Sandwich Selectmen Get Update on Town Neck Replenishment

SANDWICH – Efforts to keep sand on Sandwich beaches east of the Cape Cod Canal continue.

A coastal engineer with the Woods Hole Group, Kirk Bosma, recently provided an update to selectmen on the status of beach replenishment efforts.

Bosma said the permitting process is almost complete for taking more than 200,000 cubic yards of sand from Scusset Beach to rebuild Town Neck.

“The ultimate goal here for the beaches as a whole system…is to just kind of return sediment to system on a consistent basis,” Bosma said. “Kind of a beach recovery through reuse.”

According to the Bosma, the Army Corps of Engineers has accepted that the jetties placed at the east end of the Cape Cod Canal have been preventing the natural flow of sediment to Town Neck beach for the last century.

The Army Corps continues to work on its 111 Study which is researching the impacts of the canal. Town officials hope the Corps will help in efforts to replenish Town Neck Beach with materials taken from Scusset Beach and dredged from the Cape Cod Canal.

Bosma compared the beach system to human heart not getting any oxygen.

“The beach can only work so long when you don’t have that replenishment going on and it’s not happening right now,” he said. “So we have to reestablish that independent of any of the other solutions you might want to consider.”

Sandwich began replenishment efforts in 2016 when more than 100,000 cubic yards of sand dredged from the Cape Cod Canal was used to build up Town Neck Beach.

Prior to that work, a study by the Woods Hole Group determined that the beach needed about 400,000 cubic yards of sediment.