From the narrow road outside her Barrington home, Sandra Wyatt can watch the destruction unfold. Wyatt lives on Byway Road overlooking Allin’s Cove, which feeds out into Narragansett Bay. Standing outside her home on a recent mild Monday afternoon, Wyatt peered out across the cove, past the sandbar that cuts into the cove’s inlet, to what was at one time a healthy salt marsh. Now, all she sees when she looks out that way is a sea of Phragmites, an aggressive herbaceous grass that invades disturbed wetlands like this one, killing off the natural habitat.
But daunting as the ravished wetlands appeared, an even bigger problem loomed just a few feet away. The beach that runs along Byway Road is shrinking as the water eats away at it. The erosion has gotten so bad that Wyatt worries that a good storm could wipe out the beach and road, possibly putting the water, gas, and sewer lines under the road out of commission, and rendering hers and her neighbors’ homes worthless.
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Eventually, that is what will happen if nothing is done about the erosion, she said, with or without a hurricane.
”Once that road caves in, these utilities (are) not protected anymore,” she said.
While nature’s normal course of storms, winds, and tides makes change along Allin’s Cove inevitable, Wyatt and other environmentalists believe past wrongdoing is the reason Byway Road is now threatened. In 1959, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dumped dredge spoils from nearby Bullock Cove into the 11-acre salt marsh in Allin’s Cove. This spurred a chain reaction, experts say.
First, filling in the marsh has elevated the land, which has prevented the tide from washing over it. Instead, the water is forced into the cove, rushing in through the narrow inlet. When the water flows in, it carries silt that builds up steadily. Eventually, sand collects on top of the silt, which has caused the sand bar that guards the entrance to the cove to expand, moving steadily northward into the mouth of the cove, and westward toward Byway Road.
With the sandbar moving, it is increasing the water flow against the beach, speeding its erosion and the erosion of the bank that separates it from the road. Today, the beach is a narrow – about 15 feet wide at mid-tide – and it slopes steeply into the water. “There was a wide, shallow beach that you could walk along easily,” Wyatt recalled, standing in the beach’s moist sand. She has lived on Byway Road since 1993.
Now, it appears the town, the state, and the Army Corps of Engineers are ready to right past wrongs. And for Wyatt and other Byway residents who have pushed authorities to take action for the last three years, it is a victory.
The Army Corps’ preliminary plan is to dig up the spoils dumped into the salt marsh and use some of the material to fortify the shoreline along Byway road. This summer, the corps will begin a feasibility study to find out if this plan can work. It will examine the historic pattern of sand migration in the cove and the coastal processes in place now. Topographical information will be collected, and the tidal flow in and out of the cove will be monitored.
But not everyone is certain about how the filling of the salt marsh has affected the rest of the cove.
”Sand movement itself is a natural process, but the bad part is that it’s causing some erosion along Byway Road,” said Barbara Blumeris, the Army Corps’ project manager for the Allin’s Cove project. “It’s hard to say if that’s the result of the dredge spoil or not.”
Asked why the corps filled in the wetlands, Blumeris said, “My best guess is that people didn’t realize the value of wetlands, and (they) were just looking for a convenient disposal site.”
Either way, the specific program under which the corps plans to take action in Barrington, Section 1135 of the Water Resources Development Act of 1986, is favorable to the state. It calls for the federal government to pay 75 percent of the estimated $760,000 project, with the state and town paying the rest. State Rep. Peter T. Ginaitt, D-Warwick, is working to provide the state’s share. Last year, state lawmakers appropriated $172,000 as a state match for an Army Corps dredging project at Potter’s Pond in South Kingstown.
But, last month the corps and the state Coastal Resources Management Council nixed the project. Now, Ginaitt is working to transfer that state match – now sitting in the state supplemental budget of money left over from last year – to Allin’s Cove. (See Sidebar.)
The town of Barrington must come up with the remaining $18,000 to equal the 25 percent match. Some of that money can come in the form of in-kind support.
But some problems could arise. For example, no one yet knows what is in the dredge spoils that have filled the marsh. And even if the sediments are suitable for use along the road, plenty of material will be left over after the shoreline fortification is done.
Further, restoring degraded wetlands can be a sensitive process. In reestablishing salt marshes, the idea is not to bring the area back to its exact state of 40 years ago, but to create the conditions that allow nature to establish a sustainable marsh ecosystem, said Andy Lipsky, restoration coordinator for Save The Bay.
Similar restoration projects have been successful in other parts of the state, Lipsky said. “I’d say the chances of success are pretty high – it’s a really important project, for a lot of reasons.”
Not the least of which is the survival of Byway Road. It wasn’t long after Wyatt moved there seven years ago that she noticed her neighborhood was in danger. The sand bar’s movement has been swift, and so has the erosion along the bank. She can now point to the exposed roots of the trees that hold the bank together. Indeed, more than three feet of shoreline has disappeared in the last five years, according to the Allin’s Cove preliminary restoration plan draft.
She decided to take action. She started researching the area and salt marshes in general, and learned that it was the Army Corps that had filled the marsh in. She created a cardboard display with aerial photos showing the changes in the cove since the dredge dumping, which she used to help educate people about the problem. She also began to petition the corps to evaluate the area. She formed a citizens group, the Allin’s Cove Neighborhood Coalition, in 1998 to support her cause.
Finally, in September of last year, the corps heeded Wyatt and the neighborhood’s demands. Blumeris was assigned as the project manager for the project, and by December of last year she had completed a preliminary draft action plan. Now, the town is hoping it can improve the habitat there that supports finfish and hard and soft-shell clams.
