<
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/coastal-erosion-diy-solution-washington-state-north-cove>
"For as long as David Cottrell could remember, his hometown had been falling
into the sea. In the early 1960s, when Cottrell was 3 years old, an abandoned
US Coast Guard station teetered over the water of the Pacific in North Cove,
Washington. By the middle of the decade, the station was gone—as was a post
office, a schoolhouse, and one of the state’s earliest lighthouses.
As North Cove’s buildings melted into the ocean, many of the town’s residents
melted away too, loading their wooden homes onto trucks and retreating inland.
With every boom and crash of the tide, those who remained were reminded that it
was only a matter of time before their homes fell too.
Still, there was a life to be made here. For the next 55 years, Cottrell would
work on one of 70 family farms that together provided 60 percent of the state’s
cranberries on the 800 acres of boggy land found just inland from North Cove,
behind Highway 105. The highway provided a vital transport link and served as a
natural dyke, but like the land around it, its future was precarious; Highway
105 had already been moved once due to rising water, in 1995, and a 2015
estimate from the Washington State Department of Ecology suggested even in its
new location it would be underwater by 2030. A seawall to hold back the ocean
would cost tens of millions of dollars.
With his livelihood and community teetering on the edge, Cottrell felt he had
“nothing to lose.” One day in 2016 he walked to the end of North Cove’s main
ocean-facing road, Blue Pacific Drive—its end a mess of crumpled tarmac
culminating in a 14-foot drop into the ocean—and dumped $400 worth of basalt
cobble over the edge in a last-ditch effort to fight against erosion. Against
the odds, it worked. Where once there was only churning ocean, seven years
later there is new beach, complete with dune grass, driftwood, and a thriving
ecosystem.
Cottrell’s success sparked a grassroots movement, with people of the local
Native American Shoalwater Bay Tribe, citizen volunteers, and members of the
local drainage district uniting to form an action group to work on
beach-restoration projects along 2 miles of nearby coastline. For George
Kaminsky, a coastal engineer at the State Department of Ecology, Cottrell’s
work may have revolutionized the field. “He never tried to take credit for it,”
he says, “but David contributed this thing of immense benefit, basically saving
the community.”"
Via
Positive.News
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
