Implementing Appropriate Technologies
As the coastline of the Cape is constantly eroding, there are a variety of shorefront protection strategies, utilizing appropriate technologies, which can be implemented to help minimize the impact of this coastal process. Implementing appropriate technologies like soft solutions use preexisting resources to create an effective solution that has a lower overall cost and impact on the environment compared to hard engineered solutions, which depend upon artificial structures to manipulate coastal interactions. Soft solutions intend to work with natural processes rather than against them, making them effective and sustainable forms of erosion management. Using a soft solution over a hard engineered solution demands a more comprehensive analysis of how a beach is being used and requires beach goers to have a greater awareness about how their individual actions can make a difference for the stability of the coastline.
In managing coastal processes like erosion, the outer beach provides an excellent case study for evaluating what happens to beaches when they are allowed to erode naturally without either type of solutions being implemented. Along the Eastern Seaboard, finding a seashore that adheres to this policy is rare as the desire to stabilize the coast to be able to maximize it for development and recreation is much more pervasive. The Cape is at all times undergoing coastal changes that may be conflicting with human settlement but coastal resource management practices are not necessarily designed to resolve this tension.
The NPS is a multi-priority federal institution that is responsible for the management of the entire park, which as stated previously, is uniquely positioned because of its formation after preexisting settlement had occurred. For this reason, environmental concerns take precedent in defining its coastal resource management decisions and therefore anthropocentric concerns are not as prioritized. In this way the park is attempting to “create an equal voice at the table for the earth”, an expression used by Gordon Peabody. In their charter, National Parks were established throughout the country to serve as stewards of nationally significant lands and protect them from encroaching settlement. The National Seashore’s policies are in keeping with this philosophy, but this park is set apart from others by the fact that there are a number of residents who live within the park and are affected by these policies, namely by having to go through a permitting process to enact any erosion control methods. The NPS does not actually prevent hard engineered erosion control on private property, though it discourages them as an abutter, the Mass Wetlands protection Act enables the town’s Conservation Commissions to regulate these structures but still allows them.
There are viable alternative strategies, namely soft solutions that utilize pre-existing coastal elements to manipulate the coastal profile, allowing erosion to continue occurring unimpeded, yet assist homeowners in being able to lengthen the amount of time they have in their current location. Soft solutions can be considered on a case-by-case basis if the necessary permitting is granted, since they may be less environmentally harmful then the alternative of moving a home or structure. Further research should be conducted comparing the environmental and financial costs for beaches within the National Seashore.
