Changing Coastline

Ballston Beach, Truro

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Erosion at Ballston Beach

There has been and continues to be an alarming rate of erosion happening in this area. These two images provided by Richard Smith illustrate how alarming the changes have been to the surrounding dunes even over the past year. The two houses in the photo are located next to the Ballston Beach parking lot at the end of South Pamet Road.

Last August I took a photo of Ballston Beach from the lookout hill at the end of North Pamet Road.  Today I retook the same photo from the same location. If you look carefully at the two houses in the distance, you can clearly see that they lost more than 25 feet of land to the Atlantic Ocean in only 7 months.  The house further back is now only a 4 or 5 feet away from a 15 foot cliff which drops down to the ocean beach.  The house has already lost part of its deck. The erosion happened over a series of 4 or 5 storms that began in the summer in the 2009.  Each storm took away about 5 feet of land.

Ballston Beach, Truro, March 2010

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The Perfect Storm

On Halloween of 1991, a large storm broke through a barrier dune at Ballston Beach, flooding the Pamet River. This was known as the Perfect Storm, which Sebatian Junger’s book and major motion picture retells. Rarely can a storm of this magnitude be witnessed on the Cape, as an unfortunate number of factors all combined to create a storm so ‘perfectly’ bad that it is said that it could not have been any more severe. The storm was a nor’eastern with 120 mph winds and waves over 10 ft high that washed over the barrier dune. The storm inundated the Pamet River with such volume that the bay side of the river was connected to the ocean side, dividing the Cape and turning the lower Cape into an island.

One of the widely spoken about memories from the storm was the abundance of sea foam that lasted long after the storm was over, blanketing the area. Brian Dunn, a Truro resident who lived almost a mile back from the breached dune remembers the sea foam reaching his home it was so pervasive. Dunn who witnessed the storm as it happened from the Robbins Roost, a home perched on the adjacent overlooking cliff, vividly remembers the incredible surges breaking over the dune and flying telephone poles.

This is a concerning areas on the Cape because of human alterations to the area, including the placement of Route 6, which acts as a unnatural barrier as Mark Adams explains:

The tidal restriction at Route 6 prevents the Pamet River system from responding to overwash events. Salt water becomes impounded and causes sudden vegetation change. The Pamet River’s upstream vegetation is unnaturally freshwater adapted.

It is possible that a similar storm could occur again, washing away the remaining barrier dune and flooding the Upper Pamet River, as has happened at several other points in the area’s history. The problem with this is that the environment has been changed because of human disturbances, so while overwash events may be natural, the area cannot respond as effectively as it would have without these changes. The dune has since healed and replenished as pictured in the bottom photo, but for the health and longevity of the dune it is critical that visitors understand the need to protect it so it can continue to rebuild, minimizing the possibility of this happening again. This is communicated in part by numerous signs from the NPS telling visitors to stay on marked trails and within the confines of the sand fencing that has been erected.