The Health of Nauset Estuary
To the editor:
I join Kait Logan and Harrison Swift, who wrote letters [March 25] expressing their significant concerns about the proposed dredging of the Nauset Estuary.
Andrew Gottlieb, executive director of the Association to Preserve Cape Cod, has referred to this estuary as our version of the rain forest for its biodiversity, and he holds the estuary up as a model, in terms of its health, for other estuary systems on the Cape. We need to preserve and protect this healthy resource.
Through its Dredge Advisory Committee, the town of Orleans consulted with the Woods Hole Group (WHG), which recently concluded that “maximum current velocities measured in the Nauset Estuary are near the upper limits of the safe operating conditions for the dredging equipment considered in this study.” Further, the WHG estimated that between 76,490 and 139,972 cubic yards of sand would be removed from the area behind the spit, and that 50 percent of that amount would have to be dredged annually, due to the dynamic nature of the area.
Soon, the Eastham Select Board will consider signing a memorandum of understanding with Orleans, which would indicate Eastham’s support of the dredge as it enters the permitting phase. I urge the board to consider the environmental ramifications of a project that may or may not be safely executed and, if viable at all, would have to be re-executed on a yearly basis. The health of the estuary is just not worth the risk.
Joanna Stevens
Eastham
The writer is married to Eastham Select Board member Aimee Eckman.
On Candidate Lise King
To the editor:
Lise King has shown the willingness and determination to tackle difficult issues facing our community during her tenure as select board member. She dives deep into a subject, finds answers, and works to build consensus.
Provincetown has no shortage of community dilemmas: scarcity and cost of housing, Covid, sewage and water, climate change, support for commercial fishing, economic viability, the police station. Lise rightly, in my view, favors a comprehensive approach to our interrelated challenges. She wants all constituencies to participate in decision-making, rather than having the select board vote on pre-packaged proposals. She advocates giving the board, with community participation, sufficient time to fully study and work through proposals.
Lise’s background includes a master’s in public administration. She helped choose our new town manager, Alex Moore. I appreciate Lise’s community outreach about vaccine availability, St. Mary’s Sunday soup kitchen (where she also volunteers), and social justice, and her willingness to communicate in person and online.
Lise has been open to learning and is dedicated to her job. I’m thankful the select board has become a more cohesive group. From early on, Lise played a critical role in implementing health protocols. As a result, we, as a community, were able to pull together and welcome visitors with ample attention to safety.
I fully support her candidacy in the May 11 election. I hope others will join me in re-electing her.
Stephan Cohen
Provincetown
What It Means to Save a Place
To the editor:
I am writing to thank the Indie for the two April 22 stories by Christine Legere [“Many Historic Buildings Have No Protection” and “Modern Business Can Co-Exist With History”] and for your ongoing coverage of historic preservation concerns.
Legere makes sense of some rather complicated issues in her stories. It is important to see adaptive reuse highlighted at Mac’s, as well as the realities historic property owners face relating to climate change. Our understanding of what it means to save a place will be challenged, and reformed, by sea-level rise.
Mary Bergman
Nantucket
The writer is executive director of the Nantucket Preservation Trust.
Inspiring to Washashores
To the editor:
“The Indie Takes 14 Press Awards” [April 15, page 4] is an inspiration to all of us washashores. Congratulations! My family and I read and thoroughly enjoy our new local newspaper. We look forward to your great weekly journalism, design, and photography. And we encourage your team to step it up a notch this coming year to become the top awards winner among all New England weekly newspapers.
Paul Krueger
Truro
