The Herring River Restoration Project, which has been in the planning stage for decades, has finally begun. The clearing of dead vegetation in the Duck Harbor basin is underway as is the construction of the $31-million Chequessett Neck Road bridge that will control the restoration of estuarine tides.
Meeting or exceeding expectations is fundamental to stakeholder satisfaction. Conversely, failure to meet expectations breeds dissatisfaction. Stakeholders have been abundantly informed about the anticipated environmental benefits of the Herring River project but inadequately advised of potential harms. The citizens of Wellfleet deserve to know about potential unintended consequences as well as expected benefits.
Some adverse outcomes are certain to occur. For example, the tidal restoration will flood safe animal habitats, causing the displacement or death of birds, rodents, and other creatures that are insufficiently mobile to escape tidal inundation. Eastern box turtles are among the animals at risk, according to the project’s environmental impact statement. While the conversion of the Herring River wetlands from a freshwater to a saltwater marsh will provide new nesting opportunities for animals that normally inhabit saltwater environs, it will destroy existing freshwater nesting sites. This tradeoff will create roughly equal numbers of winners and losers. Hence, there will be no net gain in animal habitat.
The tidal restoration will kill off all existing freshwater vegetation — grasses, bushes, and trees that are exposed to the twice-daily inundation of salt water. This is explained in the introductory statement on vegetation management in the project’s final environmental impact statement. Although Mother Nature will probably substitute salt-tolerant vegetation where freshwater vegetation has been destroyed, it is possible that this natural rejuvenation could fail. Such a failure occurred in the Sesuit Creek restoration project in Dennis 15 years ago, which led to large swaths of mudflats rather than the lush salt marsh grasses that were anticipated. This unintended consequence was documented in a 2017 report prepared by two University of New Hampshire environmental scientists for the Mass. Div. of Ecological Restoration.
Recreational use of the river will be disrupted as crews remove the dead vegetation. The plan calls for the die-off byproducts to be removed with chain saws, mowers, and brush hogs, as well as larger treaded machines that cut and chip entire trees. That process has begun, and a large full-tree mulcher is pictured in a newsletter article reporting on the current clearing of dead vegetation in the Duck Harbor basin.
The livelihood or property of some stakeholders is threatened because of the project’s complexity and duration. The project has been heralded as the largest tidal restoration in New England, and thousands of pages of planning documents attest to its complexity. The time required to convert the current freshwater wetland into a stable salt marsh is estimated to be more than a decade. Large size, substantial complexity, and long duration burden such projects with a high risk of unintended consequences.
Wellfleet taxpayers are not protected from financial liability with insurance, which would have been required by a warrant article defeated at a Wellfleet town meeting in 2017. Earlier that year, attorney William Henchy offered his opinion that the town would be financially responsible for losses caused by the project because it owns the dike controlling tidal flow in the Herring River. In 2018, town counsel Gregg Corbo advised the Wellfleet Select Board to “factor the potential for liability into your decision-making process.” The chair of the Herring River Technical Committee in 2006, Robert Hubby, anticipated taxpayer liability when he recorded the following rhetorical questions in notes regarding stakeholder issues: “What will be done to compensate private individuals for damages related to the restoration?” and “How will the costs of restoration affect the tax rate?” Taxpayers have not been told the answers.
Evidence supporting all of the above is available for fact-checking at herringriver.info. Much of the evidence comes from the 984-page Herring River Restoration Project Environmental Impact Statement. Other sources include permit and grant applications as well as binding agreements among the principals — the town of Wellfleet and the Cape Cod National Seashore — and their agents. Copies of the legal opinions and meeting notes mentioned above are available for review, along with images depicting the mud flats and erosion that resulted from the Sesuit Creek restoration project.
Ronald A. Gabel lives in Yarmouth Port.
