All meetings in Wellfleet are remote only and can be watched online. Go to Wellfleet-ma.gov and click on the meeting you want to watch, then follow the instructions on the agenda.
Friday, Oct. 1
- 95 Lawrence Road Task Force, 10 a.m.
Tuesday, Oct. 5
- Open Space Committee, 4 p.m.
Wednesday, Oct. 6
- Conservation Commission, 4 p.m.
Thursday, Oct. 7
- Cape Cod Commission Hearing, 3 p.m.
Conversation Starters
Climate Change and Wellfleet’s Marshes
The Wellfleet Harbor Management Plan, presented by the Natural Resources Advisory Board (NRAB) to the select board on Sept. 28, places confronting climate change at the center of its recommendations.
Two previous harbor management plans, done in 1995 and 2006, focused on protecting and maintaining the harbor.
NRAB members’ first recommendation is to create a climate change committee. They call for one that is “broad-based,” because it is impossible to separate out “conservation issues from shellfishing issues from health issues from shoreline structure issues.”
Warming water temperatures and rising sea levels will affect the harbor, including the large tracts of marsh from Blackfish Creek to the area known as “the Gut” by Great Island.
The advisory board made four recommendations pertaining to marshes. The first is to determine which “marshes are at greatest risk”; the second is to “investigate ways to protect and restore existing marshes”; the third is to protect adjacent lands “to allow marsh migration”; and the fourth is “to restore (smaller) marshes to optimize inland migration options.”
Marsh lands are important to the shoreline structure affecting shellfishing, sea life, and dredging decisions, all of which are addressed in detail in the 23-page report. While the report recommends a series of actions by the select board and other environment-related committees, the “staff and citizens” who will serve on the climate change committee, if it is created, have their work cut out for them. —Tom Recchio
