EASTHAM — A yellow patch of grass opposite the Lobster Shanty on Route 6 became the site of a 100-person protest on Saturday, March 1, as it was the nearest place along the highway to the Cape Cod National Seashore’s Salt Pond Visitor Center.
Cape Cod National Seashore
LOCAL IMPACT
Feds Terminate Three National Seashore Staff
Archaeologist, ranger, and restoration ecologist were fired on Feb. 14
WELLFLEET — A nationwide mass firing of federal employees who were in their “probationary” first year on the job included three full-time staff at the Cape Cod National Seashore: archaeologist Daniel Zoto, outreach ranger John Hanlon, and an ecologist who worked closely with the Herring River Restoration Project, according to several sources who spoke with the Independent.
The three terminated staffers, who were all fired on Feb. 14, are among the roughly 1,000 National Park Service employees that the Trump administration is estimated to have fired by email that day, according to numerous news organizations.
There are an estimated 200,000 federal employees on probationary status, according to the New York Times, and the Trump administration has taken steps to fire most of them.
Friends of the Cape Cod National Seashore president David Bernstein told the Independent that the termination notices for the three Seashore employees came from Park Service headquarters, not from within the Seashore. All three had served in their full-time positions for less than a year.
Zoto and Hanlon both confirmed that they had been terminated effective immediately on Feb. 14. Zoto had been employed since October as the park’s full-time archaeologist, he told the Independent.
Hanlon had also started work in October in a newly created park ranger role focused on outreach, particularly to underserved communities. Before that, he had worked as a seasonal ranger for 25 years, he told the Independent.
His contract was supposed to last for four years, Bernstein said.
Bernstein confirmed that a restoration ecologist specializing in the Herring River project was also terminated, though he declined to name that person. Multiple other sources with knowledge of the situation also confirmed the ecologist’s termination without giving the person’s name.
Cape Cod National Seashore Supt. Jennifer Flynn, Deputy Supt. Leslie Reynolds, and communications specialist Linzy French did not respond to several requests for comment. Reynolds responded to a follow-up inquiry by writing “your inquiry was submitted and is in process.”
Zoto said that the termination email he received was a “cut-and-paste” email identical to that received by other National Park Service staffers across the country. It came from an office in Washington, D.C., he said, adding that “the Park had no say whatsoever in this.”
A Feb. 15 article in National Parks Traveler quotes part of that email: “The Department [of the Interior] determined that you have failed to demonstrate fitness or qualifications for continued employment because your subject matter knowledge, skills, and abilities do not meet the Department’s current needs, and it is necessary and appropriate to terminate, during the probationary period, your appointment.” The email was sent by Lena McDowall, the Park Service’s deputy director for administration.
Federal employees on probationary status can be terminated at any time, according to the American Federation of Government Employees, if their “work performance or conduct … fails to demonstrate fitness or qualifications for continued employment.”
Some terminated employees are contesting their firing through the federal Office of Special Counsel, whose director has also been fired by the Trump administration.
Zoto confirmed that, because he was still on probationary status, he will receive no benefits or severance pay as a result of his termination.
Bernstein said that Zoto had been working on more than a dozen archaeological projects when he was terminated. “It’s crucial to have an archaeologist, especially with the thousands of years of history of people living in this area,” he said.
Bernstein also said that Hanlon had recently gone to the Cape Cod Mall in Hyannis to give a talk to patients with Alzheimer’s disease about birds in the Seashore.
“He brought the Park to this group at the Cape Cod Mall,” Bernstein said. Hanlon’s job was “not just bringing people into the Park who normally can’t get here — it was also him going out to groups who would not normally get here.”
All three of the people who were fired “do crucial work,” Bernstein said. “It’s upsetting.”
Mark Adams, a former geographic information specialist at the National Seashore who had worked with Hanlon, told the Independent that Hanlon’s work had included outreach to local students, Wampanoag tribal members, and students beyond Cape Cod from as far away as Boston. He praised Hanlon’s approach to connecting people to the Seashore.
“Some people have an attitude of, ‘Oh, we have a visitor center. We’ll just open the doors and talk to whoever comes in,’ ” Adams said.
Hanlon sought to “reach people we don’t normally reach,” and looked especially for school systems that were far removed from nature, Adams said.
“I think it’s rare to have someone who’s not a careerist — whose personal goals are secondary to serving people,” Adams said. “He represents an admirable way to do the work.
“I have a lot of sympathy for the National Park staff and administration because they’re being forced into this,” Adams added. “But at the same time, I think they could do more to keep reminding people of the context of what the National Park Service is supposed to be.”
Bernstein noted that these firings come at a time when the Seashore is already short-staffed. “To my understanding, they have about 50 full-time employees, and they’re supposed to have somewhere in the 60s,” he said. “It’s not just a matter of losing three people. It’s a matter of having lots of openings for crucial jobs.”
Rich Delaney, who chairs the National Seashore Advisory Commission, told the Independent that he had heard about the terminations only second- and third-hand and had received no communication from the Park Service or National Seashore about them.
Though news of cuts to the federal workforce can seem distant, Delaney said, “It’s affecting us, clearly.”
Though the Trump administration’s stated purpose for firing probationary employees nationwide is to save money, Bernstein said, the money saved in this case is negligible because ranger salaries are already low. The rangers, Bernstein said, “don’t do it for the pay — they do it for the love of the Park and the love of the job.”
STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN
An Old Easement Leads to New Stairs in Seashore
Owner atop bluff at Head of the Meadow gets a private leg up on public land
TRURO — A 10-foot-wide easement deeded nearly 50 years ago to the owners of a house at 63 Head of the Meadow Road in Truro paved the way for the construction this fall of an unusual accommodation for that house’s new owners: a stairway for private use on Cape Cod National Seashore land.
The stairway zigzags from the ocean beach to the top of the 80-foot-high bluff where Jay Merchant’s vacation house is situated on 5.5 acres overlooking the Atlantic in the Seashore. “There used to be a rope ladder — we were using that,” Merchant told the Truro Conservation Commission during a May 6 review of the plans. “I’ve got a pretty bad leg, and I don’t walk all that great. It wasn’t easy going up and down there.”
Merchant, who lives in Brewster, purchased the property known as “Dolly Hill” in April 2022 for nearly $4 million through his Newcomb Knolls LLC. He spent more than two years obtaining the necessary approvals for the stairway project. They had to come from both the Seashore and the conservation commission, given the overlapping federal and local jurisdictions.
To navigate the approval process, Merchant enlisted Steve McKenna, the Cape Cod and Islands regional coordinator for the Mass. Office of Coastal Zone Management. McKenna helped Merchant evaluate the deeded easement and determine whether it could be used to construct improved beach access.
When Merchant and McKenna showed the easement, included on Merchant’s property plan, to National Seashore authorities, “they were pretty surprised,” McKenna told the commissioners at their May hearing. “They said this was the first time they had seen this existing easement.”
According to McKenna, the discovery raised questions about the easement’s validity and whether construction would be allowed. “It’s highly unusual to permit a private structure within Seashore property,” he said.
But after a review completed last winter, Seashore officials confirmed the easement’s legitimacy. Deputy Supt. Leslie Reynolds told the Independent that the easement was filed on Sept. 29, 1978.
“The owners hold a valid pre-existing easement over federal property which includes beach access to the mean high-water mark of the Atlantic Ocean,” Reynolds said by email.
After that, McKenna told the conservation commission, Seashore staff acknowledged the need for a suitable structure to provide the access specified in the easement. He added that the Seashore hopes to use the stairway to access the beach for its own purposes. Staff have previously done so on informal paths at the edge of the bluff.
McKenna did not respond to phone and text messages seeking comment before the Independent‘s deadline this week. Efforts to contact Jay Merchant through his company, Cape Sand and Recycling in Brewster, were unsuccessful.
Following the Seashore’s determination that the easement was valid, Merchant submitted a draft notice of intent and preliminary construction plans to the Seashore, the conservation commission, and MassWildlife’s Natural Heritage and Endangered Species Program (NHESP). Each evaluated the project under different regulatory standards.
Seashore Supt. Jennifer Flynn signed off on the draft notice of intent and the NHESP application. But when the town’s conservation commission reviewed the plans, members raised concerns about potential effects on the coastal bank and wildlife habitats and requested modifications to ensure compliance with the town’s conservation bylaw and the state’s Wetlands Protection Act.
Commissioner Diane Messinger questioned the need for a stairway in what she said was a sensitive area. “You can get to the beach very easily around the corner,” she said.
Health and Conservation Agent Emily Beebe said that the project was technically replacing a noncompliant rope ladder and pointed to the Seashore superintendent’s approval.
Commissioner Bob White highlighted the sensitivity of vegetation below Merchant’s 14-by-14-foot deck, which was built last year in the coastal bank’s buffer zone with the commission’s approval. Chair Carol Girard-Irwin said she was concerned about potential risks to recent revegetation efforts that were part of the deck project’s mitigation requirements.
Commissioner Clint Kershaw suggested adding a hand-built elevated walkway from Merchant’s deck to the proposed stairway. The commission then voted to continue the review to June 3, allowing time for Merchant to make adjustments that included reducing the stairway’s width from four feet to three feet.
The commission approved the modified project on June 3, contingent on conditions that the property owner revegetate disturbed areas with beach grasses, that there be minimal disturbance to the coastal bank, and that nearby piping plover nesting grounds be protected. Construction began after Labor Day; the stairs and walkway have now been completed.
LITTLE HOUSES
An ADU Project in the Seashore Becomes a Snafu
Conflicting laws could put Seashore homeowners’ certificates at risk, Supt. Flynn said
WELLFLEET — The owners of a two-acre property at 19 School House Hill Road are overseeing the finishing touches on an accessory dwelling unit (ADU) built under the town’s still-new bylaw aimed at boosting year-round residency. But at a zoning board of appeals hearing on Oct. 24, owners Eileen Raffo and Katherine Eppley hit a snag: a letter from the National Park Service alerted them that, because their property is in the Cape Cod National Seashore, any new construction is a violation of Seashore zoning guidelines.
The town’s ADU bylaw, which was approved by voters in 2021, allows homeowners to build accessory residential structures of up to 1,200 square feet by right, as long as the building conforms to other zoning and health regulations. For properties within the Seashore, however, the bylaw requires homeowners to go before the ZBA for a special permit.
Until last week’s hearing, the regulatory board had not received a special permit application for an ADU in the Seashore, according to ZBA chair Sharon Inger.
The National Park Service letter, signed by Seashore Supt. Jennifer Flynn, warned the ZBA and the homeowners that if the board approved the special permit and the ADU is built, the property would be out of compliance with the Park’s founding legislation, which prohibits new development. And that, Flynn wrote, would “complicate future sales” — and possibly not only of Raffo and Eppley’s house but of all houses within the Seashore’s boundaries.
A Doubly Odd Case
The extent of the noncompliance is unusually complicated in this case. That’s because the property does not have a certificate of suspension of condemnation, according to Supt. Flynn’s letter.
When Congress established the Seashore in 1961, the National Park Service took most of the undeveloped land within the 43,000-acre park through eminent domain. But owners of houses built before 1959, when the Seashore legislation was first proposed, were allowed to secure so-called certificates of suspension of condemnation, allowing them to retain ownership in perpetuity. These owners of property in the Seashore may also sell their houses, and in those cases the certificate is passed along to the new owners.
According to Seashore Deputy Supt. Leslie Reynolds, Eppley and Raffo do not have a certificate because no previous owner ever applied for one.
Flynn’s letter said that if Raffo and Eppley pursue the ADU project, the property would become ineligible for a certificate of suspension of condemnation. And that would mean that the Park could exercise its authority to take the property through eminent domain.
Such a taking involves paying fair market value for the property, and instances in which the Park exercises this power appear to be few and far between. “Very rarely does the Seashore have the money to pay market value,” said Tim Dickey of Truro, the contractor for the project.
“We have seen these letters before, but I don’t know if the Seashore has ever actually done it,” Inger said.
There’s another twist in this case. The ADU on School House Hill Road has already been built, Dickey said. That’s because of a clerical error made months ago by the town’s building department: former Building Commissioner Angelo Salamone issued a building permit for the project in June without referring the applicants to the zoning board as required by the ADU bylaw.
Interim commissioner Victor Staley caught the error and referred the homeowners to the board, Staley told the Independent. Dickey has paused work as the application is being reviewed by the board of appeals, he said.
“It’s very bad news for us,” Dickey said. “Now the question is whether the homeowners want to move forward with the project given what the Seashore is saying.”
The ZBA continued the special permit hearing in this case to its Nov. 14 meeting, citing missing materials in the application. But the board is poised to approve the application once the rest of the information comes in, Inger said.
“What we go by is the town’s bylaws,” Inger said. “We have no role in administering federal law here in little Wellfleet.”
Whose Rules Rule?
At a meeting of the Cape Cod National Seashore Advisory Commission on Aug. 5, Supt. Flynn said that towns with bylaws that allow the construction of ADUs in the National Seashore are at odds with the park’s enabling legislation. That could put the entire town’s certificates of suspension of condemnation at risk of termination, Flynn warned.
“Technically, if a town passes a zoning ordinance in conflict with the secretarial standards, the act says that everyone in the town’s certificate of suspension of condemnation is supposed to be terminated,” Flynn said. “That’s in the act.” But she added, “That is not where I would like to go.”
Reynolds wrote in an email that while Flynn’s statement is accurate, the Seashore’s approach is to target only homes that actually have newly built ADUs.
Wellfleet Planning Board chair Gerald Parent said that when the town was drafting its ADU bylaw in 2021, it reached out to the Seashore for input on the regulation. He said that the town never received a response.
“When the bylaw got passed, and the Seashore did not come to any select board or planning board meetings, it passed as a special permit,” Parent said.
Reynolds confirmed that the Park had received notice of proposed bylaw amendments. She said that her agency had provided feedback to the planning board in August 2022. But that was after the bylaw had been adopted at town meeting.
Town Planner Beth Pyles asserted that the town’s ADU bylaw is not actually in conflict with the Seashore’s foundational documents.
Pyles said that the definition of allowed development stipulates that only the construction of the main dwelling on a property needs to have been built before 1959. “There is no such modifier for accessory structures regarding when they can or cannot be built,” Pyles said. Truro Land Use Planner Barbara Carboni, who is also a member of the Wellfleet Select Board, told the Independent that Truro also concluded that ADUs are a lawful use in the Seashore.
The state’s new Affordable Homes Act, which takes effect in February, also poses a jurisdictional conflict with the Park’s enabling legislation. Towns with ADU bylaws are currently grappling with how to square local bylaws with the new state law. But whether the Park’s legislation precludes the Seashore rules from being in compliance with state law is unclear, Flynn said at the advisory commission meeting on Aug. 5.
“It is going to be a balancing act for us, because we have a congressional law that says one thing and a Massachusetts law that says something different,” she said. “The Affordable Homes Act is going to put people in a state of conflict, because by adhering to the Massachusetts state law, they will be violating the federal law.”
According to the Seashore’s zoning guidelines, the Park’s zoning must be “consistent with the laws of Massachusetts.”
State Sen. Julian Cyr said that he doesn’t know how the conflicting laws square. He is currently waiting for answers from the state Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities, which will administer the law, on how to reconcile the laws.
“State and federal law can conflict, and they do conflict sometimes,” Cyr said. “We often don’t take into account how a national park interacts with a state zoning law.”
THE BREACH
More Studies Planned for Breakwater Gap
Officials warn that opening might not stop invasive marsh crabs
PROVINCETOWN — An on-again, off-again effort to install a gap in the Long Point Dike, more commonly called the West End breakwater, took a small step forward last week at a public meeting organized by town officials and the Army Corps of Engineers to gather public input on the project.
MARSHES
Scientists Measure an Ecological Transition at Duck Harbor
How the ‘overwashes’ preview the restoration of the salt marsh at the Herring River
WELLFLEET — Duck Harbor, enjoyed by visitors as a bayside beach, is returning to its 19th-century roots as a salt marsh, according to Tim Smith, a restoration ecologist at the Cape Cod National Seashore who is studying the ecological transition here. And Smith doesn’t mean “roots” as a metaphor: the seeds of saltwater plants that have lay dormant for more than 100 years are sprouting there, including glasswort, seablite, and seaside orach, he said.
After seawater repeatedly breached a coastal dune and poured into the freshwater confines of Duck Harbor in 2021, trees behind the bank turned gray and died. With those so-called overwash events continuing since then, bursts of green saltmarsh plants have started to emerge — near the beach at first, but then farther and farther upstream.
These overwashes are not purely a function of rising seas but involve other coastal processes including sand movement, according to Katie Castagno, a geologist and director of the Land-Sea Interaction Program at the Center for Coastal Studies who is also studying the evolution of Duck Harbor. Winter storms could bring enough sand to fill the saltwater pathway inland, she said, which would put a stop to the intrusions, at least for a while.
In the meantime, research on the ecological transition at Duck Harbor can, according to Smith, provide a preview of “what the whole Herring River system will do once tides are restored.”
The decades-long $70-million Herring River Restoration Project, a collaboration between the town and the National Park Service, involves the replacement of a dike that blocks salt water from the mouth of the Herring River with a bridge and gates that allow for the gradual restoration of tidal flow there. The return of salt water to the estuary means a transition in the kinds of vegetation and wildlife that will thrive in the area.
Duck Harbor and the Herring River are part of the same system, Smith said, so what happens at Duck Harbor can help predict what will occur in the restored estuary. “The data we’re collecting are all related,” he said.
Unlike the larger restoration project, the Duck Harbor overwashes were not deliberate. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service did, however, spend $2 million to have 125 acres of dead trees in Duck Harbor turned into mulch in 2023 to help facilitate the transition to saltwater species.
Soil and Species
Castagno said her team from the Center for Coastal Studies is taking sediment samples in hopes of learning how the area has changed “over potentially thousands of years” — a timeframe that should soon be nailed down by lab tests on their oldest samples.
“We were taking sediment cores all last summer,” said Castagno. To get them, her team had to plunge tubes deep into the muck to bring up what lies beneath: layers of peat, clay, silt, and sand that tell researchers about the continuing flux of landscapes and ecosystems here. Her team also used ground-penetrating radar to generate images of underground sediment layers.
The cores don’t only describe the past, Castagno said. “If we’re anticipating erosion in different areas” from sea-level rise, “it will be useful to know what our substrate is that might erode,” she said.
Park Service research in Duck Harbor has included surveys of fish and plant species and measurements of changing soil chemistry. “Last summer we did fish sampling,” said Smith, “trying to quantify the composition and distribution of fish species” in the brackish waters.
The Park Service also established 40 one-meter-square plots in Duck Harbor to record the plant species that are appearing and disappearing in them. Smith is measuring the geochemical response of soils as they are rewetted with salt water.
So far, Duck Harbor is undergoing a “textbook” saltmarsh recovery, Smith said — in the first year after the overwash, salt-tolerant species such as spear saltbush and pickleweed began to flourish.
“When the salt water comes in, it kills these other plants, and it gives these plants a space to survive and to spread,” Smith said. Over the long term, these herbaceous annuals do not typically fill a mature salt marsh, however; on the Outer Cape, that niche belongs to grasses such as the intensely green spartina grass.
Researchers are beginning to see sparse patches of that grass in Duck Harbor, Smith said, indicating that the next stage of the transition to a salt marsh has already begun.
Knowledge about Duck Harbor’s transition has relevance beyond Cape Cod, Smith said. There are many places where humans have restricted tidal flow around or in wetlands, whether with dikes and berms or simply with roads, and people involved in their restoration will be watching this project closely.
The freshwater marshes that often result from the construction of dikes as happened here and other human-made development will be increasingly vulnerable as sea levels and high-tide lines rise, Smith said. Saltwater inundations, and therefore saltmarsh transitions, will likely become more common, whether they happen as part of managed processes or on their own.
A SAFE DISTANCE
Seashore Offers Up a House on the Edge
Threatened by erosion, the Bartlett House will be demolished if it’s not spoken for soon
EASTHAM — The Cape Cod National Seashore announced last week that the Bartlett House, a gray shingled ranch overlooking Coast Guard Beach, is no longer safe for habitation, as it is now only 13 feet away from the edge of the bluff.
Just last year, the house did not appear to be in such dire straits. In April 2023, the structure was about 45 feet from the edge. But by the fall, salt water had infiltrated the freshwater well. The Park removed the house’s cesspool last year.
Now, unless a third party steps in, the Park plans to demolish the house “before it is claimed by the sea,” the Seashore’s announcement says.
The three-bedroom, two-bathroom, one-story house was built in 1960 but was acquired from its owner, H. Craigin Bartlett, by the Park Service in 1964. For decades it was used for seasonal employee housing and, more recently, for short-term vacation rentals, according to the National Seashore.
The structure was deemed uninhabitable by the U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) on July 9. That triggered the start of a 20-day period during which HUD’s decision could be appealed. Now that the 20 days are up, any interested state or local government or organization assisting homeless people could make a bid for the house.
Any organization awarded the house would be required to move it from its current location, according to Susan Reece, the National Seashore’s chief of interpretation, education, and cultural resources.
But moving the house might not be possible. In the final determination made by the HUD, which was shared in part with the Independent, the assessors concluded that “due to the age and unique structural design of the house, the park feels confident the house will collapse or break apart if moved.”
Hadley Luddy, CEO of the Orleans-based Homeless Prevention Council, told the Independent in an email that the organization had no plans to bid on the property. Eastham Town Planner Paul Lagg did not respond to questions before this week’s deadline.
Erosion Hot Spots
On average, the National Seashore is losing three feet per year to coastal erosion. The section of the bluff right before the Bartlett House, however, has eroded at a far faster pace: between November 2023 and April 2024, the bluff lost approximately 18 feet, according to Reece.
“The Seashore has been experiencing the natural process of erosion for eons,” said Reece. “Strong storms and wind and water patterns all have an effect on erosion, as does soil composition.”
Mark Adams, a biologist, artist, and retired Seashore cartographer who has studied coastal erosion on the Outer Cape, told the Independent that long-term erosion on the seaside bluffs from Eastham to Truro is moving at a very predictable rate — about one meter per year. But short-term “erosion hot spots” can alter a bluff much more quickly.
Adams said that climate change seems to be playing a role.
An elevated section of the ocean floor off the coast of Cape Cod called Georges Bank has provided a natural barrier that weakens waves coming from the open ocean to our shores. But “one of the measurable effects of sea level rise is more waves from the southeast,” Adams said, “because Georges Bank is not protecting the Cape in the way it did 1,000 years ago.”
Erosion, he said, is the result of waves scarring the bluff and eroding its base. Bigger waves mean more concentrated wave energy pounding the shore.
Making Moves
If a local organization does choose to take over the Bartlett House, there are some precedents for moving structures away from fast-eroding cliffs. The Truro Dept. of Public Works successfully moved a small house that was threatened by erosion, along with another house that had stood on the Walsh property, to town-owned land farther inland in February.
In 2022, the facilities at Nauset Light Beach were moved away from the dune’s edge. For that project, the National Seashore installed new septic and water systems and either demolished or relocated restrooms, the lifeguard room, and the first aid room.
Similar projects to move structures back from the shoreline occurred at Herring Cove in 2013 and 2018. And the National Seashore removed eight cottages from North Beach Island in Chatham because of erosion from 2007 to 2012, according to Reece.
Reece told the Independent that there is no uniform distance that can make a building safe from erosion. “A safe distance is dependent on a number of variables (e.g., the size and weight of the structure, soil composition, weather, etc.),” she said. “Each situation is unique.”
CLEARCUT
Truro Campground Makes Slow Amends for 2016 Violations
Work is underway on environmental restoration and a long-delayed sewage system
TRURO — Eight years after the owners of Horton’s Camping Resort in Truro illegally cleared 11 acres of land abutting the Cape Cod National Seashore, a habitat restoration project is in its second spring. The restoration is a step the campground owners agreed to as part of a settlement reached with the town in 2021.
The Seashore’s Linzy French told the Independent in an email that the owners of Horton’s have a special use permit for the restoration work underway on adjoining Park-owned land. The work is expected to continue for “several years” to ensure new plantings are successful, French said.
At the same time, work is underway on a new wastewater system that will bring the campground into compliance with state standards for treatment of sewage.
The project has a convoluted history going as far back as 2004, when the Florida-based Adventure Bound Camping Resorts bought the North Truro Camping Area, according to the Cape Cod Times. Sometime after that purchase the town notified the company that it had to upgrade the way wastewater was handled on the property.
Adventure Bound notified the Mass. Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) last September that the construction of its long-delayed wastewater treatment facility was set to begin shortly, according to Fabienne Alexis, deputy press secretary at the DEP.
The new facility will replace several old septic systems and will reduce the net amount of nitrogen released into the watershed, according to Alexis.
A Clearcut Saga
Adventure Bound, which owns campgrounds in 11 states and Washington, D.C., acquired Horton’s Campground, the property next to its North Truro Camping Area, in 2012.
The founder of Adventure Bound Camping, Wayne Klekamp, did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story. But according to a report written by company attorney Donald Nagle and obtained by the Independent through a public records request, Truro had already notified Adventure Bound that it had to upgrade the sewer system there before the company purchased Horton’s. That did not happen.
Once the company bought Horton’s, however, it sought and was issued a permit by Mass. DEP to treat the sewage produced at both campgrounds at a single wastewater treatment facility located at Horton’s.
Four years later, in 2016, Adventure Bound got to work on that, ordering the installation of a network of sewage pipes that would connect the two campgrounds. To make way for the pipes, Adventure Bound then authorized the clearing of over 11 acres of native vegetation and tree canopy and disturbing the habitat of the eastern box turtle population in the process.
Truro’s zoning board of appeals notified Adventure Bound that it had violated the town’s zoning laws by going forward — there had been no site plan review, and furthermore, the violation notice said, the property did not appear to be in compliance with its pre-existing nonconforming use. “It is clear that what was primarily a primitive tent camping area is being altered for full-service recreational vehicle use,” said the notice.
Adventure Bound had skipped another step as well. The company did not pursue authorization for its project from the Natural Heritage and Endangered Species Program, the agency that gives out special “conservation management permits” for any work that could affect the habitat of a protected species.
Much of Horton’s Camping Resort is mapped as “priority habitat” by the Mass. Div. of Fisheries & Wildlife because of the eastern box turtle population. The turtles have been designated a species of special concern under the Mass. Endangered Species Act, according to Mass Audubon.
Horton’s challenged the zoning board’s cease and desist order in court, and five years later, in 2021, the parties settled the dispute.
Adventure Bound Camping Resorts agreed to several conditions for future construction, according to the settlement.
Those include the current restoration project and a requirement that active monitoring of it continue for five years. Other requirements include the removal of invasive species and that a reviewer hired by the town be allowed to inspect the property whenever necessary.
Adventure Bound Camping Resorts came to a separate agreement with the Natural Heritage and Endangered Species Program to receive an after-the-fact conservation management permit, according to the report written by Nagle.
As a part of that deal, the company had to implement a “turtle protection plan” before starting any new construction. Adventure Bound also donated nine acres of forested land to the Truro Conservation Trust and made a $95,000 donation to the Nature Conservancy for its Eastern Box Turtle Conservation Fund.
Finally, the company agreed never to seek an increase in the number of campsites at either Horton’s Camping Resort or the North Truro Camping Area. Horton’s Camping Resort has 218 campsites, while its North Truro Camping Area has 330.
Adventure Bound also agreed to limit the camping season to April 1 to Dec. 1, except for employees and their families who live on the property year-round.
No Room at the Campground
Today, even as the restoration and the construction of the treatment facility slowly move along, camping spots at Horton’s are in high demand.
An employee confirmed that hundreds of people are currently on the waitlist for a campsite. Horton’s provides short-term and seasonal rentals for RVs and tent campers.
As the Independent has reported, campgrounds including Horton’s are increasingly being looked to as a temporary housing option for seasonal workers or permanent residents between leases. But besides their low availability, it’s hard to assess the rates for these spots because they vary widely depending on the length of rental, the inclusion of utilities, and size of the rented space.
An ad placed in the “Seeking Provincetown Housing/Rentals” Facebook group in December listed a spot for an RV at Horton’s from April to November for $9,500 — although the post noted that the price might be negotiable. That fee would cover water, sewage, trash, cable, and picnic table access. It does not include the cost of the RV itself.
Coastal Acres Campground in Provincetown also has a long waiting list dating back to 2019, according to an email message from manager Anna Kuzia. Like Horton’s, Coastal Acres provides spots for RVs and tents. And like Horton’s, Coastal Acres does not list specific prices for seasonal rentals on its website.
Unlike Horton’s and Coastal Acres, Dunes’ Edge Campground in Provincetown does not allow campers to stay more than two weeks. Dunes’ Edge does not keep a waitlist, but much of the summer season rental spots have already been taken, according to its online reservation system.
Rentals at Dunes’ Edge can cost anywhere from $55 to $149 per night, depending on the amenities included.
RESTORATION UPDATE
25 Acres Get Mulched to Aid Salt Hay’s Return
Temporary bridge nears completion; low-lying roads and Mill Creek work are next
WELLFLEET — The Cape Cod National Seashore, in partnership with Ducks Unlimited and the National Park Foundation, has begun removing 25 acres of mostly live woody vegetation from around the High Toss Road causeway as part of the Herring River Restoration Project.
DUNE SHACKS
2 of 8 Leases May Go to Local Applicants
But one previous dune family gives up, worn down by the process
PROVINCETOWN — The National Park Service’s public leasing contest for eight dune shacks in the Cape Cod National Seashore took a major step toward resolution on Nov. 15. The right to negotiate 10-year leases has been awarded to three groups of applicants, two of them with connections to longtime residents.
Peter Clemons and Marianne Benson, who have lived in a dune shack they call “The Grail” every summer since 1974, will be offered a 10-year lease along with their adult children, Andrew, Elizabeth, and Tommy Clemons.
A team of four applicants — Talilla Schuster, Josiah Mayo, Chad Avellar, and Hanna Kisialeva — will be offered a 10-year lease for the shack that Schuster’s father, Lawrence Schuster, lived in year-round for three decades beginning in 1984.
Both groups told the Independent that they were exhausted by the leasing process but were celebrating.
At the Adams shack, however, the story was different. Marcia Adams, 94, and her daughter, Sally Adams, initially applied for a lease for the shack that Marcia and her husband, David Adams, had purchased in 1953, before the Cape Cod National Seashore took ownership.
They applied together with David Quinn, a friend who had taken on an increasingly important role in caring for the shack in recent years.
Emptying out the shack and its guest cottage in time for the Park Service’s initial deadline to vacate, Sept. 1, was onerous, according to both Quinn and Sally Adams. But by the time the Park Service extended the deadline to Sept. 29, they had almost fully moved out. Quinn turned in the keys to the shacks on Aug. 25.
The Park Service continued to review their application, asking them on Sept. 29 how they planned to manage sand accretion without the motorized equipment they had been using for the last six years to keep the footings of the shacks from being buried. The Park Service told them they could not use such equipment going forward.
They were given 15 days to answer, Quinn said. They received an email on the 13th day saying they could perhaps use motorized equipment after all, if a park ranger supervised them.
“That’s when we decided that we just didn’t want to go any further,” Quinn said. “The entire process has been a mess and a source of anxiety and distress, and we lost the fight and didn’t want to have all their memories ruined.”
“Our family had the very best of times over 70 years there,” Sally Adams wrote to the Independent, “and the shacks remain an integral part of our family fabric.” The ashes of her father and both her brothers are scattered there, she said.
Quinn said the experience had been “gut wrenching” and blamed “incompetence in the upper echelon” of the Park Service, though both he and Sally Adams said the National Seashore rangers are excellent and deserve recognition.
The Park Service has chosen another applicant to negotiate a 10-year lease for the Adams shack according to a Nov. 16 report in the Boston Globe, but the agency has not said who they selected.
Two Families Continue
“It was a tough summer,” said Andrew Clemons. “Grace Bessay, who gave this shack to my parents, called it ‘the Grail’ because she believed in it so much. She would have fought this, and I knew I was going to fight it.”
Over the course of the summer, Peter and Andrew spoke to news outlets across the Northeast about the Park Service’s leasing program, which included a clause allowing applicants to offer an unlimited amount of extra rent to make their proposals more competitive. That provision was not in the agency’s management plan for the dune shacks, which had been developed in a public process from 2009 to 2012.
“I can’t afford a lawyer; all I have is my family’s story,” Andrew said. “We’ve done a good job of keeping it a family-oriented shack, being part of the community, doing the upkeep — so what are they going to do, kick us out because somebody else makes more money than we do?”
Private residential use was the only type allowed in the Park Service’s request for proposals. In a phone call in May, Cape Cod National Seashore Supt. Brian Carlstrom had tried to assure Peter Clemons that other applicants for private residential use of the Grail were unlikely to be picked if his family submitted a well-written application.
In public, however, Carlstrom defended the clause allowing unlimited rent as a “sound business practice” — even after it was criticized by the select boards of Provincetown and Truro and all of Cape Cod’s elected state and federal lawmakers.
Ultimately, after several deadline extensions, the Park Service picked the Clemons-Benson family after all.
“Obviously we’re grateful that we didn’t have to be evicted,” Peter Clemons said. “We’ve been on pins and needles, but it felt more like a knife edge, really.”
Raising a Shack
The Braaten-Schuster shack was Lawrence Schuster’s year-round home for almost 30 years, said his daughter, Talilla Schuster. He had outfitted his shack with solar panels and a mini-wind turbine, she said, but around the time he turned 70 he decided he was too old to live in the dunes and moved to Maine. He is still the permit holder for the dune shack.
Mayo said he had been reasonably confident that the application he filed with Schuster, Avellar, and Kisialeva would win — mostly because they had put a great deal of time and money into raising the shack out of an encroaching sand dune.
Raising a shack can easily cost $50,000 or more, Schuster said — although free labor from friends can help. The team of four had filed documents to raise the shack in May 2022 and received official approvals that August. It would have been lifted that fall, Schuster said, except their friend Nate Winkler’s heavy equipment was all in use at the Vineyard Wind project.
“We wound up lifting the shack in early May,” Schuster said — after her father had been notified there would be a leasing contest in December 2022 and after the rules allowing applicants to offer extra rent had been released on May 1, 2023. They moved forward, figuring their work could only help their application’s chances.
What made the extra-rent option disturbing, Mayo said, was that “it’s an indication that they really don’t understand the culture or tradition out there at all — so they’re capable of anything.” Limiting residential use from Memorial Day to Labor Day was also a red flag, Mayo said.
“People in our local economy work in the summer,” said Mayo, “and it’s clear they weren’t thinking about them. Who are you really intending on putting in these shacks if you rule out people who work here?”
Now that they have been selected to negotiate a lease, Mayo said, they can find out what those seasonal occupancy rules will mean in practice.
“We think they just phrased it poorly — that they’re really just saying they won’t maintain the roads in the winter,” Schuster said. “The jeep road can actually be easier to drive in winter, so we’re hoping that won’t be a sticking point.”
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this article, published in print on Nov. 23, 2023, misspelled Talilla Schuster’s first name.
LEADERSHIP
Park Service Names New Seashore Superintendent
Jennifer Flynn’s career has focused on law enforcement and fire management
WELLFLEET — The National Park Service announced on Sept. 22 that Jennifer Flynn, who has been with the NPS for 32 years and who had her first Parks job on Cape Cod, will become the superintendent of the Cape Cod National Seashore in November.
Current Supt. Brian Carlstrom starts a new job in Denver on Oct. 8, according to NPS spokesperson Linzy French.
Flynn comes to the Seashore after three and a half years at NPS headquarters in Washington, D.C., where she has been associate director for visitor and resource protection. There, she was responsible for a slew of security and law enforcement-related services, including fire management and the U.S. Park Police, according to a February 2020 press release.
Flynn has had experience putting out more than one kind of fire, it seems. In July 2022, she issued a memo to NPS superintendents and chief rangers describing changes that would have to be made in the Park Service’s Investigative Services Branch, necessary, she wrote, because of the erosion of funding for that program. “Nearly flat budgets,” Flynn wrote, meant the ISB had been unable to fund even cost-of-living increases for staff. They were dealing with “a 45 percent decrease in staffing,” she wrote, paired with “an expansion of 1,692 percent” in responsibility.
The losses and the resulting “streamlined service model,” which would focus the reduced number of investigators on “serious crimes against people” (crimes of violence and where use of force was involved) and let go of “crimes against society” (including property crimes and drug-related investigations), was criticized by the advocacy organization Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.
Before her work at headquarters, Flynn spent 10 years as superintendent and deputy superintendent of Shenandoah National Park in Virginia. She previously managed the NPS Basic Law Enforcement Training Academy and worked as a park ranger at several national parks across the U.S.
According to the NPS news release, Flynn started out as a temporary employee at the Cape Cod National Seashore. But French offered no details, telling the Independent by email that Flynn “will not be doing interviews until she arrives at the park in mid to late November. Jennifer, I believe, is familiar with the Cape so when she comes in here, she will get to know all the resources that we have here.”
How, exactly, Flynn will be equipped to handle Cape-specific issues, French said, “is a question for her in November.”
Following Carlstrom’s departure, Seashore Deputy Supt. Leslie Reynolds will serve as acting superintendent, French confirmed. Reynolds did not respond to a request for comment.
Flynn will arrive as the Park Service faces criticism over its decision to lease 8 of the 18 dune shacks in the Peaked Hill Bars Historic District under terms that violate the Dune Shacks Historic District Preservation and Use Plan. The leasing contest has been condemned by the Truro and Provincetown select boards and state and federal legislators.
Carlstrom defended the leasing process but largely refused to answer questions about it at a recent appearance before the Provincetown Select Board.
Asked about Flynn’s prospects for navigating the dune shack controversy, French echoed Carlstrom: “I don’t have an answer for you on that. I’d have to get back to you.”
Rich Delaney, former chair of the Cape Cod National Seashore Advisory Commission, who was recently appointed to a reconstituted advisory board by Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, is looking forward to Flynn’s arrival.
Delaney plans to brief Flynn on the commission’s capacity to serve as a liaison between the Seashore and the towns. The commission was disbanded by the Trump administration in 2018. That the dune shack leasing plan unfolded without the commission’s involvement has been “a major loss,” Delaney said.
“If we had been in operation, we could have been a forum for these ongoing discussions about the dune shacks,” Delaney said. The commission historically “helped advise and resolve difficult issues,” he said, including whether jet skis could be operated in the park and how to sustainably allow off-road vehicles on the beach.
A Reconstituted Commission
The advisory commission, originally authorized in 1961, was created to ensure communication between the Seashore and the six towns within its boundaries. Its members, including representatives from the county and state, make recommendations to the superintendent.
The commission’s work was halted in 2018 and reauthorized in January of this year. Background checks on appointees of the reconstituted commission are in their “last stages,” said Delaney.
Art Autorino, chair of the Eastham Select Board, said that the towns used to have “a great working relationship with the Seashore, but that has changed.” He’s hoping the tide will turn.
“I think one of the most important things for a positive path forward in collaboration with the Seashore is for the towns to feel they have a voice,” said Leslie Sandberg, Provincetown’s alternate on the commission, who is also a member of the town’s select board. The commission, she said, is that voice.
“As soon as Jennifer Flynn arrives,” Delaney said, “I will reach out and give her some background in a briefing on what we, as citizens, believe the benefit of the advisory commission is and encourage her to help get it back up and running as soon as possible.”
Mary-Jo Avellar, Provincetown’s appointee to the commission, is less hopeful about the leadership change.
“There’s been no oversight,” Avellar said, referring to the dune shack situation that she said “mushroomed all out of control” without input from the towns. “They’ve totally, totally disregarded the vision that President Kennedy had in the creation of the Seashore, which was to preserve our history and traditions.”
On Tuesday, Avellar received a letter from Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland formally appointing her to the reconstituted Advisory Commission.
Autorino thought it was strange that the commission hasn’t met yet. But, he said, Carlstrom’s “leaving is the best thing that could happen for the area. He’s already turned off two towns, and he’s on his way to turn off a third.”
Eastham is experiencing its own conflict with NPS over parking at Nauset Light Beach. In that case, too, the Park is accused of violating a past agreement with the town, rooted in the 1965 deed conveying the beaches from the town to the Seashore.
“If we can’t resolve this with the new superintendent, we will take legal action,” Autorino said. But, he said, there’s hope that Flynn “will be more willing to work with us.”
NATIONAL SEASHORE
Supt. Carlstrom Is Promoted to a Job in Denver
He will become an NPS deputy regional director on Oct. 8
PROVINCETOWN — When Brian Carlstrom became superintendent of the Cape Cod National Seashore in April 2018, he told the Cape Cod Times that he wanted to continue “a lot of the good work of George Price” and that he was “wide open to see what the community needs are.”
Five years later, Carlstrom is leaving Cape Cod to become deputy regional director of the Intermountain Region of the National Park Service, which includes 85 national park units in eight Western states. His posting in Denver, Colo. begins Oct. 8.
Carlstrom is also leaving the Dune Shacks Historic District Preservation and Use Plan, which Supt. George Price negotiated with community representatives from 2009 to 2011, as a plan in name only. The public meetings and community outreach that Price conducted to inform the Use Plan have been cited by Carlstrom in defense of the Park Service’s current leasing of the dune shacks, a move that has generated intense local criticism — especially for the option to bid an unlimited amount of rent.
Carlstrom’s new assignment was confirmed by Rich Delaney, executive director of the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown and former chair of the Cape Cod National Seashore Advisory Commission.
Delaney is also Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland’s nominee to chair the newly reauthorized Advisory Commission, which will begin meeting again once all its nominated members have gone through a formal vetting process.
A half-dozen other people also told the Independent they were aware of Carlstrom’s promotion, including members of the Provincetown Select Board, staff at the Center for Coastal Studies, and leaders of nonprofits that deal with the National Seashore.
It was also mentioned by two people in public comments at the select board’s meeting on Monday, Aug. 28, where Carlstrom made a presentation and took questions from the board.
Nonetheless, Carlstrom himself would not confirm his new posting after the meeting, saying that all requests for interviews had to be emailed to the National Park Service.
In response to a written inquiry the next day, an NPS spokesperson would neither confirm nor deny the move, writing only that the agency had “no personnel announcements at this time.”
Questions Without Answers
Carlstrom’s presentation at the select board was preceded by almost an hour of public comments dominated by dune shack dwellers lodging complaints over the Seashore’s handling of the public leasing process.
Mildred Champlin, 92, said that many people who submitted applications for a dune shack lease would not be prepared for the way winter storms can endanger the shacks.
“These people are being bamboozled,” Champlin said. “When my brother-in-law died, we didn’t get to go to his funeral because we were putting in snow fencing” after a November storm. “You don’t get to wait until June when the weather is nice — you go right then.”
“In my view, the only way to repair this critically important relationship between stakeholders and Seashore administrators and staff is to explain how the RFP was drafted,” said Josiah Mayo, a caretaker of the Braaten shack. “Why allow higher rents to be offered? These questions must be answered.”
Select board members had specific questions for Carlstrom about the dune shacks — but he refused to answer most of them.
“I’d like to hear from you how you believe that the current RFP process follows the 2012 management plan,” board member Austin Miller asked Carlstrom.
“The RFP process is underway, and I really can’t speak to it because it is currently underway,” Carlstrom said. “A lot of work has gone into it. We want to maintain the integrity of that work, and I can’t speak to any specifics on it right now.”
Board member Leslie Sandberg asked about the letter the select board sent two weeks ago asking Carlstrom to accept a mediated conversation with the dune shack community, to be organized by the Interior Dept.’s Office of Collaborative Action and Dispute Resolution.
“We’ve received that letter, and we’re going to get back in touch with you soon,” Carlstrom said.
Sandberg said that mediation would be a “very good path” and that people deserved the chance to talk directly to the “powers that be.”
“I appreciate your perspective, Leslie, but we’ve received your letter and we’ll be back in touch with you very soon,” Carlstrom said.
Board member Erik Borg asked how the selection criteria for lease applicants would be weighted and whether ability to perform maintenance might be weighted over other factors.
“All the criteria are in the RFP,” Carlstrom said.
Sandberg asked if the Park Service would reimburse dune dwellers for the cost of closing up their shacks this October if they did not win a lease.
“It’s a very fair question, and we would work to determine how to ensure the integrity of the shacks,” Carlstrom said.
“It’s an easy yes or no,” Sandberg said.
“I understand; it’s a totally fair question, and we would work with them to determine the appropriate way to go forward,” Carlstrom said.
“Let me put it this way,” Sandberg persisted. “I would hope that if there’s a cost burden put on them, and they’re not awarded shacks, that they’d be reimbursed. And whoever you need to talk to for that, I think it’s an important thing to do. Would you do that for us?”
“Absolutely,” Carlstrom said.
At that point, the select board members decided they had no further questions.
According to correspondence sent to the dune shack leaseholders, the Park Service plans to notify winners of the current leasing contest by Sept. 29. Carlstrom will begin work in Colorado 10 days later.
NATIONAL SEASHORE
Supt. Carlstrom Is Promoted to a Job in Denver
He will become an NPS deputy regional director on Oct. 8
PROVINCETOWN — When Brian Carlstrom became superintendent of the Cape Cod National Seashore in April 2018, he told the Cape Cod Times that he wanted to continue “a lot of the good work of George Price” and that he was “wide open to see what the community needs are.”
Five years later, Carlstrom is leaving Cape Cod to become deputy regional director of the Intermountain Region of the National Park Service, which includes 85 national park units in eight Western states. His posting in Denver, Colo. begins Oct. 8.
Carlstrom is also leaving the Dune Shacks Historic District Preservation and Use Plan, which Supt. George Price negotiated with community representatives from 2009 to 2011, as a plan in name only. The public meetings and community outreach that Price conducted to inform the Use Plan have been cited by Carlstrom in defense of the Park Service’s current leasing of the dune shacks, a move that has generated intense local criticism — especially for the option to bid an unlimited amount of rent.
Carlstrom’s new assignment was confirmed by Rich Delaney, executive director of the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown and former chair of the Cape Cod National Seashore Advisory Commission.
Delaney is also Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland’s nominee to chair the newly reauthorized Advisory Commission, which will begin meeting again once all its nominated members have gone through a formal vetting process.
A half-dozen other people also told the Independent they were aware of Carlstrom’s promotion, including members of the Provincetown Select Board, staff at the Center for Coastal Studies, and leaders of nonprofits that deal with the National Seashore.
It was also mentioned by two people in public comments at the select board’s meeting on Monday, Aug. 28, where Carlstrom made a presentation and took questions from the board.
Nonetheless, Carlstrom himself would not confirm his new posting after the meeting, saying that all requests for interviews had to be emailed to the National Park Service.
In response to a written inquiry the next day, an NPS spokesperson would neither confirm nor deny the move, writing only that the agency had “no personnel announcements at this time.”
Questions Without Answers
Carlstrom’s presentation at the select board was preceded by almost an hour of public comments dominated by dune shack dwellers lodging complaints over the Seashore’s handling of the public leasing process.
Mildred Champlin, 92, said that many people who submitted applications for a dune shack lease would not be prepared for the way winter storms can endanger the shacks.
“These people are being bamboozled,” Champlin said. “When my brother-in-law died, we didn’t get to go to his funeral because we were putting in snow fencing” after a November storm. “You don’t get to wait until June when the weather is nice — you go right then.”
“In my view, the only way to repair this critically important relationship between stakeholders and Seashore administrators and staff is to explain how the RFP was drafted,” said Josiah Mayo, a caretaker of the Braaten shack. “Why allow higher rents to be offered? These questions must be answered.”
Select board members had specific questions for Carlstrom about the dune shacks — but he refused to answer most of them.
“I’d like to hear from you how you believe that the current RFP process follows the 2012 management plan,” board member Austin Miller asked Carlstrom.
“The RFP process is underway, and I really can’t speak to it because it is currently underway,” Carlstrom said. “A lot of work has gone into it. We want to maintain the integrity of that work, and I can’t speak to any specifics on it right now.”
Board member Leslie Sandberg asked about the letter the select board sent two weeks ago asking Carlstrom to accept a mediated conversation with the dune shack community, to be organized by the Interior Dept.’s Office of Collaborative Action and Dispute Resolution.
“We’ve received that letter, and we’re going to get back in touch with you soon,” Carlstrom said.
Sandberg said that mediation would be a “very good path” and that people deserved the chance to talk directly to the “powers that be.”
“I appreciate your perspective, Leslie, but we’ve received your letter and we’ll be back in touch with you very soon,” Carlstrom said.
Board member Erik Borg asked how the selection criteria for lease applicants would be weighted and whether ability to perform maintenance might be weighted over other factors.
“All the criteria are in the RFP,” Carlstrom said.
Sandberg asked if the Park Service would reimburse dune dwellers for the cost of closing up their shacks this October if they did not win a lease.
“It’s a very fair question, and we would work to determine how to ensure the integrity of the shacks,” Carlstrom said.
“It’s an easy yes or no,” Sandberg said.
“I understand; it’s a totally fair question, and we would work with them to determine the appropriate way to go forward,” Carlstrom said.
“Let me put it this way,” Sandberg persisted. “I would hope that if there’s a cost burden put on them, and they’re not awarded shacks, that they’d be reimbursed. And whoever you need to talk to for that, I think it’s an important thing to do. Would you do that for us?”
“Absolutely,” Carlstrom said.
At that point, the select board members decided they had no further questions.
According to correspondence sent to the dune shack leaseholders, the Park Service plans to notify winners of the current leasing contest by Sept. 29. Carlstrom will begin work in Colorado 10 days later.
DUNE SHACKS
Provincetown Asks for Mediation With National Park Service
Dune shack families’ deadlines are extended to Oct. 31
PROVINCETOWN — The select board has asked Cape Cod National Seashore Supt. Brian Carlstrom to bring in professional mediators to help with ongoing controversies over the Dune Shacks of Peaked Hill Bars, on the Outer Cape’s windswept Atlantic shore.
“Although the NPS’s stated commitment to follow the Use Plan is clear, there is broad misunderstanding and disagreement regarding the execution of the plan,” the select board wrote in a letter sent to Park Service officials on Aug. 14 and referring to the Dune Shacks Historic District Preservation and Use Plan signed in 2012.
“There has been a lack of dialogue with NPS,” the letter continued. “We all have not had the opportunity to understand how the NPS is interpreting and executing the terms of the agreed-upon Plan…. We believe a facilitated dialogue will increase public understanding of the NPS’s decision making and promote cooperation between the Park Service, the dune dwellers, and the larger Provincetown community.”
The letter was addressed to Carlstrom and was also sent to NPS Director Charles Sams; Assistant Secretary of the Interior Shannon Estenoz; and William Hall, director of the Interior’s Office of Collaborative Action and Dispute Resolution; along with Truro’s select board and state lawmakers.
That same day, Aug. 14, the Park Service sent letters to the families who have long held leases on eight dune shacks that are part of the public leasing contest the agency announced on May 1.
“The RFP evaluation panel is well underway,” wrote Joan Horgan of the National Seashore leasing team, “but it appears they will not be able to complete all selections by the originally anticipated date” at the end of August.
Those families had originally been told to be ready to vacate their shacks on Sept. 2 if they did not win a 10-year lease. Now they have until Oct. 31, on the condition that they allow the NPS and winners of new leases to arrange site visits during October.
Janet Armstrong, who received a notice-to-quit letter in June requiring her to leave her family’s shack in early September, also received an update from the Park Service last week. Carlstrom called to offer her a one-year special use permit for the Armstrong shack, which is not currently part of any public leasing contest and which the Park Service was planning to board up until it could arrange such a contest.
“I told Brian that this dune shack cannot be boarded up, that this was not the legal and correct course of action to take, and that this was not what we agreed to in the Use Plan,” Armstrong said. “He said he could offer me a one-year special use permit, and when I asked why he had offered Sal Del Deo two years and me one, he said he could perhaps offer me two years,” Armstrong said.
Armstrong had further conversations with Horgan at Carlstrom’s direction, although Horgan was not sure about a two-year special use permit, Armstrong said.
Armstrong decided that she needed time to think — and to consult attorney Bruce Bierhans — before proceeding.
“I told Brian that it’s not just me and it’s not just Sal — I’m concerned about the other shacks, too,” she said. “I think we’re all in this together, and I don’t want to say, ‘OK, I’ll take a year,’ when everyone else is still fighting and suffering. I’m not ready to say yes or no.”
The 2012 Use Plan provides explicit instructions on how to evaluate applications for long-term leases and how to organize “transitions” when long-term leaseholders have died. The Park Service has not been following those instructions, by boarding up dune shacks before leases have been issued and by removing the selection criteria identified in the Use Plan and replacing them with an option for applicants to bid as much annual rent as they want in an effort to win a lease.
That last change — offering applicants the chance to leverage wealth to win a dune shack — has come under withering criticism, including from the select boards of Provincetown and Truro, U.S. senators Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren, U.S. Rep. Bill Keating, and even protestors on Route 6.
Markey, Warren, and Keating wrote to NPS Director Sams on July 13 that a focus on financial factors would be a “catastrophic affront” to the history of the dune shacks. That letter still has not been answered, a spokesperson for Sen. Markey confirmed this week.
The Park Service has also refused to provide the Independent with any proof that it followed a legal process to change the Use Plan since it was adopted in 2012.
Michela Murphy, who has been advocating for the dune dwellers, drafted the letter the select board approved at its meeting.
“The Park Service is saying that they’re in fact going by their 2012 plan, and there’s nothing in the RFP that demonstrates that,” Murphy said. “Any questions that have been asked about the process and the criteria for judging have been stonewalled.” Mediation could open up a dialogue that could help the public understand the Park Service, she said.
Meghan Finn, a former Provincetown resident who is now a conflict mediator in Boston, spoke during the public comments period of the meeting to explain how mediation could be an aid in the dispute.
“I want to emphasize the neutrality of the process, the possibility for dialogue between all parties,” Finn said. She added that the Office of Collaborative Action and Dispute Resolution at the Dept. of the Interior “is really set up to create these dialogues between many constituents: the town, the community, the National Seashore, and NPS officers.
“I just can’t speak highly enough of the process,” she said.
ENVIRONMENT
Salt Hay Rebounds at Duck Harbor
WELLFLEET — As you drive down Griffins Island Road toward Duck Harbor, your eyes are drawn to what looks at first like a treeless wasteland.
On closer inspection, you notice masses of green vegetation sprouting. “That’s all pioneering saltmarsh species,” says Geoff Sanders, chief of natural resource management and science at the Cape Cod National Seashore. Glasswort, saltmarsh spikegrass, salt hay, and sea blite are among the plants making a comeback, he says.
The freshwater vegetation that had colonized the Duck Harbor basin after the Herring River was diked in 1909 was almost entirely wiped out when salt water rushed in during storm tide overwashes in 2020 and 2021.
After the removal of 80 acres of that dead vegetation this past winter, the saltwater plants restoration experts had hoped would flourish here have made an impressive rebound. With regular saltwater flooding, the western portion of Duck Harbor should revert to salt-marsh grasses, says John Portnoy, co-chair of the science advisory group at Friends of Herring River. The eastern portion is expected to receive less water until the later stages of the Herring River Restoration Project.
Dale Rheault, chair of Friends of Herring River, says that although the removal of vegetation at Duck Harbor will enhance the work of the Herring River Restoration Project, the timing is just a coincidence.
For scientists working on the restoration, the Duck Harbor recolonization has provided an opportunity for experiments with transplantation and seeding. Sanders says that Park ecologists have transplanted plugs of saltmarsh cordgrass without great success, so now they tentatively plan to reseed the Duck Harbor basin after 40 more acres of vegetation are removed in November.
Since the groundbreaking ceremony on March 1, the restoration timeline has held steady, according to Sanders. In March, two houses on Way 672 in Wellfleet that the Seashore acquired in 2017 and 2019 to facilitate the restoration were taken down due to concerns about their vulnerability in the face of tidal flow.
The MIG Corp. of Acton, the contractor hired by the town of Wellfleet, is expected to complete a temporary bypass bridge next to the dike by October. Once the bypass bridge, a single lane with a signal on either end, is done, people will be able to access Griffin Island, Duck Harbor, and Great Island while work on a larger bridge takes place.
Jacqualyn Fouse, who lives in the last house on the right as you near the dike, says she has not been affected by the construction. “I think they are doing a really great job not being very disruptive to everything out here,” she says. Fouse is the treasurer for Friends of Herring River.
In this first phase of the project to restore tidal flow in the river, low-lying roads will be raised, culverts will be replaced, a few freshwater wells will be relocated, and the Chequessett Club golf course will be elevated.
The Park Service is also planning the removal of soil berms that were created when the river was channelized decades ago, but the timeframe for that work hasn’t been determined.
Once the larger bridge is completed, 165 feet of tidal sluice gates will be opened a bit to increase tidal flow in the system. Using adaptive management techniques, scientists will begin by letting in small amounts of water. That’s when, Sanders says, “you will start to see changes in vegetation. You will start to see improved fish passage.”
Currently, the marsh edge is artificially about a meter below sea level because of the diking; the sediment has subsided due to limited tidal flow. With the restoration of the flow, sediment will move into the area and rebuild the marsh.
At that point, Rheault says, the sluice gates “will not be opened any further for at least two years.” That way, “scientists can monitor how tidal flow impacts the estuary.”
Ronald Gabel, a Yarmouth resident who is among those who have been critical of the project, says he remains wary of it. Gabel and others say the project may have significant unintended consequences that Wellfleet taxpayers could be held liable for.
Sanders believes that “there really is a preponderance of evidence that the restoration is going to be a huge benefit, and it’s not going to result in a lot of these issues people are worried about.”
Portnoy agrees, adding that “the Herring River Project will protect upland shoreline development around the marsh edge.” As saltwater grasses recolonize, he says, they impose significant friction on water flow, which should help protect against the higher storm surges that are likely to be increasingly frequent with rising sea levels.
“A lot of work, science, research, and monitoring has gone into preparing for this,” says Sanders. “If, by some chance, something unexpected happens, you can always manage the water level with the tide gates.”
