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.
Cape Cod National Seashore
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.”
DUNE SHACKS
As Deadlines Draw Near, Park Service Clams Up
Silence from agency’s director, but Seashore supt. offers falsehoods
PROVINCETOWN — Janet Armstrong is not sure exactly when she has to leave the dune shack where she took her first steps as a toddler in 1952, 71 years ago. It could be 90 days from the date of her notice-to-quit letter from the National Park Service: June 2. But the digital signature on the document was dated June 9, it was postmarked June 12, and she received it on June 16.
Whichever date turns out to be correct, the shack is due to be boarded up by the Park Service sometime in the first two weeks of September.
Cape Cod National Seashore Supt. Brian Carlstrom has told the select boards of Provincetown and Truro that there will eventually be a public leasing contest for the Armstrong shack — and for Frenchie’s shack, which Sal Del Deo, who will be 95 on Aug. 12, has cared for since 1953, and which was boarded up on June 29.
Those two shacks were not included in the public leasing contest for eight other dune shacks that was announced on May 1.
As things currently stand, Armstrong is supposed to vacate her family’s shack in September, taking all her property with her — then bid on the boarded-up shack sometime in the future — and if she is lucky, move everything back into it a year or two from now.
“This is not what’s in the plan we made,” said Armstrong, speaking of the Dune Shacks Historic District Preservation and Use Plan, which was finalized in 2012 and originated with a Dune Shack Subcommittee report that took two years, a mediator, and more than a dozen public meetings to create. Armstrong served on that subcommittee, and she said she cannot understand why its work has been discarded.
“The plan said that no shack will be vacated and closed, ever,” Armstrong said.
Indeed, on page 25, the Use Plan says that until a “transition has been implemented (notification of transition, designation of shack in terms of general use, leasing or special agreement processes, award of lease or agreement), the occupant would remain and be provided a special use permit, issued annually.”
The special use permit would end on the date a new leaseholder is set to take over, the plan says.
Animals can crawl in through holes invisible from the outside and wreak enormous damage on a boarded-up shack, Armstrong said. Weasels, woodpeckers, birds, and mice are major offenders, but even simple roof leaks can create dreadful messes.
The National Seashore will not be able to maintain these shacks on its own, she warned, and simply boarding them up will not protect the historic structures.
The Independent asked National Park Service officials including Director Charles Sams and Deputy Director Lena McDowall why the agency has departed so significantly from its own Preservation and Use Plan, which has the status of a “formal decision document” according to the agency’s 2015 National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) Handbook.
The response — which came from Supt. Carlstrom — simply said, falsely, that the agency was following the 2012 plan.
In addition to boarding up dune shacks, the agency also did not use the additional lease selection criteria that were exhaustively negotiated with the Dune Shack Subcommittee, according to Armstrong, and specifically established in the 2012 plan.
Page 71 of the agency’s NEPA Handbook describes exactly how changes to such a plan can be made, and the Independent asked Park Service officials to describe any efforts it has taken to follow those procedures and document its changes to the 2012 plan. They did not answer.
Stonewalling
When Supt. Carlstrom canceled his July 24 meeting with the Provincetown Select Board — on the day of the meeting — board members said the Park Service was “stonewalling” and “harming our relationship with them.”
The agency is not stonewalling only Provincetown and Truro, however.
U.S. senators Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren and U.S. Rep. Bill Keating sent a joint letter to NPS Director Sams on July 13 asking for a “thorough RFP review process that respects the history of the dune shacks and properly centers the concerns of the community.
“Although the ability to fulfill the financial commitment of the lease must be considered,” they wrote, “evaluating lessees disproportionately on an applicants’ financial means would be a catastrophic affront to any public accessibility goals and the shacks’ legacy as a place where artists and others with limited means have convened, worked, and built a community.”
The current RFP allows applicants to offer any amount of annual rent above the assessed market-rate rent as a competitive factor toward winning a lease — which critics have said turns the current leasing contest into a bidding war that favors the rich.
The New York Times described that conflict this week with the teaser “Tradition vs. Capitalism on Cape Cod” on its front page.
As of Aug. 8, at the Independent’s deadline, the National Park Service had not sent a written reply to Markey, Warren, and Keating, a spokesperson for Markey’s office confirmed.
A Deadline Approaches
Sal Del Deo’s son, Romolo Del Deo, said he is working with local attorneys Bruce Bierhans and Anthony Mavronicolas, who are donating their time, to try to talk the Park Service into mediation.
“More and more people are understanding what a huge mistake this is,” the younger Del Deo said. “The question is whether the machinations of bureaucracy can be impacted in time.
“Honestly, I have been reading their procedures, trying to figure out what they have been up to, and to me it looks like they just decided to cowboy this,” Del Deo said. “They didn’t follow their procedures. They didn’t follow their agreements. They just went off and did this thing, and they seemed to believe that no one would call them on it.”
Paul Tasha also served on the Dune Shack Subcommittee and is applying with his niece, Andrea Tasha, for a 10-year lease on the dune shack that poet Harry Kemp gave to his family in 1960. Like the other families whose dune shacks are in the May 1 RFP, the Tashas are supposed to remove all personal property and quit their shack on Sept. 2 — even though the Park Service may not have decided who won the lease for their shack by that time.
“Those meetings were long, and I never missed a meeting, and we came up with these qualifying criteria and everyone was OK with them,” Tasha said. “Slowly but surely, we hammered them out. And there was no talk about bidding as much as you wanted to, offering 20 grand or 50 grand or whatever in order to influence the bid.
“We came to an agreement, everyone was on the same page, and now you lied again,” Tasha said, speaking of the Park Service. “You can’t say you’re gonna do certain things and then not do it. It’s dishonorable.”
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this article, published in print on Aug. 10, incorrectly reported the name of one of the lawyers working with Romolo Del Deo. It is Anthony Mavronicolas, not “Anthony Nichols.”
DUNE SHACKS
Del Deo Rejects a 2-Year Permit From Park Service
Evicted, the 94-year-old artist seeks to defend ‘the principles of these shacks’
PROVINCETOWN — Artist and restaurateur Sal Del Deo, 94, has rejected an offer from Cape Cod National Seashore Supt. Brian Carlstrom of a two-year special-use permit for the dune shack he has occupied seasonally since 1953, according to his son, Romolo Del Deo.
The National Park Service had mailed a “notice to quit” to Sal Del Deo on March 27; NPS workers boarded up the shack on June 29. The offer of the two-year permit came one week later.
The eviction drew local and national press coverage, and U.S. senators Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren, U.S. Rep. Bill Keating, state Sen. Julian Cyr, and state Rep. Sarah Peake all raised objections.
The day after the shack was boarded up, Carlstrom called Romolo Del Deo at the direction of officials in the Interior Dept. to start an “ongoing conversation” about restoring Sal’s access to the shack. After the long July 4 weekend, however, that conversation appears to have reached an impasse.
“We disapprove of the move the Park is making, not only on us, but on all the other cottages,” Sal told the Independent. “Their whole procedure is to say this is a piece of real estate they can capitalize on, and that goes against all the principles of these dune shacks.
“My wife Josephine is probably laughing in her grave, because she was a very political person, and I would stay in the background and support her,” Sal continued. “Now the tables are turned, and I have to face the music with my son and my friends and tell the truth that she told so effortlessly.”
“We’re ultimately doing this for my mother,” Romolo said. “She fought her whole life to save the shacks — all of them. If we save our shack but all of our neighbors are gone, there would be nothing there. It would be a really bittersweet accomplishment.”
Janet Armstrong, 71, has received an eviction notice almost identical to the one served to Sal Del Deo.
Meanwhile, the Park Service is conducting a public leasing program for eight other dune shacks that dramatically departs from the rules the agency established in its Dune Shack Historic District Preservation and Use Plan in 2012. Those rules were negotiated over years to protect both the shacks themselves and their cultural value.
Shack-dwelling families, the select boards of Provincetown and Truro, and an assortment of protestors have said that the current leasing program treats the shacks like real estate instead.
Critics have especially objected to a provision of the current leasing contest that allows applicants to offer more than market-rate rent to win a lease.
Together, the two evictions and the leasing contest mean that come September there could be only one long-term dune dwelling family left in the historic district. Of the 10 families in the district, only Mildred Champlin, 92, and her daughter Andrea Champlin are not at risk of removal this year.
(One more dune shack, belonging to Conrad Malicoat’s heirs, is not part of the historic district and not subject to eviction or leasing.)
“There needs to be an immediate stay and an examination of the entire process,” said Romolo Del Deo. “Right now, it’s obvious that the leasing is about money, the highest bidder. If this goes to court, I would like to use the egregious process of our case to force an examination of all the cases.”
Romolo said that he has repeatedly raised the other dune shacks with Carlstrom, and that Carlstrom has refused to speak about them.
“In every call, I’ve said we want a mediated discussion about all the shacks, and in every conversation, he said, ‘We’re working hard to take care of your father,’ ” Romolo said. “I don’t know if he’s willfully not hearing what I’m saying, or he doesn’t want to address it — but it’s clear he doesn’t have a lot of leash to say anything other than ‘We want to take care of your dad.’ ”
National Park Service spokesperson Tracy O’Toole confirmed that Sal Del Deo had “declined the option made available to him” and said that the family was welcome to bid for a 10-year lease once the agency sets up a public leasing contest for that shack.
Weasels and Leaks
The current leasing contest does not include Del Deo’s shack or the Armstrong shack, which Janet Armstrong has been ordered to vacate by Sept. 2. Her family purchased the shack in 1949, and she began spending time there in the summer of 1952, when she was three months old.
Armstrong said the Park Service realty officer managing her eviction did not appear to know anything about the dune shacks.
“I served on the subcommittee that helped write the Use Plan,” Armstrong said. “When I got this letter, I wrote back that this is not what I agreed to. I agreed that I would fill out an application for a 20-year lease, and there would be six special criteria for evaluating the applications.”
The official asked Armstrong to send her the Use Plan and related documents, then wrote that they were irrelevant to her case.
“Our attorney and park superintendent were familiar with them and didn’t see anything that might extend your stay,” Realty Officer Molly Kammerer wrote to Armstrong.
The Use Plan specifically defines how shacks should be managed after a lifetime leaseholder dies. Armstrong’s parents, David and Connie Armstrong, accepted a lifetime special-use stipulation when the Park Service took their shack by eminent domain in 1981.
On page 25, the plan says that the Park Service should “provide an annual special use permit to a family member or kin of the deceased” until a public leasing opportunity can be concluded and a long-term lease agreement has been signed. The Use Plan describes that transition period as lasting “1 to 2 years.”
Armstrong is worried about how her shack will physically survive such a transition period without anyone to care for it.
“We came back one April to a weasel infestation — there was a nest in the bathroom shelves and one in the tool cabinet,” Armstrong said. “They leave long slimy poops about twice the size of your thumb, and they were all over the place.”
Another year woodpeckers drilled holes that led to a bird’s nest in her pantry, she said, and leaks can open up in winter storms. “We had a leak into the kitchen once that soaked the pasta, rice, and flour — and six-month-old wet pasta smells almost as bad as weasel poop,” Armstrong added.
The Del Deos are planning a public protest for Saturday, July 15. They have coordinated the plan with Provincetown’s police chief, who also alerted the Cape Cod National Seashore to the protest. Chief Ranger Michael Valora called protest organizer Michela Murphy to encourage her to seek a permit from the Park Service.
“Chief Golden has been very supportive,” Murphy said, “and Ranger Valora was very nice, too. I genuinely believe the rangers are very uncomfortable with the evictions. They had created a process for all this, and it was completely negated, and now the rangers are the ones on the front line.”
OUTDOORS ACT
Demolition of 44 Buildings in Seashore Progresses
The houses were ‘too far gone’ to be restored, says park planner
TRURO — By the end of June, the Cape Cod National Seashore will be about three-quarters of the way through its demolition of 44 buildings — an undertaking being carried out with $8.3 million in federal funds through the Great American Outdoors Act.
“Most were pretty much beyond repair, dilapidated, and some of them have roofs or other parts of the building caving in,” Park Planner Lauren McKean told the Independent.
Twenty-five of the buildings in question are at the Highland Center, the former North Truro Air Force Station, and became property of the National Park Service when the base was retired in the 1990s. The rest of the properties are houses acquired decades earlier, in the 1960s and ’70s, shortly after President John F. Kennedy signed the bill authorizing the establishment of the Cape Cod National Seashore in 1961, according to a description of the project posted on the Park Service’s website.
Not all the buildings were inhabitable when they were transferred to the Park, said McKean. “Some of them were in very bad shape by the time we got them, so they just got worse,” she said.
After the deteriorating structures are razed, “the sites will be restored and allowed to become part of the surrounding landscape,” McKean said.
In addition to the 25 buildings at the Highland Center and three other houses in Truro, the buildings being taken down are scattered around Wellfleet — near Newcomb Hollow Beach and the kettle ponds, and two in Wellfleet’s Herring River floodplain — and in Eastham, along the Nauset inlet.
The Eastham trio, on Tomahawk Trail, are mixed in among newer homes and enjoy an expansive view of the water. But the buildings have become dangerously deteriorated and their lots so overgrown with brush that they are nearly inaccessible.
Eastham Building Commissioner Justin Post said it was a challenge, but he was able to inspect the interiors of all three houses. “It looked like only raccoons and squirrels were going in there to party,” Post said, based on the scattering of nuts and poop left behind.
Seashore officials conferred with Peter McMahon, director of the Cape Cod Modern House Trust, to make sure none of the architecturally significant midcentury modern houses tucked into the landscape of the Outer Cape were on the demolition list.
“There was one of interest in Truro, but it was too far gone,” said McMahon. The trust’s mission is to preserve the midcentury houses when possible. It has restored four historic houses to date and is currently working to purchase a house in Wellfleet that was designed by Marcel Breuer.
McMahon said Seashore officials offered the trust a lease on an abandoned contemporary house on Doane Road in Eastham, but the organization declined. That house is not among those targeted for demolition.
The removal of two dilapidated houses near the restored Kohlberg house on Wellfleet’s Ocean View Drive was thoroughly done, said McMahon, leaving the properties clear of debris and ready for their return to nature.
Demolition and site work will continue until the end of June, when the project will pause for the summer. Contractors will resume their work on the last group of properties to be demolished in September. The Park forecasts the razing project will be complete by spring of 2024.
Bob Weinstein, who lives on Dyers Hollow Road in Truro, was alarmed to find a house at the end of his road being demolished as part of the Seashore’s project.
“What I think is outrageous is we’re supposedly having a housing crisis and what are they doing?” said Weinstein. “They’re taking down houses that could have been utilized if they’d been properly maintained.” He said the razing makes the lack of available local housing “a self-inflicted crisis.”
Weinstein remembered the years when the building in question was used as housing for Park staff. “It was a viable year-round house,” he said.
McKean confirmed that the house on Dyers Hollow Road had in the past been used for housing seasonal Seashore staff members. But “it had been sitting for a decade or so vacant and just getting in worse and worse shape,” said McKean.
Terry Strock, an employee of Cherokee CRC LLC — the small Tulsa, Okla.-based business contracted to carry out the demolition — is by now familiar with all 44 structures the Park says are “nonhistoric” and ready to come down. Strock described the buildings as “unmaintained for years — that’s what it looked like to me.” He said that none of the buildings seemed repairable.
“Roof damage and an unstable structure” are, Strock said, what make the Dyers Hollow Road house uninhabitable.
As part of the demolition project, contractors are also performing hazardous materials abatement before tearing down the buildings. Asbestos is the main issue, according to McKean. Strock said that a subcontractor is doing most of the hazard abatement. According to the NPS website, that subcontractor is Select Demo LLC, based in Salem, N.H.
McKean said the Park Service did consider using the structures for housing staff, but the structures in question “were not an option.” The problem is, she said, “they’d have to be fully rebuilt, and it’s not a redevelopment project. The cost is just too prohibitive.”
Seashore staff members live in 24 permanent houses and 35 seasonal houses in Truro, Wellfleet, and Eastham, according to McKean. Every summer, the seasonal abodes house up to 91 Park employees.
DEVELOPMENT
Eastham Board Approves New House in Seashore
A rare vacant lot, with a $740K price tag, is deemed buildable
EASTHAM — A 1.3-acre vacant lot located off Cable Road and within walking distance of Nauset Light Beach is on the market for $740,000 — and it is being touted as “a rare opportunity to live in the National Seashore Park surrounded by parkland.”
That certainly is the truth.
Most of the undeveloped lots in the Cape Cod National Seashore were taken by eminent domain by the National Park Service in the decade or so following the establishment of the Seashore as a national park in 1961. The landowners were paid an amount based on a fair market appraisal, according to Seashore Planner Lauren McKean.
There were more than 2,000 such land transactions during the 1960s and early ’70s. Only 615 properties within the 43,000-acre park remain under private ownership, McKean said.
But the vacant property at 0 K St. was approved last year by the Eastham Planning Board for construction of a 2,980-square-foot modern farmhouse. The status of the lot, as well as the size of the proposed house, have both been vigorously contested by National Seashore staff.
Ben Zehnder, the attorney representing the current owners Frank and Linda Noto, had pursued site-plan approval to establish that a house could be built on the lot. That approval by the planning board has boosted the presumed value of the property from the town’s assessment, $51,100, to its current asking price of $740,000. The lot went on the market on Nov. 1, shortly after the expiration of the period during which the approval could have been appealed.
According to Denise Kopasz, the real estate broker who listed the property, the Notos had planned to build a house there but have instead put it on the market “due to a change in family circumstances.” They currently own a house on the adjacent lot.
The Cape Cod National Seashore includes land in Provincetown, Truro, Wellfleet, Eastham, Orleans, and Chatham. Owners of properties that were developed before 1959 could secure a “certificate of suspension of condemnation” from the Seashore. Those certificates suspended the right of the National Park Service to take the land by eminent domain and allowed the owners to retain their ownership rights in perpetuity. Properties without buildings had no such protection.
The vacant 0 K St. property, along with an adjacent property with a house on it, had a single deed and were under the same ownership as far back as the 1940s. When the park was established, the owners secured a certificate of suspension of condemnation covering the pair of properties, saying they considered the undeveloped area a part of the lot with the house on it.
The two properties have changed hands a few times since then and have continued to enjoy protection under certificates of suspension acquired by the subsequent owners.
The Notos purchased the lots in 1986 and initially approached the National Seashore in 2020 about splitting the two parcels and building a new house on the undeveloped portion. The National Seashore opposed the plan and continues to contend that the owners have treated the two properties as a single lot, which has served to protect the undeveloped parcel from being taken by eminent domain for more than 50 years.
In a letter to the planning board, Seashore Supt. Brian Carlstrom expressed opposition to site-plan approval for a house on the undeveloped parcel. “Despite having benefited from this assertion for more than a half century,” Carlstrom wrote, “the Notos now contend that the parcels are separate buildable lots.”
In the Park Service’s view, building on the open parcel would result in two single-family dwellings on a single tract, said Carlstrom. Eastham’s Seashore zoning district requires at least three acres for a building lot, he said, and the 0 K St. lot comprises only 1.3 acres.
Carlstrom warned that, if the proposal was approved by the planning board, the certificate of suspension on the Notos’ properties would be invalidated, and the new lot “would be put on the National Seashore’s land acquisition priority list.”
Meanwhile, the planning board factored into its consideration that the property owned by the Notos is part of the Nauset Beach Plan, a subdivision plan drawn up more than 100 years ago. Many of the lots were never developed, and several streets continue to exist only on paper. Most of those undeveloped properties on the plan were taken by eminent domain by the National Seashore, and the undeveloped lot the Notos own would likely have been taken as well, McKean said.
The town’s lawyer, as well as Zehnder, pointed out the lot with the Notos’ house and the adjacent undeveloped lot are identified as individual lots separated by a paper street on the old subdivision plan. Since the subdivision predated the adoption of zoning laws, the lots were grandfathered and didn’t have to meet restrictions like the three-acre minimum size.
And although the 2,980-square-foot new house would be dramatically larger than other homes in the neighborhood, Zehnder argued that it would not affect the character of the neighborhood because it would not be visible from the road.
The planning board approved the site plan, and the National Seashore did not take the town to court to file an appeal.
While the National Seashore could now take the land by eminent domain, it has not had enough money to do any land purchasing for the past several years.
Eastham Town Planner Paul Lagg said the debate over the land at 0 K St. demonstrates the conflict that can sometimes happen when a property falls under two different jurisdictions.
“They don’t always line up,” Lagg said. “We try as best we can to work collaboratively with the Seashore, but from time to time local zoning doesn’t line up exactly with what the Seashore’s standards are designed to do.”
Such was the case for the Notos’ lot, Lagg added.
“For the town’s regulatory purposes, we consider it two lots separated by a paper street, but the Seashore considers it one lot,” he said.
DEMOLITION
Seashore Will Spend $8 Million to Raze 44 Buildings
Houses that might have been restored became the Park’s albatross
TRURO — About half of the abandoned buildings at the former North Truro Air Force Base will be razed by 2024 thanks to an $8-million grant to demolish derelict structures in the Cape Cod National Seashore.
NATIONAL SEASHORE
Nauset Bath Houses to Be Done by Summer, Says Carlstrom
But the Seashore supt. says parking lot is not for the ages
EASTHAM –– After 14 months of work beleaguered by supply-chain disruptions, labor shortages, and a storm that overturned a mobile office trailer, the new bath houses at Nauset Light Beach are 60 percent complete, according to Cape Cod National Seashore (CCNS) Supt. Brian Carlstrom.
“It’s on track to be done by May,” Carlstrom said. The project was originally scheduled to be finished by last summer, but 60 spots in the 90-space parking lot were fenced off for last year’s peak months and remain so. Last summer was particularly frustrating to beachgoers trying to navigate the eastern sliver of the parking lot that remained open because on many days no work was being done despite the construction equipment and mounds of dirt.
“It might look like things are going slow from time to time, but they’re progressing,” said Carlstrom. The project’s $2.1-million budget has not been affected by the elongated timeline, he said. “A whole litany” of shortages contributed to the delay, said Carlstrom.
A much larger problem for the Seashore is the Nauset Light parking lot. The northeast corner of the lot is currently cordoned off because of erosion under the bluff. Carlstrom said the National Park Service fenced off the area out of an abundance of caution.
“That parking lot is not going to be there long-term,” he said. “It’s changed dramatically from when the park was created in 1961. It’s going to continue to change.”
Erosion hits the entire area hard. Nauset Light Beach Road, which runs parallel to the coast, was relocated last year. The stairs at Nauset Light Beach had to be repaired four years in a row before they were abandoned altogether in favor of a path winding behind the dune. The old bath houses at Nauset Light had to be demolished in 2017 because the bluff had eroded so much that the septic tanks were within 10 feet of the edge, according to then-Supt. George Price.
Carlstrom believes that the new bath houses will survive 20 years of erosion. “Hopefully, longer than that,” he said.
Carlstrom noted that the Park Service has already begun planning for the day when the parking lot will be no more. He said the Seashore would likely use a shuttle system similar to the one currently serving Coast Guard Beach and Little Creek parking lot on Doane Road. While the Seashore owns 125 acres of woods in Eastham running north from Cable Road to the Wellfleet town line, Carlstrom said that he would like to avoid land clearing in any future parking solution. One possibility, he said, could involve collaboration with Nauset Regional High School, but nothing is set in stone.
Maintaining an Aging Park
The bath house project is just one of many multimillion-dollar deferred maintenance efforts for which Carlstrom must find funding. According to the CCNS website, the park needs $48.9 million for such projects. The Seashore is currently demolishing 40 structures “that have been underutilized or are in poor or worse condition.” These include the dilapidated homes formerly occupied by Air Force members and their families at the Highland Center in North Truro.
The CCNS recently completed a $2.1-million renovation of Highland Light in Truro. In 2021, it finished badly needed repairs at the Coast Guard Station in Eastham. Carlstrom said the Seashore completed a number of water and septic projects in the past several years.
So is the Seashore, which is responsible for maintaining 300 buildings and six public beaches, chipping away at its deferred maintenance faster than it’s adding new projects?
“I’m not sure we’re quite there yet,” Carlstrom said. “But it’s getting better.”
CEASE AND DESIST
Illegal Clearing in Seashore Halted by Town
Owners ran a private parking operation near Lecount’s last summer
WELLFLEET — Building Inspector Paul Fowler issued a cease-and-desist order at 420 Lecount Hollow Road on Tuesday, June 15 after reports of large-scale tree removal on the property in the Cape Cod National Seashore.
“No comment,” said Fowler when asked about the tree-cutting operation. “You can talk to the owners of the property.”
The owners are David and Chellise Sexton of Eastham. They own 24.5 acres of land off Lecount Hollow Road and run Cook’s by the Ocean, “the finest beachside cottage colony in the world,” according to their website. Their 14 cottages are advertised as having “access to the largest private beach on the outer banks of Cape Cod.” The Sextons could not be reached for comment before press time.
Though the land is privately owned, it is also within the boundaries of the National Seashore. There are about 600 such private parcels of land within the park’s boundaries.
Activities such as building, renovating, and landscaping on land in the Seashore are subject to restrictions to ensure the conservation of the natural surroundings. Enforcement of these restrictions generally falls to the towns, which have zoning bylaws developed in accordance with the Cape Cod National Seashore’s zoning standards.
The cease-and-desist order delivered last week is related to section 6.9 of Wellfleet’s zoning bylaw, which states that cutting timber is prohibited in the National Seashore Park District unless it is “for the purpose of reasonably controlling brush or trees,” “maintenance cutting in pastures,” or “cutting for clearance or maintenance on right-of-way including those pertaining to public utilities or public highways.”
The extensive tree removal on Lecount Hollow Road does not appear to fit into any of the three permissible categories.
“The principal reason the Seashore was established was to maintain the ambiance and character of the Outer Cape and its natural environments,” said Seashore Supt. Brian Carlstrom this week. Asked about the tree cutting at the Sextons’, he said, “It’s pretty obvious this is counter to that,” adding, “We’re watching it closely.”
A similar cease-and-desist order for tree cutting was delivered by the town to the owners of Great White Realty in January after they clear-cut a lot at the corner of Route 6 and Old Wharf Road. Great White Realty appealed the town’s order to halt development of the parcel before the zoning board of appeals, which upheld the building inspector’s action. Now, the company is suing Wellfleet in an attempt to overturn that decision along with the zoning board’s denial of special permits.
The 420 Lecount Hollow Road case could follow a similar path as the Great White Realty case, and the Sextons are not strangers to land disputes that end up in court. They were involved in a years-long court battle with the owner of Paine’s campground after claiming ownership to the campground’s 36 acres off Old Kings Highway. The court ruled against them in 2015.
Last summer, several property owners on Lecount Hollow Road and Ocean View Drive offered private paid parking for beach users, a side hustle resulting from the shrinking of town-owned parking lots in the Seashore due to erosion.
The Sextons were among those who ran a private parking lot last year, prompting Wellfleet Beach Director Suzanne Grout Thomas to speculate that the recent tree removal is related to a new private parking lot there.
“No one’s happy about it,” Grout Thomas said. “And consensus is unusual in Wellfleet.”
Worth the Trek
The Cape Cod National Seashore offers two very different guided walks this week. “Sharks and Seals: Cape Cod’s Dynamic Duo” is a one-mile walk on Race Point Beach in Provincetown on Friday, May 21st, from 10 to 11 a.m. Or enjoy a “leisurely stroll” on Nauset Marsh in Eastham on Saturday, May 22nd and Sunday, May 23rd, from 11 a.m. to noon. Registration is free. Call 508-487-1256 for the “Sharks and Seals” walk, 508-255-3421 for the Nauset Marsh walk.