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EASTHAM — The Eastham Conservation Foundation celebrated Earth Day a week early on April 16 with its fourth annual Earth Day Great Marsh Cleanup. And clean up they did, with a crew of 10 volunteers pulling over 440 pounds of trash and 1,300 pounds of wood, metal, and tires from the marsh.
The Eastham Conservation Foundation and Harwich Conservation Trust are co-sponsoring two guided walks in Eastham with historian Don Wilding on Saturday, May 15th. From 10 a.m. to noon, walk along the Nauset Marsh Trail and learn about historic storms, shipwrecks, and rescues. Then, from 1 to 3 p.m., learn about Henry Beston’s The Outermost House with a walk overlooking Nauset Marsh and “the Great Beach.” Registration is $20 at harwichconservationtrust.org.
Meetings are held remotely. Go to eastham-ma.gov/calendar-by-event-type/16 and click on the meeting you are interested in to read its agenda and find information on how to view and take part remotely.
Thursday, April 22
Monday, April 26
Tuesday, April 27
Wednesday, April 28
Conversation Starters
Outdoor Dining Continues
The select board met for just under eight minutes on April 12 to approve the expansion of alcohol licenses for outdoor seating, as approved last June by Gov. Baker. The rule would go into effect just in time for the school vacation week.
“You allowed the restaurants to have their outdoor dining for school vacation week and that’s important for a few of them,” said Town Administrator Jacqui Beebe.
Licenses were approved for Red Barn Pizza, Local Break, BrickHouse Restaurant, Mac’s Seafood, Orleans-Eastham Elks Lodge, Basco Grill, Laura and Tony’s Kitchen, Good Eats, and Brine.
Board member Al Cestaro recused himself from the vote on Mac’s Seafood. Select board chair Jamie Demetri was absent from the meeting.
Earth Day Marsh Cleanup
Bayside marshes from upper Boat Meadow to First Encounter Beach will be getting some Earth Day attention with a clean-up planned for April 23 and 24 by volunteers from the Eastham Conservation Foundation (ECF), the Open Space Committee, and DPW staff.
ECF member Joanna Buffington said volunteers are already lined up and would be the same group that went out last year. Volunteers will meet at the First Encounter Beach parking lot Sat. at 1 p.m. with their collections for the DPW to haul away. —Linda Culhane
EASTHAM — Usually, when a basement floods, the home owner starts planning to get rid of the water. When Joanna Buffington’s basement was inundated, she started planning to get rid of the house.
Now, nine years later, those plans are being realized, as Buffington helps usher her old Samoset Road home, now owned by the Eastham Conservation Foundation, through the final phases of being “unbuilt.”
“This was supposed to be when I’m dead,” mused Buffington last week.
In 1993, when Buffington purchased the house on 1.4 acres overlooking the marsh behind First Encounter Beach, she knew the basement tended to flood with the incoming tide. Built in 1960 as a duck hunting camp, the 1,008-square-foot ranch was not only in a wetland buffer zone; it was actually in the wetland.
“When it was built, they knew this,” said Buffington.
The original owners had installed the furnace and hot water heater on cinder blocks, and a caulked wooden “door dam” guarded the walkout basement entrance, hindering the encroaching tide but never completely preventing its trespass.
For the next 17 years, the house was rented out during summers and used by Buffington when she came to visit her parents, who lived nearby. In 2010, when she retired from her job as a medical officer with the Centers for Disease Control, Buffington moved to the house full-time.
The following year, a January nor’easter hit, with a one-two punch of high winds and tidal surge, pushing two feet of salt water into the basement and within inches of the raised furnace.
She decided then that the house should be removed and began to look for options that eventually led her to the Compact of Cape Cod Conservation Trusts and the Eastham Conservation Foundation (ECF).
“I knew that nobody should be living here,” said Buffington.
In 2012 she donated the property, at the time appraised at around $600,000, to the ECF, which she now serves as a trustee. She also established a life estate that would allow her to remain living there until her death.
“My family said, ‘What are you, crazy?’ ” said Buffington.
A confluence of factors, including increased flooding, prompted Buffington to give up the life estate in 2018 and move to higher ground. She turned the marshside site over to the ECF. “The signs were all coming together, so I said let’s go,” said Buffington.
The deconstruction project will be a first for ECF, which now owns about 300 acres. The foundation also administers 10 conservation restrictions. Buffington’s Samoset Road property is just its second instance of a donation involving structures, the other being a parcel on Goody Hallett Drive, where a youth hostel still operates under a long-term agreement.
ECF president Henry Lind said the Samoset Road property was accepted with the stipulation that the building and septic system be removed. In addition to the land donation, Buffington established a fund to pay the costs associated with the project.
The demolition and removal are expected to start later this year, after birds have fledged and plants have become dormant, so they can be removed and replanted later.
According to the project narrative submitted by Buffington, ECF volunteers will monitor the site to ensure planted and replanted vegetation is intact.
The conservation-minded protocols for the deconstruction stipulate that, where appropriate, materials are to be recycled or reused.
Already, the home’s solar panels have been moved to the Orleans Conservation Trust office (which shares space and staff with ECF), kitchen cabinets and counters have been relocated, and all but one window have been reused in another house.
“The proposed project to remove man-made structures, stabilize the bank, and allow migration of the salt marsh will help this section of the marsh to recover naturally,” states the project narrative.
ECF will monitor the property, watching for invasive species such as the Japanese knotweed that has already invaded in several properties.
As for future use of the property, Lind said some neighbors were concerned it would become a scenic park — which might draw traffic to the spot. He said the ECF had no plans for the property other than to “just leave it alone.”
The conservation commission is expected to hold a public hearing on the project sometime next month.
Celebrating the 50th Earth Day last week required environmental organizations across the Outer Cape to get creative.
Both the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown and the Eastham Conservation Foundation organized cleanups, but this year without working in large groups.
Laura Ludwig, coordinator of the center’s Marine Debris and Plastics Program, organized an Earth Day cleanup in which households individually collected litter. In total, 70 people participated, with about one third of volunteers sending in data cards tallying the trash, she said.
Since it was organized online, locales were near and far. Volunteers collected trash not only on Cape Cod beaches, but also in western Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Maine, and West Virginia. Ludwig was glad to reach people who hadn’t worked with the center before.
Despite the cold weather, “The feedback was fantastic,” Ludwig said. “People were so grateful to feel they weren’t doing it by themselves — that there was a bigger collective behind it.”
At the Eastham Conservation Foundation’s second annual cleanup at Bee’s River Marsh, volunteers picked up 300 pounds of trash. Seven households — a total of 15 people — worked on sections of the marsh over the course of several days while maintaining social distancing.
Foundation director Bill Allan told the Independent that volunteers were glad to participate. “People were gratified by getting out and doing something productive, when there’s not many productive things you can do these days,” he said.
Allan said volunteers ended up with less rubbish than the 1.5 tons collected last year, but that’s a step forward, since after the big effort last year, there was less trash to be found.
But with fewer people, larger items, such as tires, were left behind. “We need to understand what’s coming in and get to the source,” Allan said. “There are 50 car tires along the edge of the marsh. How did they get there? They floated in from fishing boats, which use them for bumpers.”
Ludwig agreed and emphasized the importance of counting the trash and tallying the data. “That way, you can draw attention to who the culprits are,” she said. Recording what garbage ends up in the environment is the first step toward stopping it from entering it in the first place.
Construction materials, Ludwig said, make up much of the debris found at the ocean. “It’s probably the worst offender,” she said.
Ludwig thinks construction materials blow out of uncovered dumpsters. “It’s a hard thing to manage, and harder to enforce,” she said. “But by having data, you can work with town managers and builders.”
Allan pointed out that what ends up in Bee’s River Marsh is just a fraction of the trash dumped in the ocean. “A lot of what we find is just little pieces of plastic,” he said. “Where did the rest go? It breaks down into microplastics, which get incorporated into the plants and environment, and ultimately into us.”
Harriet Korim of Wellfleet, a member of the climate-action group Cape Cool, was disappointed that live climate strikes on Earth Day were canceled due to the coronavirus. The Wellfleet Conservation Trust’s celebration of the 50th Earth Day at Preservation Hall was also canceled. Groups like Sunrise Movement and Extinction Rebellion, which helped to organize the global strike, held online rallies instead.
In lieu of a strike, Korim helped launch another project to get Outer Cape residents curious about their surroundings: a census of trees. It will continue for one year and encourage adults and children to observe and identify trees. “The real motivation is to learn how crucial trees are, and how much we don’t understand,” Korim said.
On its website, Cape Cool asks students to pay attention to one bud on a tree by tying a piece of string around its base and drawing it every day. Participants can then send in their artwork, which will be posted online.
