While the winter winds battered away at the south coast of Nantucket, the island hummed along in year-round mode. Around 14,200 people puttered into work, sent their kids to the local schools, hit up the few dozen restaurants open during the off-season, and dodged downtown when the tides rushed in and flooded over brick and cobblestone. 

Before the high summer season roars in, when the population booms to 80,000, the wind and the water will have carved off more of the island, prompting some returning seasonal residents to pace around their properties with a wary eye on the bluff’s edge. 

“If people aren’t there during the winter, and they’re not seeing some of the biggest impacts and changes to the beach,” said Cynthia Dittbrenner, vice president of natural resources for The Trustees of Reservations. “So they come back to this beautiful, occasionally tragic, scene of erosion,” she said. “But if you’re there in the winter, you’re experiencing these incredible storms and the winds, and you see the erosion happening first-hand right in front of you. It’s like an education tool.” 

Across the Cape and Islands – the region with the highest share of seasonal housing in Massachusetts – headlines and eyeballs have been transfixed on the bluff-side luxury vacation homes tumbling into the ocean or threatening to do so.  

The region is already struggling with the workforce impacts of changing housing patterns while trying to maintain the seaside tourist draw that’s essential to local economies. A 2022 state assessment noted that a major consequence of climate change on the Cape and Islands is a reduction in affordable housing availability and tourist attractions and amenities.  

This is creating a housing crunch and a climate crisis at the same time – demand for these sandy, tony shores conflicting with the need to literally shore up the coastline.   

Groundwater is rising, low-lying areas are regularly flooding, and the ocean is slowly turning some peninsulas into islands, but there’s nothing like a house toppling into the sea to drive the point home: plan or paddle. 

And regardless, someone has to pay. 

The anecdotes, at first blush, seem like first-world math problems.

If a $5.5 million home nearly falls off a cliff in Wellfleet, who foots the bill? If a house bought on an eroding beach on Nantucket drops in value from $2.2 million to $200,000, but needs another $200,000 of work before the town finally orders it demolished, was it worth it? If the value of homes across the coast more than doubled during a global pandemic and the water continues to rise, who can afford or be able to live there now?  

The demand for coastal houses is quickly bumping up against the reality of nature, with soaring pandemic prices dropping along some of the more erosion-prone shorelines.  

At-risk houses pose a threat to more than the owners’ wallets. The saga of a controversial 5,100-square foot Wellfleet mansion entered its final chapter this year, after it was purchased for $5.5 million in 2021 despite the fact that wind and water had already clawed the bluffs dangerously near the sprawling house.  

A 2024 report prepared for Wellfleet by Bryan McCormack, a coastal processes specialist with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Sea Grant, estimated that the bluffs were eroding at a rate of 3.8 to 5.6 feet a year. The report estimated the house would collapse within three years.  

Cape residents and officials fretted that, should the property fall into Cape Cod Bay, the nearby oyster beds could be physically damaged and poisoned by toxic fiberglass and refrigerant materials. Radio station CAI reported that, after years of back and forth over who would shoulder the cost of demolishing the property, a demolition crew surprised the town by starting to dismantle the house in February.  

McCormack talked to CAI as the home was demolished. “Seeing that this is happening, going into dumpsters and being taken off site, rather than next week in a storm, it is, I think, a preferable outcome for a lot of the people in the town and for the people that use the beach, the people that are eating shellfish out of Wellfleet Harbor, the people that are living all through this system,” he said. 

But the showpiece homes aren’t alone. A 2020 report by First Street Foundation, a climate data organization, found 193,000 properties in Massachusetts face a substantial risk of coastal flooding, which includes more than half of the properties in some coastal towns.   

“Water doesn’t know property lines,” said Leah Hill, Nantucket’s coastal resilience coordinator, as she stared at a grey ocean. Hill was out in the field on a late March afternoon, checking on a stretch of the island’s 88 miles of shoreline, along which perches some of the state’s priciest and most vulnerable real estate.   

A 2021 assessment of Nantucket’s coastal risk, which informed a tailored resiliency plan, slapped a $3.4 billion cumulative annual price tag on doing nothing over a 70 year period. By 2070, some 2,373 structures on the island will be at risk from flooding and erosion, the assessment found, and the costs would rack up through direct physical damage, direct and indirect economic disruption, and direct social disruption for things like relocation and health costs from injuries and mental stress.  

“We’ve got essentially three types of flooding,” explained Hill. “We’ve got flooding from rain, so stormwater flooding. We have flooding from coastal storms, when we get those big nor’easters. And then we get flooding essentially from sea level rise.”   

When sea level rises around the island, it pushes on groundwater, which then pushes fresh water up above ground. This can cause water to settle on areas that were historically dry, expanding wetlands and causing issues like basement flooding far inland. It also causes salt water to intrude into wells and make them undrinkable, Hill said.  

And then of course, there’s erosion. 

“We have one of the highest erosion rates in Massachusetts,” Hill noted. “We are essentially, as you know, a body of sand in the middle of the Atlantic.” 

Nantucket’s climate assessment noted a key tension between “current private development practices and norms” and “a future built environment that is resilient.” It continued, “given these norms, any approach that aims to restrict development is likely to be met with significant opposition and must be carefully crafted to encourage resilient development.” 

There are strains on resources created by “a growing and seasonally fluctuating population,” the assessment further stated. There is more foot traffic, more vehicular traffic, and more demand for services and utilities on one hand. On the other hand, there are more people contributing to the seasonal economy. 

On Martha’s Vineyard, a 2022 climate action plan noted that the island’s south shore beaches are eroding three to five feet every year, threatening more than 700 local jobs that could be lost in vulnerable areas and impacting travel to the island when weather events force the ferry to suspend operations.  

“Shipping, trucking, and ferrying food to the island is becoming increasingly unpredictable,” according to the Martha’s Vineyard plan, and increased demand for local food as the climate changes will be constrained by lack of affordable housing and access to affordable land.

Depending on the time of year, prime waterfront housing on the Cape and Islands is also some of the state’s emptiest.  

About 60 percent of Nantucket units are now only in seasonal, recreational, or occasional use. The island’s part-time percentage is topped only by the Martha’s Vineyard towns Chilmark and Edgartown, both of which are in the high 60s, and Truro near the northern tip of Cape Cod, which is 71 percent part-time homes. 

“We’ve been growing,” Nantucket Select Board member Matthew Fee said of the island where he grew up. “We have more houses, and more bigger and nicer houses, and more people than we’ve had at peak before.” 

Fee wears two hats: select board member running for a sixth term and owner of the local bakery and sandwich shop Something Natural. He’s always been able to tell when a summer is in high demand mode by his “bread index,” that is, how many loaves of southern Massachusetts’ classic Portuguese bread have trundled out his bakery doors. 

The island, like much of the region, has always had a strong vacation season identity. But the savvy economic move for those who want to rent out a house is now to optimize short-term rentals. A one-to-three-bed Airbnb during the prime season can run from $350 to over $1,000 a night, while some eight-bedroom homes on rental listings will still go for around $25,000 a month. 

As state Sen. Julian Cyr puts it, “the real issue is our housing market is valued basically on what a given home or apartment rents for by the night in July and August.”

Fee’s bread index theory “really holds true,” he said of late, “and we are seeing huge spikes now over a Friday-Saturday-Sunday.” 

According to the state’s recent housing needs report, half of all registered short-term rentals statewide are in Barnstable County, despite having only 6 percent of the state’s housing units. From 2009-2019, 5,800 year-round homes on Cape Cod were “lost” – taken out of the normal housing market – to seasonal use or for other reasons. New production made up part of the difference, but not enough to stem the overall loss of year-round units. 

“Thousands of homes are at risk due to increasingly severe coastal and riverine flooding,” the report’s authors wrote. “But a home doesn’t have to be flooded to be lost. … The availability of modestly priced homes and apartments is dwindling as they are acquired and upscaled by investors who sell or rent at a much higher price point.” 

Sale and rental data trackers show a slow but consistent climb for years across these seasonal communities, but the pandemic sent prices into a new stratosphere. Buyers who wanted to spend more time on idyllic shores dropped in with higher budgets, with an eye toward short-term renting or leaving it vacant except for personal vacation use. 

What once was a “life-cycle” of housing is more complicated, Fee said.  

Past a certain price point, the house “usually doesn’t get rented but still demands all the services,” Fee noted, in terms of needing town infrastructure, contractor and staff parking and housing, and utilities to serve the bigger footprints. 

And, the houses that are now being bought, renovated, and kept empty during the off-season are the ones that used to be rented to middle managers, teachers, or town workers. They now have to find somewhere else on the island to live, if possible. Workers on the Cape have a similar issue, often commuting in from the mainland rather than compete for pricey housing where they work. 

“It’s good for business and we rely on it,” Fee said of the seasonal resident ebb and flow, “but it also puts pressures on the island.” 

For Cyr, who grew up in Truro and represents the Cape and Islands, the focus on the billionaire home imperiled by nature is something of a distraction. Coastal erosion risk is “a compounding challenge” to the broader housing crunch, he said.  

“There’s going to be some places that we’re going to have to retreat,” he said, citing locations with severe erosion along the Cape Cod National Seashore in Barnstable or the bluffs of Nantucket. But Cyr and resilience experts noted that erosion is a long natural process, which itself has carved the outlines of Massachusetts’ iconic shape. “This is part of a natural rhythm of a place,” he said, pointing to areas with little development that are eroding as well. 

Martha’s Vineyard beaches have lost more than 1,400 acres since 1897, and Nantucket nearly 1,900 acres, according to the State of The Coasts report from the Trustees, which preserves places of scenic, historical, and ecological value for public use. The islands also have nearly 1,800 acres of marsh at risk from sea level rise. 

In Cyr’s experience, the focus is on the dire day-to-day impacts of places dealing with groundwater issues and ever rising tides. 

“How do you bolster Commercial Street in Provincetown, or Beach Road from Oak Bluffs to Edgartown [on Martha’s Vineyard]?” Cyr said. “How do you deal with the pretty routine flooding that’s occurring now during high tides in Nantucket? That’s what much more of the conversation is, less these bigger, more dramatic examples.” 

Climate and planning efforts in Massachusetts have tended toward the town-by-town, until recently. 

Cyr’s brisk reference to “retreat” connects to a thorny debate over managed retreat, a process of moving infrastructure, people, and property out of vulnerable areas through policies that could include options like voluntary buyouts, relocating roads, and changing zoning districts. 

A 2023 state-wide assessment of coastal communities’ willingness to consider managed retreat, reported on by CommonWealth Beacon, found that there is still significant reluctance to contemplate relocating infrastructure unless absolutely necessary. Chief concerns were the lack of places to relocate to, political feasibility, and a loss of tax revenue – especially when it comes to high-priced real estate. 

Since then, some municipalities have moved ahead with plans to consider significant changes.  

The small coastal town of Hull, a peninsula including the particularly vulnerable Hampton Circle neighborhood, is engaged in planning efforts that include elevating certain homes or planning for a buyout program encouraging homeowners to move out of an area with a particularly high risk of flooding. 

In Falmouth – which considered a plan to make a historic retreat from its iconic Surf Drive coastal roadway in the face of sea level rise, flooding, and other impacts of climate change – there is a desire to push the conversation off as long as possible. According to The Enterprise, town officials recently learned that, because of an eelgrass bed near the beach, the town will no longer be allowed to dump new sand onto Surf Drive Beach to stall erosion and protect the roadway. 

Beach committee chairwoman Barbara Schneider said people need to face the fact that Surf Drive Beach will disappear. “We are no longer talking about saving beach,” Schneider said, according to The Enterprise. “All we’re talking about right now is saving a road and people’s homes.” 

Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard, both of which occasionally lose coastal houses to erosion, are working to refine their resilience plans. 

Hill, from Nantucket, is putting out a bid soon for a retreat and relocation program that would incorporate a climate risk assessment and put procedures in place for contacting and technically assisting homeowners if they need to relocate their home – either to a safer perch or for demolition. 

Resiliency advocates are somewhat limited in their efforts because of public-private barriers. Nantucket’s climate plan is only tailored to town-owned land, where it can build up sea walls or beaches. 

“We don’t have control of what private property owners want to do on their property as far as risk management, if anything, unless it’s through a regulation,” Hill said. “So we’re focused on mitigating flooding and erosion out to 2070 on our most critical roadways – the way to get to the Steamship Authority and all of those critical assets.” 

State building code regulations can create some obligations. For instance, if an owner in the downtown Nantucket flood plain wants to do renovations that would cost more than 50 percent of the market value of the structure, the whole building must be brought up to code including flood mitigation measures. But, the parcel-by-parcel process can be unwieldy. 

A new report from Massachusetts’s Unlocking Housing Production Commission on meeting the state’s housing goals recommends creating a separate residential building code so that projects that cost a higher percentage of the total building value will have to meet higher flood protection and other climate requirements, and vice versa. 

Given the speed of erosion on the islands, finding a way to contact owners if their houses are in trouble can be essential. It’s a quirk of the wealthy seasonal community – on some streets the owners of many properties are corporations or LLCs, not a person, so the town will send a letter to the corporate address if there is a structural concern.  

There may be a chance for less piecemeal planning on the horizon; at least, less piecemeal than town-by-town. 

Recent initiatives on coastal climate resilience planning and seasonal housing stressors offer a chance for more coordination between regions. 

In late 2023, the Healey administration launched ResilientCoasts, an initiative that promises a “comprehensive framework” to coordinate local and state efforts. According to public presentations in March, a final draft plan is expected this spring, which will establish coastal resilience districts based on geography, coastal characteristics, and risks, as well as identify strategies to support local and regional efforts to improve resilience coastwide. 

“Climate change presents a unique opportunity to build safer communities – but no municipality can do this alone,” said Maria Hardiman, spokesperson for the Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management, in a statement. Though no exact figure is attached to the effort yet, Hardiman said “for every dollar we invest in resilience now, we save $13 in damages and economic impacts in the long run. These investments are critical to protecting public safety and our economy, including the Massachusetts tourism industry and access to beautiful outdoor spaces.”  

Discussion about who should pay for resilience improvements reminds select board member Fee of debates about sewer access decades ago as the island expanded.  

There is a “natural tension,” he said, between the homeowners who need upgraded infrastructure because of modern building demands and those who are adequately served by the older systems.  

“One side says it’s a common good and we all should pay for it, and one side says half the island doesn’t require sewer,” he recalled, so why put them on the hook? After years of debate, the island split the coverage and the tax burden – balancing the costs between the current tax base, those who use the sewer, and areas with expected future users. 

That sewer system, which covers about 60 percent of the island, is now actively endangered by erosion and in need of quick remedial action.  

Similarly, the question of resilience often turns onto a question of “who is this for?”  

Nantucket’s resiliency plan lays out about $1 billion of investments to help the town weather the changing climate, and voters at the annual town meeting approved splitting the island into resiliency districts based on their unique challenges. Town officials have mulled – to residents’ chagrin – imposing fees on property owners who stand to benefit the most from the resilience projects. 

Dittbrenner, the vice president of natural resources for The Trustees, said the communal stakes of preventing climate impacts are rising.  

“We haven’t necessarily had conflicts, but we’ve needed to work more with our adjacent landowners, because some of the impacts of climate change and increased flooding and erosion, of course, extend beyond our boundaries,” she said. 

Property owners can have strong aesthetic feelings that sometimes conflict with conservation interests, Dittbrenner noted. Natural brush can hold a beach in place but look untidy, netting to protect sea bird habitats can seem visually disruptive, and sometimes the solid appearance of a sea wall is more comforting than a natural wetlands barrier that might be more appropriate.  

Given the cost of some erosion interventions, like beach nourishment, groups like The Trustees are trying to find a balance for municipalities when there are overlapping property interests. 

The Trustees co-owns the Coskata-Coatue Wildlife Refuge, some 1,117 acres of rapidly thinning barrier beach that stretches around to create Nantucket Harbor, with the Nantucket Conservation Foundation. 

“We can’t afford to spend millions of dollars to come and place a bunch of sand on the beach just to shore it up in that way, because that is really transient and would only last for a few years and costs a lot of money,” said Dittbrenner. “So the cost benefit isn’t there. But if there are nature-based ways that we can improve the resilience of that buffer and increase the habitat, then that’s a mutual benefit that makes sense.” 

For that sort of project, groups can usually go to the state and federal government. Dittbrenner expects the cost will now fall more to the state given the pullback of many federal funds.  

A state grant will cover the last permitting phase of raising Argilla Road in Ipswich, which is the only road with access to interstate tourist draw Crane Estate and Crane Beach. The road has been flooding frequently on the king tide, which are exceptionally high tides tied to moon cycles. Dittbrenner said The Trustees and the city are partnering to nail down a design for the project, but have secured funding from the state. 

Town budgets are tight, Fee noted, and municipalities with areas of sparse but vulnerable housing can be stuck paying for outdated obligations. 

“The state rules have to catch up with the reality of climate change,” he said. “A town road can’t be abandoned if someone’s [living] on it, but what happens when the road goes into the ocean?”   

Don Vaccaro, a businessman and philanthropist who co-founded Ticketnetwork Inc., had owned a Sheep Pond Road property on an-erosion threatened stretch of Nantucket since 2014 and purchased the house and lot next door a decade later for $200,000, putting about the same amount into renovating and eventually demolishing the property. He demolished the second house at the town’s request just six months after buying it, for a $400,000 loss. 

“I was able to use it one week with my family and kids in both houses, which was a priceless experience, so it was worth it in the end,” he told the Nantucket Current in January. 

Housing dynamics are involved in an awkward push-and-pull with climate and open space interests. Protected coastline and green space are desirable to nearby buyers and renters, but also drive up housing costs by limiting available land. And when the impacts of climate change get too pronounced, the land value tanks. 

The former owners of the small Sheep Pond Road house bought it for $2 million in 1988 and held on for decades as the shoreline receded, imperiling the structure. Even local housing nonprofits weren’t interested after three storms carved out the little remaining beach. When they sold it to Vacarro, they got back just 10 percent of their initial investment.  

“Most of these properties that you see that have this dramatic erosion loss,” Cyr said, pointing as an example to a house that had to be relocated at Ballston Beach in Truro two years ago, “these are seasonal homes. These are second homes. I think I hear much more from concerned constituents who may not be living at the water’s edge, but whose homeowners insurance rates have gone up astronomically, or they can’t get homeowners insurance.” 

The state should be able to step in and offer assistance, said Cyr, who supports efforts to establish a flood insurance market and has filed legislation to offer incentives and encouragement to make home investments that would be more resilient to a changing climate. 

The majority of residents are not scrambling to save million-dollar homes, but demand for housing has made even risky bets seem like a good option if the buyer doesn’t mind a short use window or taking a loss that costs as much as buying a studio apartment in Boston. 

And as in the case of the former owner of the demolished Sheep Pond Road house, buying a home in 1988 with a wide stretch between the house and the beach is no guarantee of safety. When the ocean comes, if it’s every homeowner for themself, the options are demolition or a fire sale. 

The post ‘Water doesn’t know property lines’: Where Massachusetts’s climate and housing crises meet appeared first on CommonWealth Beacon.

THE ASSOCIATION to Preserve Cape Cod has reviewed the Massachusetts National Guard’s modifications to the new proposed multipurpose machine gun range at Joint Base Cape Cod and has concluded that the project continues to fail to protect the Upper Cape water supply from contamination. The entire proposal, modified or not, should be rejected.

The National Guard’s new proposal was included in EPA Region 1’s response to inquiries from Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Edward Markey and Rep. Michael Keating about the status of the environmental agency’s determination that the machine gun range represented a significant public health threat.

The National Guard’s proposal, which the public has not had the opportunity to review or comment on, fails to eliminate or meaningfully reduce the core threats to the water supply that were identified in the EPA’s review.  

The proposal rejects most of the EPA’s pollution prevention recommendations intended to help safeguard the region’s drinking water. Instead, the proposal includes a reduction in the project size from approximately 1.3 million bullets fired per year to approximately 800,000 bullets fired per year. The reduction would still far surpass what is currently used in training on the base, amounting to triple the number of bullets currently fired per year.

The National Guard’s revised proposal would rely on infrequent bullet collection, once every 10 years, along with infrequent monitoring to detect and then attempt to clean up contamination in the soil—and potentially in the aquifer—after it has already occurred. This is the same pattern of behavior that created the Superfund site at Joint Base Cape Cod, where $1.2 billion has so far been spent cleaning up hazardous waste.

As stated in EPA’s April 4, 2024 letter to the congressional delegation, “No additional scientific analyses were provided [by the National Guard] to address the risk and uncertainty of a large-scale expansion of pollutant loading.”

The National Guard’s proposal continues to rely on reacting to contamination that has occurred rather than on preventing contamination of the aquifer. Perpetuating such poor stewardship of the land and Cape Cod’s water resources is too risky and is unacceptable.

The Association to Preserve Cape Cod is equally concerned about the possibility that the National Guard’s proposal to reduce the project size is merely a project segmentation maneuver with the full intention to come back later to complete the range. If allowed, the phasing of the project would avoid scrutiny of the impact of the whole project. Segmentation of projects is prohibited under the Massachusetts Environmental Policy Act.

The National Guard has proposed to the EPA that it intends to reduce the machine gun range footprint from two of the ten 800-meter lanes and eliminate all of the 1,500-meter machine gun lanes. Up until this point, the National Guard has steadfastly insisted that ten firing lanes were necessary, and that the 1,500-meter lanes were needed to meet the Department of Defense’s training requirements.

However, when the National Guard sought construction bids for the project, the bid costs were more than $15 million, which exceeded the $9.2 million appropriated for the project. With the National Guard facing a funding shortfall and an appropriation that expires on October 1, 2024, the association wonders if the proposed project reduction is not a serious response to EPA but rather just a segmentation scheme to bring the construction cost in line with the funds already appropriated for the project in order to get the project on the ground.

In this scenario, the National Guard would then seek additional funding to fully build out the project, adding back the lanes removed now in supposed response to the EPA concerns. The National Guard could take this scenario off the table, but so far the organization has refused to comment, adding credence to the premise that they intend to segment.

It is evident that the National Guard’s proposal fails to address the EPA’s valid concerns about the threats the machine gun range poses for the Cape’s sole source aquifer or the health and welfare of the residents of Cape Cod. Indeed, the association agrees with the EPA’s April 2023 provisional determination that, “it is uncertain that any combination of operations, maintenance, and monitoring practices can adequately reduce the potential to contaminate the aquifer so as to create a significant public health hazard.”

The association urges EPA to reject the National Guard’s inadequate proposal for the machine gun range and to expeditiously finalize the draft finding.

Andrew Gottlieb is executive director of the Association to Preserve Cape Cod.

The post EPA should reject machine gun range on Cape appeared first on CommonWealth Beacon.

STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE

BACK FROM A string of activity in the nation’s capital that featured a pair of events with President Joe Biden, Gov. Maura Healey said Monday that the aging Cape Cod bridges and the prospect of a western Massachusetts passenger rail extension featured as recurring topics during her visit.

Healey ping-ponged between Massachusetts and Washington DC last week for Biden’s State of the Union address on Tuesday and then for a combination of National Governors Association events between Thursday and Saturday.

The governor told reporters on Monday she spoke with “several people” about the Bourne and Sagamore bridges, including federal lawmakers and Biden administration officials. Replacing those spans — which opened to motorists in 1935 — has loomed as a top priority for years, though the project’s future is uncertain amid unanswered funding questions.

“I think they understand the importance of these projects and the importance of funding it, and really, this is going to be about working together at the state and federal level to get this done,” Healey said.

The federal government in January rejected a US Army Corps of Engineers grant application seeking $1.88 billion in funds toward replacing the two bridges, just a few months after Washington turned down another application for more than $1 billion.

Estimates for the project’s price tag have soared. In 2019, officials projected it would cost roughly $1.5 billion to remove and replace both bridges, but in May, then-Transportation Secretary Jamey Tesler said the cost now appeared to be “close to $3 billion to close to $4 billion.”

“We’ve got to do the work right now in terms of a new [grant] application. That process hasn’t started yet, but our work on it has started,” Healey said. “It’s making sure that we demonstrate to the federal government that we have the bandwidth, the workforce capacity. Funding, yes, is important because the state needs to put its own amount of funding up, but you know, the conversations that we had — they were a good start, and this is a top priority for me.”

The Baker administration struck an agreement with the US Army Corps of Engineers in July 2020 that calls for the federal agency to retain ownership and management of the bridges during construction and demolition, then transfer ownership of the new spans to the state. At the time, Baker administration officials said publicly that the federal government would cover the costs of the project, even as a Massachusetts Department of Transportation spokesperson simultaneously acknowledged the agreement did not formally bind any federal agencies to do so.

Another transportation topic that Healey said she discussed in Washington is a long-proposed East-West Rail project extending passenger train service to western Massachusetts. She said she had a “good meeting” with the Bay State’s congressional delegation, who are “supportive” of the idea.

“My team is already spending time with the Department of Transportation thinking through what that looks like, and it’s something that I’ve been committed to from the time I ran for this position,” Healey said. “We’re working very hard on this, and I know it’s going to require and involve support of our federal delegation and the [Biden] administration on this, but I’m confident and hopeful that we can work together to see that through.”

The governor’s office said Healey met with the Bay State’s congressional delegation at the US Capitol on Thursday to discuss the Cape bridges, the Massachusetts economy, child care, the CHIPS and Science Act, behavioral health, veterans’ supports and federal funding opportunities.

On Friday, according to Healey’s office, the governor and her transportation secretary, Gina Fiandaca, met with Biden advisor and infrastructure coordinator Mitch Landrieu. She also attended a White House business session with Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and members of Biden’s Cabinet, had lunch with French Ambassador Philippe Etienne, and then held meetings with US Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

Healey attended a Saturday morning breakfast with New England governors to discuss regional energy issues, participated in NGA Winter Meeting events, and then spent an evening at the White House with the president, First Lady Jill Biden, and Healey’s partner, Joanna Lydgate.

In a Monday morning interview on Boston 25 News, Healey, appearing live from her State House office, said governors from both parties are “going to find ways to work together.”

“Many of us had a discussion about energy needs in our states, in our regions, and how we can work together to grow support for funding for infrastructure, for transmission, for our grid,” Healey said. “Many of us are facing challenges around housing, around workforce, so how do we work together to find common solutions?”

It’s been about seven weeks since Healey, then still governor-elect, announced she retained search firm Krauthamer & Associates to help find candidates to become general manager at the MBTA, and about two and a half weeks since she said that process would move on a timeline of “weeks, not months.”

“We’re close,” Healey told Boston 25 about the ongoing GM search. “I mean, we promised folks that we would move through with a very aggressive process and that we would work as quickly as possible. I said this would be weeks, not months. We’re in fact on course to do just that, and so we hope to have a decision and an announcement soon.”

Sam Drysdale contributed reporting.

The post Healey talks bridges and rail in DC visit appeared first on CommonWealth Beacon.

STATE GOVERNMENT OFTEN seems distant from the everyday lives of Massachusetts residents, but that’s not true these days on Cape Cod. 

The state Department of Environmental Protection has issued draft regulations that could require thousands of Cape residents to upgrade or replace their septic systems – or scrap their septic systems altogether and go with a county-wide watershed permit plan — to deal with the growing threat of nitrogen pollution.

It’s a costly proposition that has divided the region, prompted pushback on Beacon Hill, and stirred yet another debate about pollution and who should pay to deal with it. Of late, the debate has been pretty chippy.

The Codcast offers a balanced, nuanced look at the issue from two experts on the Cape who find a lot to agree about but nevertheless stake out different positions.

Alan McLennen, the chair of the Orleans Board of Water and Sewer commissioners and a member of the Orleans Select Board, and Stephen Rafferty, the vice chair of Falmouth’s Water Quality Management Committee, agree the nitrogen problem on Cape Cod is serious.

Wastewater from many Cape homes is run through septic systems and released into the nearby sandy soil. The nitrogen in urine travels through the earth into waterways, spurring the growth of algae that kills off plant and wildlife and leaves a foul smell.

Prodded by a lawsuit from the Conservation Law Foundation, the state Department of Environmental Protection has proposed regulations that would require individual homeowners to install new septic systems within five years or whole communities to come up with a plan to scale back nitrogen levels over 20 years.

Both McLennen and Rafferty say the home-by-home approach won’t work, in part because the new septic systems are expensive and largely ineffective. That leaves the community approach, which Rafferty says is basically a mandate.

“One of the things I find sort of unfair about the proposal they have is they know that no community is going to require all their homeowners to put new septic systems in,” Rafferty said. “If they had turned around and said you have to do these watershed permits and comply within 20 years that would be an unfunded mandate and the Legislature would have to find some funding mechanism.”

McLennen said Orleans, joined by the towns of Chatham, Harwich, and Brewster, developed the first watershed permit granted in Massachusetts and so far it’s worked well to clean up Pleasant Bay. The permit calls for reducing nitrogen levels through a combination of sewers, permeable barriers, and aquaculture to lower nitrogen levels naturally.

“We have met about 84 percent of the nitrogen removal that has to be taken care of so far. So we know the permitting process works,” he said. “We know how to do this.”

Rafferty applauds what Orleans and the other Cape communities have accomplished, but notes they have been at it for decades to deal with one estuary. He says Falmouth has 14 estuaries to permit, and work on 12 of them has barely started.

“The way this is unfolding for Falmouth is we probably are [going] to have to convince voters in the community of a major Proposition 2½ override [to pay for the clean-up] and then still not coming into compliance within the time frame they have,” he said.

“We’re willing, and I think other communities are willing, to sit down with the DEP and get their understanding of where they’re at and what we’re going to do and how we’re going to do it as opposed to them saying here’s something you’re going to have to do which is an impossibility but if you don’t want to do the impossible you can do the difficult,” he said. “I’m cautiously optimistic the DEP will do some modifications before they promulgate final regulations.” 

The post Addressing the nitrogen challenge on Cape Cod appeared first on CommonWealth Beacon.

SOARING HOUSING COSTS have become an alarming problem across the state, but on Cape Cod the crisis is even more urgent. 

While the area’s natural beauty and beaches make it an attractive place for the well-off to splurge on vacation homes, it has also driven up housing prices so sharply that its year-round community is struggling to survive. 

The region saw a 38 percent increase in the median price of single-family homes sold in the past year, according to The Cape Cod and Islands Association of Realtors. The median price of homes sold in May of this year was $630,000. At the same time housing inventory dropped, putting further upward pressure on prices. 

“If we don’t change course, if we don’t fundamentally change what we’re doing, we’re not going to have year-round communities [on the Cape],” said state Sen. Julian Cyr, a Truro Democrat, a legislative hearing on Wednesday. 

Cyr, who represents Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, and Nantucket, is sponsoring a bill that he describes as a “toolkit” of policy remedies for municipalities to use in creating sustainable conditions for the Cape’s year-round community. 

Cyr knows from experience that long-term renters are in a uniquely precarious position. If displaced from their current residences, most won’t be able to afford inflated market prices. Even on a senator’s salary, Cyr says he feels vulnerable as a renter. 

His legislation was one of 19 bills considered at a hearing of the Joint Committee on Housing. 

Displacement isn’t just a looming threat for Cape Cod residents. Increasingly, it is a reality. Alisa Magnotta, CEO of Housing Assistance Corporation, a regional housing agency for Cape Cod and the islands, who testified in support of Cyr’s bill, said that in the past six weeks 50 households have approached her office for help. Driven by a raging seller’s market, their landlords sold their units and the residents were newly homeless. 

Magnotta said her organization’s homeless outreach caseload doubled in the past year. Many of its clients are newly homeless despite holding full-time jobs. “They are hoping to get through the summer living in their cars, at campgrounds, or on a friend’s couch,” she testified. “They are praying another rental will open up in the fall.” 

Though the housing crisis is plaguing communities across the state, Magnotta said the situation on the Cape is worse because its year-round workforce is competing with second- and third-home owners. Now that work has gone remote, affluent, white-collar workers can Zoom into their 9 a.m. meeting from wherever they like. For many, that’s a breezy porch on the iconic Massachusetts peninsula. 

“No household making less than $200,000 can live here,” Magnotta said. “That’d be a big pay raise for our bank tellers, our childcare workers, and our CNAs.” 

Cyr’s legislation offers a multi-pronged set of policy solutions to a problem so grave that he says no single measure will make a significant dent in the problem. The bill includes property tax incentives for landlords renting at affordable rates, provisions that afford the Department of Housing and Community Development right of first refusal on foreclosed properties and allow it to enter into agreements to construct new housing, and a proposal to study tiny homes. 

Tiny homes are defined in the bill as detached structures of 600 square feet or less. They can be built on a permanent foundation or on a portable chassis. Currently, housing and sanitary codes preclude people from living in these dwellings, but Cyr wants to research their potential to increase housing density. “Tiny homes have been useful elsewhere,” he said. “[On the Cape and the Islands] we have such limited available land … our best bang for our buck is to build more densely.” 

“I cannot convey more strongly what an existential crisis this is for our communities,” said Cyr.

Magnotta echoed his message. “We implore this committee and our Legislature to prioritize tools in any bill that will actually result in new production and shovels in the ground so that our residents, our friends, and our neighbors have housing, not just prayers,” she said. 

The post Housing affordability becoming ‘existential crisis’ for Cape Cod appeared first on CommonWealth Beacon.

PRESIDENT TRUMP on Monday extended existing restrictions on the issuance of new green cards and temporarily suspended new work visas that will bar hundreds of thousands of immigrants from coming to the United States to work through the end of December.

The Trump administration said that the move will keep as many as 525,000 foreign workers out of the country in hopes that the positions will instead be filled by Americans who recently lost employment because of COVID-19 shutdowns.

“Under the extraordinary circumstances of the economic contraction resulting from the COVID-19 outbreak, certain nonimmigrant visa programs authorizing such employment pose an unusual threat to the employment of the American worker,” Trump wrote in the order.

The visas covered by the order include the H-1B, which is used by technology company employees and those with specialized knowledge; the H-2B, which is used by nonagricultural seasonal workers; L visas, which apply to managers and high-level employees for companies; and J visas, which typically go to young immigrants who work in a summer exchange program for three months before returning to their home countries. The ban also applies to all family members of people overseas applying for any of the visas.

Massachusetts business owners and multinational corporations will be prohibited from transferring executives and employees working abroad to their US offices for the time being.

Eva Millona, president of the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition, said Trump’s order is unnecessary. “Extensive data show that these workers do not compete with US labor; they complement it,” she said. “If due to COVID-19, employers find that they have plenty of local candidates for the jobs they need to fill, they will not go to the trouble and expense of hiring from abroad instead.”

In order for employers to get a foreign worker through the H-2B program, they have to first post the job in the US and give opportunity for the jobs to be taken by an US resident. To bring a foreign worker to the US, a company has to pay fees to the US Citizenship and Immigration Services agency and pay the worker’s airfare.

Michael Holdgate is the owner of Holdgate’s Laundry in Nantucket and is glad that his four foreign employees were approved last Saturday to arrive this week through the H-2B program.

“It’s hard to get employees on Nantucket,” he said, adding that finding high school and college students to fill the seasonal gaps is “impossible.”  He said many US workers are making more on unemployment than they make working.

At Peak Season Workforce, which helps employers on Cape Cod and across the East Coast apply for H2-B visas, company president Joe Bishop was “angry, then disappointed” to find out that the program is shut down for the rest of the year. He thinks Trump’s reasoning for ending the program doesn’t add up.

“I know with COVID there’s the idea of so many people looking for work, but these jobs aren’t traditionally filled by the people being laid off,” he said. “These aren’t going to be filled by people who had full time jobs with benefits.”

He thinks the reverberations of Trump’s order will be felt for some time as businesses struggle to find a workforce to replace immigrants and in the meantime have to cut back on their output. Peak Season Workforce typically places about 200 to 250 immigrants with Cape Cod employers per year, with many being housekeepers, servers, and au pairs.

“This is going to be disastrous for small companies. The Cape is built on the little guys. Even with bigger hotel chains, we have CEOs changing beds because they don’t have the staff,” Bishop said.

At Chin & Curtis, a business immigration firm in Boston, co-partner Phil Curtis said that the ban will impact many companies looking for skilled workers, He said one of his clients in India was denied a H-1B visa to work with a technology company in the US last year, and appealed successfully after a year of paperwork. “Now he’s stuck in India because Trump has just said no more H-1B visas will be issued,” Curtis said. The man, who does not want to be named out of concern over his application, works in IT and was supposed to work for a digital marketing company.

That sentiment is being echoed across the US as major tech companies like Amazon and Google, both of which have operations in Massachusetts, were quick to criticize the new limits. Amazon’s spokesperson told Business Insider the decision was “short-sighted.”

“Preventing high-skilled professionals from entering the country and contributing to America’s economic recovery puts American’s global competitiveness at risk. The value of high-skilled visa programs is clear, and we are grateful for the many Amazon employees from around the world that have come to the US to innovate new products and services for our customers,” the company said.

In Boston, Curtis called the administration’s statistic of saving 525,000 US jobs “nonsense” since there are only a certain amount of visas given out in many visa categories per year, and the numbers of those coming from overseas are small.

Curtis’s firm also represents businesses seeking to bring their international managers to the US on an L-visa. “It’s a well-utilized visa category that hasn’t been controversial until now,” he said. “If you can’t even transfer a manager for US Airways or BMW to the states, this is just making it harder to conduct business.”

Immigration attorney Mahsa Khanbabai said the ban on J visas will cut off the supply of young fo

reigners coming to the United States to work as au pairs and retail workers and also medical residencies.

“This will affect professionals who need an au pair in their home and need reliable childcare,” said Khanbabai. “It’s going to be a significant problem as Americans go back to work, and even working from home they need someone to watch their children.”

For international physicians, Khanbabai thinks Trump’s halt of J visas will deter future medical residents from overseas from coming to the US. “Why would physicians want to come to a country vilifying immigrants, when they could go to Australia and Canada and be showered with respect there?”

There is no breakdown of visas issued per state, but there are annual national records. According to 2019 State Department records, 188,123 H-1B visas were issued; 97,623 H-2B visas; 76,988 L visas; and 353,279 J visas. The data reflects visa applications at US embassies, and isn’t entirely reflective of how many people have that status. It also doesn’t differentiate between immigrants who applied for these visas who are already in the US, and those that are applying from overseas.

The post Trump suspends visa program bringing workers to US appeared first on CommonWealth Beacon.

What will the summer look like amid the COVID-19 threat? July 4 concerts are out, but will we be able to enjoy beaches and barbecues? What about pools, camps, and zoos?

That is the question all Massachusetts residents are asking, but nowhere is the question as urgent as on Cape Cod.

In Massachusetts’s premiere summer vacation spot, businesses and municipalities earn most of their revenue for the year in July and August, when vacationers eager to escape the city flock to the region’s seashores and restaurants.

Last week, the Boston Globe reported that town managers on the Cape were looking to Gov. Charlie Baker for guidance on how to reopen.

That guidance came Monday, when Baker said beaches could reopen, with restrictions, as soon as Monday, May 25 – marking Memorial Day as the official start of summer. The Cape Cod Times reports that towns on the Cape are all also developing their own guidelines regarding beaches, which could affect things like parking capacity.

Restaurants, however, cannot reopen until the second phase of the state’s reopening – at the earliest June 8, depending on public health data.

Restaurants are starting to prepare. In Falmouth, for example, the Board of Selectmen is asking Baker to loosen restrictions on liquor licenses and zoning to allow restaurants to expand outdoor seating.

Members of Cape Cod’s own reopening task force have expressed “cautious optimism” that the Cape can have some semblance of a normal summer season.

In a statement, the group said accommodations are cleaned and stocked, and hoping to reopen in June. (Lodgings cannot accept non-essential workers until phase two of Baker’s plan.) Restaurants are already offering takeout and hoping to begin with outdoor and possibly indoor dining in June.

The group notes that because Memorial Day falls early and Labor Day falls late, there is actually an extra two weeks of summer this year for businesses to make up some lost revenue.

And yet…will the ferry be safe? A Steamship employee who works at the Nantucket Terminal and commutes from the mainland just tested positive for COVID-19. The Cape Cod Times reports mixed news daily – the Heritage Museums and Gardens Rhododendron festival is on, but Chatham’s Independence Day parade, fireworks, and weekly Friday concerts are off.

In the LGBTQ hotspot of Provincetown, the Globe recently reported, some hope the town can be a site of healing this summer. Others worry about the devastating toll COVID-19 could take if it spreads in a community with many older and immunocompromised residents — Provincetown already has the state’s highest rate of HIV infections. Second home residents coming to Provincetown have experienced animosity from year-round residents.

And on the topic of animosity, it was a Cape Cod ice cream parlor that made national news after it was forced to close when rude customers harassed staff over social distancing guidelines.

And, of course, the biggest unanswered question lingers: Even if the Cape reopens, will visitors come?

The post A lot of summer what ifs appeared first on CommonWealth Beacon.

What will the summer look like amid the COVID-19 threat? July 4 concerts are out, but will we be able to enjoy beaches and barbecues? What about pools, camps, and zoos?

That is the question all Massachusetts residents are asking, but nowhere is the question as urgent as on Cape Cod.

In Massachusetts’s premiere summer vacation spot, businesses and municipalities earn most of their revenue for the year in July and August, when vacationers eager to escape the city flock to the region’s seashores and restaurants.

Last week, the Boston Globe reported that town managers on the Cape were looking to Gov. Charlie Baker for guidance on how to reopen.

That guidance came Monday, when Baker said beaches could reopen, with restrictions, as soon as Monday, May 25 – marking Memorial Day as the official start of summer. The Cape Cod Times reports that towns on the Cape are all also developing their own guidelines regarding beaches, which could affect things like parking capacity.

Restaurants, however, cannot reopen until the second phase of the state’s reopening – at the earliest June 8, depending on public health data.

Restaurants are starting to prepare. In Falmouth, for example, the Board of Selectmen is asking Baker to loosen restrictions on liquor licenses and zoning to allow restaurants to expand outdoor seating.

Members of Cape Cod’s own reopening task force have expressed “cautious optimism” that the Cape can have some semblance of a normal summer season.

In a statement, the group said accommodations are cleaned and stocked, and hoping to reopen in June. (Lodgings cannot accept non-essential workers until phase two of Baker’s plan.) Restaurants are already offering takeout and hoping to begin with outdoor and possibly indoor dining in June.

The group notes that because Memorial Day falls early and Labor Day falls late, there is actually an extra two weeks of summer this year for businesses to make up some lost revenue.

And yet…will the ferry be safe? A Steamship employee who works at the Nantucket Terminal and commutes from the mainland just tested positive for COVID-19. The Cape Cod Times reports mixed news daily – the Heritage Museums and Gardens Rhododendron festival is on, but Chatham’s Independence Day parade, fireworks, and weekly Friday concerts are off.

In the LGBTQ hotspot of Provincetown, the Globe recently reported, some hope the town can be a site of healing this summer. Others worry about the devastating toll COVID-19 could take if it spreads in a community with many older and immunocompromised residents — Provincetown already has the state’s highest rate of HIV infections. Second home residents coming to Provincetown have experienced animosity from year-round residents.

And on the topic of animosity, it was a Cape Cod ice cream parlor that made national news after it was forced to close when rude customers harassed staff over social distancing guidelines.

And, of course, the biggest unanswered question lingers: Even if the Cape reopens, will visitors come?

SHIRA SCHOENBERG

BEACON HILL

Gov. Charlie Baker emphasizes self-enforcement by businesses of new reopening standards. (Boston Herald) Part of the calculus in Baker’s lifting of a ban on gatherings of religious congregations: A looming First Amendment lawsuit threat. (Boston Globe)

Advocates say the Legislature needs to pass vote-by-mail bills now, not wait for the summer. (MassLive)

Even when the virus risk has been contained, do not shake Globe columnist Scot Lehigh’s hand, and for God’s sake don’t try to give him a hug.

MUNICIPAL MATTERS

The first settlement checks – averaging more than $8,000 – go out Friday for residents harmed by the Merrimack Valley gas explosions. (Eagle-Tribune)

West Boylston Police Chief Dennis Minnich threatens local Board of Health officials with arrest if they enforce Gov. Charlie Baker’s business shutdown orders in his town. Minnich says he didn’t mean for his email to sound threatening. (Telegram & Gazette)

Some are calling for the president of the Malden City Council to resign after she held a large birthday gathering for her daughter. (Boston Globe)

Boston Herald columnist Michael Graham says Mayor Marty Walsh and Rep. Ayanna Pressley are hurting working people and blacks with their warnings against reopening the economy.

New England astronaut Jessica Meir reflects on returning to Earth during the pandemic. (WGBH)

HEALTH/HEALTH CARE

A Brockton physician who was on a ventilator and gravely ill with coronavirus is on the mend and credits the experimental infusion of plasma from COVID-19 survivors for his comeback. (Boston Herald)

Researchers at Columbia University say modeling shows a shutdown of the US with stay-at-home orders two weeks earlier, on March 1, would have avoided 83 percent of the COVID-19 deaths that have occurred. (New York Times)

Two lab studies in monkeys suggest antibodies produced by coronavirus infection do protect against reinfection, a key question looming over the pandemic. (Boston Globe)

The state shut down a temporary homeless shelter for people with COVID-19 at the Quality Inn and Suites in Worcester citing “environmental concerns.” (Telegram & Gazette)

WASHINGTON/NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL

Here’s how President Trump dominates every aspect of the news cycle: A big question now is whether he’ll wear a mask when touring a Ford factory today in Michigan, something the state’s attorney general has urged him to do. (Washington Post)

US-China tensions are growing as the Trump administration looks to pin blame for the pandemic’s toll on China. (Washington Post)

ELECTIONS

Joe Kennedy is running for Senate like a Kennedy, says Joan Vennochi. (Boston Globe)

BUSINESS/ECONOMY

Rent payments are piling up for business owners affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, but creative solutions for landlords and tenants are difficult to craft. (CommonWealth)

Requests for food stamps and cash assistance surge in Massachusetts. (The Salem News)

Coronavirus-related job losses are hitting women disproportionately hard. (Boston Globe)

Gov. Baker’s orders prohibiting non-essential short-term stays leave a big question mark for those who have already rented summer vacation properties. (Herald News)

Construction is resuming in Boston, but work sites are operating very differently than before the shutdown. (Boston Globe)

While golf courses can reopen, golf driving ranges apparently cannot. (Eagle-Tribune)

An Oxford gym gets a written warning after it continues to open, defying Gov. Charlie Baker’s closure order. (MassLive)

It is up to employers and customers to report businesses that violate state safety standards when reopening. (MassLive)

EDUCATION

Higher ed leaders are expecting some combination of online and in-person learning this fall, but no one really knows. Online learning is definitely here to stay, they say. (CommonWealth)

Boston City Councilor Lydia Edwards says East Boston needs some straight answers from Eversource. (CommonWealth)

We cannot protect our environment — or protect against pandemics, racial injustice, and burdens on the working poor — while continuing to eat meat regularly, says author Jonathan Safran Foer. (New York Times)

CASINOS/MARIJUANA

Hey dude, drive up sales for recreational marijuana start on Monday. (CommonWealth)

CRIMINAL JUSTICE/COURTS

Michael Taylor, a former Green Beret from Massachusetts who worked for the FBI and as a military contractor and has a history of dangerous assignments and legal troubles, is arrested for helping former Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn escape from Japan, where he faces financial fraud charges. (Associated Press)

Norfolk County Sheriff Jerry McDermott said he credits early preparation and diligence by his staff and inmates for the low coronavirus caseload at his jail. (Patriot Ledger)

PASSINGS

Dan Boyle, a three-time Holyoke mayoral candidate, small business owner, and newspaper columnist, dies at 70, days after the passing of his wife of 32 years, nurse Angela Boyle, 61. (MassLive)

The post A lot of summer what ifs appeared first on CommonWealth Beacon.