Wampanoag tribe members once inhabited all of Chappaquiddick, a place they called “Tchepi-Aquidenet,” which means “place of separate island.”
Last week Jack Klumick, assistant superintendent for The Trustees of Reservations (TTOR), walked from Katama to Chappaquiddick and barely got wet. On the face of it, not a remarkable stroll, but for the fact that for the past eight years Chappaquiddick was an island in name as well as fact, cut off from the rest of Edgartown by a breach in the two-mile Norton Point Beach that separates Katama Bay from the Atlantic Ocean.
Mr. Klumick emailed Christopher Kennedy, TTOR Martha’s Vineyard superintendent, “Chris, I think I have bragging rights to be the first one to walk from Wasque to Norton Point and back on April 1, 2015, at 2:15 pm.”
Mr. Kennedy told The Times it was exciting news. Mr. Kennedy said the steep angle of the beach where Norton Point joins Wasque makes driving risky now but he expects that to change quickly as the beach continues to grow. As to when Norton Point will be open to vehicles, Mr. Kennedy said, “Sooner rather than later.”
The closure is not expected to affect the bay’s thriving oyster farmers. “The conditions were fantastic before we had the breach,” veteran oysterman Jack Blake told The Times. “The oysters were as sweet as can be. There’s a tremendous tide still going by my farm. The salt content hasn’t changed. It’s a great big bay that has a big harbor that flushes. We farmed nurseries in the narrows for seven years before the breach opened.”
The likelihood that oversand vehicles will once again be able to utilize the land route creates an additional complication for Peter Wells, owner of the Chappy ferry, which for the past eight years provided the only means of vehicle transport across the harbor.
“We’re doing the two-way tickets,” Mr. Wells said. “We’re giving them a pass to get back, a laminated card, the same ones Roy Hayes [former ferry owner] printed years ago. We’ll know if people went by beach and they pay half price to come back.”
One plus is navigation. “The current has diminished,” Mr. Wells said. “It’s not like before when there could be a 7- or 8-knot current. It’s going to be less interesting for me, but it’s going to make a 3-minute trip a 1-minute trip. Cutting a minute and a half off each trip will make a huge difference. The lines should be much shorter this summer.”
For the past eight years, Norton Point has provided beachgoers and naturalists with a demonstration of beach dynamics documented over the past four centuries.
In April 2007, a one-two punch of storm-driven ocean waves and powerful spring tides knocked open a cut in the beach. The result was two long, narrow spits of sand stretching east and west toward one another. The cut continued to migrate eastward to Wasque Point, in a natural cycle recorded many times in the past four centuries.
This cycle was described in detail as part of a report prepared in connection with the relocation of a massive house from the edge of the disappearing Wasque bluffs.
Following months of preparation by a team of engineers, contractors, and builders, in July 2013 International Chimney Corp. of Williamsville, N.Y., a company that specializes in building relocation, moved the 8,313-square-foot, seven-bedroom seasonal home of Richard and Jennifer Schifter of Washington, D.C., including its foundation, basement bowling alley, and massive two-story chimney, back from the brink to an adjoining lot 275 feet away.
The Woods Hole Group (WHG), an international environmental, scientific, and engineering consulting organization headquartered in Falmouth, prepared an eight-page analysis that described the three-stage natural history of periodic breaks in Norton Point Beach, the two-mile-long barrier beach that separates Katama Bay from the Atlantic Ocean.
In the first stage, ocean waves and tidal levels combine to punch a hole in vulnerable spots in the barrier beach.
During stage 2, the inlet begins to migrate east toward Chappaquiddick, and the dominant easterly-flowing shoreline current causes the Norton Point spit to grow. As that spit extends to the east, the barrier beach on the Chappy side of the inlet tends to shorten and erode.
The process of easterly inlet migration and barrier spit growth occurs until the eastern barrier is completely eroded and Norton Point begins to overlap the southwest corner of Chappaquiddick. During this middle phase of stage 2, the absence of a sediment source from the west, in combination with tidal currents directed against Chappaquiddick, causes rapid erosion of the south-facing shoreline.
In stage 3, the tidal channel that connects Katama Bay to the Atlantic Ocean eventually closes, as tidal currents are not strong enough to flush sediment from the opening. Waves gradually push the Norton Point barrier spit to the north, and the beach eventually welds onto Chappaquiddick.
Finally, during the last part of stage 3 the beach/dune system begins to retreat as ocean waves, tides, and currents cause erosion. The process continues until a new breach in the Katama Bay barrier forms, and then the cycle starts over.