With conservation committee administrator Chuck Hodgkinson riding shotgun, Chilmark Fire Chief David Norton crossed the new bridge to Squibnocket Farm in Chilmark’s 3,000-gallon fire tanker last Monday, Chief Norton said. The tanker, the Island’s biggest and heaviest, was “chockablock full,” and made it across and back without any problems, he said. Times reporters traversed the bridge on Sunday as part of a caravan of vehicles headed to a Trustees of the Reservations annual tour of Squibnocket conservation land. On the return trip, the reporters had to pull off to the side to allow another vehicle to exit the bridge. The bridge and roadway extending from it are too narrow for anything other than single-lane traffic. Chief Norton told The Times that while he deems the bridge otherwise sound, he wishes it were wider.
The much-litigated bridge was erected by Squibnocket Farm homeowners to replace an over-revetment causeway to their subdivision. It perhaps couldn’t have been ready for use at a better time. Recent storms have battered the Squibnocket Beach parking lot, and the causeway. In the parking lot, concrete had begun to separate in jagged plates, shotput-size stones lay strewn over the road, and a section of the revetment looked hit by a naval shell.
John Keene Excavation began Chilmark’s Squibnocket Beach project on Monday after two and a half weeks of storm delays. As part of the project, the revetment and the parking lot will be removed to make way for a vegetated dune. Keene told The Times he plans to complete major work in the vicinity of the old parking lot and revetment by April 10, to allow for grass to be planted on the new dune by a cutoff date of April 15. A new upper parking lot is slated for completion by Memorial Day, he said. Delays from past storms have pressured Keene’s timetable. “It’s a challenge,” he said.