State and local officials have been treading water for too long on how to handle increasingly frequent and destructive flooding at Five Corners in Vineyard Haven.
And it’s hard not to feel like time is running out, as the water keeps rising, and tidal surges keep washing up at the doors of area businesses, including Stop & Shop, the Black Dog Bakery, and right here at The Martha’s Vineyard Times.
So, yes, this issue hits very close to home. On Jan. 10, our building at 30 Beach Road took on several inches of water. Reporters were left sloshing through the newsroom in rubber boots, and the water damage compromised some of our computers. We spent thousands of dollars and quite a bit of personal elbow grease on cleaning up the mess, all while fully realizing it is only a matter of time before the next storm floods Beach Road, which is a state-administered road, once again.
So where are our state officials on helping the Island mitigate this problem on Beach Road? There is an ongoing study by the state Department of Transportation that started in earnest last summer, and is supposed to issue a report this spring. Back on Oct. 2, the state DOT project manager, Patrick Snyder, appeared at a virtual public meeting for 51 minutes and 26 seconds of “talk about further discussions.” Then there was another virtual public hearing Dec. 6.
Here’s what Snyder had to say back in October: “We’ve asked you here today to discuss the conceptual planning study. This is an important intersection, and MassDOT is excited to be part of this study looking at climate change mitigation in the area … This will inform our future work on this study.”
Conceptual planning? OK, but meanwhile the threat of more flooding looms, and so far we are getting just a steady wave of words. So it is understandable that some business owners at Five Corners are concerned and growing frustrated.
Teresa Kruszewski, the owner of 51art Gallery, watched last month as the water rose right up to the doorstep of her gallery, and she reacted by sounding the alarm and calling together a meeting of area business owners, who flocked to the Feb. 13 Vineyard Haven Business Association (VHBA) meeting.
Kruszewski has dutifully attended Massachusetts Department of Transportation meetings on the intersection, but she told The Times the agency does not seem to understand the severity of the flooding. That’s why, she said, business owners needed to make their voices heard. “What I’ve taken from the conversations is there have been a lot of studies,” Kruszewski said, adding that no real plans had been implemented.
A practical approach, Kruszewski said, is for there to be more routine cleaning of storm drains at Five Corners and storm gutters on Beach Road. She added that the businesses are anxious for some kind of concrete next steps, and concerned about what will happen with the current state of inertia.
“They were all interested in not what’s being talked about and researched — for years, I think — but what is actually going on … And what are some of the things that we can do immediately to start mitigating the physical issues that we’re dealing with,” she said.
The state DOT, the Martha’s Vineyard Commission, and several Island and town agencies have been holding meetings and hosting lots of dialogue, but from the point of view of the businesses on Beach Road, nothing seems to be getting done.
We applaud the efforts to evaluate the problem, we support the urgency that Kruszewski brings to the discussion, and we believe government officials, particularly from the state DOT, need to step up now and take real action.
Vineyard Haven business owners are trying to present a unified front in pushing for improvements at the notorious five-way intersection, and we support that as well.
Around a dozen business owners attended the VHBA meeting on Feb. 13, and discussed opportunities to represent their interests, as well as pending efforts to combat flooding.
Some attendees said that they are losing customers when storm surge reaches their storefront doors, and they are frustrated by a lack of action from government agencies that have studied the area for years.
Martha’s Vineyard Shipyard owner Phil Hale, who had to send employees home during the last big storm, showed up armed with binders of studies on Five Corners flooding, which he used to argue that the time had come for action.
Hale added that his business is considering moving inward over time, as sea level rises: “As a business, we’re actively looking — ‘Where can we go?’ — Because I can’t continue to send people home.”
The meeting was also attended by Ben Robinson of the Martha’s Vineyard Commission (MVC), who updated business owners on town, commission, and state efforts to address Five Corners. He stated that the MVC has applied for a $700,000 Island-wide resiliency grant to study planning opportunities at Vineyard Haven Harbor, Menemsha Harbor, and the road from Edgartown to Oak Bluffs along State Beach. The idea for the grant is to build an actionable framework for these three areas that can also be adapted for other vulnerable spots on-Island. If the grant succeeds, work will begin in October, he said. Candidly, it cannot get started soon enough.
