Notes from an Environmentalist; Sea level Rise in Ipswich Massachusetts.
Clark Pond
In a Warming World
Like most towns and cities on the East Coast, Ipswich Massachusetts has several well-known roads like Jefferies Neck and Argilla Road that flood regularly during storms and high tides.
But the road that has sustained the most damage over the years has been an access road to Clark Beach, an Atlantic facing beach partially sheltered by a sand bar growing rapidly off the southern end of Plum Island.
The beach was created over time after A.B. Clark built a stone dam across an area of productive clam flats in 1897. This was to create a freshwater pond to attract ducks for his hunting buddies.
The road was built in 1956 and has had to be rebuilt almost every year after waves overtop a rip rap seawall and wash sand and gravel into Clark Pond.
The repairs to the access road have become more and more costly. Three years ago the beach association that owns the road spent $15,000 to rebuild to fill and grade the road.
In 2024 they will spend $18,000 to rebuild the road and remove some of the rocks and gravel that have washed into the environmentally sensitive Clark Pond.
The Association also spent $30,000 on an environmental consultant to obtain an ongoing permit for maintenance work so they wouldn’t have to re-apply for a permit every year.
The problem is both sea level rise and the tides, which will be two to three feet higher by 2030 and three to four feet higher by the mid-30’s.
This will be enough for waves to wash over the south end of the dam with increasing frequency and tides will further scour out the inlet on the north end of the dam.
Members of the association will have to decide whether they want to continue to spend $20,000 to $40,000 a year in the short term so they can continue to drive to the beach, or let nature run her course in the long term.
In the long term storms will create two inlets at both ends of the pond and it will return Clark Pond to a protected salt-water cove with productive tidal flats, a fresh water stream and a brand new beach below Clark Road.