OGUNQUIT — A proposal to spend up to $50,000 for a consultant to study the cause of rising tides and beach erosion at Ogunquit Beach has been a source of recent debate. Now it is up to voters to decide if they want to expend funds to get outside advice on the problem.

“At high tide, South Beach is about a foot below water. When you pay $25 to park at the beach in the summer, and you don’t have a place to drop your blanket, we get complaints,” said Paul Breen, the chairman of the Beach Erosion Committee.

Ogunquit Beach spans approximately 1 1/2 miles, and Breen said the most common access point for visitors is the parking lot on the southern end of Main Beach, which generates more than $1 million in annual revenue for the town.

“For reasons we can’t be definitively sure of, the sand at the southern end of the beach from the peninsula to the Norseman [Hotel] is disappearing. Tides can go up to 13 feet or more on a full-moon tide, and parts of the parking lot go under water,” said Breen, in a recent interview.

Concerned over protecting the town’s economic and environmental vitality, the Ogunquit Select Board appointed the ad-hoc Beach Erosion Committee to specifically address two questions: Is the beach eroding? And if so, what should be done about it?

After meeting regularly since January, Breen and nine (eight?) other citizen volunteers ”“ including two engineers, a geologist, a physicist, a horticulturist and three local business owners ”“ identified both short- and long-term recommendations. At their request, the Select Board set aside $11,000 from the disaster fund to plant a matrix of wooden stakes and beach grass to help catch sand. The measures are an experiment that would be done next spring in the hope that it will help hold existing sand.

However, the committee testified this summer that tackling the larger causes of erosion required outside expertise.

“There are many suppositions about why the sand is disappearing from the beach; there has not been a formal engineering study to determine causes and recommend viable solutions,” Breen said, citing many potential causes, from natural to manmade.

Among the potential culprits is a dilapidating “rip-rap” project of rocks intended to prevent sand from moving, and the unknown impact of the Norseman Hotel and gradual expansion of the parking lot over recent decades.

“When someone gets a contract to build, they never get tasked with identifying the ecological impact – such as changing a bridge design – it can have on tides,” said Breen.

After reviewing what they knew from published reports and state experts, the committee felt that the best course of action was to set aside funds for a formal engineering study to identify the problems and potential solutions. The committee identified a criteria of 13 tasks intended to quantify what is wrong, what has changed and what should be done about it.

The Select Board unanimously voted to place a question on the Nov. 4 municipal election ballot that will ask voters to appropriate funds ”“ not to exceed $50,000 ”“ for the study.

“There are things to be learned from past mistakes, but in this environment, today, at this point in time, we need to understand what the experts would recommend we do now,” said Select Board Chair Barbara Dailey.

Conversely, the Budget Review Committee voted 4-1 to oppose spending the $50,000 after hearing from the Ogunquit Conservation Commission and other citizens who felt spending the money was premature.

“While we do acknowledge that, over the years, natural forces continually alter the geological structure of the beach, current alarm over assumed transition is just a snapshot in time,” said Chairman of the Conservation Commission Mike Horn. The commission is tasked with ongoing maintenance, monitoring and protection of town beaches.

Early in the public hearing process, the commission voted unanimously to throw their weight against a study, calling the effort a misguided approach.

“Other than the limited area south of the Norseman, there is no significant ”˜erosion’ of the majority of the beach,” Horn said, suggesting that visitors to the beach migrate northward during high tide, where there is plenty of sand.

Instead, the commission has said the priority should be eliminating and controlling pedestrian traffic on the dunes, and he supported the erection of a snow fence and educational signs.

“Before any monies are expended on engineering, there are many professional, no-cost consultants to approach,” said Horn, citing the Maine Geological Survey, Wells Reserve, Maine Department of Environmental Protection and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in a list of several resources the committee should have tried harder to engage.

Breen later clarified that “engineering” was probably not the correct term, and that the ecological impact would also be a factor of the study.

A 2013 Maine State Geological Survey awarded Ogunquit a B+ rating in comparison to other Maine beaches. In 2011, the same agency gave the town a D rating.

“It’s my understanding that geologists look at beach shorelines in 100-year spans. The Beach Erosion Committee was tasked with examining a specific issue going on with an important part of our community. Oftentimes, we, as people, see things before us that are separate of this larger context,” said Ogunquit Town Manager Thomas Fortier.

“The Beach Erosion Committee is committed to being apolitical, meaning they are there to inform, not sway, the public,” said Fortier.

To help educate the community about the purpose of the project the Beach Erosion Committee presented and received approval from the Select Board to distribute educational flyers that compare the loss of sand from previous years.

“I want to reiterate that the request is not to exceed $50,000. We’re not going to buy [the] low bidder. We want to buy the best technical competence,” said Breen.

He estimates that, if approved, the study would take six months to a year to complete. The proposal would also include recommendations for fixes, and that could take another 18-24 months to complete, depending on permits that might need to be secured based on any recommendations from the study.

— This article appeared previously in Making It At Home. Tracey Collins can be reached via the Journal Tribune at [email protected].