Now, Chatham officials are considering a massive public works project to close the cut.
"Shows you how much we know. . . . We thought it would close," said Ted Keon, Chatham coastal resources director. "But it's showing no indication it will."
Selectmen have authorized Keon to seek emergency state permits to fill in the cut, which grew from about 50 feet wide in late April to more than 600 feet today. Tomorrow, they are scheduled to discuss holding a special town meeting to ask residents if they would be willing to pay a tab that could reach $1 million, or more, to close the opening.
Chatham officials say they want to have the permits in hand so they can move quickly if the community decides to go forward -- and before the cut gets too wide.
The town's looming decision highlights the practical and philosophical concerns about re-engineering nature on a shoreline that is constantly changing. It is not clear if the effort will work, because it is difficult to plug a breach that has the ocean running through it. Town officials are not sure residents will want to foot such a large bill to save a relatively small number of homes.
The National Park Service, which has jurisdiction over Nauset Beach, a part of the Cape Cod National Seashore, has long had a hands-off philosophy when nature redesigns the coast. Environmentalists, meanwhile, say the filling-in would take place near a sensitive marine habitat for fish.
But not doing anything, others say, could lead to another kind of re-engineering. They say homeowners on North Chatham's waterfront will rush to armor their property from the ocean with sea walls and sandbags that could also affect the distribution of sand along the waterways.
"We are going ahead with the permitting," said Selectman Ronald Bergstrom. "But a whole lot of things could happen between now and then. The seashore could say no. . . . People may not want to foot the bill for these homes."
Chatham, at the Cape's elbow, is known for shifting sands that have stranded scores of fishermen and boaters over the last century and made updating navigational maps a cartographer's nightmare. Every day, the Atlantic eats at the shoreline as it delivers vast amounts of sand to form the town's spits, shoals, and sandbars.
