The storm-ravaged Squibnocket Beach parking lot will be repaved this spring while a newly-formed beach committee considers long-term solutions to address increasing erosion at the town beach and abutting development of Squibnocket Farm, the Chilmark selectmen said this week.

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When George Santayana wrote “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” he was not envisioning people repeating their own mistakes. But that is what is transpiring at Wasque Point on Chappaquiddick this spring. In 2007 the Schifter family completed a large house about 300 feet from the bluff edge. Six years later, with the house poised to fall into the ocean, they are proposing to move it about 300 feet from the edge while damaging the environment and native artifacts and disrupting users of this magnificent landscape.
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Last Sunday afternoon, under wintery skies, there was yet another pilgrimage to Lucy Vincent Beach. For many it was a solemn moment as they stood and looked without saying a word.

Pam Bunker, chairman of the Chilmark beach committee, was there taking stock of how nature had once again changed the landscape of the beach.

“The whole eastern seaboard, from Plum Island all the way down the coast, is eroding . . . . It is a melancholy feeling,” she said.

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A month after the conservation commission ordered the removal of a Chilmark house perched on an eroding bluff, the commission Wednesday heard plans for the home’s removal: the guest house is slated to come down immediately, with the main house dismantled in phases depending on the rate of erosion. The 650-square-foot summer home on Stonewall Beach, owned by Natalie Conroy, stood eight feet from a cliff in late February. Ms. Conroy applied to move the house nine and a half feet back from the bluff, an application the commission denied because it would encroach on wetlands.
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Walking west on East Chop Drive on a tranquil spring morning, the only indication of trouble is a short metal gate with a spray-painted detour sign. The pavement is remarkably free of potholes and the two-lane road appears intact as far as the eye can see.

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