Natural resources staff outline capital requests for downtown flood barrier, dredging and other resilience work

Natural resources Director Jeff Carlson told the Coastal Resilience Advisory Committee on April 8 that the department has submitted several capital articles for the town’s upcoming annual meeting, including funding to continue downtown flood-barrier design, begin implementation of a sediment transport and dredge plan and to advance design and permitting for property adaptation projects.

Carlson said the downtown neighborhood flood barrier request is intended to fund additional outreach and detailed design work and cautioned that the dollar figure in the warrant is intended to cover design and permitting of a selected alternative. “That $2,400,000 is to get through design and permitting of a selected alternative,” Carlson said.

Why it matters: the requests map directly to priorities in the town’s coastal resiliency planning and to projects that would alter transportation access and shorelines in and around Nantucket Harbor. Committee members focused discussion on how the capital requests align with the committee’s priority list, how the town will pay for projects that exceed grant funds and how to avoid leaving projects in a multi-year planning queue.

Carlson said the department also proposed a continuing “blanket placeholder” for coastal resiliency planning — a recurring capital item that in prior years has ranged from about $1 million…