Nantucket presents three design options to curb Easy Street flooding; town to pick preferred alternative for 30% design

Town of Nantucket staff and consultants presented three design alternatives on March 20, 2025, to reduce coastal and stormwater flooding along Easy Street and Broad Street in downtown Nantucket, and asked island residents for feedback as the project moves to 30% design.

Leah Hill, Town of Nantucket staff, said the Easy Street Flood Mitigation Project was identified by the town's Coastal Resilience Advisory Committee as the highest-priority near-term item in the 2021 Coastal Resilience Plan and is supported by a coastal zone management (CZM) grant of a little under $500,000 to advance a preferred design to 30%.

The town and Arcadis consultants described three revised alternatives: (1) a waterfront flood barrier that raises and expands the existing bulkhead (the bulkhead-elevation option); (2) an adaptable road-raising strategy that would raise roadway elevations to about 6.5 NAVD (roughly 4 feet above Easy Street's lowest point) with the option to raise further later; and (3) a larger road-raising approach to elevation 8 NAVD (about 5.5 feet above the lowest point) intended to protect to mid-century sea level scenarios. "This is the first structural coastal resilience plan recommendation being implemented," Hill said.

Why it matters: project team members said the downtown waterfront contains critical cultural and transportation…