Editor's note: This story was updated Feb. 13, 2024, to reflect a correct date for a public meeting in Chatham.
PROVINCETOWN — On a recent Friday morning in the East End, the off-season quiet was broken by the sound of hammering, buzz saws and impact drivers.
“It’s all repairs. Repairing damages from flooding, from the storms,” said Kevin Shea, owner of the beachfront Watermark Inn at 603 Commercial St.
The sounds of construction from the row of coastal homes signal a startling change in weather patterns, resulting in damage from flooding and storm surges — a reality that property owners like Shea have been aware of for some time now.
“I mean, we have leaks in buildings in places we’ve never had before,” said Shea, laughing as he explained flooding has become more commonplace. Storm surges, he said, also flood low-lying sections of Commercial Street.
Colleen Medeiros, transportation program manager for the Cape Cod Commission, said the region is predominantly coastal and as such is either low-lying or at sea level — making much of the Cape vulnerable to flooding spurred largely by climate change.
“We need to start looking at incorporating solutions to make our coastal communities more resilient,” Medeiros said. “Climate change is happening right now and it’s not going to go away, unfortunately.”
Focus on low-lying roads, transportation infrastructure
Since 2021, the Cape Cod Commission has been working on a project focused on areas prone to flooding, specifically low-lying roads and transportation infrastructure. The commission wants to identify future risks and offer towns solutions to prepare and budget for bigger storms, Medeiros said.
The Watermark Inn endured two storms in January, the second of which on Jan. 19 led to a storm surge that flooded Shea's decks. Water was coming up to the sliding doors of guest rooms that look out over the deck and sea, he said. No water actually came into and flooded the first floor of the inn, Shea said. There were a couple of leaks, though.
Across the street from the Watermark Inn, during the same storm, basem*nts were flooded, Shea said. Water flooded the street itself, making it impassable.
On Feb 2 , even though the flooding had subsided, a home across the street from the Watermark Inn had a two-foot high barrier of sand bags meant to protect the yard and house from past and future flooding.
“These recent storms are probably two feet higher than anything I experienced in the past,” Shea said. “The last one was recorded as a 15-foot tide by the harbormaster, and that's kind of unheard of.”
But Provincetown isn’t alone. The Cape and Islands region as a whole is susceptible to flooding because of its unique geography and network of roads that cut through environments vulnerable to severe weather.
Cape towns identify 60 sections of roads vulnerable to storm floods
About 60 sections of roads have been identified by towns as vulnerable to storm flooding, according to data collected by the commission.
One participating town is Chatham, which is set to host a public meeting at 6 p.m. on Feb. 29 to discuss two areas identified as being critically at-risk of flooding and storm inundation.
Chatham Coastal Resources Director Ted Keon said the two areas — Morris Island Road and Ridgevale Road — become “fully impassable” during floods.
A look back at Chatham's weather woes'It was like a river coming in from the ocean'
“Once those roads get flooded, there is a section of the community that is no longer accessible,” Keon said. “And that obviously raises multiple issues of emergency access and people trying to get to and from their residences.”
Fixing flooding from storm surges will be 'extremely challenging'
Fixing those problems will be “extremely challenging” in the face of a rapidly changing environment and increasingly powerful weather systems, Keon said. The town will have a particularly hard time coming up with ideas to solve the problems on Morris Island Road, he said.
“The proximity to private homes and residences, you just can't necessarily raise a road right next to a private property,” he said. “It's going to be a very challenging area to figure out. Do we just deal with the road? Or do we try to deal with the sources of flooding and the different pathways the flooding comes in?”
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County: Towns need to be more proactive
The challenges Chatham faces reflect many of the problems other Cape towns will have now and in the future, Medeiros said.
“We're giving towns a little peek into the future of where their next problem areas might arise,” she said. “They need to start budgeting and planning for solutions, instead of right now, a lot of towns right now are in a more reactive phase — they need to be more proactive.”
Shea, who with his wife bought the Watermark Inn in 1983 and opened in 1985, said towns will have to come up with solutions quickly to address problems caused by increased flooding. He said otherwise he’s afraid for coming generations who will have to bear the brunt of a changing climate.
“I have grandkids who come here in the summer, and they're never going to be able to enjoy it the way we did,” Shea said, standing on the beach, looking down the row of beachfront homes. “And how do you protect all these individual properties against climate change? It's really hard.”
Walker Armstrong reports on all things Cape and Islands, primarily focusing on courts, transportation and the Joint Base Cape Cod military base. Contact him at WArmstrong@capecodonline.com. Follow him on Twitter:@jd__walker.
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