The Borrowed Shore
Cape Cod Times
How Long Can Nantucket Import Its Way Out of Erosion?
Nantucket Coastal Conservancy
Top: Crews install and maintain the geotube system at the base of ’Sconset Bluff — an engineered structure designed to be buried beneath a layer of sand that must be continually replaced. Above: A single barge carries thousands of tons of sand to Nantucket. The proposed expansion would require dozens of deliveries like this — followed by thousands of truckloads across the island.
As debate over the ’Sconset geotube expansion continues, a larger reality emerges: a multimillion-dollar supply chain stretching from mainland cranberry bogs to the Nantucket shore, and a deficit that is still growing
Marcel Deer • April 4, 2026
There's a version of this story, raised in recent coverage by the Nantucket Current, that asks a simple question: where will the sand come from? It’s a reasonable question, and it fits neatly within the frame of a permit, a hearing, or a single regulatory decision. But it also narrows the conversation too quickly, because by the time that question is being asked, something larger has already been set in motion.
In recent phases of the project, sand has been sourced from mainland borrow pits, including sites in Plymouth and the broader cranberry-growing region of southeastern Massachusetts, before being transported to New Bedford, barged to Nantucket, and then trucked across the island to the bluff.
What Nantucket is now dealing with is not simply a sourcing question. It's a question of scale, logistics, cost, and of how long the island can continue to support an engineered system that depends on importing the very material the island once supplied on its own.
How Much Sand Are We Talking About?
The proposed expansion requires more than 87,000 cubic yards of sand to initiate the next phase. At the same time, the existing system carries a shortfall of more than 100,000 cubic yards of required mitigation sand.
Taken together, the project begins from a position where it is already behind, with roughly 200,000 cubic yards needed before any expansion is complete.
How the Sand Actually Gets Here
This is not sand that can be shifted locally from one part of Nantucket to another. It's sourced off-island and moved through a chain that becomes clearer when followed from beginning to end.
The material is excavated from inland sites, trucked to a mainland port, loaded onto barges, transported across Nantucket Sound, offloaded and then trucked again across the island to the bluff. In 2024, one delivery cycle brought approximately 3,300 tons, more than 6.6 million pounds, of sand to Nantucket in a single week.
Once that chain is understood, the question shifts from not just where the sand comes from, but how often that process must repeat.
Scale Over Time
The initial phase is only part of the picture. Beyond it, the system requires continued replenishment. Estimates tied to the expansion suggest more than 100,000 cubic yards in the first year, followed by tens of thousands of cubic yards annually. Over time, that adds up to hundreds of thousands of tons moving through the same routes.
At peak delivery, state review documents model trucking activity at roughly nine to ten trips per hour during active construction periods. Even in the off-season, that level of movement is difficult to absorb. It moves through town, along primary roads, and into a village where traffic is typically minimal.
What It Costs, and What We Don’t Fully See
Cost is present in this discussion, but rarely examined directly.
There is no single public figure that captures the full cost of the expansion over time, but the available signals are clear. Comparable coastal work places trucked upland sand at or above $100 per cubic yard once excavation and transport are included, putting even the initial phase into the millions.
The Town’s requirement that the Siasconset Beach Preservation Fund post approximately $8.5 million in collateral, effectively a bond in case the system fails or is abandoned, points to the scale of financial exposure tied to maintaining it.
At the same time, the island is weighing alternative responses to the same problem. The proposed Baxter Road relocation, estimated between roughly $32 million and $45 million, sits alongside the geotube expansion as a different way of addressing erosion.
Whether one approach replaces the other, or simply delays it, hasn't been clearly defined.
The Unresolved Piece
The existing system has not met its original sand requirements. The geotubes are intended to remain buried beneath a sufficient sand layer so they function without interrupting the natural beach. Where that layer has not been maintained, portions of the structure have been exposed, altering the shoreline they were meant to stabilize.
That condition has been acknowledged for years and hasn't been fully corrected. The question that follows is straightforward: whether it makes sense to expand a system that has not yet been brought into compliance.
WSJ
The A.D. Makepeace excavation site at 59 Federal Road in Carver, where millions of cubic yards of sand are being removed from former cranberry lands — part of the inland supply chain that ultimately reaches coastal projects like ’Sconset.
Where the Sand Comes From
The question of sourcing does not end at the shoreline.
According to Sandwars.com, there are 110 mining sites across Southeastern, MA. In the town of Carver, large-scale excavation sites tied to companies like A.D. Makepeace are producing millions of cubic yards of sand, some of it originating from former cranberry bogs and surrounding land. At sites along Federal Road alone, more than 11 million cubic yards of sand have been removed over time, with additional permits allowing for millions more.
These operations are not isolated. They sit within the Plymouth–Carver aquifer region, where residents rely on well water and where sand removal has taken place across multiple sites for decades. In some cases, mining has expanded to include dozens of acres at a time, with proposals to extend excavation further into surrounding land, including areas near wetlands and water resources.
And, as reported by The New Bedford Light on April 2, 2026, for the communities near many of those sites, the system looks different. Residents describe persistent truck traffic, airborne dust settling on homes and cars, and concerns about long-term exposure to silica particles and impacts to drinking water. Some have characterized the operations less as agriculture and more as continuous earth removal at industrial scale.
The sand that arrives on Nantucket is part of that chain. It moves from inland extraction sites to ports like New Bedford, and from there to coastal projects across the region. What appears on Nantucket as nourishment begins, elsewhere, as removal.
This project is not the only one drawing on that supply. Dredging, shoreline stabilization, and long-term coastal planning efforts all require similar material. As those efforts accumulate, the assumption that sand can be sourced as needed becomes less certain.
What This Is Becoming
There was a time when erosion on Nantucket functioned as part of a contained system. The bluff moved, and the sand it released became part of a broader coastal cycle.
That relationship has changed. The shoreline itself does not require material brought in from elsewhere. The engineered system built to hold it in place does. The question is no longer just where the next load of sand will come from, but how long that process can continue, how much it will cost to sustain, and how widely its effects will be felt.
At some point, those questions converge into something more fundamental, not whether enough sand can be brought in to hold certain places in place for now, but how long that engineered system can be sustained, and at what cost.
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