SOUTH KINGSTOWN

The owners of four Victorian cottages that survived major hurricanes and nor’easters for more than 100 years on the shores of Matunuck are now struggling to save their summer homes from another threat — the steadily eroding beach.

An expanse of dunes and grass that protected the cottages several years ago has been dissolved by waves. At high tide, the surf now reaches within a few feet of the cottages’ foundations.

Journal photo / John Freidah

One of four remaining Victorian houses along the beach in Matunuck is cut in half to be moved inland as erosion claims more and more of the beach. A state geologist estimates that 60 feet of beach has disappeared since 1999.

Janet Freedman, a state geologist, estimates that 60 feet of beach have disappeared since 1999, the year the owners had the cottages picked up and dragged back 50 feet.

Most of Rhode Island’s barrier beaches are receding at an estimated rate of 2 feet annually. The losses vary each year and are often worse in years when there are storms. Climate change is also causing the sea level to rise, hastening coastal losses.

Other cottages are threatened, particularly in Green Hill. But state coastal officials say the Matunuck cottages are most at risk.

The owners thought the 1999 move would buy them 20 more years on the beach. The cottages, just west of Roy Carpenter Beach and just east of the Trustom Pond National Wildlife Refuge, are tall, prominent features on the coast.

But the erosion has been so fast and so relentless that the owners are scrambling once again to save the buildings. (Erosion nearby cost Roy Carpenter its snack bar and much of its beach.)

The owner of the westernmost cottage, Jesse M. Bontecou, hired a moving company to cut his cottage in half and tow it several hundred feet back along a narrow driveway to safer ground.

The owners of the three other cottages, the Duvals, the Harris family and Michael Bontecou, don’t believe their cottages would fit down the driveway, or lend themselves to being cut in half. So they received permission from the state Coastal Resources Management Council to erect a “soft” berm, comprising tubes of coconut fibers and sand, in front of their cottages.

The family of former U.S. Sen. Lincoln H. Chafee owned a fifth cottage in the neighborhood, but they had it torn down several years ago after waves carried away the porch.

“It’s not cheap to move a house,” Chafee said last week. He said the beach was eroding so fast, the Chafees didn’t try to resist. Now they use the few hundred square feet of land they have left to park their car and visit the beach.

“It’s just a spectacular spot,” Chafee said. When he was a boy, the ocean was a good walk from the house, he said. And he loved listening to the waves at night.

He remembers an early effort to hold back the waves that involved “huge” concrete blocks.

“A storm came and tossed them all over,” Chafee said.

Chafee’s grandfather built the family’s modern-looking cottage after the Hurricane of 1938 devastated the coastline. The other cottage owners, who are all related, said their grandfather, Jesse H. Metcalf, also a former U.S. senator, also bought their cottages after the hurricane.

But those cottages were actually built at the start of the last century, according to Michael Bontecou. The cottages were originally owned by families that ran mills in Providence, he said.

Bontecou said his Uncle Jesse, 81, remembers the beach was much more gradual before the hurricane. Afterward, it was much steeper, and the erosion increased.

“We’ve spent every summer there, as did my father and grandfather,” said Bontecou. “My kids are the fourth generation. It’s just a great spot.”

But now, he said, with an arm of Cards Pond running just a few feet behind the cottages, there is no place else to go. “Our backs are to the wall.”

“We hope this will work,” adds Clive L. Duval III, from his office in Virginia. “We have every belief it will.”

All along this stretch of shore, waves have crossed the beach and cut away the bluffs, and peeled back soil, drain pipes and fences.

“It’s almost as if the current along the shore has changed,” said Frederick A.B. Meyerson, a University of Rhode Island professor who has been tracing shoreline changes, during a recent visit to Matunuck. He said he’s especially concerned with rising sea levels.

The CRMC has been restoring some nearby beaches by delivering barges filled with sand dredged from the shipping channels in Point Judith Pond. It couldn’t place sand directly in front of the cottages, however, because there are large boulders just offshore — part of Nebraska Shoals.

Last week, CRMC engineer Danni Goulet and Freedman, the geologist, confirmed that some of the Point Judith sand had washed ashore in front of the cottages, because they spotted worn boots and other refuse from the commercial fishing fleet that washed ashore elsewhere with the dredged sand.

Last year, the cottage owners tried to capture sand in front of their houses with plastic fencing described as dune guards. Waves tore the fencing to pieces.

Freedman described the beach as a “high-energy environment.”

Jon Boothroyd, a URI geologist who often advises the CRMC, doubts the tubes will save the cottages.

The South County beaches are eroding continually, he says. In some years there is no erosion; in others 20 feet wash away.

Sitting behind two computer monitors in his office on the Kingston campus, Boothroyd used Google Earth and the 2002 digital aerial photographs stored in his computer to survey the South County shoreline for a reporter.

State policy usually doesn’t allow “hardening” barrier beaches with boulders or concrete blocks. Generally, such structures don’t work, Boothroyd says.

But the owners of the Matunuck houses have been given permission to do their work on an “experimental basis” because the houses are on the National Register of Historic Places.

Storm waves liquefy beach sand, causing boulders to sink, Boothroyd said. Walls of boulders generally collapse over time. And before they do, they refract storm waves, causing them to gouge out what little beach lies before them.

Even if the artificial dune protects the cottages, Boothroyd said, the beach on either side will continue receding.

Sand on Rhode Island beaches is constantly moving, he explained. In the summer, it moves from west to east. At times it goes in the opposite direction. Waves also push sand up onto beaches, and strip it away. Every year some sand disappears by flowing down channels to the deeper ocean bottom offshore.

“You don’t really notice your beach is eroding until your home is close to the water. When the waves are farther away, it seems fine. It’s a matter of perception,” Boothroyd said.

Boothroyd recalled when the late John H. Chafee was running for reelection to the Senate in 1982, he was criticized for sponsoring legislation that would deny any federal assistance to development on barrier beaches. Critics said he was just trying to preclude anyone from building near his cottage on the beach.

Boothroyd recalled that Chafee asked him to write a letter explaining that the senator expected to lose his house entirely. He thought he would get another 20 years.

Chafee was only off by a few years.

The CRMC is updating its shoreline erosion maps for South County. To look at its older maps, go to:

www.crmc.ri.gov/maps/shoreline.html.

plord@projo.com