Access Denied

Plymouth has 36 miles of shoreline. The public enjoys access to only four of those miles. Plymouth Beach comprises nearly  three of those four miles. This week, following federal guidelines, the town of Plymouth closed more than two miles of Plymouth Beach to public access.

Workers of the town’s Environmental Management Division located the nest of a piping plover pair high off the beach. Herbie Ryder Way lies within the federally regulated buffer zone of the nest. Their chicks hatched Tuesday. The beach now closes at the so-called day parking lot.

The problem: this year extreme high tides have come in the middle of the protected bird’s hatching season. The birds pick food from the debris, the wrack, at the high tide line.

“The high tides have pushed the wrack up,” Plymouth environmental technician Kerin McCall said. “That’s their foraging area. They nest near their foraging area.”

It’s not the first time this has happened. High tides and hatching coincided in 2009, closing the road for two days. This closure could go another 32 days.

Piping plover chicks start foraging on their own almost immediately. In 2009, their activity moved their family closer to the beach. McCall hopes for the same this year.

“When the high tides recess, we hope they move onto the beach,” McCall said. “It would be the best for everyone.”

With the Strawberry Moon at full Wednesday night. The tides have begun to recede.

“We hope it’s a few days, not weeks,” Belinda Brewster said. The newly elected selectman ran, in part, on preserving public access to Plymouth Beach. “It is the federal statute and what we have to follow.”

The nest lies across the road from John Scagliarini’s house. A new colony of least terns has also taken up residence there. They dive at anyone walking the road. That includes beach workers who must escort, on foot, everyone going to or from the outer cottages.

The tern colony should not affect access. Unlike the plover parents that simply show their chicks where to forage, tern parents feed their young in the nest until they fledge.

Until the plover chicks fledge, as late as July 19, or move, no one knows if or when, beach goers have two options. They can join the crowds on the cobble in the Warren Cove part of the beach, or they can park in the day parking lot and in spaces along the road. The day parking lot accommodates 30 cars. The road has 150 spaces along the boulders of the sea wall.

While the public has extremely limited access to Plymouth Beach, the private property owners get escorted to the outer beach.

That would include the exclusive membership of the Goldenrod Foundation. As a non-profit, it pays no taxes. It’s now forcing the town to spend money again. This time, for a study to determine the feasibility of a boat shuttle to the outermost beach, away from the cottages. A shuttle would limit or eliminate all other modes of access.

“Everyone knows this is the way it is,” Brewster said of the closure. “We just don’t want more of our access limited.”

But that’s the way it is everywhere in Plymouth. The town owns beach property on Saquish, but only those who live on the private roads there have access. A the other end of Plymouth, the town owns a small beach in Cedarville, but only those who live on the private roads surrounding the beach have access.

Ellisville Harbor State Park has a small beach at the end of a good walk from the parking lot. You don’t see many families with small children there.

Nelson Park has a quarter mile of “beach” in polluted water.

That leaves White Horse/Priscilla Beach at nearly a mile and Plymouth Beach. The rest is private beach that does not close for piping plovers.