As waterfront homeowners stock up on sand, those living near sand excavation sites pay the price

For four years, since Larry Lewis moved to Cranberry Village, he’s heard the rumble of trucks and excavators from a sand excavation site owned by cranberry grower A.D. Makepeace.

The noise is a nuisance, but his real concern is when sand particles from the site blow through his neighborhood of manufactured homes, collecting on cars and lingering indoors. He can’t avoid breathing it in.

“For younger people, it might not be a big deal,” Lewis said, “but it could be a bigger problem for older residents like us.”

Miles away, in wealthier locales like Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket, waterfront homeowners have been turning to beach nourishment projects to keep erosion at bay. These projects can require thousands of tons of sand annually, some of which comes from cranberry bogs like the one near Lewis.

New Bedford stands in the middle: here, sand from undisclosed origins is loaded onto barges and shipped to some of the most ambitious private anti-erosion projects in the country.

As quarries close and sand resources in Massachusetts dwindle, activists say that hard-pressed cranberry bogs are turning to sand mining as a source of revenue — much to the ire of neighbors.

Although sand excavation for agricultural purposes is legal, homeowners near sites like Makepeace’s say that they’re now living near a “strip mine,” with all of the public health hazards and nuisances that could entail.

Some towns in Southeastern Massachusetts’ “Cranberry Country” are trying to better regulate excavation sites. In the state Legislature, a House bill aims to place a moratorium on new cranberry bog excavation until its impacts are better understood. The Environment and Natural Resources committee voted March 19 to advance the bill.

State officials have yet to object to cranberry bog excavation. The state’s coastal resilience plan recommends that waterfront homeowners eventually move inland rather than fill their beaches with more sand.

Even so, Massachusetts’ appetite for sand likely won’t subside anytime soon.

Lewis, for his part, has had his fill. The Makepeace site — about 50 feet from his home — is permitted to extract around 4 million cubic yards of sand over five years, and Makepeace has applied to the town for permits to excavate even more. If approved, the company would be allowed to clear-cut much of the forest between the site and Lewis’s backyard, exposing him and the rest of Cranberry Village to more noise and dust.

Sand is a necessary part of cranberry cultivation, but Lewis isn’t sure why even a grower as large as Makepeace would need that much sand.

“It doesn’t warrant this kind of thing at all,” Lewis said.

Buying time

In February 2024, a controversial beach restoration project on Nantucket barged thousands of tons of sand — 6.6 million pounds in total — from New Bedford to the glacial island.

Its destination was the shores of ’Sconset Bluff, where a group of homeowners have built a geotube, essentially a tube-shaped sack of sand slurry, to protect the eroding coastline. This March, 18 years after the geotube was built, the project was declared “almost a complete failure” by the Nantucket Conservation Commission’s chair when the tube split open after a series of severe winter storms.

The project has consumed millions of tons of glacial sand, most of it barged by Robert B. Our Company, a local aggregates company. The company did not respond to a request for comment.

In May, Nantucket residents will decide on whether to expand the controversial geotube project after the ’Sconset Beach Preservation Fund failed to supply the project with enough sand to maintain its integrity. The town’s Conservation Commission approved the expansion in March 2025. The state Office of Coastal Zone Management issued a skeptical report this January, noting that among other risks, the geotubes appeared to increase erosion at adjacent properties.

If approved, the expansion would require the Preservation Fund to nourish the project with over 100,000 cubic yards of sand each year — anywhere between 6,000 and 10,000 dump trucks worth of sand.

Nantucket’s sustainability programs manager, Vincent Murphy, said that other than ’Sconset Bluff’s large operation, the island has permitted fewer than 10 beach nourishment projects in the last five years, most on the island’s north side, where wave impacts are lower. (’Sconset Bluff is on the island’s eastern shore.)

Most homeowners choose to physically relocate their homes inland as shoreline recedes, Murphy said in an email. “Nantucket has a 250-year history of moving homes back from erosion and that has always been the local adaptation method,” he wrote.

But for those who have the will and financial means, beach nourishment can be an option. Jane Varkonda served as the conservation agent in Edgartown on Martha’s Vineyard for over 40 years before retiring in 2025. As the frequency and severity of winter storms increase due to climate change, she said anti-erosion efforts have become more common than ever — and more expensive, driven up by the “exorbitant” cost of sand.

“It’s worth more than gold these days,” Varkonda said.

Kara Shemeth, who took over as Edgartown conservation agent after Varkonda’s retirement, said that very few completely new beach nourishment projects come across her desk. In most cases, longstanding beach nourishment projects will apply for new permits to expand their work as the natural beach weathers. A project in Edgartown’s Cow Bay is one such example, having filed a new permit on March 27.

“It seems the beach has changed enough since the original filing in 2009 that the regular maintenance they’ve done needs updating,” Shemeth said.

Tara Marden, a coastal geologist, said she has worked with an increasing number of Cape and Island homeowners on beach nourishment projects over the past decade. Marden worked for years at the Woods Hole Group, an environmental consulting firm based in Falmouth, before moving to North Carolina.

Unlike the ’Sconset Beach project, most of these efforts involve just sand, cobble, and some form of vegetation to keep the sand from blowing away. These kinds of “soft structures” are minimally harmful to the environment compared to hard structures like geotubes, Marden said — but they’re also temporary.

“They basically are buying time,” Marden said.

Most often, these homeowners will join together as neighborhood groups to share costs and ensure that the sand put down on their properties lasts as long as possible, Marden said. Still, property owners must replenish that sand at least yearly, and the costs can add up.

“They’re dumping 300, 400, 500 yards of sand two or three times a year at the tune of 75 bucks a yard,” Marden said. “So you’ve got private homeowners right now trying to protect their coastal banks, spending anywhere from $25,000 to $100,000 annually.”

The sand used for beach nourishment projects must meet specific environmental criteria to ensure it matches the surrounding environment. The best sand to match Nantucket’s unique glacial geology happens to come from Southeastern Massachusetts, but Varkonda said that upland sand can contain impurities that make it less than ideal for beaches.

There’s no requirement, however, to disclose exactly where that sand comes from. On Martha’s Vineyard, homeowners can sometimes turn to local sand from Edgartown’s municipal dredge, as some homeowners did for the beach nourishment project in Cow Bay, Varkonda said. But most often, the town prioritizes its dredged sand for public beach nourishment projects to keep tourists coming back each summer.

With dredged sand scarce, Marden said she will often source materials from companies like Cape Cod Aggregates — some of which come from the South Shore’s cranberry bogs.

Before reaching the Islands, all of this sand goes through one singular point: the Port of New Bedford. Aside from Boston and Providence, New Bedford Harbor has the only facility capable of barging the amounts of sand needed for larger projects to the Islands.

According to Steamship Authority logs, the amount of aggregate materials — including sand, rocks, and gravel — barged from New Bedford to Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard increased about 125% over the past decade, from 53,000 tons in 2016 to nearly 119,000 tons over 115 shipments in 2025. Much of that material is used for construction or maintaining septic systems, however, so it’s unclear how much of that sand ended up back on the beach.

These kinds of projects worry environmental activists like Chris Powicki, a member of the Massachusetts chapter of the Sierra Club. Sand is the second most used resource in the world after water, Powicki said. (It’s a key ingredient in glass, concrete, asphalt, and other building materials.) Therefore, Powicki says, the state should use it wisely.

“There’s no doubt that more and more sand is being placed on the coastline across Massachusetts,” Powicki said. “Is this the best way to use a scarce resource?”

Cape Cod Aggregates did not respond to multiple questions and requests for comment sent by The Light.

Sand dollars

On Jan. 7, the Carver Conservation Commission issued a cease and desist order to The A.D. Makepeace Company to stop all work on wetland areas. The order came after the Community Land and Water Coalition, an environmental activist group based in Southeastern Massachusetts, argued the company had illegally altered 57 acres of wetlands.

The A.D. Makepeace Company, based in Wareham, says it is one of the largest cranberry growers in the world, and it is also the No. 1 private property owner in Southeastern Massachusetts. On its website, Makepeace brands itself as a development company with an eye towards environmental responsibility.

For the past 12 years, Linda Jacobs has lived in Cranberry Village. Since 2019, she has waited for the day that the nearby excavation site turns into the cranberry bog that Makepeace originally promised. Two years ago, Jacobs joined the Community Land and Water Coalition.

Like Lewis, Jacobs says she can hear the construction from her home. Last year, Jacobs said two of her neighbors moved out of the community after developing COPD — a respiratory illness sometimes caused by silica particles found in sand.

“There’s nothing related to cranberries anywhere on that property,” Jacobs said.

A report published by the coalition estimates that at least 61 million cubic yards of sand and gravel have been extracted from Southeastern Massachusetts since about 1990. For years, the coalition has argued that as appetites for New England cranberries wane, some cranberry bogs have instead turned into strip mines.

Roughly 750 acres of bogs have moved out of active cranberry production in the last decade as the industry consolidates. Plus, older cranberry varieties grown in Massachusetts tend to be less pest-resistant than competing specimens grown in Wisconsin and Canada.

And while cranberry prices have fallen, the price of sand has increased 20% between 2012 and 2023, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Brian Wick, executive director of the Cape Cod Cranberry Growers Association, said large-scale excavation operations like Makepeace’s are in the “minority by far.” Wick said it’s up to the growers and town officials to ensure that sand excavation — a critical component of cranberry growing — happens responsibly and sustainably.

While the cranberry industry is in a current downward trend, he said the cyclical nature of agriculture means that cranberry growing could soon become more profitable.

“The idea that they’re only in it for earth removal is a misguided statement, because cranberry growing is still the main principle,” Wick said. “Don’t paint the broad brush that what these activists are seeing on a particular project is what’s happening across the industry.”

In Carver, all requests for excavation must go through the town’s Earth Removal Committee. By design, three of the board’s six members are representatives of either the cranberry industry or the construction industry. Town bylaws require that members recuse themselves when there is a potential conflict of interest. But by its chairman’s own admission, the committee isn’t particularly stringent.

“I think for the first time ever, the Earth Removal Committee last month denied a permit,” committee chairman Scott Hannula said in an October 2025 meeting.

These excavation efforts can have real public health consequences for residents. Last year, a researcher with the Olin College of Engineering in Needham, testified that air surrounding the excavation sites in Carver contained silica dust, a particle found in sand that can lead to respiratory diseases including lung cancer. Even the noise levels found at heavy construction sites have been proven to harm human health.

What’s more, activists say, no one seems to be tracking where the sand goes.

Linda Burke, vice president of marketing and communications at A.D. Makepeace, said in a statement that the company’s operations were in compliance with all applicable regulations.

“Cranberry farming has been at the core of the A.D. Makepeace Company for over 170 years,” Burke added. “The company has diversified over time as it has grown and adapted to economic and market pressures — diversification over time is essential to virtually all longstanding companies and employers — but cranberry farming continues to be what defines us.”

Burke confirmed that any sand not used for cranberry cultivation is sold to Read Custom Soils, which operates a facility down the street from its excavation site.

Burke did not answer how much of the sand it excavates is sold versus used for agriculture.

The future of sand and cranberry bogs

The U.S. spends millions of dollars each year to replenish weathered coastlines — nearly $18 billion in total since 1923. This past winter brought two major blizzards to the New England coast — and potentially more beach nourishment projects come spring.

In the case of public beaches, Marden said, the burden of maintaining them typically falls on state agencies. Asked if Massachusetts would ever make its beaches public beyond the low-water mark, Marden laughed.

“That’s not going to happen,” Marden said. “People aren’t going to give up their rights.”

But the liability of living near the water may soon become a shared burden. In Gov. Maura Healey’s Resilient Coasts plan, released last year, state officials highlighted managed retreat as an alternative to piling more sand on the problem. For some cheaper and more vulnerable properties, retreat may come with a government buyout. But in most cases, waterfront homeowners will just have to cut their losses.

Facing similar challenges, states like Florida, North Carolina, and New Jersey have relied on another source for their growing sand needs — the open ocean.

Offshore sand mining allows communities to retrieve the sand collected on the ocean floor from natural erosion processes. That sand is often better suited for coastal resilience projects than its upland counterparts.

Massachusetts currently does not allow offshore sand mining, but some activists are worried that could soon change. The Office of Coastal Zone Management’s report on the Nantucket geotube project highlighted offshore sand mining as a potential solution to meeting the project’s steep sand deficits.

A 2020 assessment conducted by the Bureau of Ocean Energy and Management (BOEM) and National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) found that offshore sand mining could impact fish species and their habitats.

Activist groups like the Sierra Club oppose offshore sand mining, although Powicki acknowledged that some dredging projects may be necessary to restore natural sand flows. He noted that while it remains broadly illegal, the state has started greenlighting some offshore dredging permits.

“I don’t know if it’ll be illegal forever,” Powicki said. Marden said the state for years has slow-walked research into the impacts of offshore sand mining in Massachusetts out of concern for the region’s fisheries and eel grass beds.

Neither Marden nor Varkonda are necessarily opposed to offshore sand mining.

“In my mind, that’s much more natural,” Marden said. “You’re taking the sand from offshore and putting it back on the beach, which is where it came from.”

Meanwhile, companies like Makepeace are still diversifying beyond cranberries. In Wareham, the company has begun building solar arrays on its properties, kicking up more local resistance from residents concerned that the projects contributed to deforestation.

Re-wilding could offer one solution for struggling cranberry growers. Across Massachusetts, some smaller growers have sold or donated their bogs to conservation groups like the Buzzards Bay Coalition to restore them back to natural marsh. The “green exit strategy” not only provides relief to exhausted farmers, it also furthers the state’s goals to push development inland and rebuild coastal wetlands that can better accommodate rising sea levels.

Melissa Ferretti is the chairwoman of the Herring Pond Wampanoag Tribe, whose homeland ranges from the Plymouth region to the upper parts of Cape Cod. Ferretti said that projects like the one in Carver disrupt the tribe’s hunting and foraging grounds and therefore their food sources. For Indigenous people, the environmental damage is also personal, she said.

“Natives, we say everything is living,” Ferretti said. “The rocks are alive, the trees are living. When we lose a tree, we lose a piece of ourselves.”

Last year, the Herring Pond Wampanoag Tribe started Sacred Earth Land Conservancy, a native-run land trust, to give property owners the opportunity to donate or sell their land back to Indigenous people to be restored and conserved in perpetuity. The conservancy has not acquired any land yet; Ferretti said it is currently in talks with a cranberry bog owner and would welcome others.

But without proper enforcement mechanisms, Powicki said that neither growers nor builders nor homeowners will act with the planet’s best interest at heart.

“If it comes down to who can spend the money to keep their land, it’s gonna come down to the people with the deepest pockets,” Powicki said. “People can buy sand forever.”

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This story was originally published by The New Bedford Light and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.