Weymar and his neighbors decided action was needed. They formed the nonprofit Sconset Beach Preservation Fund to raise money for what they hoped would be a permanent solution: lowering the water table in front of the bluff as a way of creating more beachfront. Such “de-watering” projects are routine at construction sites. The fund raised around $2 million, and the Conservation Commission signed off on it. Three systems of perforated pipes and pumps were installed at various points along the Sconset shoreline and the water sucked out of the sand was pumped back into the ocean.

The system worked for a while but then broke down and was abandoned. It is difficult to measure its effectiveness, although Weymar argues that it helped restore the beachfront at Codfish Park and then some. But the de-watering did little to stop the erosion of the bluff.

Next, with the permission of the town, a number of homeowners built layers of sand terraces on the beach in front of the bluff. These “burritos” were encased in biodegradable materials such as coir or jute and were designed to provide some protection against storms. Unfortunately, a couple of big storms broke up the terraces, sending debris around the island. “It became a cause célèbre,” Weymar says. “We were risking the lives of the island’s mariners and whatever. It was ‘these rich bastards in Sconset.’ They were just running wild.” The combination of the failed piping system and the scattered debris “poisoned” the group’s “political situation on the island,” he says.

Not to be deterred, the group, in 2005, hit upon the idea of “beach nourishment,” similar to the Malibu project, pumping sand off the ocean floor onto the beach in front of the bluff, with the hope of widening it by some 150 feet. “That’s what everybody else does about erosion,” Weymar says. “Half or more of the Jersey Shore is all man-made.” The new project was to cost around $24 million.

“The bluff was, as it is today, heavily populated by people with deep pockets,” Weymar explains. “So no problem: we’ve got the commitments for the $24 million from people on the north and south bluff.” No financial help from the town was solicited. The widening of the beach would last six years and then would have to be repeated. “When you amortize the number over the six years and over the distance, and given the value of the properties, it made economic sense to do it,” Weymar continues. There was also the emotional argument of how the project would save the historic village of Sconset for future generations. “If we do this, it won’t go away,” he says. “So we were doing this for our grandchildren and great-great-great-grandchildren—the future population of Nantucket and Sconset—not just for ourselves. Sconset is a precious community that can readily be preserved in an environmentally sensitive way. Look at Holland, for example. History will condemn us if we allow Nantucket to disappear, one community at a time.” But Nantucket historian and best-selling author Nathaniel Philbrick notes that “the old-timers didn’t build on the beach unless it was a fishing shack, which they moved as the beach would come and go.”

Meanwhile, the erosion of the bluff in front of the Sankaty Head Lighthouse became so pervasive that, in 2007, it was moved 405 feet, at a cost of $4 million, to a spot just off the edge of the fifth hole of the tony Sankaty Head Golf Club. As a result, there seemed to be political momentum building for Weymar’s plan. What Weymar and his allies hadn’t counted on, though, was opposition from local fishermen. They “got totally up in arms about it,” he says. It turns out that the waters below Sconset Bluff constitute some of the world’s best striped-bass fishing, and the island’s chartered tourist fishing boats usually head straight for the area. In short order, the local fishermen became convinced that the beach-nourishment project threatened their livelihood. Others were concerned the mussel population would be decimated. Environmentalists worried that big hopper dredges in the ocean vacuuming sand was not the Nantucket Way. For more than a year, an uneasy coalition of fishermen and environmentalists opposed the project. “We would go to the bars and drink with them, spend time with them, asking, How can we do this differently? How can we do that differently?” Weymar recalls.