Nantucket
Coastal
Resilience Plan
Brief Description
The Nantucket Coastal Resilience Plan draws on the cherished built and natural heritage of Nantucket to create a community-supported roadmap to implementation for a series of layered flood control and adaptation approaches that lessen the loss from storm surges and help the community adapt to rising seas and eroding coastlines.
Urgent & Pressing Crisis
Climate change presents an urgent and pressing crisis for Nantucket. Developing a Coastal Resilience Plan was a critical step in the Town and County of Nantucket’s process of preparing for and adapting to the effects of climate change, which includes increasingly intense and frequent coastal flooding, erosion, and future sea level rise.
The plan analyzed risks to the island's homes and businesses, public infrastructure, economy, civic spaces, and historic and natural resources, and proposed location-specific interventions for reducing long-term risks and increasing resilience, as well as provided a recommended implementation roadmap. The process built on prior and ongoing studies led by the Town.