CHARLESTOWN, R.I. — When a 150-foot section of the Charlestown Breachway gave way last winter after being battered by storms in late 2023 and early 2024, the results were immediate: sand from the beach washed into the channel, making it shallower and dangerous for boaters to navigate, and affecting the health of Ninigret Pond.

The breachway channel connects the Atlantic Ocean and Ninigret Pond, a vital ecosystem that acts as a nursery for a variety of fish and shellfish and is home to commercial aquaculture farms. It’s surrounded by the Ninigret National Wildlife Refuge, the Ninigret Conservation Area, homes, and marinas. A variety of groups, including recreational boaters, recreational anglers, shellfishers, and birders use the pond and fish from the breachway’s jetties, considered one of the best saltwater fishing areas in the state.

The town had been worried about the state of the breachway since Superstorm Sandy came through in 2012. Recognizing what could happen if the most recent damage wasn’t repaired, the town began working with the Coastal Resources Management Council to discuss ways to fix the seawall.

“We’ve been studying it all summer long,” said Steve McCandless, Charlestown’s geographic information system coordinator, speaking to a crowd gathered at the breachway Wednesday evening to hear an update on the repairs hosted by Rhode Island Sea Grant.

The audience, wearing a mix of shorts, down jackets, and flip-flops on an initially balmy evening that turned progressively chillier, listened intently as McCandless; Emily Hall, a coastal geologist for CRMC; and Alicia Schaffner, executive director of the Salt Ponds Coalition, discussed the project.

The overall goal, Hall said, is to make the breachway more resilient and better able to withstand increasingly damaging storms by repairing the seawall, enhancing the barrier dune habitat, and dredging the channel to remove some of the sand that came though the breach.

The project received a grant to fund the design portion, McCandless said. Then, in August, the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management joined the discussion, largely thanks to the efforts of Rep. Tina Spears, a Democrat who represents District 36, which includes Charlestown, McCandless said.

“Believe it or not, this was actually a really fast turnaround for bureaucratic agencies,” Hall said. “For one, we have been regularly meeting since about mid-summer. We knew that this was a problem. Forty percent of the state’s aquaculture is actually in the pond behind me.”

The area’s popularity was evident as Hall spoke, with two people fishing off a small boat in the pond while saltwater anglers lugged their large poles to fish off the breachway’s seawall.

The pond, said Schaffner, is also an important habitat for different species, from shellfish to flounder to crab.

The breach in the seawall reduced the flow of water into and out of the pond, which in turn led to a deterioration in water quality by decreasing dissolved oxygen in the pond and increasing the water temperature and nutrient and bacteria concentrations. The results: increased algal blooms and a decrease in the pond’s health.

“Without that circulation, without that flow, we don’t have any healthy ecosystem for those animals to live in,” Schaffner said. “I know how important the ponds are, not just for the animals, but also for the people that utilize them.”

The original plans for the seawall repairs submitted by the town to the CRMC, Hall said, called for sandbags instead of rocks.

Although CRMC issued the town a permit to install the sandbags, Hall said such a plan wasn’t ideal.

“You know they’re not going to last through those storms like we had just last winter,” she said. “They were able to find the money after a couple unfortunate accidents that were happening out here, and … everyone realized it was a big deal, and the money came through.”

The plan changed from using sandbags to using rocks to shore up the damaged section of seawall.

“Sometimes people see rocks and hard infrastructure like this, and they say, ‘how is that resilience,’” Hall said. “Rather than having to do a bunch of Band-Aid repairs every five years for the next 50 to 75 years, we’re hoping to do it once and do it once well.”

Complicating the matter was the various ownerships of the land involved.

“The Department of Environmental Management technically does own the breachway, even though Charlestown is the majority stakeholder,” Hall said. “So [the east] side of the breachway is managed by the state parks division. The [west] side is managed by the [DEM] Fish & Wildlife Division. And the breachway itself is under DEM.”

All parties worked together to get an emergency declaration for the seawall repairs from the Army Corps of Engineers, accelerating the process and getting the necessary permits, McCandless said — a process, he added, that usually takes a full year.

The project cost $550,000, McCandless said, with $300,000 coming from DEM and $250,000 from the town.

Once the work began in October, McCandless said, “It was amazing to watch.”

A three-man crew did the repair work in a week, McCandless said, working late into the night on a few occasions to avoid inclement weather. They trucked in 600 tons of stone, and “put those rocks together tight, like a puzzle,” he said. They also reconstructed a dune protecting the west seawall with sandbags, he said.

“Every day, it’s getting a little bit better,” McCandless said of the channel’s depth. “And it will continue. The channel itself will get deep quick, back to what it was.”

McCandless said he believes the repaired seawall will hold fast through New England storms. Eventually, he said, the town hopes to make longer-term repairs to shore up the breachway and surrounding dunes, and to that end he has applied for federal grants, two of which, for $5.5 million and $6 million, have been approved.

For pictures of the breachway from before it was damaged up to now, click here. A video of the repair work can be found here.