Great Cove Project In Osterville Now Complete
0.92 acres in Osterville
In 2001, a Conservation Restriction (CR) was placed on 27 acres of land surrounding Great Cove on the Grand Island of Osterville. That CR erased eight building lots, thereby protecting pine/oak forest, salt marsh, coastal floodplains and water quality. Combined with adjacent BLT land and the Oyster Harbors golf course (also protected by a CR), 220 contiguous acres are now permanently preserved.
The CR also created a .92-acre building envelope and managed landscape area, which allowed for possible development of a house on the point. Now, nearly a decade later, the remaining building envelope was retired along with the right to build an already permitted dock.
According to BLT Executive Director Jaci Barton, “Development of the lot and the permitted dock would have affected shellfish habitat, along with access to and use of the Town of Barnstable’s shellfish nursery that lies immediately offshore. Retiring the last lot has a huge public benefit.”
While the CR wended its way through the approval process, Kris Clark, the Town’s Shellfish Technician, expressed a need for use of the beach to tend the nursery. To support the Town's shellfish enhancement program, the Town was granted limited access rights so that employees and their helpers could service the shellfish nursery. Now, nets used for municipal shellfish propagation may be laid out to dry and gear may be temporarily stored on the beach to support planting and harvesting seed quahogs. The baby quahogs are then redistributed to populate shellfisheries in the 3 bays: Cotuit, North Bay, and West Bay.
All the inhabitants of the Town of Barnstable benefit, thanks to the filter-feeding action of the young quahogs. The bounty, however, goes to those who don their waders and grab their rakes!
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