SANDWICH — The Sandwich Boardwalk was once a seemingly endless stretch of wooden planks —  each piece of weather-beaten timber carrying visitors through vibrant waterways and surrounding sand dunes. 

But after storm surges during January's nor'easter, Mill Creek Saltmarsh swallowed 220 feet of the boardwalk, including hundreds of planks, which were inscribed with the names of donors who contributed money to the boardwalk's construction over the years. 

In February, Sandwich residents Brian and Katie Stanton managed to pull the missing sections of boardwalk from the marsh and hope to return the planks to those who donated them.

Since February, a "plank gang" of 10 volunteers — comprising Sandwich residents, Friends of the Sandwich Boardwalk members and representatives from the Sandwich High School Blue Knight Key Club — disassembled the boardwalk, said Candy Thomson, a Friends of the Sandwich Boardwalk member, and broke down the sections into 455 planks. The group photographed and numbered each board.

"Now comes the painstaking detective work of matching the planks with those who donated them," said Thomson.

While the almost-500 planks are temporarily stored at the Sandwich Marina, Melissa Carroll, office manager for the Board of Selectmen and town management, began her own mission to pair the recovered planks back with original donors who payed for the slats during donor and engraving campaigns in 1992, 2001, 2004 and 2007. 

For months, Carroll carefully separated, tagged and logged donor names on a spreadsheet. And after combing through handwritten files, portable document file listings, and several spreadsheets, Carroll said 2,000 planks will eventually need to be paired back to their original donors.

For now, Carroll has identified 42 donors from the recently recovered planks. Eleven of those donors were presented with their planks by Carroll, and also met with Charlie Holden, a member of the plank gang and vice chair of the Select Board, Thursday morning at Sandwich Town Hall auditorium.

"Everyone seems excited to be able to see what it (their plank) looks like now. Some people haven’t seen their planks in years," she said. "It was 21 years ago when people donated originally."

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While donor names are listed on each plank, the process of returning them to families isn't easy, said Carroll. Although listings include contact information, phone numbers either aren't current or belong to donors who have passed away. For those who donated in 1992 and 2001, emails are not even included in listings. Many of the names on recovered planks have substantially faded, making it almost impossible to figure out who they belong to, Carroll said. 

"With some of the boards, when you can get them in just the right light, you can see what it says," she said. "But some of the planks are very worn down and you can't see anything."

While she is still in the beginning stages of the project, Carroll is hoping to connect donors to their boards as quickly as possible, before beginning a new donor campaign for a new boardwalk, which is slated for completion before next summer, said Carroll. 

"There are so many different steps we have to accomplish before we start creating a new boardwalk, so there’s time to make new inscriptions," she said. "We will need approximately 2,400 planks for the new boardwalk."

While many town residents and Friends of the Sandwich Boardwalk were hoping repairs could be made to the existing boardwalk, Heather Harper, assistant town manager, said the town will focus funding on replacing the boardwalk instead.

Although the replacement was approved at town meeting in 2018, the remaining sections of Boardwalk will continue to remain intact, according to a press release, until a contract is awarded and demolition begins – no sooner than late fall.

The Sandwich Historic District Committee approved the boardwalk reconstruction design plan last September and the Board of Selectman OK'd it in December.

Because temporary repairs would cost between $300,000 to $500,000, said Harper, the money used would impact what's available for the boardwalk's permanent replacement, which was budgeted at about $3 million in November 2021.

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"Our estimate in November 2021 was $2.7 million, plus a premium for preferred stainless steel mesh infill," Harper said in an email. "$3 million is still a reasonable number."

"The cost is certainly an issue," she said. "We want to avoid making a very expensive temporary repair and then taking that down and making permanent repairs."

There are also significant regulatory hurdles associated with repairs, Harper said, including meeting existing building codes, Americans with Disabilities Act compliance and general safety issues. The beams, posts, bracing and metal fasteners, according to the town's website, have also exceeded their useful life and are deteriorating rapidly, creating safety risks. 

Thomson said many Sandwich residents are dismayed that repairs won't be made to the current structure. 

"They told us we wouldn’t miss any summers of the boardwalk back before the storm," Thomson said. "Originally, the plan was to get past Labor Day (2021), dismantle what's there and build through the winter. All that gone blown apart by the storm in January."

Thomson said the Sandwich Boardwalk Reconstruction project has been delayed unnecessarily for far too long.

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"We have been dragging this along and it keeps getting more expensive," said Thomson. "This is two summers without the boardwalk and yet the selectmen are showing no urgency. There is no urgency from the town."

Peter Barlow, a Sandwich resident and civil engineer, said while the town continues to argue that materials and labor will be expensive, he said repairs can be made through volunteer efforts. The town allowed the plank gang to work on recovered sections of the boardwalk, Barlow said, but refuses to let those same volunteers help repair the remaining boardwalk, basing that decision on cost and safety issues. 

"They want to have a licensed contractor do it," he said. "They used volunteers to (disassemble the planks) but can't use volunteers to put new stringers up and new planks down. We would be more than happy to do that; we are begging to do that."

In a letter written by Thomson, which she shared with the Times, she also raises concerns regarding the comprehensive U.S. Army Corps of Engineers review, which is also called a Section 106. Thomson said the town is hiring a consultant to monitor that process, with a proposed contract end date of April 2023.

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"An official with the regional USACE (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers) office confirmed that it has more than 1,000 reviews pending. It’s hard to imagine that the Sandwich application—when it comes—will move to the head of the line," Thomson wrote in her letter. 

While Harper said the Army Corps of Engineers' comprehensive permit is the largest permit the town needs to obtain, she said as soon as that goes through, the town will have the public hearing notice schedule available. 

"I expect for that to happen anytime now, within the next week or so," Harper said. "Then we will be working diligently towards the possibility of draft bid documents and a final design that we will bring to the Board of Selectmen hopefully this summer."

Thomson also advocates for the use of town parking fees from the Boardwalk Road, Town Neck and First Beach lots. In 2020, she said, the town collected about $172,000 in parking fees. 

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The Senate also recently voted to provide $500,000 for boardwalk repair and climate resilient infrastructure in Sandwich, according to a press release provided by state Sen. Susan Moran's office.

Harper has heard the suggestion of using parking fees before but said it's a proposal that wouldn't work for boardwalk repairs. 

"Revenues come in on an annual basis and they're only available once they're appropriated," she said. "So that's a much different conversation."

The Sandwich Conservation Commission recently issued an order of conditions for the boardwalk, said Harper. This means the town can prepare to submit final permits toward the possibility of draft bid documents, propose a final design and issue construction documents in late summer.

But with the town reliant on the regulatory process, Harper admits much of the timing is out of the town's hands. 

"We're hoping the approvals come through in the proposed time frame," she said. "But that's beyond our control... We're doing the very best we can to put ourselves in a position to move once the permits are issued."

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Despite uncertainty from some residents, if everything goes well through the regulatory process, Harper is hopeful construction documents for bidding will be ready by late summer or early fall, and a 2022-2023 construction window will be a reality. 

"We feel like we've done everything we can possibly do to put together a project that is permit-able," she said. "We are going to put ourselves in a position to execute the project so we can have a boardwalk available for the subsequent summer."