New Seabury is a census-designated place (CDP) in the town of Mashpee in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, United States, on Cape Cod.
Attractions include a county club and the Fells Pond, Daniels Island, and Littleneck Bay neighborhoods.
New Seabury came into being during the vacation-home boom for upper-income retirees, self-employed, and long-distance commuters, who fled to coastal areas of New England during the 1960s and 1970s.
With the vacation-home boom, "the newcomers (seized) control of town government and began erecting physical and legal barriers to the lands the Wampanoags had enjoyed for countless generations, most glaringly in the form of the New Seabury condominium complex on the coast of Mashpee.
In 2011,[9] the Mashpee Conservation Commission permitted the construction of an alternative coastal erosion control sea wall along Shore Drive West in New Seabury which consists of wooden pilings with one-inch gaps in between that allow waves to break through the wall and for sand replenishment along the beach.
[9][10] The inch-wide gaps between pilings has been noted to be blocked as a result of debris and lack of maintenance, leading to the permeable system to function as an impermeable wall.
In 2014, homeowners on Shore Drive West applied to the Mashpee Conservation Commission to construct a very similar system along their properties that consisted of similar pilings alongside coir envelopes and fiber rolls embedded in the dunes that would facilitate bank growth and erosion control.
In spite of this, thirty-six Massachusetts state legislators joined to demand the project be allowed to continue, especially considering the precedent that the decision would set for other coastal areas.
[12] The reason for rejection was that the wooden pilings could alter sediment transport and tidal patterns which violates the Wetlands Protection Act of 1978,[11] though the coir and fiber were permissible “soft” solutions.