Eco-Bills Come Due at Bay's Beaches

While the nation debates the cost of climate change -- whether the price of electricity and gasoline should increase because of their greenhouse gas emissions -- the problem already has a price tag on the Chesapeake Bay.

Sea levels are rising almost twice as fast in the Chesapeake region as in most of the world, and waterside communities are spending millions to keep the water from eroding yards, marshes and sandy beaches.

The area's beaches are dealing with the same bad luck: The land is dropping, climate change is altering currents and the oceans are inching up. The impact is slow, but it's real. Beachgoers won't notice it at major ocean resorts. But for small beaches on the bay, the result is often death by bulkhead.

At the Calvert County shore resort of North Beach, the beach created the town. Now, as the waters of the bay rise an eighth of an inch every year, it's the other way around.

"This is it. This is what we're trying to preserve," said Mayor Michael Bojokles. He was looking at a beach three blocks long and so skinny that a Frisbee could be thrown clear over it -- the remains of the wide sandy strip that first drew vacationers in the 1890s.

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