The towns had planned for a meeting in March, but it was cancelled because of the coronavirus pandemic.

MARSHFIELD Before the coronavirus pandemic, Marshfield Planning Director Greg Guimond and his Duxbury counterpart planned a public presentation and meeting in March for a plan for beach nourishment by dumping sand on and near beaches to prevent further erosion and protect the seawalls.

The pandemic ended any possibility of an in-person gathering in March. Public hearings will still happen, whether in person or virtually, but first Marshfield and Duxbury are planning an informational meeting, without real-time public input, to clear the way for a public hearing.

The meeting will be streamed online, Monday morning from 9 to 10:15 a.m., on both the Marshfield and Duxbury community television websites, and then made available anytime via either website.

Guimond said the presentation will be lead by Leslie Fields, of the Woods Hole Group.

"It's mostly Leslie with, here's where we are, here are the facts and here are the next steps," Guimond said.

Before and after the presentation, Guimond and Duxbury Town Planner Valerie Massard will answer resident's questions via email.

"It's more of us trying to get info out to the public," Guimond said. "We want to make the public as informed as possible up until the point we have a public hearing."

The grant for the design and permitting of the beach and dune nourishment projects came from the Massachusetts Coastal Zone Management, with a deadline in June, and the project has not received an extension. Holding public hearings is one of the requirements.

"When we get to those public hearings, we want them to go smoother," Guimond said.

How those eventual public hearings will happen, and if they will be online, in person, or a combination of the two, is up in the air, but public hearings provide a more rich experience to judge the public's response, he said.

"It's very useful, on our side, because we got immediate reactions and on the public's side, they felt like we heard them," Guimond said. "The Zoom remote hearings, they're difficult to get the true sense of where people are on things. That is a very difficult read."

Holding only digital hearings would pose a very real problem for participation, he said.

"If everyone wants to interact at a hearing, that would probably be 500 people," he said.

Massard and Guimond said beach nourishment is important because it prolongs the life of the seawalls.

"All of it's expensive, but we're trying to make the best use of public money," Massard said.

She said 260 houses are directly impacted because they are protected by the seawall.

Seawalls in Marshfield and Duxbury both failed in 2018 during powerful storms, crumbling into the ocean.

Guimond said the meeting is to help the public understand that beach nourishment is a lengthy and expensive process and it will require easements from property owners.

"A lot of things have gone off people's radars at the moment," he said.

Wheeler Cowperthwaite can be reached at wcowperthwaite@patriotledger.com.

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Marshfield and Duxbury look to shore up beaches with beach nourishment plan - The Patriot Ledger