Roche Resigns From Coastal Resiliency Advisory Committee

Maria Mitchell Association executive director Joanna Roche has resigned from the Coastal Resilience Advisory Committee (CRAC). In her resignation letter, Roche criticized the committee’s evolving role advising the Conservation Commission and assisting with social media content creation, but in an interview with the Current, she emphasized that she supports CRAC and its goals.

“I believe that CRAC would benefit from greater clarity around its advisory role, its charge, and its relationship with the Select Board, Town staff, and other boards and committees,” Roche wrote in her resignation letter. “I have questioned, for example, whether reviewing individual Conservation Commission applications is the best use of an advisory committee to the Select Board. Similarly, I don’t believe developing social media content on behalf of the Town is an appropriate function for the committee.”

CRAC is a non-regulatory board tasked with providing advice to the Select Board and developing the town’s voluminous Coastal Resilience Plan. The many recommendations in the plan were last prioritized in November of 2025. Recently, the Conservation Commission, which rules on development proposals that would impact wetland areas on Nantucket and appoints one of CRAC’s members, has asked CRAC for specific recommendations on a handful of applications related to coastal resilience.

Roche believes that this is a poor use of CRAC’s time, and the Committee should stay focused on long-range planning, but other members of CRAC have taken a different position.

“When people come to us, and they want advice, I think we should give it to them,” CRAC chair Peter Brace said. “When coastal resilience is involved, I think we should be involved.”

In her resignation letter, Roche said she resigned because, as the chair of the Finance Committee, she “need[s] to be thoughtful about where I devote my time and where I can be most effective.” She told the Current that her criticisms of CRAC had nothing to do with her resignation.

“This is a committee of very good people who are doing very good work that is important, and anything that I said was definitely meant to be constructive,” she said.

Roche’s resignation comes as skepticism of Nantucket’s coastal resilience efforts mounts among Nantucket’s top elected officials. Select Board member Bob DeCosta, elected after a historic write-in campaign last spring, has repeatedly criticized Nantucket’s spending on coastal resilience. Brian Borgeson, newly elected to the Planning Board, recently said that he disagreed with “about 97.75 percent” of CRAC’s recommendations. He was then appointed to the Committee, where he will likely be a dissenting voice.

Roche told the Current that her concerns are different, and the timing is a coincidence: she supports CRAC and believes that many of the recommendations listed in the coastal resilience plan are things that the town is going to have to do anyway, but wants better communication and collaboration between different town entities.

The science shows that human-caused climate change will drive sea-level rise across the country, including on Nantucket, as warmer temperatures melt glaciers and polar ice sheets. Data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shows that, since 1950, the sea level at the Steamboat Wharf has risen by nearly nine inches.

How much sea-level rise Nantucket can expect in the future, however, is highly uncertain. NOAA’s sea-level rise projections provide an illustrative example of this uncertainty. In the high sea-level rise scenario, the water level could rise another 6.66 feet by 2100. In the low sea-level rise scenario, the water level could rise by less than 2.5 feet. Either scenario means significant sea-level rise is coming for Nantucket—even the most optimistic NOAA scenario has sea-level rise more than tripling over the next seventy-five years—but the gap is enormous.

In her letter, Roche called for “greater discussion and transparency around the different sea-level-rise models being used to guide Town decisions” as the assumptions “have significant policy and financial implications.”

Roche said that there are three notable sea-level rise projections pertaining to Nantucket, all of which forecast very different numbers, and the town often has to use the most aggressive of these models to obtain state funding. Roche is skeptical of that model, but Brace defended it.

“Which would you rather do? Would you rather plan for the best-case scenario, where the water isn't going to come up as the state says, or would you rather plan for the worst-case scenario, where even if the sea level doesn't come up as high as they say, you have a plan that will cover you?” He asked. “I just can't see planning for less. I can't.”

One of the most common criticisms of CRAC is the cost of its recommendations. Several of the most expensive projects on the town’s capital improvement plan, which lists over $1 billion in potential spending over the next 10 years, are related to coastal resilience. Both DeCosta and Select Board member Jill Vieth have called to rein in spending, and both voted against a climate and sustainability action plan at an August Select Board meeting.

As the Select Board works on prioritizing the capital improvement plan, a lengthy undertaking that might take months and one that DeCosta and Vieth both pushed for, some coastal resilience projects may start to slide down the list. Already, the Select Board gave a low priority designation to a downtown neighborhood flood barrier and dune restoration at Codfish Park.

Roche worries that some of the large projects may not be practical, especially with no federal funding on the horizon. Brace, on the other hand, believes that coastal resilience “should be” the largest item on Nantucket’s capital improvement plan, characterizing many of the capital decisions made by the Select Board and voters at Town Meeting as “luxuries” that would have to be sacrificed should the seas rise too high.

Even though she is no longer serving on CRAC, Roche will still have a chance to weigh in on these projects: as the chair of the Finance Committee, she will vote on many of them, a fact she noted in her letter.

“Nantucket’s response to coastal resilience will require difficult choices, significant investment, clarity, and coordination across Town government,” she wrote. “These issues will also inevitably intersect with my work on [the Finance Committee], particularly as we consider the long-term financial implications of the decisions ahead.”