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EASTHAM — David Moot, an interior designer from Pittsburgh, made national headlines in 2023 when he bought a house here at 157 Brownell Road. That’s because it’s the last house left on a fast-eroding cliff above Nauset Light Beach. Moot, who paid less than half the value of the average single-family home in Eastham for the property, told Bloomberg at the time, “Life’s too short, and I just said to myself, ‘Let’s just see what happens.’ ”

Today, the house is close to the cliff’s edge, and Eastham Conservation Agent Alex Bates says Moot has repeatedly failed to act despite receiving notices from town boards and the Cape Cod National Seashore asking him to take steps to ensure the structure does not endanger the public.

Eastham’s board of health and conservation commission have imposed fines totaling $300 a day as a penalty for Moot’s inaction, but Bates says Moot has been “unresponsive” and hasn’t paid those fines.

The situation “keeps me up at night,” Bates said.

The Outer Cape’s back shore is receding at a rate of three to four feet per year, on average, according to retired National Park Service coastal geologist and cartographer Mark Adams. But the rate at which the dunes retreat isn’t constant, he says — one big storm could topple the house.

With storm season approaching, Moot blames the house’s previous owners and the town for his predicament.

“There were things that were kept from me as the new buyer,” Moot told the Independent. “It seems everything has come down on me, but these issues should have been addressed by the prior owners.” He said he wanted to move his house’s leaching field, but progress on that project stalled when town officials didn’t respond to his requests for advice.

Repeated Warnings

“We’ve advised him of multiple different scenarios he could do in the short term,” Eastham Health Director Hillary Greenberg-Lemos told the board of health at a meeting on April 24, 2025. “The longer he waits, the more dangerous the situation is going to become.”

“It’s a dangerous situation for public health reasons,” said board of health vice chair Francie Williamson during that meeting. “I feel that we have no other option but to levy the fine.”

Conservation commission chair Karen Strauss came to the same conclusion: “It seems like the only lever we have in this matter is to issue fines,” she told the commission during its June 10 meeting. “How else can we get his attention?”

Built in 1956, 157 Brownell Road was one of several houses that once stood on the west side of Nauset Light Beach Road, a strip of pavement that used to run parallel to the coast north of Nauset Light. A 2013 site plan — the most recent one on file with the town’s conservation dept. — shows 157 Brownell’s well to the east of the house, about 100 feet from the cliff’s edge. The house’s septic tank lies just west of the house.

But the landscape has changed significantly in the years since that plan was drawn. Part of Nauset Light Beach Road that appears on the plan was relocated in 2021 as a result of erosion.

Because of 157 Brownell’s proximity to the cliff, the town’s health and conservation dept. had requested last year that Moot make plans to relocate its septic system. That was before a winter storm on Dec. 11 scoured sand from the back shore, prompting a visit to the property by town officials who determined that the house’s septic system and leaching field were in danger of becoming exposed to the cliff face.

“We urgently ask that you act now,” said a letter issued to the owner on Dec. 13 and signed by members of the town’s board of health and conservation commission and the building commissioner, as well as National Seashore Supt. Jennifer Flynn. “Taking no action will be costly and cause significant environmental impacts and will render your property unlivable when there is no sewage disposal or water,” the letter said.

On Jan. 29, 2025, Moot was sent a Title 5 enforcement order, which said he was in violation of the state environmental code for his failure to follow town procedures for approving a new septic system design, according to documents on file with the town.

Moot was ordered to appear before the Eastham Board of Health for a public hearing on April 24 regarding the septic violation. He was also asked by the conservation commission to submit a deconstruction protocol to have on file for the house by June 10. He didn’t comply with either order.

At each of those meetings, the boards voted to levy daily fines. A $200 daily fine by the board of health was made retroactive to Jan. 29, the date the first enforcement order was filed. The conservation commission imposed a fine of $100 a day.

In June, Greenberg-Lemos told the conservation commission that she had had “a bit of email correspondence” with Moot, who had applied for a building permit to demolish a section of the house. But Moot’s application didn’t contain any site plans or engineer’s drawings, Greenberg-Lemos said, and included no mention of the septic system other than that he intended to move it to the back of the property. Greenberg-Lemos said she had gone to the house twice since then to look for Moot, but nobody had answered the door.

Moot says he visits the house every month.

Shades of the ‘Blasch House’

Moot’s property is not the only precariously sited structure that Outer Cape towns have had to address as coastal erosion continues.

Henry Lind, who served as Eastham’s conservation agent from 1975 to 2009, told the Independent that such situations were rare early in his career but by the 2000s had become a familiar problem. He said that some imperiled houses have, over the years, been removed preliminarily to Seashore land and then given to the nonprofit Eastham Conservation Foundation.

Linzy French, the public information officer for the National Seashore, told the Independent last week that CCNS had not been involved in any negotiations related to 157 Brownell Road.

Williamson, of the board of health, compared the situation at 157 Brownell with that of the bayside house at 1440 Chequessett Neck Road in Wellfleet, known as the Blasch house. It was demolished in February following a tense back and forth between a lawyer for owner John G. Bonomi Jr., who bought the house from Mark and Barbara Blasch for $5.5 million in 2021, and the town over who was responsible for paying for an emergency demolition. In that case, the owner ultimately paid for the work.

Moot bought the house at 157 Brownell in 2023 for $395,000, which was $130,000 less than the previous owners paid for it in 2019. At the time, he told the Boston Globe that it was his “dream home.”

“A storm came that brought me to where I am now,” Moot said.