Residents of the resort paid $600,000 for sand. It took a few days.

The owners of beachfront homes in the northern Massachusetts coastal community of Salisbury Beach spent nearly $600,000 to drop about 15,000 tons of sand near their properties to protect themselves from future storms.

But the Atlantic Ocean had something else in store. The high tides and winds that battered the area on Sunday washed away almost half of the sand just days after it was placed.

The storm left the beach barren and defenseless against the ocean waters that draw vacationers to that beach town every year.

“People are depressed, discouraged and angry,” said US President Tom Saab Salisbury Beach Citizens for Changea group representing real estate owners that was the spearhead of the sand project. “The dunes have done their job. They sacrificed themselves to protect the property – no property was actually damaged.”

The citizens group decided in January to buy the sand that was placed along a 1.5-mile stretch of Salisbury Beach near the properties in mid-February, Mr. Saab said. There are approximately 150 buildings along the beach, including detached houses and apartments. The beach stretches for about four miles and the adjacent properties are estimated to have a combined value of $2 billion, he said.

The sand dune project came about after Salisbury Beach was hit hard by storms in recent months. It was inundated by a high tide and a nor’easter in December 2022, leaving the beach “devastated,” said Mr. Saab, who has lived on Salisbury Beach for decades.

Two more nor’easters reached the area in January, he said.

“Those two storms basically wiped out the entire beach,” Saab said of the January storms. “Properties were damaged – decks were destroyed,” he said, adding that stairs and patios were also damaged. “One house was condemned and no longer allowed to be occupied,” he said.

In an attempt to take matters into their own hands, the citizen group started the sand project in mid-February, raising the necessary funds from property owners. The project was completed last week, on Wednesday March 7. It was cause for celebration, just a few days before the next washout.

“Everyone had beautiful dunes, all paid for out of their own pocket — not a dime from the state of Massachusetts at all,” Mr. Saab said. “We built this mile and a half of beach ready to protect us.”

Then the nor’easter touched down, taking with it 50 percent of the sand and an estimated $300,000 worth of work, according to the group.

Two access points to the Salisbury Beach State Reservation were closed on Sunday and remained closed Thursday due to storm damage, according to the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation.

Some area residents are calling on state leaders for help. They believe government officials should contribute, in part because the protection the dunes provide extends beyond their properties and into city and state infrastructure. The beach has previously received state and federal support.

The state “continues to communicate regularly with city representatives, the legislative delegation and the community and will continue to work with them to address the impacts of beach erosion,” said a spokeswoman for the state Conservation and Recreation Department.

It is not unusual for the east coast will be hit by nor’easters and other storms, according to the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

About half of the properties in Salisbury Beach have been owned by the same families since the 1950s to the 1970s, and those owners are unwilling to give up their ocean views, Mr. Saab said.

“No one wants to give up,” he said. “I will never give up protecting Salisbury Beach.”