Cuomo: Dune project on Robbins Rest on Fire Island complete

A dune-building project designed to strengthen Robbins Rest on Fire Island during major storms has been completed, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said Tuesday.

The emergency repair work, started in March, targeted coastal erosion and resiliency, according to Cuomo’s office.

Using 20,000 cubic yards of sand stockpiled at Robert Moses State Park, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built a dune approximately 15 feet high and a 90-foot berm.

The joint state and federal project repaired damage done to Robbins Rest during superstorm Sandy in 2012 and from subsequent coastal breaches.

The state Department of Environmental Conservation and Suffolk County obtained the necessary real estate interests to work on private property, officials said.

After Sandy and other storms, erosion along the stretch of Fire Island increased, “posing a significant threat to the communities . . . and potential coastal flooding along mainland Long Island,” Cuomo’s office said.

The DEC, Suffolk and the Army Corps also are “working quickly to advance the Fire Island Inlet to Moriches Inlet project, and the planning for the Fire Island Inlet to Montauk Point coastal storm risk reduction project to further bolster Long Island’s coastal defenses along the Atlantic coastline,” the governor’s office said.

That much vaster inlet project, which costs about $207 million, will build about a dozen miles of dunes and berms with 7 million cubic yards of sand on the 32-mile-long barrier island, officials said.