No quick fixes for erosion in Southold

Erosion is getting to be a little like the weather in Southold: Everybody is talking about it, but no one can do anything about it - at least right away.

About 100 town residents met in Peconic Wednesday to hear federal, state and local officials explain what government could - and could not - do to help threatened homes, shore up local roads and put more sand on the beaches.

After two hours, no one was under the illusion any help is coming quickly from anywhere.

"I know it's not what people wanted to hear, but there has to be some rational discussion," Supervisor Scott Russell said.

At the meeting were officials with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the state Department of Environmental Conservation; federal, state and local elected officials or their aides; and people like Wendy Normoye, whose daughter owns one of the houses on badly eroded Hashamomuck Cove.

"They're talking about a three-year plan. Three years from now, the house won't be standing," she said of the house.

Residents told the officials that there is not enough time for long-range studies, and that help has to come soon. "If your roof blew off in a storm, you wouldn't wait three years to replace it," one man said.

But Corps of Engineers officials said that no simple, dramatic steps could be taken quickly because doing work in one area could result in harm to another location. And much of the three- to five-year delay between proposing a study and completing the work involves the environmental review of the work, state officials said.

And federal, state and local officials agreed there is little money right now to do the studies required before any work on shoreline stabilization could be started.

Roman Rakoczy of the Corps of Engineers Division of Planning said one program used to evaluate small local projects usually costing $1.5 million or less has no money.

He said any major project designed to shore up an area like Hashamomuck Cove - where about a dozen homes are threatened - would take three to five years to design and would require a commitment from federal, state and local governments.

Supervisor Russell said Suffolk County might be able to fund the local share of that work, but it would be "unrealistic" to expect his town to raise the needed funds.

Like other East End towns, Southold has been laying off workers and leaving vacant positions unfilled to hold the line on taxes.