State plans to add sand to eroded Robert Moses beach

The state parks department is arranging to place 200,000 cubic yards of sand on a badly eroded section of beach at Robert Moses State Park so it can be used by the public this summer.

The sand will replenish the beach at Field 5, which has been so badly eroded by storms over the past year that it sometimes disappears at high tide and has been closed off periodically.

The sand has been stockpiled at the west end of the park since it was dredged from Fire Island Inlet in 1994 to clear shoals that were impeding navigation, said Ronald Foley, regional director of the state Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation. The agency is seeking bids from contractors to move the sand and hopes to have the work done by the beginning of April.

The sand is expected to create a beach 300 feet out from the dune line from the east end of Field 5 and west almost to Field 4. "Hopefully it will get us through two summers," said Foley, who added it might take that long for a federal dredging project to be done in the inlet to improve navigation and replenish that beach and nearby beaches. "Ideally we would like to restore the pile when we have a dredging project."

The agency has a 10-year state Department of Environmental Conservation permit for emergency beach maintenance that was renewed last year.

In the 1980s and early '90s, the department several times paid for contractors to truck in sand to bolster the beachfront near the park traffic circle when erosion threatened to undermine it, Foley said.