A 'sandstorm' over Fire Island

Daily Point

Army Corps takes a bit of a beach walk on Schumer

The summer may be over, but the politics surrounding Long Island’s endangered beachfront is still in full stride.

Sen. Chuck Schumer recently kicked a little sand in the eyes of the Army Corps of Engineers, complaining that a multimillion-dollar project to build up the dunes to save homes on Fire Island so far has been a 90-pound weakling. After homeowners complained that much of the sand from a beach rehab project in Davis Park, Fire Island Pines and surrounding areas had washed away, Schumer demanded the Army Corps repair the damage urgently.

In a Sept. 25 letter to the Corps, Schumer said “major erosion” had occurred along Fire Island’s beaches, and that “emergency repair is particularly needed in the eastern Fire Island communities where the beachfront has diminished.” He said more action “is critical to protecting them from future storm events.”

In an email to The Point on Wednesday, the Corps defended itself, pointing out that in the winter of 2022 it deposited “millions of yards of sand on south shore beaches to bolster their resilience.” Nonetheless, the Corps says it’s studying the most recent Fire Island damage, just as New York’s senior senator requested.

“We are currently in the process of assessing last weekend [sic] storm's severity to determine its eligibility for Federal rehabilitation support,” the Corps acknowledged. The agency said that beach surveys are planned for this month between Ocean Bay Park and Davis Park. The purpose is “discerning the present conditions and any forthcoming needs for periodic beach nourishment” based on the availability of federal and nonfederal funds, it said.

However, the Corps’ reply to The Point seemed to indicate that the folks on Fire Island won’t be jumping ahead of any other planned projects, and may not even possibly qualify for emergency help.

“It's crucial to note that decisions concerning eligibility for emergency aid are grounded in regulations and policies pertaining to storm intensity and damage extent on a national basis,” the Corps wrote in its email. After the winter storms of 2022-2023, it noted, Ocean Bay Park to Davis Park on Fire Island “did not meet the criteria of an extraordinary event by federal law, thus, impacted coastal projects from these storms did not qualify for emergency assistance.”

This recent volley of exchanges is part of a much bigger drama involving Fire Island’s beaches. Overall, the Corps has placed over seven million cubic yards of sand along the Long Island coastline to increase resiliency, including the recent federal rehab effort in Fire Island that cost $291 million, the agency says. It’s part of a multiyear $1.8 billion Fire Island to Montauk Point shoreline restoration plan responding to damages from the 2012 Superstorm Sandy disaster.

— Thomas Maier thomas.maier@newsday.com

Pencil Point

There's no there there

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Reference Point

A Sound idea? Just water under the bridge

The State Legislature in New York meets for half a year. Every so often, interested parties call for a special session in the second half of the year to address some particularly pressing problem.

Newsday’s editorial board issued such a call on Oct. 5, 1978, imploring lawmakers to take up what it called “two prime pieces of economic legislation.” One would have created a Long Island job development authority. The other — and stop us if this sounds familiar — would have set up a “thorough” legislative study of the feasibility of building a bridge across Long Island Sound from Suffolk County to Connecticut.

Many incarnations of Newsday’s board have supported such a cross-Sound connection, and many such proposals have been made. Wikipedia has an incomplete list of 15 different proposals for bridges or tunnels from 11 different locations on Long Island to 12 different spots in Connecticut, Rhode Island and Westchester County — but the list does not include what appears to be the first such proposal in 1938, from U.S. Sen. Royal S. Copeland, a New York City resident who pitched an 18-mile bridge from Orient Point to either Groton, Connecticut or Watch Hill, Rhode Island.

In an Oct. 5, 1978 piece called “Two Bills Long Island Needs Soon From Albany,” the board again went to bat for a bridge, taking aim at its Connecticut opponents.

“Both Governor Ella Grasso and Senator Abraham Ribicoff protest that the proposed bridge would cause severe environmental and economic damage to their state,” the board wrote. “Ribicoff, for example, insists it ‘would funnel millions of cars and trucks onto the already overcrowded Connecticut Turnpike and Merritt Parkway.’ We don’t agree. In fact, an East End bridge should reduce traffic on these highways, because vehicles coming to the Island from points east could travel directly to Suffolk without going through western Connecticut.”

The board also complained about a different proposal from then-New York Gov. Hugh Carey for an executive branch study of various bridge proposals. “The legislative study, part of a planned larger analysis of the Sound’s regional problems, is better designed; the main thing now is to get moving on it,” the board concluded.

As it turned out, Carey formed a tristate advisory committee to examine the issue but all the proposals of the day met the same fate as all other proposals through the decades. Newsday’s board tipped to that in one phrase assessing the chances of its favored bills when it wrote that they “may confront political and procedural obstacles next year.”

Not to mention the ultimate obstacle that grounded so many bridge pitches — public opinion. Long Island’s public never met a bridge proposal it couldn’t protest.

— Michael Dobie michael.dobie@newsday.com, Amanda Fiscina-Wells amanda.fiscina-wells@newsday.com

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