The Fire Island Association’s Summer Meeting will be held on Saturday, July 31, at the Community House in Ocean Beach, starting at 11 am. The main speaker will be Congressman Steve Israel (D., NY-2nd), whose district includes most Fire Island communities. Mr. Israel is a member of the House Appropriations Sub-Committee on Energy and Water Development, the committee that will be responsible for recommending appropriation of funds for the Fire Island Inlet to Montauk Point beach nourishment program. Other speakers will include FINS Superintendent Chris Soller, Suffolk County Police Department Marine Bureau Commander Hal Jantzen and several other public figures.
FIA will arrange free water taxi service for communities east of Point O’Woods and West of Atlantique. A schedule will be posted here and sent to community websites when it is made final. Reserve in the usual way by phoning 665-8885 about an hour before the scheduled departure and mention you are going the FIA meeting in Ocean Beach, and there will be no charge. When embarking, advise the captain and/or crew to the same effect.
Fire Island’s Natural Neighborhoods
By Bob Spencer
An island in the ocean – with its mystique enhanced by being a bit isolated – offers essential treasures to those who seek peaceful freedom of mind.
Fire Island’s barrier beach island – 32 miles long, bordering the south of Great South Bay — has millions of people living within 50 miles of it, yet is largely unknown to most.
Fire Island – has 17 “neighborhoods”– which are small, and individualistic hamlet-communities of only 4,000 homes, scattered like rare beach glass treasures along that natural sand stretch, each hamlet averaging less than 1% of total Fire Island’s space.
continue reading "ON SPENCER’S POINT"
Photo 1
Growing anxiety about safety and security, and quality-of-life matters, led three Fire Island Association Directors to the Patchogue office of County Legislator Jack Eddington in February (photo 1). The issue was brought to the fore last August by Fire Island’s representative in the State Assembly, Ginny Fields, when she led a large delegation of concerned islanders to a meeting in Hauppauge with County Executive Steve Levy and Police Commissioner Richard Dormer.
At the meeting with Mr. Eddington was FIA President Jerry Stoddard, Suzanne Goldhirsch, President of the Seaview Association, and John Lund, President of the Davis Park Association, both of the latter are Vice Presidents of FIA. Ms. Goldhirsch stated the issue: the issues of crime and safety are of growing importance on Fire Island, and incidents are becoming more frequent and more serious. After describing a few of them, she said a visible increase in police on patrol would start to address this issue. In addition to criminal activity, Ms. Goldhirsch is concerned that older residents, especially, feel isolated on Fire Island and fearful of not getting prompt transport to mainland hospitals in a medical emergency.
Mr. Eddington chairs the County Legislature’s Committee on Public Safety, which includes review of the Police Department budget. One of several suggestions he made was that island communities work with the Marine Bureau to form Neighborhood Watch groups to advise of potential problems before they get out of hand. He also said the islanders should meet with police officials and urge restoration of the summer police contingent to former levels. He acknowledged this would be a problem in light of cutbacks being urged by the County Executive to balance the budget.
In March, an expanded group acted on Legislator Eddington’s advice, meeting with Nicholas Mango, Chief of Patrol; Patrick Cuff, Assistant Chief of Patrol; John Meehan, Deputy Chief of Patrol; and Deputy Inspector Harold Jantzen, Commander of the Marine Bureau. FIA Officers included included the above mentioned, joined by Hugh O’Brien, Trustee of Saltaire; Tom Ruskin, Seaview’s Vice President for Security; and Bartley Horton, Ocean Bay Park Community Manager (photo 2).
At the meeting, the island representatives related details of their concerns. The police officials, while forthright about the budget constraints they operate under, showed a reassuringly detailed familiarity with the special problems of the various Fire Island communities.The meeting brought out that last year’s experiment with assigning the west end sector car to the 1st Precinct (Babylon), while keeping the crew as part of the Fire Island contingent, was not effective and won’t be continued. Also, there are expected to be ten seasonal patrol officers (virtually all of them with island experience) assigned to Fire Island for the 2010 season. This compares to six seasonals in 2009, plus the crew from the west end sector car. The group hopes to meet with Inspector Jantzen for an update following the Memorial Day weekend, typically the most problematic of the summer.
One request from the police: response times will be improved if all house numbers are clearly shown on the sidewalk. For houses that are rented, detailed instructions of how to report an emergency should be posted near the telephone. If 911 is dialed from a landline, the police will know how to locate the house; if the call is from a mobile phone, the system for doing that will not work.
Photo 2
The Fire Island Association and the Fire Island National Seashore are cooperating on a New York City Meeting. Its primary purpose is to discuss revising the Seashore’s General Management Plan (GMP), but it will also provide an opportunity to raise questions Fire Islanders may have regarding Fire Island that the National Seashore or FIA can address as time allows.
The meeting will begin with a power point presentation by Superintendent Soller and National Park Service Planner Ellen Carlson on the process to be followed in revising the GMP, the document that sets forth guidelines followed by the National Seashore in managing the park. This is an opportunity for residents, businesses and visitors to provide input to the park’s deliberations. Other stakeholders will have a similar opportunity as the process moves forward. This will be the first GMP revision since the present plan went into effect in 1978. It is important that the people who care most about the island are part of the discussion.
The meeting will be held on Thursday, February 18, at All Souls Unitarian Church, Lexington Avenue at 80th Street, New York City. There is a stop on the Lexington Avenue subway line at 77th Street. The meeting will convene at 7 p.m. and end at or before 9 p.m.
For more information, call FINS at (631) 687-4750 or FIA at (212) 929-6415.
The following email and pdf document was received today from Chris Soller. The time for participating in the “Visioning Project” has been extended to January 15, 2010. FIA members and others who care about Fire Island’s future are encouraged to click on visionfireisland.com and participate, if you have not already done so.
Jerry:
As we have discussed, I know there have been concerns and questions raised
regarding the Fire Island Community Character/Visioning Project. Attached
is a letter I have written that I hope will lay to rest a number of
questions and concerns raised regarding the project. We are also extending
the deadline to participate in the project to January 15, 2010. I hope
that you and the others members of the Fire Island Association Board of
Directors and Fire Island Community Association leaders would distribute
this letter to your members and members of the various community
associations. Hopefully it will reinforce our desire to work with the Fire
Island communities and to engage Fire Islanders in the issues that we are
all involved with now and in the future.
Jerry, I would like to thank you and all the Board of Directors for your
continued support. Over the next year, as the National Seashore presents
the draft alternatives on the General Management Plan, refines the
alternatives and presents a preferred alternative for public review and
comment, the participation of the FIA and the Communities in this dialogue
will be extremely valuable. We look forward to your continued involvement
in this process. Again, many thanks.
Chris Soller
Superintendent
Fire Island National Seashore
National Park Service
To read Mr. Soller’s letter, click on “more”
continue reading "Message from Superintendent Soller"
I walked the entire Kismet beach today, October 24, west to east. Kismet has a high wide dune in front of four of our five walks ranging from 60′-100″ in depth except for the most easterly walk, where the first row house extends out beyond the row line. At that location, the dune has a south to north depth of about 40′. All dunes have healthy dune grass throughout. Even the small federal strip, between two of our walks, where no scraping was allowed over the past 15 years by FINS, has a dune and it is filling with new sand at the toe this past week. There is no water penetration under any first row Kismet houses. While the southerly toe of the dune line was bitten up several weeks ago, resulting in a drop off, on average of about 3′, it has now all filled in providing a comfortable, walkable grade down to the beach face. The north to south dune fencing installations of the last 3 years are still intact throughout the length of the beach except for the most southerly 2008 installation limited to one over walk location where the fencing fell some weeks ago. The Kismet ECD deliberately held off having its contractor install the 2009 Kismet allotment of dune fencing provided by the Town of Islip until this past week. All of the new poles are now installed and are still standing upright, and the new fencing on these poles is completed up to about 4 walks, with one more to go, and all new fencing is intact. The old fencing is filled with sand to the top of the poles and the new fencing is already filling in just over the past few days with sand deposited by the high tide. Today, as the tide receded, the beach face was quite wide in spite of heavy surf.
All and all, we’ve lived to fight another day.
Marsha Hunter, Commissioner
Kismet Erosion Control District.
October 24, 2009
Saltaire suffered only relatively minor erosion — some scouring, but no damage to the dunes, stairs, fencing, etc. No scarping at all. Scouring never got closer to the dunes than about 10 feet in one limited area, farther away everywhere else. The sand is still in our system and the project seems to be doing its job.
Hugh O’Brien, October 22, 2009
I watched the events unfold last weekend and finally got to walk the beach yesterday an hour or so before low tide. About two thirds of the community (4100 feet long) saw some scarping ranging from 1 foot to 4 feet in the worst areas and then tapering back down. We lost one set of stairs in the Davis Park section at Seajay Walk and a section of sand fence in that area as well. The concentration of erosion seems to be shifting a bit west of its historic impact area in the Casino to West Walk area of the community. There is a lot of sand extending from the beach into the ocean at the east end of the community. Fishing from it and casting to the west has been seen. Other sand remains in the surf area. Traditionally erosion has chewed away at the middle of the community and moved some sand to the west end where our westernmost Fifth Walk enjoys a very similar profile to the 1950s and an elevation near 20ft. Sand seems to be accumulating in the surf here as well and the beach widens.
John Lund
In Dunewood this past weekend water came past our snow fencing on the ocean but we did not appear to lose substantial dune. We did lose height on the beach front and will need some favorable winds to get buildup to help us thru winter. The water in the bay was raging and the highest that I can remember, coming over the ferry dock (ferry had trouble unloading passengers and carts due to tide height). Water several feet high covered our entire bay beach and went over bay front bulk heads and close to bay front houses. I could not assess if there was any damage to bulk heads but I think we may have dodged the bullet this time. I think Chris [Soller] is right to be worried about the bay. The wind driven water appeared to keep building up with each tide and had no suitable outlet out from the bay. — Ron Bimberg
Anyone reading the Times weather page in the ten days leading up to Sunday, October 18 had an excuse for being anxious. The maritime forecast consistently reported winds from the northeast anywhere between 10 and 30 mph, “with higher gusts,” for more than a week straight. Those winds not only pummeled the newly restored beaches, it made Fire Island Inlet, already far from efficient at draining Great South Bay because of sand clogging the channel, even more of a problem: the tides flow in but don’t completely drain, so the next tide piles up behind the first, and so on. Television news showed places like Freeport and Bayville on the bay’s north side coping with serious street flooding as a result.
But tides piling up in the bay pose another threat as well: if there is a low, flat area (and Fire Island has several of them) once there is enough water in the bay it won’t wait around for the tide to go out, it will seek the quickest way to the ocean, and that means through the island. It didn’t happen this time but it sure pointed up the need for the Corps of Engineers and New York State to get together on an emergency program for maintenance dredging at the inlets, especially the Fire Island Inlet.
As for the ocean side, Fire Island did not escape unscathed; and one shudders to think of what might have happened but for the 2009 community nourishment projects. From east to west, Bob Spencer (Davis Park) reported very high tides and mainland flooding. On the ocean side, he reports severe scarping in the persistent “erosion hot spot” that afflicts about 500 feet toward the western part of that community. Unless a period of westerly winds rebuilds the area, more nor’easters “could be real nasty,” Bob says.
Fire Island Pines experienced severe erosion at the eastern end, according to Jay Pagano. One set of stairs was lost. In another context, Steve Keehn, the ’09 project engineer, noted that the eastern ends of all of the projects are exposed to northeast winds, and the experience at the Pines seems to bear this out.
Ocean Bay Park came through “in pretty good shape”, according to Steven Jaffee. Stairs and fencing are all still standing, although a lot of sand was lost, he added. He noted that Seaview (which adjoins Ocean Bay Park to the west) seems to have lost several hundred feet of sand fencing.
Ocean Beach had flooding up as far as Midway, Love the Plumber reports. There was a foot or more of water near the water tower, but the area near the court house was dry by comparison.
Robbins Rest, to the west of Ocean Beach, was very pleased with the performance of its new bulkhead. Still, water came up from the bay about 100 yards, the Association reported.
If you have further information, please add it in a comment to this post.
WARNING: This e-mail is a suspected phishing scam.