Vol. XIII, No. 5
September-October 1999
Table of Contents:
Slow, Grudging, but the
Progress all the same
Floyd Spares Fire Island
The True
Environmentalists
50/50 Raffle Raises $20,000
SLOW, GRUDGING, BUT PROGRESS ALL THE SAME
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has been working with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and the National Park Service on an interim shore protection project for Fire Island for nearly four years. In July, the Corps completed a draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) for the project and sent it to the agencies and New York State for review. We had hoped this would be done in June (see May-June Newsletter), because that would have permitted inter-agency differences to be resolved in July, a final EIS released to the public in August, a public hearing held and a final record of decision issued in September or October. As it happened, the issues resolution conference wasn’t held until October 1. This means the public hearing is unlikely before January, assuming there are no further delays.
From what we can glean from people involved in the process, we judge that arguments about potential environmental impacts of the project have been dealt with. Opponents now seem focused on the issue of whether the FIIP will cause new building (or rebuilding) on Fire Island beaches. Arguments along this line were expected eventually to supplant environmental questions. Had there truly been an adverse environmental impact, neither the Corps nor New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), the principal non-federal sponsor, could have supported the project under their charters.
The Corps researched the development question at the request of the President’s Office of Management and Budget. Not surprisingly, the finding was that people develop and live in residential beach properties because beaches tend to be highly desirable places to live. Most beach property owners surveyed about why they wanted to build or buy on the beach were not even aware that a Corps project was or might be contemplated for the area.
Still, opponents of shore protection – not only on Fire Island but across the nation – persist in the belief that if the Corps does not protect beaches, fewer people will locate in those areas. This leads inevitably to the idea that as houses are destroyed by erosion (largely due to inadequate sand bypassing around manmade obstructions) those properties might be easier and less costly to acquire and "protect as open space." Thus, project opponents do not want the wide, natural beaches that protect development, but narrow beaches with low dunes that make development perilous, even if this poses substantial risk to upland and back bay areas.
For its part, the Corps of Engineers is not interested in land use issues. Their mission is to protect public and private property to save taxpayer dollars otherwise spent on repair, reconstruction and disaster relief. Thus, Corps projects must protect at least as much in dollar value of infrastructure, private and business property and the health of local water bodies as they cost to construct. If, in the course of protecting Fire Island, developed communities are also protected, that is fine, says the Corps, but not in itself a reason for doing the project.
Community protection is, of course, a major reason that Fire Island property owners not only support the project but have agreed to raise up to half the local cost share (up to $4 million) by establishing an island-wide erosion control taxing district.
While the building/rebuilding issue is not resolved in the minds of some project opponents, implementation of the DEC’s Coastal Erosion Hazard Area Management Program should quiet fears of the "massive building boom" some foresee. This law, known to some as Article 34, is now in place on Fire Island – as it had to be if the state were to be able to participate in the project. Article 34 requires all lands in or south of the project area to be off-limits for development. The Town of Brookhaven will administer this law on Fire Island; Islip has decided to let the state do it, at least for now.
If environmental and building issues have been (or soon should be) resolved, another issue of concern remains: whether the Fire Island National Seashore will permit sand placement in large federal land holdings between the communities. The issue arises because FINS says that it is required by its General Management Plan (GMP) and the enabling legislation that created the Seashore to maintain Fire Island in a "natural condition." FIA believes the maintenance of stabilized inlets along the south shore has made the region decidedly unnatural, and that the best course is to make it as naturally appearing and naturally functioning as possible, given the need to maintain inlets and protect the shoreline.
The Corps is trying to work within what the Park sees as its constraints by reducing the amount of fill in some undeveloped areas. They are the engineers and FIA has little option but to hope that in trying to maintain good relations with FINS, the engineering integrity of the project is not compromised.
When the DEIS is released for public comment, the time will have arrived for each Fire Island property owner to take a stand in favor of the interim project. Opponents have been able to call the tune for four years; that’s long enough. Your coming to the public hearing (when scheduled), signing your name and putting an "X" in the "favors project" box is basic. But sending letters, faxes and e-mail to those officials who need to see them is equally important. We will help with points that should be made, but if you don’t take a personal interest in this you are putting the value and marketability of your Fire Island property at risk. The next Newsletter will have more details on what you can do. In the meantime, please use the enclosed contact list to express your support for the FIIP.
Hurricane Floyd, the sixth of 1999's anticipated 14 named storms, crashed the Carolina coastline after Labor Day. It followed a course that would have brought it to Fire Island, had it not split apart after reaching the Mid-Atlantic states. Heavy rains moved inland while the winds moved quickly out to sea. Based on a recommendation from Suffolk County Fire Rescue and Emergency Services (FRES), County Executive Robert Gaffney called for an evacuation of Fire Island on September 9.
As in the past, compliance was spotty. FRES estimates there were some 2,000 people on Fire Island when the evacuation was ordered and that as many as 400-500 ignored it. The order was lifted at 10 a.m. the following day and most people’s weekend plans were not affected.
Because evacuation is via ferry boats, which have to be secured on the north side of the bay some hours before a hurricane hits, an evacuation order has to be declared well in advance. This adds to the difficulty of getting people to comply with the orders. (Police can’t force people to_ leave their property. They underline the seriousness of the matter by requesting the name and address of next of kin of those who won’t leave.)
On Fire Island, a major concern was the flooding of the Burma Road in the Lighthouse tract. Reports to the Fire Island Law Enforcement and Safety Council (LESC) indicated that, had the storm not been considerably weakened by the time it reached Fire Island the road would have become impassable and there would have been no way off the island for the emergency service personnel. Local police and fire fighters work with the Fire Island National Seashore and Suffolk County Police Marine Bureau to assure that all civilians are notified that they miss the last ferry to the mainland at their peril. That done, if the storm seems likely to be strong enough to make staying on the island dangerous even for trained personnel, getting off by car or truck is essential. If the road is severely flooded, that could be impossible.
The LESC notified public officials about this problem, urging that the road be elevated and/or the dunes protecting it be raised and strengthened. There had been concern expressed by FINS about restoring dune blowouts, planting dune grass and installing snow fence west of Sunken Forest, as well as in the Lighthouse area, both federal property. Supt. Dillon, however, advised FIA that he intends to place dune fencing in both locations, as this is permitted by the General Management Plan. He noted that "these areas need some help."
We continue very lucky, so far as hurricanes are concerned. It is now over 60 years since the 1938 hurricane, a high Category II storm (winds at or over 110 mph) made landfall just east of Fire Island. It came at high tide, which raises the ocean level some six to eight feet, and pushed a storm surge of an additional eight or nine feet in front of it as the storm moved up the coast and slammed into Long Island at 60 mph. A Category II storm like that, statistically, will hit Fire Island every 50 years. September 1938, of course, was 61 years ago.
Any who feel they can blithely ignore an evacuation order from the County Executive might ponder the following:
"...[T]he tidal surge ... was the most horrifying aspect of the [1938] hurricane. Imagine a huge wall of water lifted above the normal level of the ocean, topped by waves whipped higher than any yet seen heading straight toward you with a monstrous roar. [While] reports vary as to the height of the tidal surge with their mountainous waves, it would seem that thirty feet would not be an exaggeration ... When [it] smashed into the houses at Saltaire, most of them were wrenched off their foundations and pushed by the powerful impact of the sea across the narrow island and into Great South Bay."
Brickner, R.K., The Long Island Express: Tracking the Hurricane of 1938, Hodgins Printing Co., Batavia, NY 1988 p. 74-75.
Madeleine C. Johnson’s Fire Island 1650s-1980s (Shoreland Press, Mountainside, NJ, 1983) contains equally harrowing accounts of the storm. She cites the County Review (September 29, 1938) as recording the loss of 265 Fire Island houses, while 922 survived. Of these, Kismet lost 21 of the 22 houses then in the community, Saltaire lost 90 of 150 and Cherry Grove 65 of 80. Oddly, only four houses were lost of the 700 then in Ocean Beach/Seaview. (p. 173).
The state of the art in forecasting in 1938 was nothing like it is today. Many on Fire Island had no warning of the storm that was about to hit the island. Even so, the moral of the story is clear: when the County says "go," it is best to go.
THE
TRUE ENVIRONMENTALISTS
by Bob Spencer
Local representatives of the Department of the Interior (DOI) have raised objections to the Fire Island Interim beach nourishment project (FIIP) in the name of "protecting the environment." They feel beach nourishment will destroy potential habitat for piping plovers and other wildlife, and also cause "a building boom." They point to the the General Management Plan (GMP) of the Seashore as precluding adding fill to beaches hurt by 35 years of sand stoppage at Moriches Inlet and Westhampton.
When Jerry Stoddard asked me to address the FIA Summer Meeting on July 31st, he mentioned that Seashore Superintendent Costa Dillon would also be on the program. I thought it a good time to point out that FIA (then the Fire Island Voters Association) was the primary proponent of the National Seashore back in 1962. At one point, FIA had three bills calling for creation of the Seashore wending through Congress. The FIA saw Master Planner Robert Moses’ road proposal as calling for more development than parkland and saw the Seashore as a way of blocking him. When Governor Rockefeller asked him to leave the Long Island State Park Commission, which Moses had chaired for forty years, the door was opened to a Fire Island National Seashore Act.
My remarks last July were triggered by an article in National Parks Magazine that was headlined, "Homes Erode National Seashore," that had been based on interviews with various FINS staff people, including Supt. Dillon. The writer (who resigned shortly after the article appeared) ended her piece by asking readers to "write letters to New York’s senators and representatives alerting them to the destructive building practices ... and [demand] that they halt the Corps’ beach nourishment plan and appropriate funds for land acquisition and natural dune restoration." I referred to that, exercising some restraint, I thought, as "wrong thinking."
In addition, a number of DOI and FINS position papers have set forth considerations for planning the future of Fire Island. One of these suggests it might be a good idea to push ocean- front owners into accepting a "life tenancy" in their property. This would mean the property could neither be sold nor bequeathed, and the tenancy would end if the property were substantially damaged in a storm. Every option in their list of things to be considered was aimed at taking over oceanfront property in the long term.
Supt. Dillon wrote me a letter saying, "we have no plans to [acquire homes by means of instituting life tenancies]." He added that I may have "read too much into" the "Department of the Interior Position on Shoreline Protection and and Beach Nourishment at Fire Island National Seashore." He then points out that this was a paper "drafted and approved by ... the National park Service, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, U.S. Geological Survey, Solicitor’s Office and the Office of Environmental Policy and Compliance," which I think proves my point.
I reminded the Superintendent that the "life tenancy" concept was raised as something to be considered, even if it wasn’t definitively planned, in his November 1998 position paper. I added, "The fact that you are even thinking of ... acquiring land by way of "life tenancy" is a grave problem to those on Fire island, myself included, who worked hard to create the Seashore as a way of curbing over development."
FIA contends that oceanfront owners, and most other owners, too, have been the only ones protecting the environment by attempting to rebuild dunes through sand fencing, planting and state-supervised beach scraping. And even though the GMP requires that "ocean-facing dunes will be repaired or restored as needed,"FINS has done nothing in many years to protect this aspect of _ the environment.
Fire Island homeowners forced the creation of
the Seashore because of their strong environmental conscience.
The idea was a mix of private property and protected public lands
that would arrest development as it was in 1964. But FINS now
seems to want to change the deal and roll back development,
starting with the oceanfront homes. If there is no project, there
can be no beach and this means the first row houses eventually
will be destroyed. At that point, expect "emergency"
regulations that will "protect" the beach, by buying
houses at a fraction of their value. Expect this opposition to
continue through the public hearings on the FIIP.
Note: Bob Spencer, First Vice President of FIA, is a Davis Park
oceanfront property owner. The full text of his dialogue with
Supt. Dillon is available on request.
Fire Islanders and visitors purchased almost $45,000 worth of tickets in the 50/50 Raffle set up by Bob Spencer to boost the special fund raising effort the communities voted last year. The $20,000 raised through the raffle brought the effort past the $100,000 mark of the $150,000 goal.
The raffle fell short of the hoped for $50,000 first prize but there were 13 prize winners drawn at FIA’s September Board meeting. First prize of $17,200 went to Scott Hirsch at Ocean Beach’s Island Mermaid Restaurant. There were ten $350 winners: Carole Abramcyk, Robert Alfandre, Pat Carter, B. Gilston, Ken Larson, Ed Lewis, Jeff Lewis, Bruce Martin, Dorothy Mott and Art Weinstein. William Newman won a sport jacket donated by Bill Borenstein and Theodore Cohn won four tickets to the last Mets game of the regular season (donated by Bob Delia).
The $20,000, to be devoted to bringing the Fire Island Interim Project to reality, is the equivalent of 267 dues payments. Thank you.