Why You Should Support the Fire Island Interim Flood Protection Plan
Fire Island protects Long Island’s south shore from flooding caused by storms in the Atlantic Ocean. Manmade groins and inlet jetties have blocked sand from nourishing the island’s beaches, and the protective barrier has eroded. Island residents, who led an effort 35 years ago to prevent over development by creating a National Seashore, now are supporting the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Fire Island Interim Project (FIIP) to add sand to the island to help it protect the north side of Great South Bay.
BUT – forces trying to block the FIIP are saying that the plan would promote development and hurt the environment.
The FIIP will add protection to properties and businesses on the mainland and help preserve one of Long Island’s finest beach resources for the benefit of all Long Islanders.
Here is some background on this important
issue:
Homes, businesses and government buildings and infrastructure
on Long Island’s south shore are protected by the string of
barrier islands that extends from Rockaway Point to Southampton.
Stabilizing the inlets between these islands, however, causes
beach erosion, because the east to west movement of sand is
blocked. (These effects were magnified by the over-built and
improperly constructed groinfield at Westhampton Beach that was
recklessly abandoned in 1975.) Coastal engineers compensate for
erosion by mechanically moving sand from the updrift (east) side
to the downdrift (west) side of inlets, and by dredging sand from
offshore deposits and placing it on downdrift beaches. Without
these efforts, barrier islands can narrow to a point where a
storm or hydrological forces cause a breach; i.e., a new inlet.
This subjects the mainland to flooding as more water gets into
the bay. The breach at Westhampton in the December 1992 nor’easter,
a direct consequence of the Westhampton Beach groins, caused
flooding of the mainland. In Remsenberg, for example, a flooded
house burned to the waterline in 1993 because fire fighting
apparatus could not reach it.
There were relatively few houses on the island when Robert Moses proposed to connect it to the mainland by bridges and then connect the bridges with an extension of Ocean Parkway. When Moses’ plans seemed close to fruition in the 1960s, Fire Island property owners intensively lobbied Congress to make the island a mixed-use National Seashore, like Cape Cod, that would freeze development as of 1964. They won. The park was created and today all 32 miles of ocean beach and 80 percent of the upland area of the island is fully open to the public. Fire Island became the only developed barrier island in the world that does not have a formal road system. And the 17 pre-existing, middle class residential communities, reached primarily by ferry boat, will remain, so long as their low-density, single-family character is retained. In this arrangement, Fire Island’s recreational beaches, limited commercial development and thriving second-home industry adds hundreds of millions of dollars each year to the Long Island economy. As primarily a summer community, it makes relatively few demands on mainland municipalities.
Despite this win-win situation for Long Island, a new generation of bureaucrats now wants to go back on the deal their predecessors welcomed. People opposed to houses on or near beaches are trying to delay shore protection projects in hopes that property will be destroyed, thus lowering the cost of acquiring it. It is one thing for towns and the County to protect undeveloped land for future generations by buying it at market prices from willing sellers. It is something else for government to adopt policies certain to cause the destruction of homes by storms and flooding so that underlying property can be acquired cheaply. Delaying programs designed to protect public recreational beaches and low-lying areas from flooding, puts individual homes and entire communities at risk, along with government facilities, roads and bridges.
Congress well knows the need to provide storm damage protection and beach erosion control on Long Island. In 1960 it asked the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for proposals to accomplish this between Fire Island Inlet and Montauk Point. A stop-gap aspect of this plan, the Fire Island Interim Project, or FIIP, would place about 9 million cubic yards of sand along Fire Island where needed to raise dunes to an average of 15 feet and widen beaches to about 90 feet. A second sand placement (renourishment) at some point within the six-year project life is expected to provide time to complete studies on the longer-term project. The Corps says the FIIP will provide protection against barrier island breaching (and consequent mainland flooding) in storms of a severity encountered every 30 years on average; for example, the 1962 Ash Wednesday Storm and the December 1992 nor’easter. Governor Cuomo’s Coastal Erosion Task Force endorsed this approach in its 1994 Final Report.
The FIIP would cost $60 million ($80 million including the renourishment). Federal funds would account for 65 percent of initial construction, or $39 million. The non-federal cost share is 35 percent, or $21 million. Under state law this amount is divided 70-30 with local government, or $15 million state and $6 million local. Fire Island property owners, recognizing the benefits of a federal-state-local project, have proposed that Fire Island property be taxed to raise half of the local share. The balance ($3 million) would come from Suffolk general revenues.
Opponents of the FIIP say it will cause people to rebuild houses knocked down by storms. But a new state law strictly controls building and rebuilding houses in beach project areas. If the FIIP is delayed, opponents hope, more houses will be knocked down and these properties acquired cheaply. But delay puts the barrier and south shore of Long Island in jeopardy. By protecting south shore businesses and residences from flooding, the FIIP will help lower disaster recovery costs. Meanwhile, healthy beaches throughout Long Island means many millions in travel and tourism revenue. The project deserves the support of thoughtful voters.
The Fire Island Association – November 1999
Click on FIIP Contact List for names and addresses of people to write to. Many with e-mail addresses.