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WHY THE FIRE ISLAND INTERIM PROJECT (Your comments on any of these subjects are welcome. Send e-mail to info@fireislandassn.org.) 1. A strong barrier island is needed to protect Long Island’s south shore from the extra flooding that would result from breaching or serious overwash. a) Over 34,000 structures, with a total value of $7.9 billion, exist within the south shore flood plain. b) The Corps of Engineers sees a one in five c) The Corps estimates the extent of property damage from a breach, 2. The $52.8 million first cost of a temporary beach a) The cost apportionment is as follows: Federal (65%) $34,377,000 *To be raised through an erosion control taxing district b) Fire Island residents have agreed to pay half the local share; so the cost to local (non-Fire Island) taxpayers is less than $2.8 million. b) For every one dollar paid by the general Suffolk County taxpayer, Fire Island property owners would pay $129.
3. The Corps project would have a positive benefit to cost ratio. a) The Corps’s economic analysis shows a net annual benefit in excess of costs with a BCR of 1.3; all benefits are derived from storm damage reduction, recreation and reduced breach closure costs. b) Approximately 80 percent of project benefits are derived from protection provided to mainland areas adjacent to Great South Bay. c) With the Corps project in place, 10,500 mainland homes in the south shore flood plain would see fewer floods and less inundation from any that occur. d) In addition, another 1,500 mainland structures now at risk from coastal flooding would be so no longer. e) More than 3,000 barrier island structures would be less subject to flooding. f) Mainland and barrier island structures alike would be caused to make fewer flood insurance claims and in lesser amounts. 4. Following the 1992 storm, New York State requested the Corps of Engineers to survey the south shore of Long Island to determine whether there was a federal/state interest in protecting the area. a) Governor Cuomo appointed a Coastal Erosion Task Force to review storm damage and to work with the Corps in making recommendations. b) The Corps noted that a shore replenishment and protection program already was authorized for the area and recommended implementation of that project, later known as the Fire Island Interim Project, or FIIP. c) The FIIP was consistent with the recommendation of the Task Force, which also recommended prompt closure of breaches, modification and filling of the Westhampton groinfield and implementation of sand bypassing at all southshore inlets. d) A Breach Contingency Plan is now in place and the Westhampton groinfield has been modified. With completion of needed beach fill, primarily in Fire Island and west of Shinnecock Inlet, and completion of inlet bypassing at Shinnecock and Moriches Inlets, the Corps’s plan for the south shore,
originally authorized by Congress in 1960, would be more than 90 percent completed. 5. Project opponents in the National Park Service, citing decades old rulings and out-of-date guidelines, insist that any project for Fire Island be minimal; that no fill be placed other than in the community development district. a) The Corps complied, but the opponents nevertheless demanded a full environmental impact study that took three years to complete, and which was finally presented for public comment in January 2000. b) Public opinion voiced at the public hearing overwhelmingly favored implementation of the Corps/DEC project. c) The Department of the Interior, however, insisted that the EIS was still deficient and that more studies were needed. d) New York State refused to make any comment at all, despite an official statement in the EIS that, if no new information was developed at the hearing or in the comment period, the state would be in position to grant the permits needed for the project to go forward. e) DOI now is able to point to “lack of state support” as one of its reasons for opposing the project. 6. The reason for opposing the FIIP is not environmental but socioeconomic: opponents want to remove houses from Fire Island and they fear that any project that protects the beach is likely to make that objective harder to attain. a) DOI asserts that it believes houses in dune areas cause erosion, although there is no scientific support for this notion, and such studies as do exist indicate that houses have no effect on beach or dune erosion. b) Yet DOI has called for removing such houses by a variety of means, such as restricting owners to a life tenancy in their structures; requiring structures to be relocated to other areas, condemning and purchasing developed and undeveloped lots, etc. c) The Nature Conservancy has proposed buying out all properties in the dune area for $163 million in public funds. d) DOI also asserts that it is “the goal and the mission” of the National Park Service to prevent development in the dune area. e) Declaring that the protection project would cause more building, DOI “insists “ on a building moratorium in such areas. 7. While opponents’ basic claim is that the project is bad for the coastal environment, in fact the opposite is true. a) The Environmental Protection Agency has rated the FIIP at LO-1, its lowest rating for environmental significance. b) Opponents have long insisted that piping plovers benefit from “early successional overwash” conditions that precede a breach in the barrier island, relying on a study that predicted a decline in plover production if these conditions were not prevalent. c) But, in West Hampton Dunes, once the beach was raised and widened by a project virtually identical to the FIIP, production of piping plovers greatly increased; it did not decrease as the relied on expert predicted. d) The Fire Island barrier is one of the few (possibly the only one) in the world that contains fresh water wetlands that maintain a unique wildlife habitat. Failure to protect this habitat on the barrier would threaten a unique resource with permanent extinction; yet those charged with its preservation
do not even mention it. e) A current Corps of Engineers Biological Monitoring Program, a 7-year, $8.6 million study of a beach nourishment project in northern New Jersey, found no long-term impacts on marine, avian or plant life in the project area. This report has been deemed not relevant on the grounds that, while the New
Jersey coast runs north and south, Fire Island runs east and west! Fire Island Association |
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