ON SPENCER’S POINT

How Oceans Attract Us

By Bob Spencer

Alluring. Mysterious. Relaxing. Inspiring. Awesome. This is what an ocean offers.

And — sniffing the salt laden air, as one approaches the seaside, just adds to an ocean’s appeal.

I first became inspired by the ocean when in my teens, and I would sit by a summer sea in the evening and watch a full moon slowly rise out of the Atlantic. I promised myself then and there that I would seek to recreate such a feeling over my life span. Because it made my mind come alive, it becomes a catalyst of the imagination.

An ocean can reveal its infinite beauty – it can also raise its haunches in powerful strokes of stormy winds and tides to cause a show of respect.

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By Bob Spencer

Many readers will be aware of some of the story about how Fire Island was saved from the paving of a highway, atop a sand-dike that had been first proposed by Robert Moses back in 1924, when he first became head of the Long Island State Park Commission. With each major storm after that, Bob Moses came back time and again with his same idea. But here, this reporter will try to set down a bit more on how the people of Fire Island, and just across the Great South Bay pulled off a little miracle.
read more from "How Fire Island was Saved from being Paved Over"

Note: When reporters write about shore protection projects for the first time, or the article seems biased, FIA sometrimes sends comments to public officials as well as to the reporter. The following is an example:

To: Interested Public Officials

The following comments expand on points made in the article, “A Creeping Sensation For Fire Island Owners” NY Times, Long Island Section, Sunday, October 14, 2001.

1.               “Holes along Fire Island” Holes were in the sand bar offshore, not in the island itself. “Holes in the bar” allow wave energy to be focused, unblunted, on particular sections of the shoreline. If there are no holes (i.e., discontinuities) in the bar, it serves to remove most of the energy from waves by causing them to break well offshore.
read more from "October 2001 A Times article gets it wrong"

by Carole Paquette

(Reprinted with Permission of the Fire Island Tide)

Fire Island homeowner Gerard Stoddard has been president of the Fire Island Association, which represents more than half of Fire Island’s property owners, since February 1987. A native Long Islander and graduate of Cornell University and NYU Law School, he is a public affairs communications specialist active in coastal issues. From 1973 to 1986 he was vice president of corporate communications for SCM Corporation. In 1989, he founded the Long Island Coastal Alliance, a not-for-profit forum for research and discussion of national and Long Island coastal policy issues. His firm, Coastal Reports, Inc., publishes a newsletter dedicated to analysis of issues affecting coastal property owners, communities and businesses.

read more from "Fire Island Tide, June 19, 1998"

A Reply to FINS

In the Fall 1999 newsletter of Save Our Seashore, Inc., the Superintendent of the Fire Island National Seashore set forth his position on the proposed Fire Island Interim Project, a transitional shore protection effort designed to protect Fire Island beaches until a longer term solution known as the Reformulation Study can be implemented.

In the course of doing so he demonstrated a bias against the project. The Fire Island Association believes the Superintendent’s position would place properties and government infrastructure, both on Fire Island and on the south shore of Long Island, at needless risk in order to effectuate a policy designed to facilitate removal of private development from the barrier island. Supt. Dillon’s statement is attached. His major points are encapsulated below in bold­face type, followed by comments from the Fire Island Association.
read more from "1999 — Seashore Opposes Interim Project"