Army Corps Is Marching In

The Army Corps of Engineers will be in Montauk on Wednesday to present its future plans for the hamlet’s downtown beach, under its extensive Fire Island to Montauk Point shoreline project called FIMP. The plan calls for the addition of 120,000 cubic yards of sand to the beach every four years, in front of the line of buried sandbags recently installed by the Corps.

Beginning at 6 p.m. at the Montauk Playhouse, Army Corps of Engineers representatives will present information. A question-and-answer session will follow at 7.

The proposal falls short of what town officials had hoped for, following the installation of the 3,100-foot sandbag wall, which was done after Superstorm Sandy under federal emergency authorization and was expected to be only an interim measure until the Corps could complete a more extensive beach restoration.

The town board has sought help from First Coastal, a specialized consulting firm, to prepare its response to the Army Corps’ draft plan.

The recent damage to the sandbag wall from Hermine, a tropical storm that had minimal effect here, illustrates “the inadequacy” of that project and of the proposal under FIMP to add sand every four years, East Hampton Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell has said. “What is needed to protect the beach and downtown Montauk is a major beach-fill project that would pump at least 1 million cubic yards of sand from an offshore source to provide the protection needed in the hamlet of Montauk,” he said in a recent release.

As the Army Corps prepares to come to town, Defend H20, an organization that staunchly opposed the Corps’ sandbag wall installation on the downtown beach on legal and environmental grounds, is taking formal steps against the new project as well. Defend H2O sued to stop the sandbags, but abandoned the suit in the face of an unfavorable initial court ruling.

The group, along with other opponents, predicted the sandbag wall would result in a loss of the beach shoreward. Putting such a structure on the beach, Defend H2O also said, is prohibited under state and local coastal policy.

Carl Irace, an attorney for the group, said that a “report of improper administration” will be submitted this week regarding East Hampton Town’s compliance with the federal Coastal Zone Management Act and its policies as articulated in the town’s local waterfront revitalization plan.

The report, to be sent to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which oversees coastal zone management, will, said Mr. Irace, outline “errors made by all levels of government during the review of the Army Corps revetment proposal.” Had the sandbag wall been properly reviewed, he said, “there is no way it would have received approval by the state.”

New York State dropped the ball, Mr. Irace alleged, with both the Department of State and the Department of Environmental Conservation failing to conduct proper reviews. The state “also improperly abrogated its responsibilities to the town, which clearly had no idea what it was doing — but also had no authority under law to do so,” Mr. Irace wrote in an email to The Star.

One other East Hampton Town project is included in the FIMP plan, a similar addition of 120,000 cubic yards of sand every four years to the beach near Potato Road in Wainscott, between Town Line Beach and Peter’s Pond.

In a separate endeavor, the Army Corps is also looking to add to a stone revetment armoring the shore at the Montauk Lighthouse. The plan, for which a comment period ended in June, calls for the addition of 15-ton boulders on top of the existing revetment along 840 feet of shore, in order, according to an Army Corps document, to provide “protection for the most vulnerable portion of the bluff that would directly endanger the lighthouse complex should it fail.”

The estimated $14.6 million federal project was originally authorized in 2006 and was funded by Congress in the post-Sandy disaster relief act. The plan was re-evaluated after Sandy and revised.

The Montauk Historical Society, which owns the lighthouse, agrees with the approach, but others, notably the Surfrider Foundation, oppose additional armoring of the shore and have instead advocated moving the lighthouse back away from the bluff.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo recently signed legislation sponsored by Senator Kenneth P. LaValle and Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. that will clear the way for the re-armoring project.

The Department of Environmental Conservation, which is needed to sign on as the required state “sponsor” of the federal project, had been precluded from entering into a financial agreement with nonprofit organizations such as the Montauk Historical Society; the legislation allows that to occur. It grants the D.E.C. commissioner the authority to undertake any project necessary to protect a National Historic Landmark, such as the lighthouse, from shore erosion. The lighthouse was given that designation, and deeded to the historical society, in 1996.

Both lawmakers endorsed the Army Corps’ lighthouse project in recent releases.

“The Montauk Point Lighthouse has been part of Long Island’s land and seascape for more than 200 years. This new legislation, combined with the national landmark status, will ensure that the Montauk Historical Society can continue their great work in protecting this lighthouse and ensure its existence for future generations,” said Assemblyman Thiele.

“Without this legislation, the D.E.C. cannot assist with shore erosion there,” said Senator LaValle in a release last summer. “The legislation provides a solution to the issue.”