Ban Beach Barriers
It was folly for William Rudin to spend around a million dollars on an enormous erosion-control system in front of his Bridgehampton house, but at least he did it with his own cash. Elsewhere along the south shore, millions of taxpayer dollars have been foolishly wasted on shore-hardening structures. Close to home, the bay and ocean beaches are scarred by publicly funded groins as well as privately funded bulkheads and revetments, from Hog Creek Point in Springs around Montauk Point to Westhampton.
As the destruction of Mr. Rudin's folly has illustrated so dramatically, shore-hardening structures work only sometimes, and then only at the expense of downdrift properties. The Konecky house, immediately west of Mr. Rudin's, will fall into the ocean if it isn't moved back. The Kelleher house, at the end of Potato Road in Sagaponack and downdrift of the Georgica jetty, did collapse last week.
Reminiscent of those that wreaked the destruction along Dune Road in Westhampton several years ago, two beach-scouring northeasters in the last two weeks have delivered as strong a message as any waterfront homeowner or government official should need. The power and capriciousness of the ocean cannot be controlled. Groin fields and sand-replenishing, as the Army Corps of Engineers has proposed, or the continued approval of revetments and bulkheads by local authorities, are as foolish as they are futile.
Southampton Town has a 100-foot setback law governing new oceanfront construction, and has too easily approved too many variances. East Hampton Town's setbacks range from 50 to 150 feet along the bays and from 100 to 150 feet on the ocean. These setbacks and the protected Double Dunes, which stretch between the Village of East Hampton and Amagansett, have helped limit destruction here.
But strict setbacks are only stopgap measures against a rising sea. With waterfront development in both towns nearing capacity, neither has limited construction enough.
Rather than ban houses in flood-prone areas, the Federal Emergency Management Act simply mandates that they be elevated. FEMA regulations do little more than trigger the Federal Government's costly flood insurance program, the epitome of public funds serving private interests, at least along the nation's coasts.
Densely developed Southampton has only just begun to draft a waterfront revitalization plan. East Hampton Town began that work more than a decade ago, and the flooding and erosion portion of the report was finished two years ago. It would ban all shore-hardening structures on the ocean, ban perpendicular ones on the bay, and allow the expansion of existing structures or their reconstruction only when they are part of a cluster or when they serve some public interest, such as public access to the waterfront.
The law would not apply in East Hampton Village, however, where most houses were built years ago and where a number of trouble-making jetties have been built to protect them. Village beaches have been relatively stable in recent years, but this winter's events prove they are not immune to the forces of nature. Applications to harden the beaches in front of existing houses will become more and more common as homeowners seek to protect their investments from inevitable catastrophes.
It is time for the East Hampton Town Board to tackle the job of turning the flooding and erosion report of the Local Waterfront Revitalization Plan into legislation. Southampton Town must be prepared to take similar tough action as soon as its generic environmental impact study of the ocean coast, under way for several months, is done. East Hampton Village should re-explore its decision giving the State Department of Environmental Conservation control of shore-hardening structures there. And the Town Trustees in both towns should make certain that they are included in all waterfront decision-making.