Montauk Beach Work Zone Watched Carefully

As work continues on the Army Corps of Engineers’ seawall along the downtown Montauk shore, the beach has been transformed as large sand-filled geotextile bags are piled up to make what is meant to become a 15-foot-tall, 3,100-foot-long impediment to ocean flooding during storms.

East Hampton officials have endorsed the project as a key, short-term protection while the town continues to advocate for a more natural beach-widening project that it is hoped the Army Corps of Engineers could undertake under its long-term coastal plan, called the Fire Island to Montauk Point reformulation study. 

Funding for that work has been authorized by Congress, and a final draft outlining its scope is due this winter, but town officials acknowledged recently that it is unknown just what the Army Corps will propose regarding Montauk. 

Opponents of the seawall, a number of whom were arrested for acts of civil disobedience during protests at the beach work site this fall, have said that the wall will result in a total loss of the beach seaward and to either end of the bags, and that it should not have been allowed under the town’s coastal laws, which preclude hard structures along the ocean shore.

They have questioned the contractors’ removal of a natural primary dune, in order to “tie in” the western edge of the sandbag wall, as well as whether it is realistic to expect that the seawall will ever be removed. 

A number have been keeping close watch on the work, documenting it in photos and on video, and continue to raise questions about the project and its impacts, including whether the work adheres to agreed-upon specifications. 

Town officials have weekly conference calls with federal and state representatives to keep tabs on the work, said Alex Walter, East Hampton Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell’s executive assistant, who is overseeing the project.

Working in 500-foot stretches from west to east, the contractor has put in sandbags for the wall as far east along the South Emerson Avenue beachfront as the Ocean Surf Resort.

The bags are to be covered with three feet of sand. Mr. Walter said this week that the first layer will be of quarried sand trucked in from an upland mine; natural, white sand excavated from the Montauk beach will be placed on top of it. The natural sand topping was included in the plan in an effort to maintain the natural look of the Montauk beach. 

The orange-colored quarried sand, which was thought to have been used only to fill the geotextile bags and not be mixed with the natural Montauk beach sand, has been spread across the beach in some areas, seawall opponents and other observers said after recent visits to the work zone.

According to Mr. Walter, the contractors used the sand to augment a work area that was constrained by rising tide and surf. “They are using some of that quarry sand to give themselves a barrier,” said Mr. Walter, explaining that it will eventually be scooped up and used to fill the sandbags.

“We were worried about that material when it showed up,” said Thomas Bradley Muse, a Montauk resident and project opponent who brought two samples of the quarry sand to a lab for analysis. The results are pending.

But, Mr. Muse said, a cursory examination, using samples of both the quarried sand and the native sand placed in jars with water, showed the quarried sample with many suspended particles in cloudy water. 

Mr. Muse, who is among the plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed last spring to stop the Army Corps project, said the impact of that sand on the ocean water quality is “wildly unacceptable.” 

He said it looks like the contractors are “building a berm” with the quarried material in front of the piled sand-filled bags. “I don’t know how you clean that up,” he said. In addition, he claimed, it appears that there is “at least two feet” of the quarry sand on top of the capped bags. 

Mr. Walter said that the Army Corps’s contractors, who are new to building this type of seawall, had difficulty at first creating the proper slurry mix of quarried sand and water, and pumping it into the geotextile bags. “It took them a little while to get the rhythm there,” Mr. Walter said. 

Sand fencing is to be put in along both sides of the sandbag wall to prevent people from getting close to the bags. It will be installed soon, Mr. Walter said, but the material that the fencing and fence posts will be made of has not yet been specified. Beach grass will be planted and protected by the fence. 

Town regulations on shoreline fencing allow only untreated wooden fencing and untreated wooden posts. Those regulations were strengthened in 2013 after lifeguards told town officials that old metal stakes once buried by sand but then unearthed were turning up in the surf zone as hazards to swimmers and beachgoers.

Town restrictions on the use of treated wood caused a delay in the installation of the walkways that will rise above the dune on pilings that have already been installed all along the project area. Mr. Walter said that approvals have now been issued for the timbers to be used. When that part of the construction will begin is unknown. 

While some project opponents have questioned whether the walkway would lead directly into the surf, Mr. Walter said that this week, at least, there is “plenty of beach on the west end,” and that the walkway is intended to allow people to get over the dune and down onto the sand. 

Town officials are waiting to see the outcome of the project before making plans for next summer’s beach season. 

The width of the downtown Montauk beach naturally ebbs and flows. On a narrowed beach, however, the seawall could take up much of the sand area. 

Decisions on how, or if, lifeguards would be stationed on what have been the downtown bathing beaches, or where beachgoers will be redirected should the seawall make it impossible to bask on the sand along the downtown stretch, will be made as soon as possible, Mr. Walter said.

“We really don’t know where the lifeguarded beaches are going to be,” he said.

He believes that the sandbag pile could be finished as far as the South Edison Street road-end — “enough to allow us to assess” — next month, giving town officials time to plan for summer.

“We did have some questions, initially” regarding whether there will be room on the beach for lifeguards or Marine Patrol access, Mr. Walter said Monday. Marine Patrol officers had previously established an open zone on the sand to maintain a clear path for emergency vehicles to reach different parts of the beach. 

With the seawall extending across much if not all of the width of the beach, those vehicles may be restricted to the nearby road. As part of the project, a vehicle access to the beach is to be built at South Edison Street. 

Contractors, who were to have finished the project by the end of next month, have pushed the completion date to mid-March, but residents carefully watching the progress have questioned whether that is possible.

Barring extreme winter weather, “I think it is realistic,” Mr. Walter said this week, “if you have a normal winter, not like you’ve had the last two years.”

“I think overall they’re doing a good job,” he said.