Saving the Beaches: Time to Get It Right

Everything looks great on the downtown Montauk ocean beach at the moment, but behind the scenes a massive economic disaster looms and what could be a major political embarrassment is unfolding. Meanwhile, objections are being heard to a United States Army Corps of Engineers plan to expand the stone bulwark at Montauk Point.

At the downtown beach, thousands of plastic sandbags lie buried under an artificial dune after the completion of a roughly $9 million Army Corps project built under false pretenses and with assurances that it was temporary. This last point is critically important: Officials, including East Hampton Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell and Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc, had defended the work as a stopgap solution to protect shorefront buildings until the Army Corps released its Fire Island to Montauk Point Reformulation Plan. 

At the time, The Star and other critics pointed out that waiting for the Corps was a fool’s gambit — and so it was. In an announcement last week, the Corps said that Montauk’s downtown would be left out of a $1 billion-plus plan to shore up Long Island’s beaches. 

Town officials’ rosy belief that the Army Corps would return to make everything all right had been the key assumption in their justifying the project, which unquestionably violated town law governing the duration of such supposedly emergency measures. Under town and state law, emergency erosion-control structures, including the Montauk sandbags, are allowed for up to six months, with an additional three months possible, until permanent, nonstructural measures are in place. With the official completion of the downtown work in the spring, the sea wall would have been due to be removed right about now. 

There was one small bit of good news in the Army Corps announcement. Federal money can be used to keep the sandbags buried with sand. Maintenance of the structure was to be the sole  responsibility of the town and county. Hearings next month on the $1 billion spending plan are to be announced. 

Things get weirder still in Army Corps land. While it shortchanged downtown Montauk with a sure-to-fail half-effort, it appears ready to spend $18 million or more to increase the stone bulwark at the Montauk Lighthouse. This could put three much-loved surfing breaks and one of the East Coast’s greatest striped bass fishing spots at risk. In typical fashion, the Corps has said the work would actually improve the surfable wave there, but that is far from credible, given the Corps’s questionable engineering expertise.

Sadly, the South Fork’s state elected representatives, Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. and Senator Kenneth P. LaValle, sped a bill through the State Legislature giving lead agency authority for the Lighthouse work to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, whose staff looked the other way when laws were being broken to get the downtown Montauk project under way.

Considering the broken promises made by the Army Corps and apparent collusion among town and state officials now is the time to step back and seek independent analysis, not to rush into a new set of mistakes. East Hampton Town must take the time to get it right where the ocean shore — one of its greatest assets — is concerned.