Trustees Urged to Take Stand on Army Corps Project

The Surfrider Foundation, an activist organization dedicated to protecting oceans and beaches, is vehemently opposed to the erosion-control project planned for the Montauk ocean shoreline, Mike Bottini told the East Hampton Town Trustees last week.

Mr. Bottini, an environmental consultant and naturalist who chairs the organization’s local chapter, appealed to the trustees on behalf of the 114-member chapter to publicly oppose the United States Army Corps of Engineers’ plan to construct an artificial dune from plastic-fabric sandbags, covered largely by imported sand and sand-filled “geo-tubes” at its seaward and landward edges. The project, which could begin next month, is intended to protect downtown Montauk, where several oceanfront motels are threatened by rising sea levels.

“The town trustees have always taken a hard look at coastal erosion-control projects with an eye toward protecting the beach, the beach being our most valuable asset out here,” he said. “Where there’s a conflict between protecting a structure, you’ve always taken a position that the beach takes priority. You’re not going to compromise our beaches to protect structures that were built on a primary dune, for example.”

While the trustees manage East Hampton Town’s beaches, waterways, and bottomlands on behalf of the public, the ocean beaches in Montauk are under the town board’s control. But when Mr. Bottini prefaced a comment by stating that the shoreline in question was not under trustee jurisdiction, trustees cut him off. “Be careful,” said Nat Miller. “We’ll decide our jurisdiction,” said Deborah Klughers.

Mr. Bottini continued. “This project in downtown Montauk sets a really bad precedent, and I think the town could use a little guidance from the trustees. It would behoove the trustees to inform the town board that this would not be looked on favorably by the town trustees.” He showed the trustees a document detailing eight case studies from around the world, all of which he said had detrimentally affected beaches.

The trustees oppose hard structures and are presently engaged in a lawsuit over a rock revetment built on the ocean beach off West End Road in East Hampton Village. They contend that such structures do more harm than good, resulting in scouring of adjacent shoreline and further loss of beach.

John Courtney, their attorney, voiced that position at the Feb. 10 meeting. “We have property to the west of that,” he said of the Army Corps project, “that we believe will be impacted by it. It’s going to interrupt the flow of sand from the east, down toward Napeague, toward Amagansett. It’s going to scour it. . . . It’s not going to come down the beach like it does naturally.”

Mr. Bottini asked that the trustees convey to the town board and the Natural Resources Department the position that “this kind of a thing would never be looked upon favorably elsewhere in the town.”

Diane McNally, the trustees’ clerk, said Tuesday that they had not yet addressed Mr. Bottini’s request as issues pertaining to trustee-owned land at Lazy Point in Amagansett have dominated their time and attention. “It is very concerning,” she said of the Montauk beach plan. “We had gone on record after Hurricane Sandy . . . as not being in favor of any shoreline-hardening structures in Montauk. We’ll probably come back to that at some point.”