Wider Beach, Sandbag Groins in Inlet Plan

The Army Corps of Engineers presented a plan for the Montauk Inlet on Tuesday that would combine dredging with a project to bolster the shoreline to the west.

A number of alternatives involving trucking in sand and/or using sand dredged from the shoaled-in inlet to build up the beaches along Soundview and toward Culloden Point have been under discussion for years. Some included the use of shoreline structures to trap and hold the sand, which naturally moves from east to west.

The Army Corps’s recommended course of action is to add enough dredged sand to create a 10-foot-wide beach and to install several groins made of sand-filled geotextile bags at intervals along the beach to contain the loose sand, Steve Couch of the Army Corps said on Tuesday. The proposal meets the federal agency’s standards of cost-effectiveness and maximized net benefit.

But “it’s your project; you get to have a voice,” Gene Brickman, an Army Corps deputy chief planner, told the town board and others in the audience. “You can recommend an alternative plan. We’re not just saying, ‘Here’s the  project. Take it or leave it.’ ”

However, a decision is needed “in the April time frame,” he said.

Money authorized following Hurricane Sandy is available to get the project done at mostly federal expense, Mr. Brickman said at a town board meeting at the Montauk Playhouse, but the town must give its initial okay within several weeks in order to maintain a good chance of gaining the funding. “This is a real opportunity; you have a chance to get a project. The time to act is now. There’s lots of projects competing for the same pot of money.”

Montauk Inlet, a federally designated navigation channel, is dredged by the Army Corps every three years, with a goal of dredging to a depth of 12 feet.

Commercial fishermen have long said a deeper channel is needed and that the occasional dredging does not maintain the channel at even the 12-foot depth.

While dredging to a deeper level — a separate process that could be pursued — has not been federally authorized, Mr. Brickman said that the deeper dredging could nonetheless be accomplished as part of the project under discussion.

Under a cost-sharing scenario, federal money would cover 80 percent of the approximate $10 million cost of the groin construction option, with New York State to contribute 15 percent, and the town 6 percent.

The Corps’s recommended alternative raises a number of questions and issues including compliance with the town’s local waterfront revitalization plan regarding the installation of shorefront structures such a groins.

Public access to the bolstered beach, perhaps requiring the town to purchase land, or easements, or to acquire land through eminent domain, would be required.

A second alternative meeting the Army Corps’s standards would require the town to kick in more funding.

Under that scenario, which would eliminate the groins, the beach would be rebuilt to a width of 70 feet, using 400,000 cubic yards of sand dredged from offshore. The inlet channel would be dredged every 10 years and that sand added to the western beach. The channel’s routine dredging, a separate effort, would continue.

At the town’s request, the corps could analyze the feasibility of building a wider beach without the groins, said Mr. Couch. Should the town ask instead for that project, estimated to cost $21 million, none of the additional cost could be borne by the Army Corps, Mr. Crouch said.

Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell issued a call for public comment about the proposals. “We’re going to certainly seek all the answers that we can through this process, but we’d also like to know how you feel,” he said at Tuesday’s meeting.

The Army Corps proposal will be posted online at the Corps’s New York District website for review.