Winning Bid for Montauk Beach

The pieces are rapidly falling into place for an effort by the United States Army Corps of Engineers to protect the downtown Montauk oceanfront. According to a spokesman for the corps, a low bidder has been identified, and a formal contract could be signed within the next two weeks. Just when the work might begin is undecided.

Chris Gardner, a public affairs specialist for the Army Corps of Engineers New York District, said that nine firms submitted proposals. A bid of $8.4 million from H & L Contracting of Bay Shore was the lowest received.

"Generally, we would anticipate formally awarding a contract in the next two weeks or so, but that is pending coordination of things like bonding, insurance, etc. Once a contract is awarded, we would then begin working with the contractor to develop a more specific construction schedule," Mr. Gardner said in an email.

H & L Contracting is a veteran of several other notable projects for the Army Corps. It was the winning bidder in a $25 million beach stabilization on Coney Island awarded in September. Among its other recent projects have been dredging in Little Narragansett Bay, R.I., and in Great South Bay. It has done millions of dollars of highway work for the New York State Department of Transportation.

The 3,100-foot-long Montauk plan was developed in response to ongoing erosion made worse by Tropical Storm Irene in 2011 and Hurricane Sandy a bit more than a year later. Once work begins, the contractor is to excavate a trench on the beach in front of 10 properties, a mix of motels, condominiums, and private residences, and install a seawall made from some 14,500 plastic-fabric sandbags piled to a height of about 15 feet above sea level.

Following the completion of the sandbag wall, it will be covered by sand, most of which will come from an upland mine and be transported by truck to Montauk in as many as 3,000 round trips. Beach grass is to be planted on top of the reinforced dune, and several walkways and vehicle cross-overs will be built.

The Army Corps is planning the work in two phases to accommodate a demand from East Hampton Town officials that no construction activity take place between about Memorial Day and the middle of October. However, that requirement has made a tentative start later this month unlikely, according to a state official.

Mr. Gardner said it would be speculation to say when the work could begin. An attempt to reach a representative of H & L Contracting was unsuccessful.

Downtown Montauk's placement along the ocean shore is unique for Eastern Long Island and has its roots in a 1920s scheme by Carl Fisher to develop what he believed could be the "Miami Beach of the North." In Fisher's prescient vision, it would be an attractive complement to a resort he had built on Biscayne Bay. By the winter of 1926, there were 800 men at work, some building a bathing casino and ocean boardwalk.

Fisher's teams laid out the hamlet's streets, including one that lay seaward of the row of motels and condominiums that line the shore today. Until Carl Fisher arrived, what little business was done in Montauk was along Fort Pond Bay or well inland.

The stock market crash of 1929 and the Great Depression forced the Montauk Beach Company out of business. Fisher died about a year after the 1938 Hurricane wiped away his boardwalk.

Critics of the Army Corps project say that it will result in the loss of the beach and that necessary environmental view did not take place. Concerns were heightened when the project grew from about 63,000 cubic yards of sand to more than 100,000 in the final version.

Documents released by the Army Corps last week described other concerns. Brian Frank, a senior member of the East Hampton Town Planning Department, told the corps in November that changes to the town code might be necessary to avoid a nine-month time limit on sandbags on the ocean beach.

In October, the New York Department of State told the corps that while it approved of the project, future efforts should place greater emphasis on long-term risk reduction and resiliency, and account for natural processes and sea-level rise.

Yogi Harper, the president of Erosion Control Specialists of Nags Head, N.C., told the Army Corps in an undated letter that its design was inadequate. "Our review of the proposed shoreline protection for the Town of Montauk [sic], unfortunately, leads to a conclusion that the design will fail to provide the desired protection, and based on our experience it is believed that the design will lead to an early, if not rapid, failure of the protective structure."

Four environmental planners, including Rameshwar Das, who wrote the town's Local Waterfront Revitalization Plan, supported the project in a letter to the Army Corps. However, they said that a cost-sharing estimate for an annual maintenance cost of $60,000 to be split between the town and Suffolk County was too low and required more detailed analysis, particularly based on estimates of storm frequency during the project's 10-to-15-year lifespan.

They also said that replacing the downtown Montauk shoreline buildings with a "public beachfront park" would be a wiser long-term investment with the potential to generate more tourism income than the existing hotels.

Grace Musumeci, the chief of the Environmental Protection Agency's New York City office, told the Army Corps in September that there were shortcomings in its assessment of the project. She cited the sandbags' vulnerability to vandalism and their fate if they were exposed in a storm, as well as to threatened and endangered species such as sea turtles, marine mammals, and piping plovers.

While Peter Weppler, the chief of the Army Corps' New York Environmental Analysis Branch, responded in detail to Ms. Musumeci, he sent a form letter to all the others stating that "the proposed project represents a sound engineering solution to property damage concerns" and will meet environmental requirements.