With a sense of urgency, the East Hampton Town Board discussed the hiring of a surveyor to assess current beach profile conditions at Ditch Plain in Montauk and to determine the necessary volume and source of sand, its placement, and the cost to restore it to a healthy level.
Tuesday’s discussion followed winter storms that have eroded the dune, left a narrow and debris-strewn beach, and rendered the neighborhood vulnerable to flooding. The board also plans to issue a request for qualifications or request for applications to retain consultants in coastal morphology to guide a longer-term strategy to sustain the beach there.
The board also heard, during the meeting’s public-comment component, from Laura Michaels of the Ditch Plains Association, who said that the association has conferred with multiple coastal experts and heard recommendations regarding erosion, coastal processes, and storm impacts. A meeting with experts and a survey of the beach at Ditch Plain is to happen this week, she said, and the association is investigating the sourcing of sand for a potential, privately-funded emergency stabilization effort. “Right now, the first line of defense is completely gone,” she told the board.
Later in the meeting, however, Councilwoman Cate Rogers said that “it would be much more beneficial for us all to work together,” and that “everybody trying to run in different areas for solutions does not bring solutions. The last thing we want to do is create more vulnerabilities for folks, or give folks the idea that ‘this thing is going to help’ and it doesn’t.” Still, “the town wants to work with the community,” she said, “to find what’s the best thing we can do in the short term.”
The discussion was about recommendations for Ditch Plain as detailed in the Coastal Assessment Resiliency Plan, which was adopted into the comprehensive plan in 2022. Ditch Plain is one of the focus areas in the study, which states that the area’s shoreline “is experiencing significant long-term erosion,” its beaches and dune also seeing “storm and seasonal erosion, resulting in loss of land and increased vulnerability of building structures and roadways.”
But CARP’s executive summary also states that “the currently projected range of sea level rise will transform” East Hampton Town “into a series of islands with permanent submergence of low-lying areas, as early as 2070.” As manifestations of climate change grew exponentially throughout 2023, this winter’s flood events at Ditch Plain and in the hamlet’s downtown suggest an inevitability to the Montauk hamlet study’s long-range recommendation for a managed retreat from coastlines.
The discussion came during the early stages of the downtown Montauk portion of the Fire Island to Montauk Point beach renourishment project, or FIMP, which will have the federal Army Corps of Engineers depositing 450,000 cubic yards of sand on the downtown ocean beach. Despite the town board’s efforts to include it, Ditch Plain is not now part of that project.
Samantha Klein, an environmental analyst in the town’s Natural Resources Department, gave a presentation that, in addition to the hiring of a surveyor, featured potential actions including an erosion control district, for which the town would provide information on the process and guidance on bluff stabilization policies; communication of emergency management plans specific to Ditch Plain; formation of a committee of environmental experts to create scopes of work for resilience projects to mitigate flooding and erosion; establishment of “accommodation overlay zones” to require more stringent redevelopment requirements in high flood-risk zones, and increasing of design flood elevations to incorporate sea level rise into requirements. The town, Ms. Klein said, “might be interested in dedicating a budget line, even, to adaptation or resiliency projects.”
Councilman David Lys agreed that the town should immediately seek a coastal engineer to assess what measures should be taken to stabilize the beach and protect the neighborhood. “I am also immediately in favor of having contractors install sand fencing — whatever can give short-term temporary solutions there,” he said. “I’m also in favor of property owners coming and using the code to legally put in solutions that might protect their personal structures.”
“There’s other factors involved,” Ms. Rogers said. “There’s a rock revetment to the east,” at the Montauk Shores condominiums. “You can stand there and see the scouring that’s been done. How do we mitigate that? . . . That’s why it’s important to take a regional approach to the littoral system. So I would like to add a teamwork effort, a person that understands coastal morphology and geology, and an engineer as well.”
“Moving forward,” said Councilman Tom Flight, a Montauk resident, “we need to be perhaps more proactive with some of the homeowners in assessing what the future is going to look like for them.” But in the immediate term, “if there’s one message I would like people to take away: please, please, please, personal safety before anything else in these situations.” He urged residents to sign up for emergency alerts at the town’s website, “and take precautions accordingly.”
Supervisor Kathee Burke-Gonzalez said that the board should authorize by resolution the hiring of a surveyor as soon as possible — likely at its next meeting, which happens next Thursday.
