Glen Cove, Lattingtown officials scramble to fix road, beach

Glen Cove officials are scrambling to restore a severely eroded city beach that was battered by the four March nor’easters.

They’re also working with neighboring Lattingtown to fix a pothole-plagued road to the beach that has been closed since January and deteriorated further since then.

“It looks like the road was bombed,” Lattingtown Mayor Robert Fagiola said of East Beach Road. “There are craters everywhere near the end, axle-breaking, wheel-breaking craters.”

The 1⁄3-mile-long road is entirely in the village of Lattingtown but it is the only access to Glen Cove’s Pryibil Beach, on Long Island Sound, other than a pedestrian gate. It also provides access to Lattingtown’s small, unnamed beach.

The low-lying road, which is bordered by wetlands, regularly floods, but this year the damage was especially severe because of the pothole-creating freeze-and-thaw cycle in the early winter of bitterly cold temperatures and snow followed by mild weather, said Darcy Belyea, director of parks and recreation for Glen Cove. The salt in the floodwater causes asphalt to more easily crumble, she said.

“The water was this high — at least three feet deep,” Mayor Timothy Tenke said as he stood on the road on a recent afternoon, motioning with his hand the depth of the flooding. “It was like a lake.”

More than a week after the March 21-22 snowstorm, water and silt still filled the potholes, some of which had grown to as much as 6 feet wide.

The potholes will be filled in the coming weeks, before the beach is slated to open on May 26.

Village and city officials say they are working toward a permanent solution to the chronic flooding problem, with a reconstruction of the road and improvements to the drainage system planned. The goal is to complete that work before the 2020 beach season begins, Belyea said.

A 1960s agreement divides costs between the municipalities based upon use, meaning Glen Cove likely would shoulder most of the expense, officials said.

Glen Cove officials also are determining how to restore the beach from what Belyea said is the worst erosion she’s seen on a city beach. The sand level dropped 8 feet in spots, causing the collapse of a ramp for people with disabilities that was built directly over the sand, to allow them to easily access the beach and the water.

“We’re going to have to brings thousands of yards of sand in,” Tenke said as he stood near a second access ramp, this one still intact but leading to a drop-off of a few feet rather than allowing visitors to wheel or walk directly onto the sand. In addition, the parking lot is littered with sea shells and other debris that washed ashore.

“This is not an easy fix,” the mayor said.