Weekend storm erosion seen on LI beaches

High winds and rough seas over the weekend swept away large amounts of sand from several Long Island beaches already suffering from erosion over the winter.

With gusty, southeast winds on Saturday night, "Robert Moses got whacked," said Ronald Foley, regional director of the state Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation. At parking fields 4 and 5 of the state park, "You walk out to the edge of the dune line and it drops off four or five feet and high tide comes right up to the toe of the dunes," he said.

In March of 2010, the parks agency spent almost $1 million to place 200,000 cubic yards of sand on the Robert Moses beaches to replenish what was lost in a series of storms the previous winter. Now most of that sand has been swept away this winter.

Foley said the agency hopes to place 30,000 cubic yards of sand that remains in a stockpile at Robert Moses on to the beach, primarily at Field 5, before the end of May. He said some sand could be placed on Field 4 if there is enough sand to stretch that far.

Aram Terchunian, coastal geologist at First Coastal Corp., a marine construction firm in Westhampton Beach, said about 15 feet of dune on the east side of Tiana Beach in Southampton was eroded over the weekend, leaving a four-foot drop-off to the beach.

"We're lucky that there was pretty small damage, which I attribute to a very fast-moving storm and the fact that the west wind of the last few weeks has built up the beach," he said.

National Weather Service meteorologist John Murray of the Upton office said the next few days will bring some showers and astronomical high tides "but we're not expecting much in the way of winds," so no further erosion is expected.