Sand is not the forever answer on Fire Island

In an emergency, it may seem reasonable to grab for any immediate remedy, regardless of the cost, especially if it involves our personal safety or the future of our homes. It also seems reasonable to ask for government’s help in dealing with such emergencies.

Certainly, this is the case for thousands of property owners along Long Island’s fragile South Shore who have seen a succession of recent storms carve away the protective beachfront and dunes in front of their quite expensive oceanfront homes. From Long Beach to Montauk — and especially on Fire Island — the impact of strong storms this fall and winter season has been devastating. The pounding waves of the Atlantic, hastened by rising sea levels from climate change, have endangered many homes that have been there for generations.

But these storms have also laid bare the folly of trying to fight nature by assuming that expensive sand replenishment projects are anything more than government Band-Aids for a much bigger problem.

Just a few months ago, Sen. Chuck Schumer called upon the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to perform emergency repairs to a multimillion-dollar beach rehab project completed last winter that was already falling apart on Fire Island, endangering homes from Ocean Bay Park to Davis Park. Much of the sand the Corps replenished had been swept away.

Building up storm-battered beaches is very expensive. Overall, by 2022, the Corps had poured some seven million cubic yards of sand to protect beachfront in that very same area at a cost of some $290 million. It’s part of a multiyear $1.8 billion Fire Island-to-Montauk Point shoreline restoration plan resulting from 2012’s Superstorm Sandy.

At first, the Corps said no to Schumer’s request, contending that recent storms didn’t cause enough damage to qualify for emergency repairs. Later, when public outcry mounted after even more storms, the Corps indicated it would reconsider but with no promises. Now, with the latest storms that wreaked havoc on Fire Island and across Long Island’s shoreline, Schumer has come up with a possible remedy for the moment. This week, he called for the Corps to add up the cumulative effect of all these recent storms — to meet the federal dollar-damage threshold.

Given the amount of damage that may be caused by even more damaging nor'easters this winter, the Corps should agree with Schumer’s plan for at least some emergency repairs at the most vulnerable and hardest-hit sites along LI’s shoreline. 

But many of these beach replenishment projects, like sand castles built by children along the beach in summertime, do not last long before they are swept again into the sea. This remedy is hardly a wise, long-term investment for taxpayers in dealing with the escalating problem of rising sea levels along a heavily populated coast. Band-Aid solutions can't continue to be the answer.