LI needs real answers for rising seas

What is most striking about the recent severe erosion along the Fire Island shoreline is not that it’s from one devastating blow, like 2012’s Superstorm Sandy. Rather, the cause appears to be a series of no-name storms that chipped away at millions of dollars of sand repeatedly placed there to repair and protect our beaches.

Residents along the shoreline — particularly in Fire Island Pines and Davis Park — are aghast at the recent damage. “I’ve been coming out for 25 years. Our beaches have never looked like this,” Henry Robin, president of the Fire Island Pines Property Owners Association, said this week.

Fire Island residents have been joined in their concern by politicians from both parties who recently called for more help from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the federal agency most responsible for maintaining Long Island’s beaches. By June 2020, the Corps had poured some seven million cubic yards of sand along the shoreline as part of a $291 million Fire Island to Moriches Inlet rehab project. But a series of storms since then has swept much of that sand away.

The severe impact of these storms on Fire Island — the 32-mile barrier island that protects much of the Great South Bay area's populated South Shore — should be of concern beyond just the cost of another sand project. This should be considered another all-too-familiar warning of the threat posed by our rising seas.

How we respond to this emerging crisis will play out not only on Long Island’s coastline but in similar low-lying lands around the nation and world. One of the most immediate concerns is cost to taxpayers. The Army Corps has been once again asked to come to the rescue with more sand, more rehab projects. Overall, the agency is overseeing a $1.8 billion Fire Island to Montauk Point repair and restorations program that includes various projects along that 83-mile coastline. That effort against rising tides features home elevations, flood-proofing, buyouts of endangered homes, and sand replenishment.

But expensive and repeated sand projects are only a temporary Band-Aid to the problem of severe erosion from rising tides and intense storms. Many criticize hardened sea walls and rock revetments for aggravating the problem. Instead, they say more buyouts of flood-prone homes and greater reliance on building up natural defenses such as marshlands might be more sensible and inexpensive than a costly battle against nature.

That debate is only the beginning of a long process we must face in the years ahead to address rising sea levels. It will affect our economy, politics, social life and our sense of Long Island itself. The sooner we arrive at solutions based on scientific evidence — and what is increasingly evident with our own eyes walking along the beach — the better off we will be.