Efforts to shore up Long Beach

I was very interested to read about the progress in Long Beach to protect the beach with jetties, dunes, sand replenishment and sea walls along the boardwalk [“Putting the beach back in Long Beach,” News, Aug. 19].

However, as long as the inlets act as expressways that can bring tidal surges into the back bays, all the communities on the bays of the South Shore remain sitting ducks in the face of a hurricane.

In 2016, I attended a presentation by the Army Corps of Engineers about this topic, and retractable flood gates at the inlets were discussed. I have heard nothing on the topic since. While the improvements at the beach are important, they represent no more than a piece of chewing gum in a leaking dam as long as there is no complementary program to install retractable tidal flood gates at the South Shore inlets.

Let’s not wait for the next big one to hit to learn the hard way that the inlets must be addressed. There are many examples around the globe where this type of system has worked. As we approach the sixth anniversary of superstorm Sandy, we already should have progressed on this critical capital project that would save tens of billions of dollars in the event that another Sandy-type storm hits us.

Ray Xerri, Oceanside

The story on the Long Beach project reminded me of dunes perhaps 60 feet high on Fire Island that ran parallel to the ocean on both sides of Moriches Inlet in the 1940s and 1950s. Today, I can stand at Moriches Bay in Mastic Beach, look across to Fire Island and see the ocean. Those dunes? All gone, never to be seen again.

So with the first major hurricane or winter storm, much of those seven miles of sand that are being pumped onto Long Beach Island at a cost of $230 million will get washed back into the ocean, leaving the beach just as before.

Thomas W. Smith, Riverhead