Letter: Coastal homes are doomed
The boardwalk in Long Beach on Oct. 21, 2014. Credit: Newsday / J. Conrad Williams Jr.
I'd like to offer coastal inhabitants an unfortunate reminder ["Infrastructure: Bid to protect LI," News, Oct. 29].
For 12,000 years, the shoreline has been drowning, and all the beach-barrier island environments still remain because, through storms, they continue to migrate landward.
As in the 1960s, storms periodically appear, and all attempts at stabilization or "recovery" have been temporary. Yet, the attempts continue via the Federal Emergency Management Agency and NY Rising.
It's good to see some families accepting fair market-plus value for their land and leaving. Most people have seen, but refuse to accept, reality.
Coastal sustainability is not stabilization, especially with the emphasis on global warming, accentuated sea-level rise and extreme weather. Elevating homes could prevent storms from reaching the living area, but the wave surge could still undermine the columnar pilings beneath the home, leading to tilting and collapse.
Sea walls also provide stabilization, but wherever a wall ends, the storm surge flanks it, crosses the narrow width of land or enters the bay, circulates for nearly an hour, and must then flow back out. Water that can't retreat where it entered is trapped.
People should accept any reasonable offer that returns their land to a county or state park. This should become a national policy, but when?
Fred Wolff
Ridge
Editor's note: The writer is a professor emeritus of the Department of Geology, Environment and Sustainability at Hofstra University.
