The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will be rebuilding the beach in downtown Montauk as a part of the Fire Island to Montauk Point Reformation project (FIMP).
The beach will be widened by around 1,000 feet with sand collected through dredging used to strengthen the shore. The project is being funded by the Superstorm Sandy federal aid package.
Geotextile sandbags — used to protect shorelines — were placed back in 2015, and have since been eroded over the intervening years. The Town of East Hampton and Suffolk County have borne the cost to rebury the bags every year.
The current plan to widen the shore with dredged sand is aimed at preventing damage to nearby property, but some advocates see this as the wrong decision.
“It’s just going to prove over the long term that it's just not sustainable economically, and then environmentally,” said Kevin McAllister, founder and director of DefendH2O in Sag Harbor.
He mentioned that the replacement sand could still erode over time. For sand replenishment, he said that “the average lifespan of these projects is roughly four to five years.”
“Do you even know if that sand is compatible to the downtown beach?” McAllister asked. He added that, “Until that sand comes out of the pipe…you don’t know what type of material you have and how it’s going to behave under storm.”
McAllister suggested that the town instead considered coastal retreat — relocating some of the downtown buildings to a safer area further from the shore.
“That’s what I believe has to happen for protection of the downtown, building in an important natural buffer to sea level rise and storm energy,” McAllister said.
However, McAllister admitted that the idea is not yet widely accepted. “That’s a bitter pill to swallow,” he said.
He hopes that, sooner rather than later, this solution will be talked about more.
“We don’t want to lose walkable beaches to…climate change and wrong decisions,” McAllister said.
For now, the Army Corps is continuing to move forward with the sand replacement project, which is due to be completed in spring 2024.
