News Release - Coastal Conservation Association New York

1-877-98-CCA-NY www.ccany.org

April 18, 2005 CONTACT: Ted Venker, 1-800-201-FISH

“There is no need for this project,” states Scott Holder, CCA NY’s Chair. “The shoreline at Long Beach is what is known as an ‘accreting beach,” that is, one where sand is naturally deposited, and the beach built up, by the littoral drift. The Corps labels its proposed project ‘beach restoration,’ but what they’re really doing should be called ‘beach disruption,” since their activity would merely interrupt already-existing processes that keep the beach in good condition.”

“Littoral drift” is the term given to the millennia-long process by which sand is naturally transported along the coast, in a generally north to south direction. “There’s always a temptation to look at a sandy beach and think that the sand that you see today is the same sand that you saw last week or, for that matter, last year,” notes CCA NY’s President, Frank Crescitelli, “but in reality, the sand that’s at Long Beach today may well have come from the crumbling bluffs at Montauk a few years ago. Next year, it may be at Breezy Point or Coney Island.”

Barrier beaches are high-energy environments that are constantly being shaped by wind and water. Although people often see them as fragile, they are actually very resilient structures that yield sand in a storm, then rebuild gradually during periods of calm. Over the long term, depletion and accretion remain in rough balance. In the short term, changes can be dramatic, and often tempt people to intervene and “save” beaches that have fronted the Long Island shore since the retreat of the last glacier. However, such efforts are both expensive and unnecessary, and in the end are often futile.

“The Corps claims that they want to protect Long Beach from the effects of a serious storm, something along the lines of a Class 3 hurricane,” says Holder. “To do that, they’ll dump tons of sand on the beach. That sand, mined offshore, is nothing like the sand that’s on the beach today. It will bury the jetties, destroying scarce and valuable hard-bottom habitat and depriving anglers who fish there of recreational opportunities. Because the sand is not of the same composition and structure it will break down in the surf line and create a sediment plume that degrades the nearby ocean, making it less attractive top bathers and marine life alike. The newly deposited sand will bury and suffocate untold worms, crabs and other invertebrates that provide food for fish and for migrating and resident birds. It will change the contour of the beach, creating a sharp underwater slope that is dangerous to swimmers and wading anglers. The sand will cost millions of dollars to mine, transport, deposit and grade. Worst of all, most of it will disappear in the first hard nor’easter.”

While undisturbed barrier beaches endure, slowly changing, for millennia, human efforts to interrupt littoral drift or otherwise alter the normal patterns of beach accretion and depletion are transitory. Jetties and groins trap sand and build beaches on the upcurrent side, while beaches downcurrent from such structures are starved of new sand and quickly begin to erode. Beaches “armored” or “hardened” with ripraps or seawalls usually disappear altogether, at least until the sea undercuts the foreign structure and causes its collapse. Sand deposited to “restore” a beach is quickly washed away.

“We’re not aware of a single occasion, anywhere on Long Island or elsewhere on the coast, where a single ‘beach replenishment’ project led to a long-term solution,” says Crescitelli. “Look at just a few examples here in New York: Dune Road, Smith Point, Gilgo Beach. In each case, so-called ‘replenishment’ has become an extremely expensive, never ending process in which sand is regularly brought in to replace that lost in the latest round of storms. If the beaches were allowed to shape themselves naturally, the result would be a more stable coastline, a healthier coastal and dune environment and a lot fewer taxpayer dollars spent pouring sand into the sea.”

“CCA NY believes that the Corps’ proposed Long Beach replenishment project should be abandoned,” states Holder. “Once the project is begun, it will take on a life of its own as sand, washed away in the winter, is artificially replaced year after year, continually degrading coastal habitat and making the beach less attractive to bathers and anglers. The only one who will benefit is the Corps itself, which will have one more make-work project to justify its existence.”