The Long Beach City Council Tuesday unanimously approved the city’s proposal to move forward with a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers storm protection project for the barrier island in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.
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The Army Corps’ $150 million project calls for building a dune nearly 16 feet above sea level throughout the limits of the city’s beachfront, as well as raising the beach about five feet from its pre-storm elevation and rehabilitating its jetties. The dune would be built in front of a new boardwalk, which is a separate project.
The resolution to move forward with the Army Corps plan was not posted on the city’s website prior to Tuesday's council meeting nor as of 10 a.m. Wednesday morning, and a copy of it was not presented to the public at the meeting. Jim LaCarrubba, commissioner of public works, told the council that the city has decided to move forward with the plan after receiving a letter from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers last Thursday, which he said approved its proposed modifications to a plan from years past.
“We’re ready to see this project happen,” LaCarrubba said.
The plan is expected to protect beaches neighboring Long Beach, including East Atlantic Beach Lido Beach and Point Lookout, but details about the plan for these areas have not yet been released. But the Town of Hempstead did announce Tuesday that it was the first municipality among four to authorize the plan. New York State and Nassau County must also approve it in order for the project to commence.
LaCarrubba and Thomas Peirro, director of Coastal Planning and Engineering, a Florida-based consulting firm that the city hired in December to assist with beach and coastal recovery efforts, fielded questions and comments from several residents about the plan. A few residents asked if the plan would address the bay side of Long Beach, along Reynolds Channel.
“I think the Canals are like a forgotten area,"said Boyd Street homeowner Peggy Wildstein. “The surge this time was predominately, if I’m not mistaken, from the bay … A lot of the damage that was done was done in the Canals area.”
LaCarrubba said the Army Corps has authorization for a study for the bayside that has already started, but it is a separate project that doesn’t have funding yet. “We’re already talking with Sen. [Charles] Schumer and Congresswoman [Carolyn] McCarthy’s office about trying to find funding in the Sandy Recovery Bill to go ahead and fund that site, so that the Army Corp can start that process on the north side of the city,” he said.
Hurricane Sandy washed some three million cubic feet of sand off of the city’s beaches, and under the proposal the sand to restore the beach will be dredged from a borrowed area about a mile off the shore at Lido Beach.
With the proposed width of the dune at 25 feet, some residents wanted to know if the plan would somehow make up for lost beach space. Peirro said that a berm would be built along the front of the dune, extend 180 feet south and slope into the waterline. “From the toe of the new dune to the waterline, you may be looking somewhere in the vicinity of 200 to 225 feet,” said Peirro, adding that this projection is “pretty close” to the length of the beach pre-Sandy.
The plan calls for rehabilitating 16 jetties, but LaCarrubba said the city is pushing the Army Corps to rehab all of the jetties. Under the plan, though, the length of the jetties will not be extended.
John Bendo, president of the West End Neighbors Civic Association, noted that the height and width of the proposed dune are similar to the dunes in the West End that that were wiped away in the storm. He asked how the dune would protect the city better. LaCarrubba said the higher elevation of the beach and the added berm in front of the dune would “provide additional protection that the city did not have prior to Superstorm Sandy.”
Other residents feared that the 16-foot-high dune would be higher than the new boardwalk, but the commissioner explained that the dune, measured from sea level, would be nearly two feet lower than the proposed wood and concrete structure. “We look at things as based on where sea level sits, not so much where you are standing and how high something looks,” said LaCarrubba, who expects the new boardwalk project will be completed before the storm project starts.
When asked for a timeline for the dune project's complete construction, LaCarrbbua estimated within three years.
The City Council in 2006 voted against a $98 million Army Corps protection plan, a prior version of which Congress has already authorized. Last week, U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer announced that the federal government would fund in full the Army Corps’ $150 million project, as part of the $60 billion Sandy Aid Bill the Senate and Congress approved in January.
“It’s the only project right now that can accept money from the Sandy Recovery Act,” LaCarrubba continued. “By utilizing this project, things are going to move a lot quicker.”
On Tuesday, the City Council also voted unanimously to amend a contract with Coastal Planning and Engineering to help obtain permits to restore temporary dunes in the west and east ends beach in Long Beach. “We need those reconstructed immediately,” LaCarrubba said.
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