By Doug Miller
But even with images of the nightmare in New Orleans filling television screens around the globe, the revamped Army Corps plan holds steady at protecting against a Category 3 storm, and would not protect Long Beach, or the inland communities north of the city, from the Big One.
The Army Corps has kept a wary eye on the beaches along the barrier island since at least the 1960s, and the first rehab project -- which was never implemented -- was unveiled in the mid-1980s. While it is the Long Beach City Council that has the final say on whether its beaches get rebuilt, the entire South Shore has a stake, since the costs would be covered by the state and the Town of Hempstead as well as the city. And the plan is meant to protect the inland communities of Oceanside, Island Park, Baldwin and the Five Towns as well.
"A lot of it is based on risk," said Cliff Jones, the project director for the Army Corps of Engineers. "There is a level where you ask, 'Where do you maximize benefits associated with that risk?'"
The beach restoration project, slated to begin next summer but on hold indefinitely until a plan is agreed on, would cover the beaches from Point Lookout to Nevada Avenue in Long Beach's West End. The most recent version of the plan, which city officials and much of the public decried, involved pumping more than 7 million cubic yards of sand onto the beach to raise a large section of it, called a berm, to an elevation of 10 feet above the high-tide line. In addition, a 5-foot-high dune would be created on the inland side of the berm, 25 feet south of the boardwalk, which would, in theory, top off two feet below the level of the boardwalk.
This version of the plan would cost more than $90 million, with the federal government picking up $60.3 million and the state another $22 million. Long Beach would kick in $5.9 million, the Town of Hempstead, $3.75 million, and Nassau County, $22,500.
However, strong public resistance has essentially killed the plan, and a new one, in which the dunes would be built under the boardwalk, is now being floated. "We have been working with the Town of Hempstead, the City of Long Beach and the state of New York on revising the plan," said Jones. "The most significant of the changes is the extent of the dunes."
The city will insist, however, that any beach reclamation include rehabilitation of the groins that divide the beaches. To avoid a full-scale shutdown of the beaches, the Army Corps would rehabilitate one or two at a time.
The original proposal also put Long Beach on the hook for $600,000 in annual maintenance. City Manager Charles Theofan said that the revamped project would come with a significantly smaller price tag, both for the initial hit and the annual maintenance, but he said the numbers weren't known yet.
The project will not be given another public hearing until after the Nov. 8 City Council election.
In June, the Long Beach chapter of the Surfrider Foundation, an environmental watchdog group, informed the city that it would not back any plan that did not meet certain criteria, the most important of which is limiting the berm to no more than four feet above the high-tide line.
Erika D'Avanzo, the environmental chairman of Long Beach Surfrider, who just returned from rescue work near New Orleans, added that where the Army Corps builds the dunes in Long Beach is irrelevant. "In a Category 3 storm, everyone needs to evacuate, period," she said. "These dunes will just give you some more time to evacuate."
She criticized the Army Corps because, she said, it has never addressed the issue of flooding from Reynolds Channel, which is especially prevalent in the Canals and the West End.
She added that a berm higher than four feet could lead to scarping -- the mid-beach cliffs that sometimes appear at low tide -- and could also help create rip currents.
Her foundation comprises as many surfers as it does environmentalists, and the protection of surfing in Long Beach is a priority. To that end, the group warned in June that it would fight any plan that called for the disturbance of groins on the busiest surfing beaches, specifically Pacific, Franklin, Lincoln, Lafayette, Washington and Laurelton.
But the grim images of the destruction of New Orleans, Theofan responded, "trivializes" the Surfriders' arguments to protect surfing.
As before, the city has the option of doing nothing and reaping limited benefits from a modified plan the Army Corps has developed that would only rehabilitate the beach at Point Lookout. The city would gain because currents naturally carry sand west. In effect, Long Beach would be the recipient of free sand.
For that reason, the Village of Atlantic Beach and East Atlantic Beach have opted out of the plan. By doing nothing -- and paying nothing -- they still stand to gain. Because East Atlantic Beach's beaches are private, or residents-only, and funded by line items on local property-tax bills or beach club members' dues, the area gets to keep its privileged status by saying no to the Corps. And if the Long Beach project were undertaken, even though it would technically end at Nevada Avenue, on Long Beach's western border, East Atlantic Beach would benefit from "incidental tapering" and a substantial influx of new sand, according to Anthony Ciorra, the former project manager who now heads up all beach reclamation projects for the Corps of Engineers.
Ciorra warned last November that the price of inaction would be leaving the region unprotected in case of a Category 3 storm. The project is designed to protect against violent surf up to 12 feet high. "People think it won't happen, because they don't remember it ever happening," Ciorra said. "But it has happened, and it will happen again."
And given the images of a destroyed New Orleans, the Army Corps' Jones said the idea of designing a beach that could protect the city from nature's worst was tossed around. "We could maximize [the project] all the way to a category 5, to a 500-year event," he said. "But what is the likelihood that that event is going to hit us? Some of that tradeoff has to be recognized."
Comments about this story? DMiller@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 213.
