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News Release
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Fire Island Named as Among America’s Best Restored Beaches
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LINK: [
PDF file ]
FORT MYERS, FL - The American Shore and Beach Preservation
Association (ASBPA) announced today that Fire Island Beaches
are a winner of its 2009 Best Restored Beach Award. Many
believe that, for the foreseeable future, regular nourishment of
beaches with sand from offshore will be the primary way of
addressing the effects of sea-level rise on America’s
recreational beaches.
Fire Island, N.Y.: This project is a highly successful beach renourishment project built between January and April 2009.
It is the culmination of 16 years of individual effort among 11 communities leading to the largest and first joint project on the Fire Island barrier island along the south shore of Long Island, N.Y. The project demonstrates
how periodic renourishment aids in sustaining greater storm protection and recreational enhancement, instead of waiting until erosion has reached a critical point before action is taken. The project also restored the protective beach and dunes of one critically eroded community, and will aid in preserving the shoreline for future visitors to Fire Island.
Since 2001 ASBPA’s Best Restored Beach award has highlighted the
value of renourishing America’s beaches,” said Harry Simmons,
mayor of Caswell Beach, N.C., and ASBPA president. Americans
flocking to our coastline this summer often will not realize
they are using a beach created by engineers for their enjoyment,
and for the protection of nearby upland areas and shoreline
species.
Fire Island, the 32-mile long barrier island that protects the
south shore of Long Island, New York from the Atlantic Ocean, is
also a National Seashore, one of the almost 400 units of the
National Park system. Within the Seashore are two villages and
15 hamlets. Eleven of these, with the support and cooperation of
local taxing authorities, agreed to higher property taxes to pay
for the project, which is expected to have a useful life of five
or six years.
The participating communities were required to come together,
with four contracting authorities agreeing on a single contract.
This required assembling an Inter-municipal Agreement (IMA) Team
to resolve issues. At times, the disparate entities found a
single approach hard to imagine, much less implement. In the
end, however, they set aside differences and reached agreement
on protecting the beaches that define the communities’
character.
Because the project was to take place in a National Seashore,
permits from numerous federal agencies were also required, as
were others from state and municipal authorities. Also, a more
comprehensive project, involving the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers and New York State agencies, is pending in the region,
adding further complexity to the project.
Permitting began in fall of 2006, with the last permits received
in December 2008. This was only weeks before construction had to
begin to insure completion before the onset of Piping Plover
nesting season, when all activity on the beach was required to
end. The Fire Island communities showed unity of purpose when
the sequence of construction had to be changed in order to avoid
potential impact on Piping Plover nesting. Even with this
unexpected snag, however, and despite the difficulties of
working in the northern Atlantic Ocean in winter, the contractor
was able to fulfill the design specifications.
Commenting on the difficulties encountered, the Fire Island
Association, a league of island property owner groups, said,
Cooperative projects like this cannot be completed without the
active involvement of elected officials, in our case ranging
from the Supervisors of the towns of Islip and Brookhaven to the
offices of very busy U.S. Senators and Congressmen. Second, this
project demonstrates that people care enough about America’s
public beaches to agree to higher taxes to protect them from
erosion until government at the state and federal levels can
agree on long term coastal management policies.
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