FAIR HARBOR BEACH EROSION CONTROL DISTRICT - January 2002 Update
Beach
The beach continues to be in poor condition following the late summer
storms which, together with earlier erosion, removed as much as 80 feet of
dune in some areas. The front portion of at least one house is undermined
and several others are threatened. The damage area has been moving towards
the west. Saltaire which previously had minor damage, now has significant
beach loss. That's the bad news. The good news is' that our recent
November 2001 beach monitoring report, which tallies both on-shore and
off-shore sand, shows that Fair Harbor actually gained more than 13,000
cubic yards (cy) of sand since the fall of 2000.'Our very visible 47,000
cy onshore loss was more than offset by a greater offshore gain. Hopefully
this recent gain forecasts abatement of the damage that we have been
experiencing.
Permits
Some other positive news. We are pleased to report the submission of
applications for our dredging project. Coastal Planning has found suitable
sand at a "near" borrow site about 1.6 miles southeast of Lonelyville that
could be dredged at an estimated cost of$4/cy in addition to mobilization
costs of~$ 350,000 for Fair Harbor. The permit would allow for deposition
of445,425cy of sand. Although this would cost ~$1000/house/year with a
seven year bond payout (compared with average cost of $550 now), the
permit will allow, and we expect that we will opt for, a smaller project.
Previous project involved 179,000cy for Fair Harbor. Our permit
application is supported by an evaluation by Coastal Planning showing the
emergency nature of our need and significant possibility of an Island
"breakthrough" if no project is done.
A second set of applications have been submitted for trucking much
smaller volumes of sand, about 20,000 cy (a small fraction of the amount
to be dredged), for potential use in temporarily stabilizing houses that
have been undermined and possibly rendering the beach usable in case of an
emergency. We have been asked by the NYS DEC to support this application
with a short-form environmental assessment which is being submitted.
The National Seashore has announced that it will require more
environmental studies than in the past, indicating their opposition for
any project even beach scraping. FINS is strongly opposed to trucking'
However, it has not yet outright rejected our application for either
dredging or trucking.
What You Can Do To Help
Now that permit applications have been submitted, we need support from
federal or state elected officials to influence the permitting agencies.
As a first step, we are seeking members of the community who may have
friends or contacts with members of the government that may be helpful.
Please keep in mind that it is important to coordinate all actions with
our ongoing political efforts, our project partners, the FIA which is
active on behalf of our projects, and our permitting contractor, Land Use.
If you can help, please call a member of our committee.
Erica can be reached at (908) 654-5274.
Erica Fried, Deputy Commissioner, Frank Bums, Jerome Feder, Nevio
Maggiora, Wells Newell, Claire Walsh. FHBECD Committee
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