Have No Fear, Sand is Here
Volume 49, Issue 10
By David Crohn

Newsflash: There’s sand on the beach.

Or, to be precise, there’s more of it, in the dunes—which is just where it should be, thanks to the beach replenishment projects that brought the much-needed stuff to four communities on Fire Island.

Two weeks ago beaches in Kismet, Ocean Bay Park, Point O’ Woods and Davis Park were scraped by bulldozers, which built piles that were pushed up against the dunes about a week later by payloaders.

Precise grain figures were unavailable at press time, but according to officials, 60 cubic feet of sand for each linear foot of beach was dredged and moved.

The work was supervised by the Land Use Ecological Survey (LUES), which is licensed by the state, the federal government and either Islip or Brookhaven. Permits allow beach scraping from April 1 to August 15, but because of the nesting habits of the endangered piping plover, the work is usually not done until the end of the summer.

Chuck Bowman, a LUES consultant, said Kismet—the only community to have the entirety of its dunes replenished this year—is in especially good shape this year.

“[Kismet] has a pretty good dune system now, all from being rebuilt,” he said of the 10,000-foot stretch.

Beach replenishment, undertaken periodically all over the island, is paid for by taxpayers. In Davis Park, for instance, considered by many to be eroding the fastest on Fire Island, the average annual cost is $230 per household.

Replenishment is done for the year, Bowman said, but the LUES will continue to maintain a presence on Fire Island.

“During the winter we will monitor [the beaches]. We’ll keep track of the length, width and height of the dunes,” he said.

Critics of beach scraping have said that it may improve dunes but actually contributes to erosion from the beach front, which is where sand is taken from, but Bowman disputes that claim with facts and figures he and the DEC have collected over the years.

“If you compare the beaches that have been scraped and not, you’ll see no difference. Does it work? Yeah, it absolutely does. It’s a controversy all over the East coast, but it works. Look at the dunes,” he said.