14
BROOKLYN WEEKLY, FEBRUARY 9, 2020
SAND DUNES
maybe six feet of wet sand.”
Locals eventually adapted to the
new reality, enjoying their man-made
beach — even if it caused the occasional
drain backup and sand accumulation.
But the dunes started to grow as
the US Army Corps and the Parks
Department continued to dump
thousands of pounds of sand onto
the beach’s southern shore — which
would migrate up to Gravesend Bay.
The Corps and the Parks Department
have conducted several sand
removal projects on the northern
shore and constructed new terminal
groins in 2016 to help prevent the
buildup, but residents say that conditions
only worsened — and have
reached a breaking point.
“This year is the worst year I’ve
seen,” said Ceretti.
These days, the sand dune is fortified
above the walls that surround
Sea Gate, often spilling over the
fences and covering residents’ yards
like snow.
Homeowners who live in the
dozen-or-so houses along Ocean
View Avenue complain that the giant
dune blocks their view of Gravesend
Bay and causes a plethora of consequences.
“It takes over our backyard and
causes all kinds of damage,” said
Patrick Fioriglio, who lives on the
maritime roadway next to the bay.
“There’s health problems. There’s
breathing problems.”
Sea Gate residents can navigate a
number of bureaucratic hurdles each
year to obtain a permit and hire a
bulldozer to plow the sand back into
the ocean — but even then, their relief
is only temporary.
“Every year we have to push back
the sand, it blows back, we push back
the sand, it blows back,” said Fioriglio.
Ceretti added that residents fork
over around $15,000 every year for
the unsustainable plow job.
Much of the blame lies at the feet
of the Parks Department, according
to locals, who accuse the city’s greenspace
gurus of failing to do their part
to clear the sand from the public side
of the fence that borders the private
Sea Gate community — which allowed
the wall to build up in the first
place.
“If the city kept their side of the
fence clear, Sea Gate would have a
much smaller issue to contend with,”
said Ceretti.
A representative from the US
Army Corps of Engineers did not
say whether the additional sand on
the southern shore may have caused
the gigantic sand dune to grow, but
claimed that the t-groins have prevented
conditions from worsening.
Army Corps maps, above, show how the sand has gathered along the Coney Island coast, causing nearby
homes to be surrounded, below. Photos by Derrick Watterson
Continued from page
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