C R Y D E R P O I N T 6DECEMBER Against the Wall Rebuilding begins on FAILING SEA WALL After three crippling storms and four years of planning, the battered sea wall protecting Cryder Point is finally set to be replaced. Work on the first part of project, replacing the sea wall, is scheduled to begin in December and is estimated will cost about $2.5 million. If all goes according to schedule, the seawall will be completed in about 3-4 months, and the balance of the project will be done by this time next year, say members of the Cryder Point board. “We live on a great piece of property because it is right on the water,” says board member Lou Garcia. “But because we’re on the water, the buildings and the wall that’s supposed to protect us take a beating from the water and the salt air.” The project is designed to insure the job will not have to be done again for a generation, he says. “We have had two different engineers on this project with two different designs,” explains fellow board member Phil Resnick. “And a third engineer provided yet another opinion on the whole thing. It will be done right.” Proposals to rebuild the sea wall have been discussed off and on since at least 2011, say the board members. But conditions at the shoreline have been deteriorating much faster than predicted. Three storms over the past four years are to blame for the damaged wall which protects the foundation of the three buildings from the encroaching waters of Long Island Sound. It began with Most of the cement pointing between stones has been washed away here. Hurricane Irene in August 2011 – the worst storm to strike the city in 40 years, it was noted at the time. Flooding from the storm closed the Holland Tunnel in Manhattan and came within a foot of inundating the subways and car tunnels. One man drowned off City Island while checking on his boat during the storm. At Cryder Point, many of the drain pipes under the property simply collapsed, and the water had no place to go but over the edge of the property, behind the bulkheads. After the storm it was discovered that pressure from the water had torn a gap in the seawall at its western edge by the pool. “Originally, we were thinking of doing it piecemeal, over time, starting with the collapsed western section of the wall,” said Garcia. “We were in the process of designing a fix for it when Sandy happened a year later,” Resnick said. The Superstorm that wreaked so much damage on New York in October 2012 – the most expensive natural disaster in city history – did yet more damage to the western-most edge of the wall. The hole was now much bigger and nearly all the 6 CRYDER POINT COURIER | DECEMBER 2014 | WWW.QUEENSCOURIER.COM cement pointing in the wall was washed away. “All I can say is it that hundred-year storms seem to be coming every two years now,” says Garcia. “The engineer’s recommendation was ‘Replace the whole thing.’ About 20 years ago, a system of underground drain pipes was built to direct heavy water runoff into the Sound. At the same time, a terraced slope was built above the wall to keep erosion from eating at the land along the property’s edge – by the swimming pool and playground. “It should have lasted 50 years, but it didn’t,” Resnick said. “Eventually the drains collapsed. When there was a storm, the water was pouring over the top.” Water running off the pool deck, for instance, created a sink hole in the adjacent playground, forcing the co-op to declare the entire area off limits. The final straw came just last May, when a sudden spring storm dumped more than three inches of rain on the area in less than an hour. Water from the storm ruptured the eastern section
CP122014
To see the actual publication please follow the link above