NOVEMBER 2019 • LONGISLANDPRESS.COM 9
SEA GATES
WOULD THEY WORK?
BY TIMOTHY BOLGER
As the region looked back on
the seventh anniversary
of Superstorm
Sandy
on Oct.
29, debate
surged over
proposals to build
massive concrete and
steel sea gates at the mouths
of major Long Island waterways
to mitigate future hurricane flooding.
Coastal community residents, lawmakers,
and environmentalists are
at odds over U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers (USACE) studies exploring
the construction of multibillion-dollar
floodgates in the Rockaway, Fire Island,
and Jones inlets to block Atlantic
Ocean storm surges from inundating
the South Shore. Also proving controversial
is an idea to build a nearly milelong
barrier at the Throgs Neck Bridge
to keep the Long Island Sound from
swelling the East River and flooding
New York City during major storms.
Most ambitious of all is the suggestion
to erect a 46-foot-high steel barrier
between Sandy Hook, New Jersey, and
Breezy Point, Queens to protect New
York Harbor when hurricanes strike
— but those residing outside the gates
fear it will worsen their flood damage.
“The proposals from USACE would
only further exacerbate the flooding
that occurs in these communities,”
said Peter Forman, commissioner
of the Port Washington-Manhasset
Office of Emergency Management.
He urged the Corps to instead build
seawalls around Manhattan.
Sparking the federal studies was the
2012 superstorm that killed 53 New
Yorkers, displaced tens of thousands
of residents, and caused $65 billion
in damage in the U.S. Afterward, $50
billion in federal aid was allocated to
fund reconstruction and storm surge
mitigation projects, such as raising
structures and rebuilding dunes
along the oceanfront on LI’s barrier
beaches.
Since
then, the
Corps has
been studying
how to prepare for the
next big storm to hit the
New York Metro area, which
is particularly vulnerable since it
forms a right angle, making storm
surge pile up. The Throgs Neck and
New York Harbor draft proposals
stirring up debate are among the
alternatives being explored in what’s
known as the New York and New
Jersey Harbor and Tributaries Focus
Area Feasibility Study (HATS).
The inlet gates are part of a separate
review known as the Nassau County
Back Bays Coastal Storm Risk
Management Study, which is also
exploring the possibility of a crossbay
barrier along the Jones Beach
Causeway to mitigate storm surge
flowing from the Great South Bay
in Suffolk County into the Nassau
County’s western bays.
HATS, which is further along in its
review than the back bays study,
acknowledges critics’ fears that such
hard structures can worsen flooding
for those on the wrong side of the
gate.
LAND SIDE
The U.S. Army Corps. of Engineers is
studying proposals to build floodgates
in local inlets. (ACE graphic)
“The closure of the barriers appears
to enhance ocean storm surge for
most of the simulated events outside
of the closed barrier,” the authors
of HATS wrote near the end of the
136-page interim report.
How the inlet and causeway floodgates
would impact the South Shore
of LI requires further investigation
than the 74-page back bays study
has gotten into. Both studies aim to
narrow down the Corps’ preferred
option by next year.
Whatever ideas the Corps settles on
are likely to face decades of debate.
By comparison, the Fire Island Inlet
to Montauk Point project, another
ACE plan to mitigate storm damage
for an 83-mile stretch of LI’s southeastern
shorefront, languished for
a half century and didn’t get
its $1 billion in federal
funding until after Sandy
hit.
Meanwhile, residents in some
low-lying communities who back
the plans grow impatient by the
glacial pace of the review process.
Freeport Village Mayor
Robert Kennedy, who had
been lobbying for inlet
gates, is eager for a quicker
solution before the next
major storm strikes.
He asked Corps officials
during a hearing on the
topic at Freeport Village
Hall in June, “Are you
going to start working on
the gates next week?” The
question sparked the only
laughter in the 90-minute
meeting, where the dozens
of attendees were familiar
with the slow speed of such
mind-numbingly complex government
projects.
Others, such as Steven Resler, a retired
New York State Department of
State coastal manager, who favors
seawalls for lower Manhattan, regularly
reminds people that strategic
coastal retreat — not rebuilding
waterfront structures destroyed
by flooding — has been required by
state law for four decades.
“We’re supposed to be moving out
of these fragile and important areas
and harm’s way, not spending
billions to try and maintain existing
structures and place new development
in them,” Resler said. “This is
not ‘resilience’ … nor is it ‘coastal
management.’ It’s sheer and willful
madness on the parts of engineering
and other consulting contractors,
the public, and government at every
level.”
IN THE NEWS
“The proposals from USACE would only further
exacerbate the flooding that occurs in these
communities,” says Peter Forman.
FLOOD SIDE
/LONGISLANDPRESS.COM
