Rockaway residents fear beach restoration could be futile
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers begins pumping 3.5 million cubic yards of sand onto the peninsula’s badly eroded beaches, but critics charge it will just wash away without jetties and other permanent safeguards.
BY LISA L. COLANGELO / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Even as sand replenishment work gets done Thursday on Rockaway beaches and a new boardwalk (inset below) takes shape, some fear the lack of rock jetties and a seawall.
By next summer, the beaches in the Rockaways will have as much sand as they did in the 1970s, but it remains to be seen how long they will stay that way.
Officials gathered near the surf Thursday to highlight the coastal restoration program, while concerned residents complained that another tropical storm would return the beaches — along with their coastal neighborhoods — to the condition they were in last fall, after Superstorm Sandy.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has started a $36.4 million project to pump 3.5 million cubic yards of sand onto the peninsula’s badly eroded beaches, fortifying them against future superstorms and the raging Atlantic Ocean.
When the work is finished, the beaches will be the largest Rockaway residents have seen in almost four decades.
Rockaway residents, who lost their homes and businesses to superstorm Sandy, have been anxiously awaiting the sand replenishment, boardwalk reconstruction and other protection measures as another storm season looms.
Those who have taken an active interest in the work say the new sand is good, but they remain critical of the fact that rock jetties and other permanent structures, also important to shielding the coastal neighborhoods from the ravages of a superstorm, will not be built for at least three years.
“It’s mind-numbing that this could not be done simultaneously,” said John Cori, who started Friends of Rockaway Beach in 2011 to push for more shore protection. “We need jetties and a seawall boardwalk, or all the sand will wash away again.”
Mayor Bloomberg stood with New York District Commander Col. Paul Owen from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Parks Commissioner Veronica White and local lawmakers on Thursday to watch the first stage of the beach replenishment project.
Sand replenishment work has started along sections of Rockaway’s shoreline. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is working with contractors to pump dredged sand from the East Rockaway Inlet. Sand is piled up along sections of Beach 97th St. to restore the eroded shoreline battered by Superstorm Sandy.
White said she hoped construction of a new concrete boardwalk, “something that will last,” could start at the end of the year.
Bloomberg defended the restoration projects, saying they were proceeding as quickly as could be expected.
“I think that the speed that things are getting done here — it may not seem fast, but in terms of the real world — I don’t know any project of this magnitude that has been done this quickly,” Bloomberg said.
Under the first phase of the sand replenishment project, 600,000 cubic yards of sand dredged from the East Rockaway Inlet is being placed from Beach 89th St. to Beach 149th St.
A larger second phase includes an infusion of 3 million cubic yards of sand along the stretch of Rockaway coastline from Beach 19th St. to Beach 149th St.
“When the project’s over, you are going to see a very wide beach and it will probably be very flat,” said Dan Falt, project manager the Army Corps. It will be what people expect in Rockaway but they have’t seen in many years.”
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