Buying Time

Twenty days and $11 million later, the dredger Ellis Island has departed the easternmost point of Long Island, leaving Montauk’s downtown with a wide new beach and a new temporary lease on life in its continuing battle with time, tides and global warming.

It leaves behind a looming question: Is that really money well-spent? Building a bulwark against Mother Nature built with a material that is the very definition of ephemeral and transitory? A “wall” that is designed to be breached, just a little more slowly?

But those aren’t the salient questions. The fact is, beach nourishment is, at the moment, the best, most cost-effective alternative to protect the oceanfront and human encroachment. The other options are either more complicated and costly in the short term (retreat), shortsighted and damaging to the beaches (hard structures), or heartless and misguided (doing nothing).

“Coastal retreat” is a wonderful concept and, in the end, the most sensible. The dynamic oceanfront is just too unpredictable to build as close as we have, drawn by the beauty of that sandy stretch. The only real solution is to move back and give the beach room to come and go as it has for millennia.

But that, of course, is terribly simplistic. In America, we agree that forcing someone to abandon private property, even if it’s for their own protection in the long run, is generally unacceptable. Incentivizing a move would be logistically difficult, crushingly expensive and will take decades of planning. East Hampton Town officials are starting that conversation, though it’s hard to envision Southampton Town jumping into the fray just yet. Best-case scenario: A working solution will be left for the next generation to implement.

The jury has long been in on hard structures, which typically do more damage than good — examples abound on the South Fork. At the very least, bulkheads come with a heavy cost: the loss of the beach to protect the landward structures. Jetties and groins disrupt a natural ebb-and-flow of sandy beaches. Their time has passed.

That leaves the “tough beans” approach: If you’ve built too close, or if the capricious nature of the waterfront changes, and your building is threatened … well, that’s what insurance is for. But, of course, it’s not that simple. Property owners would flock to the courts seeking redress, and they’ve got a long list of legal precedents to back up their desire to build protective hard structures to save the buildings, regardless of the negative effect. As one oceanfront expert said recently, everyone hated the sandbags on the beach in Montauk, but that $9 million investment did save at least $100 million in property losses.

At the moment, beach nourishment has detractors, and it’s a topic that’s worthy of vigorous debate. The federal government picked up the bill in Montauk, but future work is going to include local investment. And Southampton Town has an active concern west of the Shinnecock Inlet (get familiar with the acronym “WOSI”), and thus should be more active in the conversation.

As it stands, there are a couple of truths to anchor this discussion. First, beach nourishment works. But 1A is: Only for a while. Consider the return on investment for property owners on the beachfront in Sagaponack and Bridgehampton for a nourishment project a decade ago, but also consider WOSI, which has seen dumped sand flow away in a couple of unexpected winter storms.

Another truth: Dredging and dumping sand, essentially doing Mother Nature’s work for her, is expensive — but it’s the least expensive option at the moment. And, finally, remember that beach nourishment has one goal, and only one goal: buying time. Could be months, could be years — the dredge might not be seen for a while, or it could be back next year. But it pushes disaster off a little while longer.

What matters most is how that time is used to figure out the next phase of life on the shoreline. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has gifted the town a precious commodity: The Fire Island to Montauk Point commitment will actively manage Montauk, and other points along the shore, about 30 years to figure out an even longer-term solution. That seemed adequate back when FIMP was just a glimmer in some now-dead congressman’s eye. Today, with rising sea levels and more violent storms, it might turn out to be a blink of an eye.

But even as the clock is ticking, there is time to act. That’s what beach nourishment does: It pushes the deadline a little further, at a very high cost. The only way it’s a waste of money? If you waste the time.