January 7th 2009 • HOME •

Should the Corps of Engineers Retreat From Fire Island?

By Val Washington, executive director of Environmental Advocates (Albany).

IF THE U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has its way, it will be spending almost $600 million of federal taxpayers' money on Long Island beach restorations. Their projects stretch from Fire Island inlet to Montauk and stand to benefit a comparatively small number of mostly affluent homeowners who would only have to contribute a small fraction of the total costs.

The Long Island Beach Replenishment Plan, including one project completed on Westhampton Beach and two more in the works on Fire Island, is the resurrection of schemes killed by the Carter administration more than 20 years ago.

These renovation plans have also earned a place among the Top Ten Most Wasteful Corps Projects in "Troubled Waters," a new report by Taxpayers for Common Sense and the National Wildlife Federation.

The Corps got around President Jimmy Carter's rejection by cutting the plan into smaller pieces, dubbing them "interim" projects and proceeding with the blessing of some powerful backers in Congress. Happily, news reports now indicate that political support for one $70-million interim Fire Island project may be eroding at two New York State departments and the U.S. Department of Interior. Certainly it would be better for the environment and the taxpayers if the entire project was permanently shelved.

The basic idea behind the projects is to prevent breaches in barrier islands, which lead to mainland flooding. But the Corps' plan could damage offshore wildlife habitat and wouldn't necessarily solve flooding problems. The Long Island plan would require more sand-pumping at least every five years, most of it at public expense. Some coastal geologists have warned that interfering with natural beach processes may actually increase the risk of flooding.

Extensive development in this area is threatening ecologically sensitive sections of Fire Island, a federally protected National Seashore. Coasts provide vital breeding and feeding grounds for fish, sea turtles, shellfish, birds and other wildlife. Mining offshore sand destroys offshore habitat, and dumping it on beaches smothers tidal wildlife. Over time, beach replenishment fundamentally alters the barrier island ecosystem.

Long Island is not alone in facing environmental problems raised by the Army Corps' proposals. Although some Corps projects do contribute to the nation's economic development, numerous others demonstrate an overreaching effort aimed at controlling nature, and a dangerously naive belief that human engineering has the capacity to fundamentally replumb and reshape our nation's rivers, floodplains and coastlines with few, if any, adverse consequences. From the Mississippi Delta to the Snake River in Idaho to the Savannah Harbor, the Corps is destroying wide expanses of the nation's estuaries and coastlines, at taxpayers' expense.

A big part of the problem is that the Corps has historically been one of the key levers Congress has used to pull pork-barrel projects into individual congressional districts. Such is the case with Long Island beach replenishment. The Fire Island Association, representing owners of expensive beachfront homes on the barrier island, has wielded its political influence to secure a deal in which, according to some estimates, homeowners would pay less than 7 percent of the project's construction costs.

The Corps of Engineers is at a crossroads. The 19th-Century thinking that we can ditch, drain, straighten, dam, levee, control and defy Mother Nature is changing. In 1990, environmental restoration joined flood control and navigation as a primary mission of the Army Corps of Engineers, demonstrating a positive move by Corps leadership toward a more ecologically sensitive approach.

While part of the Corps is looking toward the 21st Century, another part is stuck in the past.

In the case of Long Island beach replenishment, the agency should reevaluate the long-term costs of all such projects and reconsider its mission there. And policies should be put in place to discourage hazardous coastal development that threatens the environment and commits government to doing little more than throwing buckets of money to hold back the ocean.

From Newsday, 19 March 2000; reprinted with the author's permission.

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