New Fire Island Breach Could Be Beneficial Unless Government Fills It In

For Long Island, New York, there is one possible bright spot emerging in the wake of Hurricane Sandy's whirling devastation last October: a new breach has opened up on Fire Island, the narrow barrier island that hovers protectively a few miles off the coast of Long Island's southern shore.

The once-contiguous stretch of beach at Otis Pike High Dune Wilderness at Fire Island National Seashore is now split by a 400-foot-wide channel that is being called "Old Inlet" because it occurs at the same site as a previous breach that closed in the early 1800's.

The result?

A potential improvement to the beleaguered health of the Great South Bay, the amniotic sac that sits between the mainland and the barrier beach and was declared an "impaired water body" by the US Environmental Protection Agency in 2010 – as long as the government leaves the breach open, instead of closing it as currently recommended and supported by New York State Senator Chuck Schumer.

The fresh exchange of clean water from the Atlantic Ocean into the bay that the "Old Inlet" breach provides could reduce the brown and red tides that chronically plague the region, devastating the local shellfish industry and often closing beaches to recreation.

These brown and red tides are a by-product of Long Island's high population density (between 1,600 - 4,700 people per square mile) as well as its' half a million septic tanks. Prior to the opening of the breach at Old Inlet, the Great South Bay was flushing itself of toxins only once every 100 days. With this new infusion of water from the Atlantic Ocean, however, that period has been greatly reduced, with estimates from the Save the Great South Bay organization putting the current flush-rate closer to once every 40 days.

An improved flush-rate complements some of the "soft infrastructure investments" suggested by NYS 2100, a new commission formed by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo that is charged with figuring out how New York should adapt in the long term to worsening storms and continued population growth. Turning some of the state’s industrial shoreline back into shellfish beds, wetlands, and tidal salt marshes that can filter the bay and absorb some of the force of incoming storms could protect the region moving forward. A cleaner, healthier bay will in turn protect the shellfish and wetlands.

Because of this, rather than immediate closure by the Army Corps of Engineers (as has been accepted practice), the commission's report supports a pragmatic approach to the Old Inlet, saying:

The State should monitor the impact of the Fire Island Wilderness breach on the barrier island, the bay, and the mainland to determine whether or not to close that breach in the near future. Limited monitoring to date suggests that the inlet is stable or closing slightly. This has resulted in improved water quality in Great South Bay and created a platform for new eelgrass and wetland growth, which may actually reduce flooding in certain cases (i.e., when winds blow from the west).

Another local, informed voice, Professor Charles Flagg from the University of Stony Brook's School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, analyzed months of tidal and aerial data in the online paper "The Impact on Great South Bay of the Breach at Old Inlet" and concludes that "there has been little change in tidal range" and:

The relative size of the inlet certainly suggests that the impact of the inlet on local flooding should be small, perhaps not negligible, but small. A definitive answer about the added risk of flood would require some detailed circulation modeling, but so far we have not seen any clear evidence of added flooding in the eastern Great South Bay as a result of the breach at Old Inlet.

This information is vital to get out to the public and policymakers because decisions about how Sandy-relief money will be disbursed are being made in Washington right now – and with the very best of intentions, requirements for how this money will be spent currently include closing Old Inlet immediately, an act that could do more harm than good to Long Island's environmental health as well as its' ability to withstand storms like Sandy in the future.

Despite the fact that the open breach is creating a cleaner, healthier bay that seems to align with disaster-preparedness goals created by the NYS 2100 commission, despite the fact that post-breach tide-levels in the Great South Bay have not risen, and despite the fact that it will cost taxpayers millions of dollars to fill it in, New York Senator Chuck Schumer is still committed to closing the "Old Inlet" breach, refusing to waver from the perspective he offered in a NovemberLong Island Press article where he stated, "Allowing the breach to remain open puts communities all along the south shore of Long Island immediately at greater risk of flooding.”

At the Yale 360 Environment blog, Rob Young, a professor of coastal geology at Western Carolina University, calls Sandy's coastal rebuilding projects ill-advised and environmentally damaging, in addition to being a possible misuse of public funds:

The (federal disaster aid) bill goes far beyond the immediate need for emergency assistance by funding a massive coastal engineering effort that is not based on science or wise planning. As currently proposed, the bill would give the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers roughly $4.5 billion to spend on coastal construction projects related to “flood control and risk reduction.” Most troubling, the bill requires the Corps to attempt to rebuild the New Jersey and New York beaches to their “design profile.” In other words, the Corps will work to put the beaches back exactly as they were before the storm, ignoring the reality of rising sea levels and intensifying storms as the world warms.

Are we basing federal disaster-relief policy on incomplete data? In a rush to help those devastated by Sandy are we actually endangering them, instead?