Opinion: Worried about the Ocean Beaches of the East End

If you live near an ocean beach you understand that connection one has with the ocean. You notice the waves, when rough or gentle, the breezes coming in or going out, the cloud formations, the thunderheads and the tides. However, lately I have been wondering every year is there less ocean beach? Why? And has it always been like this?

Eight years ago I lived 452 steps from the ocean waves (at high tide) in Montauk at Ditch Plains. I walked my dog every morning at sunrise and around midnight along the sandy, rocky, or both beaches at Ditch Plains, depending on the tide. The first two years things were sort of normal, that meaning, on an extreme low tide there would be a 30 yards or more wide sand highway into Montauk Village that was usually underwater at high tide when the walk was just not possible.

Around 2007 in the winter a nor'easter came along and the immediate beach at Ditch right where I lived changed. Sand dunes I was used to were gone, replaced by red-clay like boulders. Over time they eroded into a red clay-like sand. Now that location is basically small rocks.

At the time, between 2004 to 2012, I was writing for both the Montauk Pioneer and Dan's Papers and was in constant touch with all the community leaders. So I called Larry Penny, the paid East Hampton environmental guru and set up an appointment to do an article on beach erosion.

When I finally met with him in his office he told me he noticed what I had noticed but said, over his 20 or so years, the beach came back on its own. He explained how there were some spots where erosion would take away beach and others where it might grow and why. He explained why on a Thursday, Ditch Plains may be a pebble beach and a few days later covered with natural ocean sand.

I felt better until I then went and interviewed a few motel owners on the ocean in Montauk Village and they had other observations; mostly being the ocean was moving closer and closer to their motel rooms or pools or both. The story never ran, it was bad for real estate advertisers so I had to rewrite it, something like "The Great Beaches of the East End," and I got paid.

Fast forward to aftermath of Hurricane Sandy and Irene. The federal government and local governments along with the United States Army Corps of Engineers have launched ambitious programs to rebuild dunes to contain the ocean waters from ruining towns like Long Beach, Long Island again.

Massive beach work and plantings were done along most of Fire Island and in Montauk to fight beach erosion and preserve expensive oceanfront real estate. They were/are noble, well intended efforts but as any Long Island surfer will tell you, Mother Nature and her oceans have a mind of their own.

So now in Montauk after certain storms cinderblocks and ugly sand bags are exposed and the beach is closed until the town can do costly repairs. All this damage without a major class 3-4-5 hurricane landing at high tide.

In that article years back that I researched, someone in some D.C. office was bold enough to let me quote him that should a Category 5 hurricane hit East Hampton (including, of course, Montauk) the damage to roads, power lines and other infrastructure would be, by the federal government's estimate, $500 million-plus, not including homes and cars.

That was more than 10 years ago. After Katrina, Ellen Stahl of Sag Harbor told me of how a woman she visited in Biloxi, Mississippi, where Katrina landed as a category 4-5 hurricane, explained the aftermath of 33 feet about sea level high tide in Biloxi saying, "It was like Hiroshima without the radiation."

A mother I telephoned interviewed in Biloxi said, "Biloxi was like a moonscape."

So I wonder and worry. I know people mean well with ambitious projects but I believe in the end you can't tame "Mother Nature" for long.

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