On Long Island Coast, An Unexpected Gift From Hurricane Sandy

[xchrom]

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/11/on-long-island-coast-an-unexpected-gift-from-hurricane-sandy/281423/


An aerial photograph of the inlet taken on September 15, 2013. (Charles Flagg)

In the mid-1980s, Long Island’s Great South Bay turned the color of Earl Grey tea. It was the first outbreak of an algal bloom known as the brown tide, and it would return year after year, fueled by pollution from the island’s septic systems. Over three decades, it would wipe out thousands of acres of underwater grass, contribute to the demise of a once-booming shellfish industry and make the shallow, 45-mile lagoon a symbol of the suburban island’s troubled relationship with water.

Then, a year ago, Hurricane Sandy blasted a new inlet through Fire Island, the slender barrier island separating the Great South Bay from the Atlantic Ocean. Fishermen began to spot river herring, fluke, weakfish, sea turtles—even a seal that popped its head up alongside a dock—in a formerly stagnant, eastern swathe of the bay. Scientists watched water there grow clearer and the brown tide weaken and dissipate more quickly. As the year passed, parts of the Great South Bay started to look a bit more like the body of water many Long Islanders remember swimming in as children and scouring for shellfish in young adulthood.

It’s now a year since Hurricane Sandy made landfall, and the new waterway remains a fiercely debated piece of the storm’s legacy in New York State. Teams of scientists putter around it in skiffs. Residents pack high-school auditoriums to argue over whether it represents a blessing or a threat. Anglers flock to the scattered shoals at its mouth, and beachgoers walk a mile down the shore to bathe in it. A trio of governmental agencies continue to consider plugging it with sand.

Some fear the breach—now roughly the width of two football fields laid end-to-end—will magnify the power of the next superstorm, allowing more water to fill the bay and crash along the coast. “It’s a giant hole,” said Aram Terchunian, a Long Island coastal geologist who has worked as a consultant on other breach-closure projects. “What do you think is going to happen? You’re going to get a storm surge, water’s going to come flooding in through the inlet and it’s going to fill up the Great South Bay. It’s not rocket science.”

[Demeter]

1. Let Nature Do Her Thing, for Crying Out Loud!

and get the hell out of her way. Nobody is "entitled" to a beach front property who can't afford to lose it to a natural event.

[xchrom]

2. we had a double whammy of that in cali.

people building and living in frequent fire zones and on the vulnerable cost line.

and in places like malibu -- the 2 meet up.

[Demeter]

3. That's why I cannot understand living there

If the earthquakes don't get you, the mudslides/wildfires/drought/riots/corruption/freak snowfall will.

[kestrel91316]

5. Well, the riots are extraordinarily rare, and never happen where

we get wildfires/mudslides.

[Demeter]

6. Thanks for the chuckle

I actually survived 2 years in CA. My marriage didn't, but it was a gonner before we got there. I thought of naming Silicon Valley as the correspondent....

[HooptieWagon]

4. Storm created inlets....

occur after the storm, as the storm surge seeks the path of least resistance to the sea. Thus, the non-existence of the inlet didn't prevent the Sandy storm surge, which merely over-topped all the low-lying areas of Fire Island.
Unless a massive seawall 30+ feet above seawall is built, and a massive stabilization of the sand to seaward of it is done, there is no way to prevent storm surge from entering Great South Bay. Besides costing a huge amount of money, it would also destroy the natural state of Fire Island. The very nature of barrier islands is that they shift, move, build up, erode away. Best to leave them alone.
This is from a Florida resident who lives in an area with many barrier islands, has seen the repeated efforts to stabilize them fail, has seen the effects of hurricanes...and BTW, has visted Great South Bay several times. Let nature work naturally...its better in the long run.

[Nihil]

7. Can you say "conflict of interest"? Yes! I knew you could!

> “It’s a giant hole,” said Aram Terchunian, a Long Island coastal geologist
> who has worked as a consultant on other breach-closure projects.

Strange, when I was taught geology for *my* degree, I found out quite a lot
about the transient nature of barrier islands and the bays & lagoons thus formed.

I wonder why little Aram has forgotten that rather important fact?

It wouldn't have anything to do with his professional interest in being hired
again as a consultant would it?

It surely wouldn't be due to him living in the area?




> "It’s not rocket science.”

Correct. It's not rocket science, it is shit, specifically human shit and,
even more specifically, human shit from the people who live on Long Island:

In recent years, studies have traced the brown tide to nitrogen pollution
flowing from the island’s buried backyard septic systems.
Long Island is home to 2.8 million people and part of the most populous
metropolitan area in the country, but huge swaths of it aren’t connected
to sewers, relying instead on septic tanks that allow wastewater to collect
underground and leach into the earth. From there, nitrogen—a nutrient found
in human waste—winds its way through the groundwater and into the bays,
where it feeds the algal blooms.

Well then Mr. "Long Island Geologist", you are not only to blame for the former
state of the Great South Bay but you are in absolutely no position to speak
honestly about further artificial changes that are "necessary" to "restore" the
bay to its former highly polluted and unnatural state.


>> Others see a positive development and symbol of nature’s power of
>> self-renewal—an instance of the ocean breaking through a barrier of land
>> to rescue a bay that overfishing and overdevelopment had rendered all
>> but unrecognizable.

And yet others (viewing it purely scientifically and without any hint of a spiritual
gloss on the facts) see it as the progress of time on a very short-term phenomena.