Building up the beach

From the Daily News:

After a series of storms battered Rockaway's shoreline, it looked like a section of the popular beach might not open in time for Memorial Day.

But with some last-minute funding and an intricate network of pipes snaking across the beach and underwater, the Army Corps of Engineers has been busily replenishing the sand depleted in November's nor'easter.

"This sand isn't just for beach enjoyment," Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-Brooklyn, Queens) said last week as he stood on the Boardwalk overlooking the beach, where bulldozers leveled tall crests of sand. "This is the protection for thousands and thousands of residents."

Weiner secured almost $3 million of the roughly $4.5 million needed to move 121,000 cubic yards of sediment to the oceanfront between Beach 92nd and Beach 103rd Sts.

Some sections of the beach lost up to 6 feet of sand, making it impossible to use many of the Boardwalk staircases, Weiner said.

The replacement sand comes from the East Rockaway Inlet on the eastern end of the Rockaways. It accumulates in the inlet, making travel dangerous for marine traffic, said Army Corps project manager Joe Olha. Dredging began May 6.

The inlet is dredged about once every two years and the sand deposited on the peninsula's nearby beaches. This year, the city Parks Department asked the Army Corps of Engineers to move the sand farther up the Rockaways to the areas hardest hit.

But it looked like there wasn't enough money to do that - until Borough President Helen Marshall came through at the last minute with more than $1 million of additional funding.