DEC won't see benefit of seawall

From the Queens Courier:

Two Beechhurst neighbors want to end a two-decade-old fight with the State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to keep their decks, which were built over unauthorized seawalls, which they say protected their homes from Hurricane Sandy.

Thanks to their parallel 15-foot high decks, Al Risi and 90-year-old neighbor Ruth Winkle’s water-edged houses suffered only flooding damage from the storm, but were left mainly intact, they said.

But since the decks have never had the proper permit, the DEC is calling for the residents to remove them. Risi and Winkle, who lives alone with her three dogs and nursing aide, argue that taking the decks down would make the residences vulnerable to another storm of equal or greater intensity than Sandy.

Risi and Winkle built the seawalls on their properties about 18 years ago without permission from the DEC. Engineers warned Risi when he bought his nearly $1 million, three-level house in 1995 that it needed protection from the tides, so he requested a permit for the neighbors’ seawalls from the state agency. But he said the DEC didn’t respond to him when he submitted his final plans, so he went ahead with the structures, which are made of large stones slanted at an angle. The DEC later said that he had illegally landfilled the area.

A DEC representative did not return numerous emails and calls for comment on this issue.

Actually, it's more likely that they suffered only minor damage because they live on the north shore, not the south shore.