City closing stretch of Rockaway beaches for safety's sake

From CBS 2:

Longtime resident John Cori spoke to CBS2 in April about the ongoing erosion that he says should have been addressed and resolved years ago.

“It’s not unexpected,” he said. “We’ve been talking about this and warning the city.”

Cori adds that the Army Corps of Engineers has been slow to act.

“We know the issue, they’re closing the beaches,” he said. “We need to get the federal government in.”

City beaches are slated to open this Memorial Day Weekend, but the area between Beach 91st street and Beach 102nd Street will officially be off-limits. A section of beach in front of the 97th Street concessions area and bathrooms will be open, but there will be no access to the water.

Rockaway street has sinking feeling

From DNA Info:

Part of a major roadway on the Rockaway peninsula has been closed for emergency repairs after officials declared the street unsafe.

Drivers have been detoured from Beach Channel Drive between Beach 108th and Beach 113th streets after the Department of Transportation closed it on Dec. 31, according to a spokesman.

The one-block segment along Jamaica Bay was shuttered due to "roadway conditions" but the DOT would not elaborate further and could not provide a timeline for when it would reopen again.

As a result of the closure, National Grid has had to halt its final stage of remediation work on the former gas plant, a spokeswoman said.

State approves protection system for Breezy Point

From CBS New York:

A multimillion-dollar request for a dune system and other coastal protections for Breezy Point, Queens is moving forward, New York State officials announced Monday.

Breezy Point lost 355 homes to fire and flooding during Superstorm Sandy two years ago.

The $58.2 million request submitted to the Federal Emergency Management Agency entails building a double dune on the side of Breezy Point that faces the ocean, as well as potentially constructing a seawall and groins along the bay in both Breezy Point and nearby Roxbury to prevent flooding and erosion.

The state said $1.2 million was awarded to support technical, feasibility and permitting needs for the project. Another $57 million in funds for design, engineering and construction could follow, according to the governor’s office.

Queensbridge Park seawall finally repaired

From the Queens Courier:

The Long Island City waterfront has just received a much needed facelift.

Officials cut the ribbon on Tuesday on the $6.65 million project in Queensbridge Park which included the restoration and improvement of the seawall, and the creation of a six-foot-wide waterfront promenade with benches and plants as well as a small pier at the north end.

The seawall protects the park from high tides and covers some of the mechanisms and underwater cables that keep a number of subway lines in order. It was previously blocked off by a chain-link fence due to decades of deterioration.

This project, managed by the NYC Economic Development Corporation, included the reconstruction of the seawall using rip-rap revetment. Rip-rap, made up of large rocks, was used to protect the shoreline by absorbing and deflecting waves and also decreasing the effects of erosion.

A sunken forest for Arverne?

From Capital New York:

The architects behind a "double dune" system envisioned for parts of the Rockaways are pushing an even more ambitious proposal for the barrier peninsula: a sunken Forest.

"It's more for animals than for people, but the part for the people is primarily resiliency against flooding and sea surges," said Walter Meyer, who runs Local Office Landscape Architecture with his wife, Jennifer Bolstad.

Last Wednesday, Meyer, Bolstad and the developers they are working with presented their Sunken Forest-like proposal to the public at a charter school in Far Rockaway, part of a larger bid to win community and government backing for a mixed-use development called Arverne East.

Arverne East, in turn, is the latest in a multi-phase plan to build a new neighborhood on more than 300 city-controlled acres between Beach 32nd and Beach 84th streets in the Rockaways. That partially complete neighborhood is already home to than 1,000 families, but the Arverne East portion has been hampered by, among other things, the real estate crash.

Now, after Hurricane Sandy, the developers are re-imagining the project with the 50-acre nature park as one of its most beguiling features.

Rockaway coast restoration underway

From the Daily News:

By next summer, the beaches in the Rockaways will have as much sand as they did in the 1970s, but it remains to be seen how long they will stay that way.

Officials gathered near the surf Thursday to highlight the coastal restoration program, while concerned residents complained that another tropical storm would return the beaches — along with their coastal neighborhoods — to the condition they were in last fall, after Superstorm Sandy.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has started a $36.4 million project to pump 3.5 million cubic yards of sand onto the peninsula’s badly eroded beaches, fortifying them against future superstorms and the raging Atlantic Ocean.

Rockaway residents, who lost their homes and businesses to superstorm Sandy, have been anxiously awaiting the sand replenishment, boardwalk reconstruction and other protection measures as another storm season looms.

Those who have taken an active interest in the work say the new sand is good, but they remain critical of the fact that rock jetties and other permanent structures, also important to shielding the coastal neighborhoods from the ravages of a superstorm, will not be built for at least three years.

There's also a research center at Jamaica Bay now to study the ecosystem.

Special Hillsides Preservation District doesn't do much to protect hillside

From SI Live:

Members of the Tompkins Circle Civic Association were surprised and concerned in late March when they observed workers removing vegetative undergrowth and then cutting down trees on the steep hillside that rises 80 feet up from the intersection of Van Duzer Street and St. Pauls Avenue to Tompkins Circle.

The vacant land is immediately adjacent to the neighborhood's century-old Stairway Street, and falls within the boundaries of the city-designated Special Hillsides Preservation District (SHPD).

This site is one of three tax lots that Pavilion Hill Terrace LLC owns and envisions for a new residential and commercial development called Pavilion Hill Terrace.

The city's zoning resolution that created the SHPD notes that one of the goals of the designation is "to reduce hillside erosion, landslides and excessive storm water runoff associated with development by conserving vegetation and protecting natural terrain."

Other goals are "to preserve hillsides having unique aesthetic value to the public," and "to guide development in areas of outstanding natural beauty in order to protect, maintain and enhance the natural features."

It is on these grounds that homeowners in the Tompkins Circle civic are furious about the removal of trees and vegetation on what they describe as a fragile hillside.

Community Board 1 and local residents informed the Department of City Planning that trees were being removed on the protected hillside site, an agency spokesperson informed the Advance on April 30.

"Removal of trees over six inches in caliper requires a (City Planning Commission) authorization, or demonstration to the Department of Buildings that they are a public safety hazard due to damaged or dying trees," the spokesperson explained.

"The Department of Buildings issued a violation against the property owner. To remove the violation, the property owner will need to submit a restoration plan subject to certification by the City Planning Commission," the spokesperson said.

Beach replenishment starting in June

From the Daily News:

The first extra dose of sand is coming this June to storm-worn sections of Rockaway’s beaches.

The most eroded sections between Beach 89th and Beach 149th Sts. will get 1 million cubic yards of sand dredged from the East Rockaway Inlet, officials said Tuesday.

“We know the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has been working hard to bring sand to Rockaway,” said Queens Parks Commissioner Dorothy Lewandowski. “We look forward to its arrival and will do everything we can to help get it in place as quickly and safely as possible.”

Portions of the beach will close while the sand is added.

Meanwhile, another 2.5 million cubic yards of sand is slated to beef up the entire beachfront from Beach 19th to Beach 149th streets. That project is not expected to start until August and could take between six and nine months to complete.

Boardwalk coming back, but not the sand

From the Daily News:

The Rockaway Beach boardwalk — battered by Hurricane Irene — will be fixed in time for the summer season, Parks Department officials said Wednesday.

But local activists are pushing for a long-term beach replenishment and protection program, worried the shoreline will be whittled away by future storms.

“The sand is not only for recreation, it’s protection for our neighborhoods,” said John Cori, who formed Friends of Rockaway Beach last year. “It’s the first line of defense during a storm.”

The group has started a “Demand the Sand” campaign, urging people to contact elected officials and get them to focus on the issue.

While the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is slated to dredge the East Rockaway Inlet for navigational purposes in the near future, there is no current funding to transport the sand to eroded beaches.

Beach Channel Drive needs shoring up

From the Daily News:

Local officials in Rockaway are pleading with Mayor Bloomberg to fix a battered bulkhead that has allowed Jamaica Bay to creep dangerously close to Beach Channel Drive.

A portion of the esplanade near Beach 108th St. and Beach Channel Drive has collapsed, just feet from the peninsula’s main east-west thoroughfare.

“One bad Nor’easter and we could lose the westbound drive,” said Jonathan Gaska, the district manager of Community Board 14. “This is our Queens Blvd. and it’s in danger.”

Assemblyman Phil Goldfeder and Community Board 14 have recently sent letters to the mayor’s office, warning the city about the precarious situation.

“I’m concerned that one day we might wake up and Beach Channel Drive is in the bay,” said Goldfeder. “It doesn’t take an engineer to see we have a pretty bad problem on our hands.”

While sections of the bulkhead that protect Rockaway from Jamaica Bay have been repaired over the years, it remains an uneven barrier.

Parts are owned by various city agencies as well as the federal government.

A real cliffhanger in the Bronx

From the NY Times:

In late September, residents of 5 of the 17 apartments at the idyllic Villa Charlotte Brontë cooperative in the Bronx were waiting for permission to go home after Tropical Storm Irene caused a landslide at the building.

They are still waiting.

Although there is no visible structural damage to the idiosyncratic assemblage of eight buildings that sits atop the cliff at Spuyten Duyvil, there is concern that the landslide destabilized the foundations of the two westernmost buildings overlooking the Hudson River.

The remedial plan, presented to the Department of Buildings by the co-op’s engineering firm, Birdsall Services Group in White Plains, calls for at least $500,000 in repairs to stabilize the cliff and shore up the affected foundations.

The tentative return date for the displaced tenants is early December. Until then, they are allowed to enter their homes to pick up or drop off belongings, but they must do so on the honor system: lingering is against the rules.

In the meantime, the displaced tenants are living in borrowed apartments or staying with friends. One of the affected, Richard Sime, said he found it puzzling that there was no mechanism by which he and the other displaced tenants, including the superintendent, could absolve the city and the co-operative of liability.

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.

Rockaway sand replacement costs a bundle

From the Queens Courier:

According to Queens Parks Commissioner Dorothy Lewandowski, the East Rockaway Inlet is dredged every two years to make it more accessible for boats. The sand is then deposited on the peninsula’s beaches, from Beach 26th and Beach 38th Streets. However, due to the recent Nor’easters beginning last November, there was a need for sand between Beach 80th and 110th Streets.

“This past year we lost a lot of sand in higher numbers like the 90s to lower 100s, so we reached out to the Army Corps [of Engineers] and asked them to consider putting it [the sand] there rather than in the 30s, which didn’t really lose sand,” Lewandowski said.

Army Corps Project Manager Joe Olha said that from where the federal channel is usually dredged, the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation requested sand to be placed more westerly – between 81st and 110th Streets – resulting in an additional $1 million cost.

Final plans are still being discussed, and Olha said they are developing “a scope of works that will detail what material will be placed where.”

The Parks Department made $1.5 million available for the project, including contributions by both Borough President Helen Marshall and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. However, the contractor’s bid for the incremental cost to place material further west than between 26th and 36th Streets was greater than $1.5 million, Olha said.

Lewandowski said the Army Corps estimates the project will begin in late March/early April.

Not a day at the beach for Rockaway man

From the Daily News:

It's the second wave for a Belle Harbor man who sued the city for building sand dunes on a four-block stretch of the Rockaways.

James Agoglia, 40, is appealing a judge's decision to toss his lawsuit, which claims the dunes restrict access to the beach and don't prevent erosion, as originally intended.

"We didn't want dunes there in the first place," said Agoglia, who lives on Beach 141st St., about 350 feet from the dunes. "All it did was shrink the beach for people who use the beach." The Parks Department constructed the dunes in 1997 between Beach 138th St. and Beach 142nd St., as an "experiment in erosion control, designed to keep sand on the beach and out of your street and yards and homes," said then-Parks Commissioner Henry Stern.

But Agoglia said the experiment has been a failure and has benefitted only the six homes directly in front of the dunes.

"The sole purpose of those dunes was to give privacy to those homeowners," Agoglia said.

Agoglia and five fellow plaintiffs sued the Parks Department and the state Department of Environmental Conservation in Queens Supreme Court in 2006.

Justice Janice Taylor tossed out the case in March 2009. In her ruling, Taylor wrote that the plaintiffs failed to show "that they have suffered a different harm than the harm allegedly suffered by the public at large."

Rockaway beaches being claimed by the sea

From the Daily News:

Beach erosion is a persistent problem in oceanfront communities, but recent storms have taken an unusually large bite out of the South Shore of Long Island, including the Rockaways.

A wave of November storms battered the shoreline, removing tons of sand from Far Rockaway to Breezy Point, with the surfers' beach at Beach 90th St. taking the brunt of them .

The remnants of Tropical Depression Ida and other storms created a week-long frenzy in the Northeast, with high tides coming dangerously close to houses and major roads.

Beach 90th St., immediately west of the last rock jetty for several miles, is a notoriously short beach.

The storms have removed so much sand that the high-tide line is close to the Boardwalk.

Jagged wooden jetties are now even more exposed than before and an entrance ramp on Beach 90th St. to the beach is now more than two feet from the sand due to the recent erosion.

Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand recently asked Gov. Paterson to make a federal disaster declaration for Long Island beaches affected by the storms.

The declaration would clear the way for the state to get federal money to replenish the beaches.