City: Bulkhead projects could begin next year

Long-awaited plans to protect bayfront are in motion

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After Hurricane Sandy pummeled the barrier island and its residents four years ago, local, state and federal officials formulated extensive plans to rebuild the devastated city. Though Long Beach residents can now stroll on the rebuilt boardwalk, locals have continued to raise their homes and the Army Corps of Engineers has begun a large-scale coastal protection project, some proposals designed to shield the north side of the city from another storm remain in the design phase.

“We are in significantly better position as a city, both in terms of preparedness and physical resiliency, than we were before Sandy, and we’ve come a tremendously long way,” said City Manager Jack Schnirman. “However, we still have big projects in the works that, until they are completed, we won’t be as protected as we can be.”

City officials said that the long-awaited $12.8 million project to protect the bayfront with bulkheading, outlined in Long Beach’s New York Rising Community Reconstruction Plan, could begin next year. The project is one of the plan’s top priorities, taking up about half of the $25 million in federal money granted through the initiative, which is funded by the Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery program. Some feel, four years after the storm, that the funds are not being made available quickly enough.

State Sen. Todd Kaminsky said that the Governor’s Office of Storm Recovery often claims that it is waiting on paperwork from the local municipalities receiving the funds, and that many projects planned for South Shore communities “are way too slow.”

“There’s all this infrastructure money out there that hasn’t yet been fully realized …,” Kaminsky told the Herald. “Bulkheading in Long Beach [for example] — are we going to wait for the next storm to have that done? There are great projects, we just need people to fight for them to fruition.”

Forty percent of the project’s design is complete, according to the governor’s office, and city officials said they are working with regulatory agencies to obtain environmental permits. The design is expected to be completed next year. Public meetings focusing on the plan — at which residents will be able to meet with design consultants — will be scheduled in the coming months, officials added.

A separate project along Reynolds Channel, for which Gov. Andrew Cuomo secured $13 million in 2013, would include a seawall and a “Dutch dam” system to protect Long Beach’s industrial district — which includes the water treatment plant, storage tower and wastewater treatment plant — from future storm surges. City officials said that the project’s estimated cost is $20 million, which would be covered by state funds, and that it would involve a pumping system to send water back into the channel over the bulkheads. It has been approved by the state, officials said, and they are hopeful construction will begin before the end of next year.

Plagued by flooding

Residents along the bay have complained about frequent flooding, sometimes caused by nothing more than moderate rainfall. John McNally, co-chair of Long Beach’s Community Reconstruction Plan committee, said the process of approving and moving forward with crucial projects outlined in the 205-page plan takes time, but “has been moving along well for what the process it.”

“All of this has been a slow, painful, laborious process, but it’s a necessary evil,” McNally said. “Is it frustrating? Yes. Would we like it to move a whole lot faster? Yes. But is that what we expect when we have to go through funding streams? Unfortunately, yes.”

Sandy caused an estimated $200 million in damage to the city’s facilities and infrastructure alone, and total damages likely eclipsed $1 billion when private homes and businesses are figured in, according to a 2014 report by New York Rising. More than 10,000 residences were flooded. Sixty-eight percent of all of the homes in the city sustained heavy damage that affected at least 20 percent of the home, the report said.

Since the storm, 300 new homes have been built and 368 existing homes have been elevated, according to the city. More than 200 have been raised in the last 12 months alone. Still, an estimated 5 percent of the population remains displaced.

McNally said that some residents are having trouble elevating their homes through New York Rising’s current program, which he said is “mired with issues” and not moving fast enough. He added that he wished the CRP could have included a program that would allow similar services at the local level — so the city could loan money to homeowners lifting their houses — but the committee was focused on pushing projects that would first protect the city as a whole.

Despite some remaining struggles for locals, the city has invested more than $4 million in improving its water system since the storm, $5.5 million in upgrading and repairing its sewer system, and $1.5 million in storm draining infrastructure, including the installation of tide-flex valves, which allow water to flow from the city’s northern streets to the channel, officials said.

Long Beach also spent more than $32 million on debris removal, rehabilitated its community centers, playgrounds and recreational facilities, replanted thousands of trees and repaved its historical brick streets.

“It has been a whirlwind four years full of progress and accomplishments,” Schnirman said, “and we will continue working and continue rebuilding until we have the resilient infrastructure that we need.”

The Army Corps of Engineers broke ground on its $230 million coastal protection project along Long Beach’s oceanfront in August. Phase One of the project — which is expected to last until early 2018 — includes the rehabilitation of 18 groins, or jetties, to help stabilize the sand, and the construction of four new groins. A contract for the second phase is expected to be awarded next fall, and includes the addition of 5 million cubic yards of sand for dunes that will rise approximately 14 feet above sea level and extend along seven miles of shoreline, from East Rockaway Inlet to Jones Inlet. Phase Two will last about two years, officials have said.

Though substantial progress has been made, Schnirman said that the city would continue to prepare for potential storms of Sandy’s magnitude, which will always pose a threat to communities surrounded by water. “No matter how many projects we complete, we are on a barrier island, and therefore always vulnerable to storms,” he said. “What we have to do and we will continue to do is improve our resiliency to live up to the City Council’s mantra of rebuilding stronger, smarter and safer, and that’s what we’re doing every day.”