Army Corps project behind schedule

Amid concerns over endangered birds, work now slated to begin next summer

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The Army Corps of Engineers project has hit a delay, as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reviews the agency’s $180 million coastal protection plan to make sure it complies with the Endangered Species Act, mainly to ensure that piping plovers — sparrow-sized birds that nest in the project area — are protected.

“Currently, the Long Beach project report is going through … a formal consultation process with the Fish and Wildlife Service,” said Chris Gardner, a spokesman for the Army Corps. “That is to comply with Endangered Species Act, and they indicated that they feel the project requires a biological opinion that complies with the act.”

According to Fish and Wildlife, piping plover populations were federally listed as threatened and endangered in 1986, and the agency determined that the project work would have an adverse affect on nesting areas.

The agency’s formal review began in July and is expected to be completed on Nov. 24.

“We make recommendations on how those adverse affects can be minimized,” said Meagan Racey, a spokeswoman for Fish and Wildlife. “Our goal is always to efficiently and quickly address these issues and provide the information that the corps needs and address any possible concerns with piping plovers.”

The Army Corps project — designed to withstand the equivalent of a 100-year storm — calls for the rehabilitation or new construction of at least 22 jetties, or groins, and the addition of roughly 4.7 million cubic yards of sand to build a system of berms and dunes along 35,000 feet of shoreline in Long Beach and the Town of Hempstead.

The dunes in Long Beach would be 25 feet wide, rising to a height of 14 feet in front of the boardwalk. They would slope down to a 40-foot-wide berm at an elevation of 9 feet, and a 130-foot-wide berm 2 feet lower that would slope down to the waterline. The project would include 31 dune crossovers in Long Beach alone.

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