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Governor Hochul, Senators Schumer and Gillibrand Announce U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Approval of Emergency Repairs on Eastern Fire Island

Army Corps Approves New York’s Request for “Extreme Storm” Determination; $3.5 Million to Advance Project Engineering and Design

Governor Kathy Hochul, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, and U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand today announced the approval of federal funds by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to advance significant repairs of a damaged coastal project on Fire Island in Suffolk County following a series of devastating coastal storms. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers disbursed $3.5 million to its New York District Office to expedite project engineering and design. To advance repairs, the New York District is undertaking a detailed survey of existing topographical conditions, information that is essential to the engineering and design of the project. New York State previously allocated $3 million to Suffolk County for an interim project to immediately reduce risk to the most vulnerable Fire Island communities; the interim project is nearing completion.  

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The East Coast Is Sinking

New satellite-based research reveals how land along the coast is slumping into the ocean, compounding the danger from global sea level rise.

A major culprit: overpumping of groundwater.

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Fire Island AIDS Memorial overlooking the ocean will be a fitting ‘tribute’ to honor those who died, organizers say

Eric Sawyer, who’s involved in a project to build a Fire Island AIDS Memorial, in front of a New York City AIDS memorial on Wednesday. Credit: Ed Quinn

By Brianne Leddabrianne.ledda@newsday.comUpdated January 28, 2024 7:10 am


In the 1980s, Eric Sawyer recalls performing a somber ritual when seasonal residents of the barrier island returned each spring. He would make the rounds, as a family doctor might, to check on friends and neighbors who were ill to see if they had survived the winter.

HIV was sweeping the country at the time, with gay men among its earliest victims. On Long Island, between 1983 and 2022, nearly 10,000 individuals were diagnosed with AIDS, the disease caused by the human immunodeficiency virus. Across the state, by 2022, more than 130,000 had died from the illness. The Fire Island communities of the Pines and Cherry Grove — havens for the LGBTQ+ community — were especially hard-hit.

“It was a horrible time because we practically witnessed half of our generation dying in front of us,” said Sawyer, 69, a founding member of ACT UP and Housing Works, organizations dedicated to combatting the AIDS epidemic. “There were no treatments to prevent these deaths and not much was known early on about how the disease was spread.”

Now, more than 40 years later, Sawyer, who is gay and splits his time between Manhattan and his house in Fire Island Pines, and other residents, like Jay Pagano, are planning to create a Fire Island AIDS Memorial for those who died on the island. The memorial will be built between the Pines and Cherry Grove, with a sitting area overlooking the beach and Atlantic Ocean, where the ashes of many who died of AIDS were spread.

WHAT TO KNOW

• More than 40 years after the HIV virus started sweeping across the country, advocates on Fire Island have joined to build a memorial in honor of those who died from AIDS.

• Cherry Grove and Fire Island Pines, hamlets on the barrier island, are among the communities that advocates say were most heavily impacted by the epidemic. 

• Federal lawmakers have introduced legislation that would authorize the nonprofit The Pines Foundation to build and maintain the memorial, which would partly fall onto federal land managed by the National Park Service.

“The Pines and Cherry Grove were more affected by the AIDS epidemic probably than any community in the United States or the world,” said Pagano, 79, a Pines resident and past president of the Fire Island Pines civic group.

Pagano said he lost many friends, including two summer visitors who died at his house.

“They’re with me every day,” he said

Charles Renfro’s preliminary design of the planned memorial, which he said will be the “reflecting place of many of our friends and family who died at the height of the epidemic.” Credit: Diller Scofidio + Renfro

Organizers said they plan to play recorded interviews with survivors of the epidemic to educate visitors about the impact of HIV on Fire Island.

“We want this memorial to be about experience more than image,” said New York architect Charles Renfro, who is on the planning team and has drawn a preliminary design for the memorial.

Designs show a dune-like sound reflector, focusing the sound of waves on a bench with views of the ocean. Pagano said the design would be composed of cemented sand to look like concave dunes coming together.

“It will be about hearing, feeling and seeing the island in new ways and being reminded that the ocean, its sound magnified through a natural reflector, is the reflecting place of many of our friends and family who died at the height of the epidemic,” Renfro said.

The memorial is also meant to help educate younger generations, said Denise Roberts Hurlin, 62, one of the tribute’s organizers and co-founder of Dancers Responding to AIDS, a nonprofit meant to raise awareness and money to directly help individuals living with AIDS.

“Whether you’re an ally or a queer person, it all matters,” Hurlin said. “To have this information, as well as a place of beauty to come and reflect, it helps that community into the future.”

Pagano said the Fire Island community has embraced the project. The organizers have collected about $75,000 in donations and said they plan to launch a fundraising campaign through The Pines Foundation, a nonprofit that raises money for programs and projects in the Pines.

Pagano estimates the memorial will cost around $250,000. Once legislation allowing the memorial to be built on federal parkland has been passed, he hopes to start construction by the end of next year and wrap up the project in 2026.

The bipartisan legislation, introduced on Dec. 14 by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Rep. Andrew Garbarino (R-Bayport), would authorize The Pines Foundation to build and maintain the memorial. The legislation is needed because the project would partly fall onto land that’s part of the Fire Island National Seashore, a federally designated wilderness managed by the National Park Service.

Advocates for the memorial are optimistic that the legislation will be passed. Hurlin, reflecting on prospects for the tribute, said she believes the “path to realization has quite a bright light to it.”

Sawyer tested positive for HIV in 1985, the same year the screening test was first developed. He’d already been sick for years, with symptoms first developing in 1982.

The diagnosis frightened him. His partner died from the disease in 1986, and Sawyer felt “extremely fearful” he would “perish in the horribly painful and ugly way that [his partner] lost his life.”

“I used to go to the back on the ferry boat, on the upper deck at the end of the season when I was leaving [Fire Island] for the winter, and say a little prayer that I would survive … to be able to come back to that place, which was one of my favorite places on earth, the following spring,” Sawyer said.

It seems fitting, he added, that there’ll be “some kind of a recognized tribute to memorialize those people lost,” in a place so many chose to be the “final resting place for their remains.”

“That’s part of why we wanted to have the memorial be adjacent to the ocean,” Sawyer said, “so that people could go to the memorial site and contemplate and remember the loved ones that they lost while looking into the ocean.”

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers approves federal funding to address Fire Island coastal erosion

By CBS New York Team

Updated on: January 26, 2024 / 11:30 PM EST / CBS New York

OCEAN BEACH, N.Y. — Fire Island could soon get federal help to deal with beach erosion.

Gov. Kathy Hochul said Friday night that the the United States Army Corps of Engineers approved the state’s request for federal support. It’s the first step to get money to make repairs to the coastline and replenish the sand.

“The Fire Island seashore is one of our State’s greatest natural treasures. We are going to work with the Army Corps to immediately begin repairs on our coasts,” Hochul said.

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A Powerful Storm Hits Fire Island

Last week an unnamed storm event came out of the Gulf and raced up the east coast, leaving trees blown down, power outages affecting thousands, and causing major coastal and inland flooding on its way north. By the time it arrived on Fire Island, the storm’s barometer readings were so low that it carried the destructive power of a Category One hurricane. The buoys that measure wave height 50 miles offshore registered 27 feet before the buoys failed. When the swells hit our beaches, they were still 14 – 16 feet high and powerfully destructive. This FIA UPDATE will offer you information about the extent of the storm damage, how the aftermath is being assessed and addressed, and the leadership role of the FIA in recovery efforts.

The storm moved quickly, but even so it delivered a surprisingly powerful 1-2 punch to the island. On the ocean side, beaches and dunes were decimated up and down the island, although the far west end (Kismet to Fair Harbor) was spared more serious sand loss. As the ocean waves began to abate, however, the tides in the bay surged to near historic levels. Water quickly rose over bulkheads, sending several inches of bay water flooding through low lying areas of many communities.

There were also several minor wash-overs, with 3 more serious ones at the Pines, Robbins Rest and Corneille Estates. On the east end of the Pines, a river of ocean water came up through the vehicle cut and ran downhill toward the PSEG substation on the bay side. The two wash-overs on the west end of the island left 3 feet of water from ocean to bay in two places, delaying the school buses taking the mainland kids home at 3pm.

Speaking of wash-overs, several people posted on social media about the ocean overtopping the dunes, mistakenly using the term “breach.” While both terms describe ocean water flowing across the island, a wash-over is temporary and recedes as the storm passes. A breach cuts through the island and does not recede after the storm, usually deepening and widening if not repaired. Where the ocean washed to the bay last week, the waters receded on the next low tides, thus qualifying them as temporary wash-overs. (Note: On Fire Island, a breach in the developed areas would be immediately repaired, but it would be left open if it occurred in a major FINS tract. An example is the breach that occurred in the Wilderness area during Sandy, which was allowed to remain open.)

Assessing and Addressing the Damage
During and right after the storm, our emergency responders, local contractors, and year-round residents did a great job of getting out and around the communities to check homes and businesses, help anyone in distress, and take pictures and videos of the havoc wreaked up and down the island. In the following days, teams from the County and Towns were able to get on the island to assess the damage to infrastructure, especially on the ocean side. The day before the storm hit, Great Lakes Dredge and Dock Corporation had begun mobilizing for a long-delayed US Army Corps (USACE) project to repair damage on the west end (Kismet to Seaview) from winter storms back in 2020. The GL project team was also surprised by the ferocity of the storm, and had to go back out during the storm to secure project equipment on the Beach that was getting pounded by the rough surf. The west end repair project will continue this week with the dredge itself expected to arrive to start pumping sand on shore on December 29th.On the east end (Ocean Bay Park to Davis Park), the storm washed away huge amounts of sand from many areas of beach and berm that were already dramatically eroded. Adding to the sense of urgency about the condition of east end beaches, a NYS DEC and Suffolk County request to USACE for repair of east end damage from several recent storms was rejected by the Corps in the fall. That decision was appealed by the DEC, prompting the Corps to send the denied application to two other USACE districts with coastal experience (Philadelphia and Jacksonville, FL) for an independent review of the negative determination. The County is currently gathering post-storm beach measurements to submit with another repair application to USACE based on the strength of this storm and the severity of damage sustained.

Historic Role of the FIAThe FIA has been actively, relentlessly, and passionately advocating with government agencies and elected officials for Fire Island shoreline management, sand renourishment, and storm repair for the last 30 + years. Our successes include forming multiple community Erosion Control Districts in the early 90’s, using the ECDs to carry-out several FEMA repair projects in the years before Sandy, securing the FIMI rebuild of our beaches after Sandy, winning the 60 year battle to get the FIMP shoreline management project authorized 2 years ago, and successfully pushing for the current repair project for the west end. You can be sure that we are once again deeply involved in the current State, County, and East End community efforts to secure an expedited emergency repair project for our island’s East End.I hope this FIA UPDATE gives you a clearer picture of the scope of last week’s storm damage, and helps you understand the complex multi-agency process that keeps our fragile barrier island in a healthy state as we face the ever-increasing threats of climate change, sea level rise, and the increasing severity of powerful storms that come our way.Please support our efforts by joining FIA (see below). After working with and for Fire Islanders since 1955, we have all learned an important lesson—we’re most definitely better together!

With warm regards for a very Happy New Year!

Suzy Goldhirsch

President, Fire Island Association