FIA Policy

Constituency Statement

Following its success in defeating proposals to build a “service road” from the Robert Moses Causeway to Ocean Beach in the 1950s, the Fire Island Erosion Control Committee was incorporated as the Fire Island Voters Association in 1961. The corporate charter was modified to change the name to Fire Island Association (FIA) in 1981. The FIA Board of Directors comprises the mayors of Ocean Beach and Saltaire and the leaders of eighteen community associations. The Board elects a president, first vice president, treasurer, secretary and three vice presidents every two years.

With approximately 1,600 households paying $75 in annual dues, and many additional contributions to the Association’s Dunes Guardians Committee, FIA raises and spends significant amounts in furtherance of its members’ interests. Only the Association president receives a stipend ($28,000 per year); all other officers and directors contribute services pro bono. The Association retains a Washington representative (Marlowe & Co.), an environment counsel (Holland & Knight, also of Washington), and local public relations counsel (Shapiro Associates of Hauppauge). Other professional services (printing and mailing, legal and various consultants) are retained as needed.

As the successor to organizations that were instrumental in creating the park, FIA’s prime objective is to assure its ongoing effective administration. As a small National Park largely given over to a Wilderness Area, FINS is also unique in that numerous communities and other interest groups are wholly contained within it. Thus, a mutually supportive relationship between the park and the communities is essential. Given the makeup of its board, of the many interest groups on the island, FIA is best situated to communicate with community associations as well as with individual FIA members. But FIA also is aware that only if all island interests are taken account of can this unique unit of the National Park system serve resident and visitor alike, while preserving and conserving its important natural resource and wilderness values for the nation.

A defining characteristic of Fire Island is that it is a developed barrier island that lacks a formal road system. Only by limiting the use of off road vehicles can the island maintain that unique status, which is much valued by park residents and visitors. FIA recognizes that it is primarily the provision of services to Fire Island residents and businesses that occasions most of the driving, and that any reduction in the amount of permitted driving may cause delay and increase the cost of providing those services. How these interests are balanced is critical to maintaining each community’s quality of life.

Non-essential driving on Fire Island should be supplanted, wherever possible, by water transport. In a few cases, homes are accessible only by driving on the beach at some times of year and provision for this access must be made. Apart from these rare cases, however, and aided by the proliferation of 4WD vehicles, off road and beach driving has become a convenience for some. The Association holds that any discretionary driving on Fire Island should be strongly discouraged. That said, the island’s ocean beach has been used for vehicular travel for more than eight decades. Where necessary, it should continue to be used for that purpose.

A narrow, deeply rutted and eroded beach is ill-suited for vehicular transport as well as unattractive to beach users. In contrast, a wide, flat beach can accommodate vehicles, while keeping space between vehicles, beach users and dune vegetation. Vehicle use in these conditions has only a negligible impact on the beach itself, and can be controlled to avoid impact on protected species. At the same time, failure to raise and widen the beach as an element of routine coastal management forces vehicles, including emergency vehicles, to an inland route that can only be traversed slowly, noisily and at a heavy cost to the island’s auto-free character. Consequently, FIA believes that routine beach nourishment, whatever else it may accomplish in terms of protection of property and the island itself, is essential to maintaining the park’s roadless environment. (Note: The community of Cherry Grove is not in favor of beach nourishment. While supporting the balance of the statement, it wishes to be excepted from this paragraph.)

Fire Island Association

August 2002

Community Self-Help Beach Nourishment Projects

It is the policy of the Fire Island Association (FIA) to fully support the right of each member community to decide and implement its own policy regarding beach nourishment and other shore protection projects paid for by village government or local erosion control taxing districts. FIA, the principal stakeholder group, represents the interests of the owners of nearly 4,000 residential and business properties on Fire Island, the barrier island between Long Island’s south shore and the Atlantic Ocean.

Overview

Communities on Fire Island and in low-lying areas of mainland Long Island are jeopardized by accelerating erosion of the barrier island. Much of this erosion is the result of severe storms and man-made blockage of the natural supply of sand that sustained the beaches for centuries, and the failure of government at all levels to address the problem for more than four decades.

The US Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) has been working with New York State to implement a Congressionally-authorized shore protection project for Long Island’s south shore since 1960. With the creation of the Fire Island National Seashore (FINS) in 1964, the US Department of the Interior became an interested agency. Today, the National Seashore has within its boundaries two incorporated villages in Islip, Ocean Beach and Saltaire, and fifteen unincorporated hamlets in Islip and Brookhaven. These communities range in size from a dozen to 700 residences, the great majority of them summer and weekend vacation homes. They make few demands for municipal services, generate some $15 million annually in municipal taxes, and help to maintain public beaches visited by hundreds of thousands. A key component of the south shore Long Island economy, they support mainland businesses and service companies with millions of dollars in revenue each year.

Since the park’s inception, the Corps has been blocked from protecting the Fire Island shoreline by those who oppose the existence of these economically vital communities within its boundaries. In 1978, the US Council on Environmental Quality required that the Corps project, now known as the Fire Island Inlet to Montauk Point (FIMP) project, be reformulated. Almost thirty years later, in the summer of 2007, the Corps admitted to the Fire Island communities that details of the reformulation will not be final until late 2009 – if then. It could be additional years before funding is in place and the plan implemented.

Simultaneously, FINS is engaged in a complex and time consuming effort to revise its General Management Plan, which must take account of shore protection needs among other park management issues. The Corps and FINS agree that the shore protection and park management plans must each take account of the other’s needs. FIA supports accomplishment of both of these objectives where they are not inconsistent with or obstructive to community needs and interests. For example, it is not acceptable to delay community-sponsored beach renourishment or other shore protection projects pending completion by FINS of its General Management Plan revision, nor is it required for issuance of any permits necessary for a community to proceed with such projects.

Background

In the wake of the northeast storms of 1992-93, FIA retained Coastal Planning & Engineering, Inc. (CP&E) to ask federal, state and local agencies for help in restoring Fire Island’s shoreline. In 1994, several Fire Island communities asked CP&E to design and build small projects to provide emergency protection. (The Corps anticipates community efforts like this will continue until FIMP is implemented, but recognizes they in no way substitute for it.) By 1999, the Corps of Engineers had secured US Environmental Protection Agency and NY Department of Environmental Conservation approval for an island-wide stop-gap project. When the NY Department of State declared the interim project not needed because FIMP was soon to be implemented, the interim project was abandoned. Nine years later, FIMP is still years away. While the Corps has worked to complete studies aimed at meeting the demands of various environmental groups and agencies, CP&E engineered additional community beach fill projects in 2002 and 2005, with more planned for 2008. FIA estimates that communities have expended almost $20 million in self-imposed taxes and other community-generated funds to place 2.6 million cubic yards of sand on Fire Island’s public beaches. Only a small portion of the barrier island’s beach has been reinforced by this effort, which shows the need for a comprehensive federal/state project.

Present Status

As community projects can never be more than stop-gap measures, FIMP is essential to long-term protection of Fire Island and low-lying areas of the mainland. The April 2007 nor’easter that resulted in a Suffolk County request for $26 million in federal disaster aid, and the near miss by Hurricane Noel in November 2007 show that dangerous storms will continue as a major concern. In Davis Park, the April storm rendered some houses, safely behind 100 feet or more of well-vegetated dunes when built, unusable due to unchecked erosion. These homes will survive only if an emergency FEMA project to provide short-term protection with 27,000 cubic yards of sand barged from the mainland is successful. Davis Park is among a number of communities that have again called on CP&E for beach nourishment projects to hold the line against erosion until FIMP supplants them. While not all communities are able to make the necessary commitment, more such interim projects are likely to be needed.

Policy

FIA will support Fire Island communities as they deal with beach erosion, while continuing to urge prompt implementation of the FIMP – by the end of 2009, if possible.
FIA will meet and communicate with government agencies and other groups as necessary to gather and disseminate information on technical details of beach nourishment proposals, including benefits of joint projects.
FIA will use public statements, press releases, newsletters and other materials to provide historical background and other information on the value of shore protection projects to Fire Island and mainland communities.
FIA will help communities qualify for federal, state and private organization grants related to erosion control and other island needs.
FIA will assist coastal engineers and dredging companies in providing technical and other information to members of the public interested in learning more about the process of shore protection.

Approved by the Board of Directors

December 12, 2007