Sandy-Damaged Brooklyn Beaches To Be Repaired With Pieces Of Other Beaches
- Heather Cross/GoNYC
Specifically, with around 600,000 cubic yards of sand taken from the Jamaica Bay Inlet, to the tune of around $7.3 million. According to the Daily News, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers just awarded a large contract for the repairs, which are meant to rebuild dunes between W. 37th St. and Brighton Beach that were destroyed last October during Hurricane Sandy.
All of which will likely mean “rolling closures” once the process starts in August, and an Army Corps official told the paper, “This work is important to ensuring the engineered beach continues to provide coastal storm risk reduction to the communities behind it.” Which all checks out, even if the idea of more closures during this already-reduced beach season is sort of a bummer.
Even more of a bummer, though, is the footnote in the Daily News article explaining that the Army Corps has actually wanted to make these sort of protective coastal repairs—particularly a 15-foot-high floodwall along Coney Island—since 1972, but could never drum up the money. That’s a full 40 years before Sandy! Seems like it might have helped a few people.
Follow Virginia K. Smith on Twitter @vksmith.
