Point Lookout Residents Cheer Approval of Dredging
By Sophia Chang, Newsday, Melville, N.Y.
Jul. 11–Gerry Ottavino remembers playing softball years ago on Point Lookout’s beach, in a formerly sandy stretch now covered by the waters of Jones Inlet.
The spot where he used to take a turn at bat was so far from the current shoreline “you couldn’t hit the dunes on a fly,” said Ottavino, 55, an actuary who has lived in Point Lookout for 26 years.
He pointed to the mounds of sand that abut the water. Years of storms and tidal patterns have eroded 150 yards of the community’s beachfront and deposited the sand at the bottom of Jones Inlet, creating hazardous boating conditions, local officials say.
After nearly a decade of activism from residents such as Ottavino asking for federal and state help, Gov. Eliot Spitzer signed legislation Monday to restore Point Lookout’s waterfront by dredging the inlet for 700,000 cubic yards of sand to bolster the beach.
Yesterday morning, Spitzer choppered in to Jones Inlet to reiterate his support of the bill sponsored by State Assemb. Harvey Weisenberg (D-Long Beach) and state Sen. Dean Skelos (R-Rockville Centre) that appropriated $7.6 million for the dredging and beach restoration. “This project will provide the area with the funding necessary to reverse these disturbing trends and salvage the inlet and beaches for years to come,” Spitzer said in a news release.
Weisenberg hailed Spitzer’s support for an urgent solution. “The reality is that we have an emergency situation that exists, and our priority is to expedite a solution,” he said.
The dredging of the inlet, the first since 1995, will improve boating conditions, and the restored beach will provide a storm buffer to nearby homes, said Hempstead Town Supervisor Kate Murray.
“This goes to the continued existence of Point Lookout,” she said yesterday, shortly before another news conference that local officials originally planned to pressure Spitzer into signing the bill.
Instead, the conference on the beach became an impromptu victory rally with Point Lookout residents clapping as Skelos told them, “You won. You won.”
Because it is the nesting season of the piping plovers, an endangered shorebird, the Army Corps of Engineers cannot begin dredging until Oct. 1.
But Murray said the estimated time frame for completion was a few months. “We’re hoping by next summer there will be a different face to this beach and a lot more of it,” she said.
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