Ocean Pkwy

Q

Quigley

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Went to Gilgo yesterday to look at the waves.
Looks like this past weeks waves washed away the new dunes just west of Gilgo. the beach is now at the road. It looks like its threatening the road again. The right lane was closed off by the Thruway authority.
 
Beach is gone.
Road is close to falling in.
Not good
Gilgo inlet is trying to come back!

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that old Gilgo Inlet is dead set on being active again........
 
Wonder how that would affect the bay if this was opened?
 
Probably would start to fill in the state channel and be bad.
Plus it would cutoff ocean parkway without a bridge built.
Instead of putting sand there, they may need a concrete wall!
 
I agree with CurrentSea. Piling more sand there is a waste of time and money. The next storm will simply wash it away. They need some mega-ton boulders piled along the beach to act as a wall and a breakwater. Hy
 
We should just face the fact; the barrier beach is going away and the Great South Bay is going to become the new South Shore :-).
 
You can't fight Mother Nature..........eventually you're gonna lose.
 
What's the saying about shoveling sand against the tide? It's time to build something more permanent along the ocean side of the barrier beaches and be done with it. The barrier is what keeps the south shore dry without it I think the water would make it to Sunrise Highway!
 
There was an article the other day (I think Newsday but don't remember for sure) that a plan was developed after Sandy to bury a steel barrier to shore up that area and also potentially add rocks/boulders to reinforce everything. But due to costs that wouldn't be covered by federal Sandy funds (which were to get things back to pre-storm conditions) as well as the time required which wouldn't have had the road opened for Memorial Day, that was scrapped in favor of just rebuilding the dunes.
 
That worked well for six months. So now they're pushing more sand there to protect the highway. That sand will also wash away at the next northeaster. What's really needed is a wall parallel to the shore with overlapping openings for entrance and exist of boats. There wouldn't be a direct openiong so the wave action wouldn't funnel onto the beach. For now, however, the job those workers are doing at the beach is a great one. Thanks, guys and gals. Hy
 
Army corp of engineers has always tried to say that reinforcing one area only makes another more vulnerable. So that's probably the fight we don't see. In any event these temp repairs are extremely costly and draining the taxpayer. not that anyone in government cares about that part.

Rob
 
If they are going to keep Ocean parkway as a viable 12 month roadway, they will have to do something more permanent then pushing the sand back after every storm. I agree nature wants to take its course, but unless we want to abandon Merrick Rd/Montauk Hwy and south, we need to keep the barrier beach functional.

Billy K.
 
I don't think they have to build up other areas.
If you notice the ocean always trys to cut paths at common spots.
I assume this has alot to do with currents, ocean bottom, rips, etc.
So you take a spot like Gilgo and you put in a seawall made of rocks.
This will protect that spot and hopefully not cause other's to fail.
Even Old Inlet was a inlet before and the ocean tried to take it back.

I am no army enginneer, but it seems to me that pushing sand into a spot where it always dissapears makes little sense without a more permanent solution.

I think to study this issue one has to look at the past!

Although a inlet at Gilgo could be a good thing, who knows!
 
My thought is that if you put a plug in something that's ready to burst it will build up pressure somewhere else and burst there but, like Dave, I'm not an engineer.
 
If you look at Newsday, this happened just west of where the deposition of sand from the inlet dredging had reached. So it's not surprising this happened. What they did in the spring is fine, but it's half a solution. One little pile of sand could never stand by itself, especially not before the grasses have had time to deeply root.

I've been swimming out there my whole life, and never has it been the case that someone could stand ankle deep and basically shake hands with someone who's in up to their neck, like it is now. That's an exaggeration but a slight one. There's no beach and there's an abnormally steep slope. The normal shallow slope is what kills the energy in the waves. They need to finish the job and rebuild the beach. And if some of that sand gets pulled out and reestablishes the offshore bar, that's good too. It all has to work as a system. It did for decades (or actually for millenia) and can do so again.

The problem is the inlets and jetties stop the westward sand flow, and nothing is done until CG or commercial ships start hitting bottom in the inlet and senators have an excuse to get on TV. The beaches need to be replenished and the inlets dredged more frequently than every 20 years. Nature didn't create this problem, the government did by implementing half assed solutions. You're in or you're out.
 
Interesting video, ok, I take back my hard seawall idea.
Get rid of all shoreline roads and houses.
Allow more access my movable objects like boats!
 
Excellent video, thanks for posting.

So if using the hypothesis and partial theory from the Carolina's, what are the alternatives, remove or move the road? Thousands of vehicles use Ocean Parkway as part of their commute. At Gilgo in particular, the north side was dredged for the marina. In hindsight it probably wasn't a good place to put it, given it was at one time an inlet. Also before the roadway, there was ferry service from many points on the mainland. Build up of the shoreline would hinder any use of Cedar, Gilgo etc for use by people who don't have boats if they remove the road.

On another note the State Channel that runs east and west along the beach is at least dredged. I was told a real long time ago, I think, that it was dredged and used to raise the island to support the road. Maybe that is a way of building the ocean side without disturbing the ocean bottom.

Billy K.
 
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