Quogue Beach Project Is Shelved

It appears that long-discussed plans to bolster all of Quogue Village’s 2.7 miles of beachfront with new sand, a project estimated to cost between $12 million and $15 million, will remain in dry dock indefinitely.

Mayor Peter Sartorius announced during his annual State of the Village Address on Saturday that an eight-member appointed committee has determined that the job is too expensive. That committee includes representatives of both the Save the Dunes and Beaches Foundation, mostly Dune Road homeowners pushing for the beach work, and the Concerned Citizens of Quogue, a group who questioned the need for the massive project, as well as those unaffiliated with either group.

The group met for the last time on May 22, according to the mayor.

“Their final conclusion is that they acknowledge the significant loss of dune on the eastern part of Quogue, but they can’t really ascertain whether this is temporary or a nonrecoverable loss of sand,” Mr. Sartorius said during his hour-long speech at Village Hall. “The majority of the committee concluded that there is not enough scientific data establishing a long-term, naturally occurring and irreversible trend of beach loss so as to warrant this expenditure required to maintain a beach nourishment project.”

Neither Marjorie Kuhn, a longtime Dune Road homeowner and president of the Save the Dunes and Beaches Foundation, nor Douglas Greeff, a spokesman for the Concerned Citizens of Quogue, immediately returned calls seeking comment this week. Both serve on the village’s seven-member Beach Advisory Committee.

Other members of the committee include: Bob Freedman, a member of the Save the Dunes and Beaches Foundation; Terry Young, a member of the Concerned Citizens of Quogue; and village residents Bill Horak, Kittric Motz, Andrew Lynch and Wick Coddington.

In his address, Mr. Sartorius suggested that committee members opted not to pursue the nourishment option after determining that the project would be too expensive, especially since the cost would have to be footed by Quogue residents. He added that they reached their conclusion after meeting with as many as nine coastal erosion experts over the past several months.

After a nearly three-year wait, the village secured the necessary permit from the State Department of Environmental Conservation to go forward with the work if it ever figured out a way to finance it. The permit, which is valid for a decade, allows the village to dredge an estimated one million cubic yards of sand from the ocean floor and redistribute those spoils along the village’s entire stretch of oceanfront. The original application requested permission from the DEC to widen the village’s stretch of beach by between 50 and 127 feet.

Mr. Sartorius said both he and his fellow board members will continue to keep close tabs on the beachfront in case nourishment work is eventually needed.