Tobay Beach in Oyster Bay lost 60% of its sand in the weekend nor'easter

Every year, Oyster Bay Supervisor Joseph Saladino vows Tobay Beach will look pristine by Memorial Day weekend.

That's because every offseason, coastal storms batter the stretch of shoreline on Nassau's South Shore.

A devastating nor’easter thrashed Long Island’s southern coast over the weekend, triggering fresh beach erosion that experts and officials say threatens infrastructure, homes and the environment. The storm eroded about 60% of the sand at Tobay — about the typical effect of a full offseason of damage, Saladino told Newsday in a phone interview Tuesday.

“Over the course of the entire winter, the cumulative effect ends up to this kind of level,” Saladino said. “But this storm was larger than most. It isn’t the worst erosion we’ve received in one event, but it’s up there.” 

Oyster Bay typically spends $3 million annually to replenish the beach. On Tuesday, pools of water settled in the middle of the sandy beach and nearby dunes appeared damaged.

Last year, the town took advantage of a new option: A federal contractor delivered hydraulically dredged sand, which is denser in composition, to Tobay. The town usually scrapes sand from those outer areas to replenish the beach and trucks in sand to make up the difference.

The hydraulically dredged sand was part of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' project to maintain a federal navigation channel on Fire Island Inlet. The effort cost the town $3.1 million, though the state reimbursed about half the cost.

The latest round of storm damage wiped away a significant amount of sand from Tobay's outer reaches, Saladino said 

“Mother Nature may bring back, slowly, some of that sand,” Saladino noted, referencing the natural wave process that pushes sand along the shoreline. “Every year we need to both scrape and deliver sand to build it up.”

The hydraulically delivered sand, Saladino said, appears to have blunted some of the storm’s impact.

“That 60% could have been 75%, could have been 80%," Saladino said, adding the pavilion appeared to escape damage. 

Long-term solutions to protect shorelines can be expensive and don't often work, experts have said. 

Replenishing ocean-facing beaches "is a treatment, not a cure," said Henry Bokuniewicz, a geologist and Stony Brook University professor of oceanography.

For example, shoreline groins — perpendicular rock structures designed to catch sand before it moves away from the beach — can have negative consequences, he said. The groins can shield sand from naturally migrating to areas farther down the beach, he said.

There are also concerns for threatened species, like the piping plover and terrapin turtles, who use the beach as a nesting site, said Colin Bell, deputy commissioner of the town's department of environmental resources.

"They rely on the dunes, and the sloping sands provides their natural habitat," Bell said. "Those habitats tend to be destroyed and disrupted during storm events like this."

The recent nor'easter brought heavy winds that fueled more forceful waves, said Susan Kilgore, a geologist and an assistant professor at Adelphi University in Garden City. The damage threatens the barrier beaches, a bulwark for the communities near the beach, she said.

“The fact that you can have these big storms that can essentially erode away the land that there’s development on and people living on, and the fact that there are people really close to the shore, just makes everything much more vulnerable,” Kilgore said.