December 31, 2006
Erosion
Does Underwater Still Count as Beachfront Property?
By RUTHIE ACKERMAN
NY TIMES

Southold, N.Y.

IN the battle between Long Island Sound and the residents of Hashamomuck Cove,
nature is winning.

The Sound, which on a calm day is as tranquil as a lake, is encroaching on the
two dozen properties in the cove, eating away the land at about two feet a year.
This has cost homeowners 100 feet of beach over the last 40 years.

As the water has inched closer, the properties there have become a narrow buffer
— in some areas only a few feet — between the Sound and County Road 48, and
residents say seven of the homes are in imminent danger.

Residents also say the government should step in and pay for a study. With the
northeaster season having begun, they are hoping their houses and the road will
hold up.

A sign on Jo Anne Gouveia’s teal house reads Cottage by the Sea, but it has
almost become a cottage in the sea, with the water touching the bulkhead at high
tide. The Gouveias weathered their first storm on Christmas Eve in 1994, less than two months
after moving in. Afterward there was a deer carcass on the beach, along with a
huge pile of debris. “Of course you take a risk” when you buy a house on the
beach, Ms. Gouveia said. “But my goodness gracious, this is crazy.”

Over the years, residents have fought back with revetments, jetties, groins and
bulkheads, but those have proved fruitless. Even the rocks and lumber that
residents have used to protect their homes have become weapons, flung against
their houses during vicious storms.

During a storm, the water washes onto Dave Corwin’s property, which has no
house, and within 8 to 10 feet of Route 48. The road is an east-west artery with
access to Eastern Long Island Hospital, housing for the elderly at Peconic
Landing, and ferry service to the east. Gas lines and water mains run underneath
it.

Virginia Dietrich has lived in her house, next to Mr. Corwin’s property, for 39
years, and she says she has been struggling since the early 1970s to get someone to pay attention to the erosion in the
cove. Now she has passed the torch to Ms. Gouveia.

Last June Ms. Gouveia wrote to County Legislator Edward P. Romaine, and he then
met with United States Representative Timothy H. Bishop and state, county and
town officials. Everyone agreed that something needed to be done. But the bottom
line remains: who will pay for it?

Mr. Romaine has offered solutions to stabilize the beach, including large
plastic tubes filled with sand that form temporary jetties, as well as shore
hardening and stone revetments, which have longer-term effects. None are
perfect, and no one has offered to pay for them.

Scott A. Russell, the Southold town supervisor, said the county would have an
interest in saving the road because of the threat of erosion, but that does not
include saving the houses. The most cost-effective effort, he said, would be to
armor the road, but that would still leave the beach open to erosion and the
houses exposed.

“These are costly solutions,” said Mr. Russell, estimating the cost of a study
alone at more than $1 million. “If they are looking for the federal or state or
county governments to pay for those solutions, that will not happen overnight,
if it happens at all.”

Mr. Russell said the federal and state governments were not in the business of
saving houses from erosion. “The beach is doing what beaches do,” he said.
“Beaches move.”

If Congress authorizes spending for it, Thomas E. Pfeifer of the Army Corps of
Engineers said, the corps will study what the best options are, but he said that
any money would not be available until Oct. 1. Then a study could take two to
three years.

In the meantime, the residents in the cove look out for each other during
storms. Ms. Gouveia continues to write letters and hopes that elected officials
will help find a solution.

“We’ve got to know we’re not forgotten out here,” she says.

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