The End Of Georgica Groins?

By Russell Drumm

Three rock jetties off Georgica Beach in East Hampton, which for over 30 years have been blamed for serious erosion to the west, will become history, if the Southampton Town Board has its way. The board voted on Tuesday night to ask the United States Army Corps of Engineers, which built the groins, to destroy them.

The board acted after a recent examination of the corps' internal records revealed that the agency had advised against the jetties being built in the first place.

The news has delighted beachfront property owners in Southampton Town who have sued unsuccessfully to have the groins removed, but it has stunned and disappointed the local surfing community, which has enjoyed some world-class surf breaks created by the small jetties.

A Corps of Engineers report dating from July 1964, before the Georgica jetties were built, cautioned that such structures would "result in erosion to the downdrift beaches to the west of the groin field and will consequently increase the possibility of break-through . . . during severe storms. [The groins] will undoubtedly result in downdrift beach attenuation damages which will be adverse to the public interest."

Despite the warning, and contrary to a Congressional mandate to maintain the beaches between Fire Island and Montauk by replenishing them with sand, the Army Corps proceeded to build the East Hampton groins, as well as a groin field in Westhampton that was later blamed for a serious break in the barrier beach there. The resultant loss of property prompted a successful lawsuit against the corps.

So far as Cynthia Hamlin Ireland of Sagaponack is concerned, the Army Corps' prediction came true three years ago. A severe northeaster cost her two-thirds of her beachfront property, and she later had to move her historic cottage back from the sea not once but twice, at great expense. Her son Gary, an attorney, filed a lawsuit on her behalf, claiming that the Army Corps had ignored its own advice back in the '60s due to pressure from Juan Trippe, then chief executive officer of Pan American Airways. The groins were built in front of Mr. Trippe's West End Road house, now owned by Calvin Klein. The largest, over 600 feet, was funded by the federal government. Two smaller ones were state-funded.

Internal Memos

It was Mr. Ireland who discovered the internal corps memos and brought to light the agency's preferred "soft" method of preserving the ocean beaches east of Fire Island, which was ignored. He apparently did not tell Southampton Town officials about the papers until a few weeks ago, and they reacted swiftly.

In fact, though, it was not the first time the Army Corps had been confronted with the documents. Stephen Leatherman, a coastal geologist who has studied Georgica Beach, speaking this week from his office at the National Hurricane Center in Miami, said that in 1991 Ronald Lauder, whose extensive Wainscott properties have also been affected by groin-related erosion, had hired him and offered to pay $1 million to have the government remove one jetty.

Dr. Leatherman said it was he who first uncovered the corps memo warning against the jetties. He said that when confronted, Army Corps representatives agreed that removing them was a good idea, but told Mr. Lauder that the project would have to be "prioritized," meaning a four or five-year wait. Now, with a town government doing the asking rather than an individual - even an influential one - things might move more quickly, said Dr. Leatherman.

Mrs. Ireland's was not the first suit connected to the Georgica groins. In 1984, Michael Kennedy, a prominent Manhattan attorney with an oceanfront house in Wainscott, sued every level of government from Washington down to East Hampton Village, demanding that the government-built groins be removed. He correctly assumed that the small jetties were responsible for the rapid loss of beach in front of his summer house, Kilkare.

The suit, which asked for $10 million in damages, failed. By 1987, about 150 feet of dune in front of the Kennedy house had been eaten away by erosion. Mr. Kennedy asked the East Hampton Zoning Board of Appeals for permission to buttress his house with a manmade dune. It was denied.

In 1993, the Army Corps and the State Department of Environmental Conservation gave Mr. Kennedy the go-ahead to build a stone revetment parallel to the beach. He did not, however, apply to the town. The structure was built, the town sued and got a stop-work order, and a court set it aside. The town appealed, and appealed again, but the courts found for Mr. Kennedy each time, on the grounds that given East Hampton's probable denial, an application would have been an "idle act." The town stopped its appeals.

Asked this week if he felt vindicated, Mr. Kennedy said that was "too strong a word, because all I was ever trying to do was save my 120-year-old house. I'm grateful to Southampton for helping [the Irelands]. Oh, and by the way. The revetment has been there for a decade now and there has been no shortening of the beach."

Dr. Leatherman said removing the jetties would "re-equilibrate the beaches, make the downdrift beaches less dynamic." Beaches to the east would become narrower, he predicted, and the shoreline would straighten itself out. "It will be more equal east and west of where the jetties are" - a good thing, he said.

Surfers Disheartened

Michael Solomon, a local surfer and a member of the environmental group Surfrider Foundation said he was stunned by the news.

"It will mean that three or four world-class surf spots will be gone that have been ridden for 35 years by thousands of surfers," he said. "Sean Thompson [a former world champion] said one of the spots was the best little left he'd ever ridden." Mr. Solomon is also worried that without the jetties the inlet, or gut, that connects Georgica Pond to the ocean would migrate east and west, as it did before the jetties were constructed in 1964. He predicted as well that demolishing the jetties would mean closing Georgica Beach for months, and necessitate buttressing nearby roads for heavy trucks to carry the boulders away. He predicted the Surfrider Foundation would oppose the removal. "This will be an incredible scandal if it happens," Mr. Solomon concluded.

The Southampton Town Board resolution calls for the removal of the Georgica groins, the elevation of the dunes and replenishment of the beaches with clean sand, the replanting of dunes with native beach grasses, and the maintenance of the project for not less than 30 years. Copies of the proposal, which mirrors the Army Corps' original plan, have been sent to the Corps, the D.E.C., and the Suffolk Legislature.

Southampton Town Trustees are supporting their town board. Not so sanguine was Tom Knobel, an East Hampton Town Trustee. "Coordination is going to be necessary," he said yesterday. "After all, they voted on something in another township. It is not something that can be done without review. The [East Hampton] trustees are going to be interested because it will affect a lot of what we do with Georgica Pond."

The trustees own the bottom and the shoreline of the pond, and part of the ocean beach at Georgica. The Georgica Association also owns a stretch of the beach, between the gut and Beach Lane in Wainscott. East Hampton Village claims jurisdiction from the gut east to its Two Mile Hollow Beach boundary.