Repeated flooding events during the first weeks of 2024 have prompted the Town of East Hampton to enact long-pondered plans for flood preparedness. At the meeting of the Town Board on January 16, a decision was reached to seek out a coastal adaptation specialist to lead the engineering projects necessary to protect the town’s coastline.
While plans like this had been discussed before, the decision to act came after notable flooding events that affected much of Montauk and Ditch Plains. During the Town Board’s work session, East Hampton Town Planning Director Jeremey Samuelson said, “Now is the hard moment. Now is the moment where we have to begin to have differently.” The specific difference he meant was that “We can no longer simply continue to behave the same way and expect that everything’s going to be ok. It won’t. We must move roads and critical infrastructure from where they are to more sensible locations.”
Referencing the town’s Comprehensive Plan first adopted in 2022, Samuelson said, “The good news is we know how to do this.” East Hampton has been developing a roadmap for its Coastal Resiliency Action Plan changes since 2014.
The town had made some efforts to prevent the flooding events. Town Councilwoman Cate Rogers said the city had been dropping sand at Otis Avenue in Ditch Plains to prevent events like these. However, the sand dumped in December of 2023 was washed away overnight by January 9 and 10 flooding. The sand was dumped again before the flooding of January 13, and Rogers credits this sand for protecting the neighborhood during that event.
Rogers said, “We know we will see increasing storms and surge… We know that this is climate change. This has been studied for decades. We’re certainly seeing the impacts of the studies we have talked about for decades,” and said, “It is time for the town to develop the next phase of plans to provide for recovery, get our infrastructure running, and get our roads cleared.”
The US Army Corps of Engineers is also moving to prevent flooding events in Montauk. The Corps installed sandbags along the beachfront to protect downtown nine years ago and is preparing to pump 450,000 cubic yards of sand along that same beachfront again. The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation had written to the Corps to warn that these defenses were “at risk of catastrophic failure if immediate action is not undertaken to facilitate their repair.”
In a press release by Col. Alex Young, the commander of the Corps’ New York District, it was said that the Corps was examining data from the storms by federal guidelines. They emphasized four specific projects on the South Shore and South Fork. In their statement, the Corps reiterated their commitment to work with federal, state, and local partners “to determine the best path forward for helping to mitigate coastal storm damage for the residents of these communities and throughout the tri-state area.”
