I am writing this community to ask for your help. If you ever lived on The South Shore of Long Island, fished or boated in The Great South Bay, took the ferry to Fire Island, drove to Smith Point, or Jones Beach to swim or tan on our beaches, we need you to help Save The Great South Bay convince The Commissioner of The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation Joseph Martens not to have the Old Inlet closed by the Army Corps of Engineers as part of restoration of our shorelines Post-Sandy. Commissioner Martens can be contacted at this link. He should know that:
1. The breach at The Old Inlet is making the water cleaner, clearer, oxygenating it.
2. Continuous monitoring beginning Pre-Sandy shows that the Old Inlet is in no way contributing to flooding.
3. A clean, healthy Great South Bay would be great economic news for The South Shore.
The decision is imminent. Filling in the Old Inlet would throw away the one gift Sandy gave us amid the massive destruction: A cleaner, healthier bay.
The fact of the matter is that The Old Inlet, reopened by Hurricane Sandy is helping to flush a stagnant, slowly dying bay, and breathing new life into our goal of revitalizing The Great South Bay so that it can be a healthy, sustainable ecosystem for baymen, fishermen, boaters, swimmer, beach goers, as well as to a wide variety of marine animals and plants that live here.
Let Commissioner Martens know that the Old Inlet is not only helping the bay to flush more quickly, it will help improve the local economy. The biggest initial fear, that The Old Inlet would increase flooding, has been shown to be unfounded.
Hear our story and learn a bit about what is happening in The Great South Bay according to marine biologists by taking a deeper dive under the orange waves below.
I was born in Babylon Long Island almost 54 years ago and moved to Sayville in 1965. I spent every summer until I was 22 on The Great South Bay, whether it was fishing, boating, clamming, swimming, or taking the Sayville Ferry to Fire Island, which lay in the distance just three miles from the end of my block. There was a proud 'bayman' tradition in my town, of generations who'd made their living on it fishing and clamming.
As it turned out, I was one of the many who helped destroy that tradition. Times being what they were in the late '70's, The Great South Bay was how people could make good money, the young during the summers, or the many adults losing their jobs on LI year round.
Removing almost all the clams out of The Great South Bay did not take very long. Between everyone who needed to earn a living, towns along the bay that wanted and needed the permit income, and The Blue Point Oyster Company, with its 21 sq miles of bay bottom, scraping out everything, by 1980, the bay was 'clammed' out.
That in turn changed the ecology of The Great South Bay. Whereas in 1976 the bay's waters were filtered within 2 days by the clams, today, it barely happens. It was a vicious cycle: Less clams meant murkier waters. That killed the eel grass, which stripped clams of more habitat, which meant murkier waters, and so forth. We stand here today with a bay at the brink. With my son last August at Sayville Beach, I was standing in what looked like warm tea, able to support some jellyfish but it seemed not much else.
So we spoke at The HS reunion asking the classic question, "What is to be done?" the larger answer was obvious: Save The Great South Bay. But then the tactical question(s) came: "How?"
Some research brought me to The Nature Conservancy, and their Shellfish Restoration Program. Over the past three years, The Nature Conservancy has been seeding the bay with cherrystone clams (larger than littlenecks, smaller than chowders). Cherrystones are big enough to survive and breed in a bay that has become less friendly to shellfish. So far, 7,000,000 clams have been seeded into The Great South Bay, on some of the 21 sq miles The Nature Conservancy now oversees, the lease on the bay bottom that was The Blue Point Oyster Company's having at last expired. The clams are spawning, the bivalves are filtering the water, and the bay is benefiting.
We started selling tshirts to buy more cherrystones for The Nature Conservancy. My sister, an artist named Susan Brown, painted The West Sayville Marina, and that inspired the shirt:
"This Shirt Helped 30 Cherrystones Clean The Great South Bay"
The plan is to create a virtuous circle in The Great South Bay where the clams and other shell fish return and help clean the bay water. If the bay, and indeed the how ecosystem of barrier beaches, islands, marshes, seabeds, could be made sustainable, it would not only be a great economic boon to The South Shore, but also a defense against future storms. A recent report commissioned by Governor Cuomo called The NYS2100 Report makes similar recommendations -- we need to rethink our shoreline ecosystem management.
Beyond shellfish restoration, our Pre-Sandy efforts have been focused on identifying and trying to find a means to address the hundreds of thousands of waste sites scattered throughout Suffolk County that are contributing to the bay's pollution. I am speaking of septic tanks. The Great South Bay desperately needs filtration not only because the shellfish are gone, but also because of a decision taken over 30 years ago not to build a sewer system in Suffolk County. It was lean economic times, again, and the public was not ready to accept a big bill for necessary infrastructure.
As per a study from Prof. Christopher Gobler of Stony Brook University, 70% of the nitrogenous pollution in the Great South Bay -- that which contributes to algae blooms and loss of oxygen -- is from septic tank seepage, with lawn fertilizer (stop doing this!) a distant second at 10%. What's truly alarming is that the pollution we see now in the bay is from what seeped from septic tanks 20 years ago or more. MUCH more is in the pipeline so to speak.
To this end, we have reached out to the winner of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's winner of "The Toilet of the Future" contest, Caltech, to see if what they are planning to roll out in India can be done on Long Island as well.
Save The Great South Bay was founded to bring the best science we have to bear to revitalize this magnificent body of water while we still can. We have been dedicated to developing a comprehensive plan for the proper management of this public resource so that people can continue to clam, fish, swim, boat, and go to The Beach, and so that the communities along its shores can be made safer against a changing climate and more prosperous for having the Great South Bay as a sustainable resource.
But then Sandy hit. With Sandy came a lot of damage, confusion, questions, fears, and a misplaced desire to 'return things to normal.' While the science is arguing to keep the Old Inlet open, there are many who assume that they are at greater risk for flooding both in the general public and among our political leadership. Sen Schumer weighed in early (Nov 19th) to say the breach must be closed, and hasn't altered his view as of this date as we continue to gather ever more data showing the benefits of The Old Inlet.
The Army Corps of Engineers, eager to start in on its $3.2 bil project to rebuild the shoreline, wants the Old Inlet closed as part of the scope of work, despite the science, and is as we understand it pressuring the NYS DEC to let them fill it in. In the grand scheme of things, the work involved in filling in the Old Inlet is a drop in the bucket compared to other projects, including dredging The Fire Island Inlet of 3,000,000 cubic yards of sand and using that to rebuild 5 miles of dunes at Gilgo Beach and Robert Moses State Park / Jones Beach. What we as an organization are saying, what other non-profits addressing the question of The Old Inlet are saying is -- Leave it open, for the good of the bay! Take the funds that were allocated to this, and find a good use for them. There is so much damage. Filling the breach would be thwarting nature -- exactly what the just released NYS2100 Report advised against.
Here are four letters sent to the NYS DEC Commissioner/Issued publicly that call for the breach at the Old Inlet to remain untouched:
1. Citizens Campaign Memorandum of Support
2. Peconic Baykeeper Op-Ed in the Long Island Advance
3. The Nature Conservancy to the NYS DEC
4.The Coastal Conservation Association
In less than a month, The Save The Great South Bay Facebook Group has enlisted 375+ people -- with all the key bay research groups represented along with many local baymen. We also have 2000+ Likes on the group's Facebook Page from 0 Jan 1st, with 100 new each day.
We are starting to get awareness. Our letters to NYS DEC Commissioner Joseph Martens are being heard.
The cause even got a nice write up on Wired.com:
New Fire Island Breach Could Be Beneficial Unless Government Fills It In
What we fear will happen is that the gross mismanagement of The Great South Bay that has persisted over the decades, and has brought this body of water to the brink, will continue on because the science will continue to be ignored, the government will continue to ignore its own findings, and in effort to rebuild after Sandy, we will miss a grand opportunity to restart the bay as each tide The Old Inlet further flushes and cleans it.
The Old Inlet was the one gift Sandy gave us. It would be foolish and tragic to throw it away because we didn't stop first and understand the implications of closing it. We should be guided in our efforts not by politics but by science. The people on the South Shore want a healthy, sustaining bay.