The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration announced on Thursday, December 1, that it has awarded East Hampton Town a $350,000 grant to design “living shorelines” along the shores of Fort Pond and Lake Montauk.
Living shorelines are engineered coastlines in low-lying areas intended to protect against flooding and storm impacts using natural features rather than hardened seawall structures. The designs can mimic natural wetlands buffers and shellfish reefs that dampen wave energy and allow flooding to occur without causing erosion of the coastline.
The town’s Natural Resource Department applied for the grant funding to cover the cost of planning and design of two living shorelines in Montauk’s two enclosed water bodies, both of which were spotlighted in the town’s recent Coastal Assessment and Resilience Plan as vulnerable to flooding impacts and, in the case of Fort Pond, a potential breach from the ocean during a severe storm that could threaten much of the downtown.
The federal grant funding would cover about half of the total anticipated project cost of $710,000, with the rest to come from a local match — typically a combination of state grant funding and town contribution of staff time dedicated to the project planning and implementation.
Living shorelines can cost between $1,000 and $5,000 per linear foot to design and construct.
“This significant grant award is a well-deserved acknowledgment of East Hampton Town’s progress in recognizing the tangible impacts of climate change in our coastal community,” Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc said in a press release sent out on Tuesday, December 6, announcing the grant award, “and acting to protect our residents and infrastructure while insuring continued sustainability.”
The grant application was written by Samantha Klein, an environmental analyst in the Natural Resources Department.
The town described the first steps of the work as site analysis, determining plant species to be used, designing whether mussels or oysters should be used to create shellfish reefs and what other natural components will be used to create the new shoreline.
The funding was part of $136 million from the federal infrastructure improvement bill that was awarded by NOAA, the National Fish and Wildlife Fund and the Department of Defense for environmental and flood mitigation projects in 29 states.
“The natural infrastructure projects provide a buffer for communities against increasingly intense storms and flooding, while also improving crucial habitats for fish and wildlife species,” the NOAA announcement of the grant funding says. “The projects will restore and create more than 16,000 acres of coastal habitats, including coastal dunes in Texas and California, saltmarshes in Louisiana and Virginia, oyster reefs along the Atlantic seaboard and living shorelines to protect military facilities in Mississippi and Florida, among others. Twenty-eight of these grants will fund construction activities for resilience projects, and 60 of them — 29 for planning and 31 for engineering and design — will advance community initiatives, with the ultimate goal of becoming shovel-ready resilience efforts.”
Michael Wright on Dec 7, 2022