Town Readies To Rebuild Montauk Dune Again, And Waits For County To Ante Up

East Hampton Town is preparing to again restore the artificial dune above the 3,100-foot-long sandbag revetment across the front of downtown Montauk, a project that is likely to again cost more than $1 million to complete.

The town will be responsible for half the costs of the work, though its financial partner in the endeavor, Suffolk County, has still not paid East Hampton Town more than $500,000 it owes for the reconstruction of the artificial dune last year.

East Hampton Town last week received an approximately $1.1 million bid from Bistrian Materials for this year’s delivery of some 50,000 tons of sand that the company will truck to the beach, dump and bulldoze into place on top of the sandbag revetment.

The work last year, which was done under a similar bid, came in slightly under budget at just over $1 million. The dune had not fared well over the summer, for reasons unknown, and some of the sandbags were exposed by erosion in midsummer, when the beach is usually at its widest.

But a calm fall and winter, so far, has re-covered bags along most of the reach of the project, and town officials said they are hopeful the restoration this year will not require substantially more sand than last year.

“I don’t have any expectation of what it is going to be—the winter is far from over,” Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc said. “But we have to have it all lined up, because we really only have about a 30-day window in which to get it done.”

The contract with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which constructed the $9 million protective sandbag revetment and the sand dune covering it, required that the town and Suffolk County be responsible for restoring the dune to the original project specifications each spring, before May 15.

The contract says the two local sponsors must split the costs, evenly.

When asked this week if the county had paid its share, town Budget Officer Len Bernard said the town had submitted invoices for the $501,802.50 to the County Department of Public Works in July and again two weeks ago. He said that the department’s acting commissioner, Darnell Tyson, had said he would be following up with the town soon.

Mr. Van Scoyoc said he town hopes to get the county check soon so that it can close out its 2018 books.