Bulkheads and Shoreline Erosion Control

In order to do any construction work on bulkheads within the boundaries of Fire Island National Seashore, a National Park Service Special Use Permit is required. The NPS permit is in addition to the appropriate permit from New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (usually the Tidal Wetlands permit from NYS DEC) and the 404 permit from the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers. Each permit is necessary to provide oversight for the resources that each agency is mandated to protect.

Particularly on the bay side of Fire Island, property owners have constructed individual bulkheads with the intention of protecting their property against erosion. However, bulkheads negatively impact both natural ecosystem processes, and private property that is not bulkheaded.

Bulkheads replace natural formations landward of them and prevent upland sand sources from entering the littoral drift system, causing sediment starvation downdrift, and shifting negative effects to neighboring land. The interaction of waves with a structure increases wave reflection and turbulence, nearshore current velocities, and sediment activation and transport at the base of the structure.

Continuing past practices that have been shown to be in conflict with scientific understanding of best management practices is imprudent and short sighted. Knowledge about bay shore processes is ever increasing and new methods of shoreline protection that are more respectful of and responsive to natural systems, and that address erosion concerns of property owners are being developed and tested in coastal environments around the world. Park managers, in cooperation with universities and other federal and state agencies, are monitoring these developments and supporting research in order to ascertain an environmentally sensitive approach to these erosion concerns.

 

In recognition of the erosion concerns of individual property owners, park management adopted the following policy regarding special use permits for bulkheads on properties within the boundaries of the park:

1. Permit applications for new bulkheads, where no bulkhead previously existed, will be denied.

2. Permit applications will be approved when they propose:

   a. replacement in kind of minor structures with little or no change in location, capacity or appearance; or

   b. routine maintenance and repairs to non-historic structures; and

   c. in both (a) and (b) above, applicants agree that approved structures will be removed at such time that FIIS management recognizes a comprehensive and ecologically sound approach to bayside sediment transfer that may include existing bulkheads being replaced by a more sustainable shoreline protection method.

   d. Bulkhead permits of this type will be processed under a categorical exclusion consistent with Director’s Order 12, Chapter 3.4.

3. Permit applications to remove traditional and install new non-traditional bulkheads, may be approved when an applicant(s) submits an innovative and environmentally sensitive design, not involving shore hardening, which has been demonstrably successful in similar bay-shore environments with analogous ecosystem dynamics. Such systems should not introduce non-native flora or fauna, result in changes in predation, have high potential for negatively affecting adjacent property, or other negative impacts to the shore. Multiple property owners along a variably bulkheaded contiguous stretch of shoreline, proposing a unified or comprehensive approach of an innovative nature, are highly encouraged to submit a joint application. Proposals of this type will require a higher level of environmental review, such as an Environmental Assessment (EA) or an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS).

For more information, you may read the complete text of the park's current bulkhead policy:

• Bulkhead Policy for Fire Island National Seashore, December 5, 2005

 

Learn More

A series of Science Synthesis Papers was published in 2005 to support the preparation of a General Management Plan for Fire Island National Seashore.

• The Coastal Geomorphology of Fire Island: a Portrait of Continuity and Change
  (Fire Island National Seashore Science Synthesis Paper)
  by Norbert P. Psuty, Michele Grace, and Jeffrey P. Pace, Rutgers University
  
• Bay Shoreline Physical Processes, Fire Island
  (Fire Island National Seashore Science Synthesis Paper)
  by Karl F. Nordstrom, Rutgers University
  Nancy L. Jackson, New Jersey Institute of Technology