National Park Service Announces Plan for Breach Made by Hurricane Sandy to Close Naturally

Fire Island’s National Park Service has announced a plan regarding the third breach within the Otis Pike Fire Island High Dune Wilderness Area, which was caused by Hurricane Sandy in 2012. The two other breaches caused by the devastating superstorm were filled in right away, but the third remained open because of its location inside a designated wilderness area.

The National Park Service had to come up with a best practice to preserve the federal wilderness area before deciding how to handle the breach, in order to comply with the Wilderness Act of 1964, the 1980 legislation that established the Fire Island Wilderness, the Otis Pike Fire Island High Dune Wilderness Act and the 1983 Wilderness Management Plan Fire Island National Seashore.

NPS has now announced their plan in an Environmental Impact Statement, which is to allow the breach to close naturally. Allowing nature to manage the breach improves the quality of water through the exchange of seawater and bay water, but it can also threaten human life, cause storm damage and flooding or have “other severe economic and physical damage to the Great South Bay and surrounding areas,” the EIS says. If the latter happens, human intervention will occur and steps will be taken to close the breach.

The EIS stresses the decision made about the open breach was made based on factors like maintaining wilderness character, sediment transport and geomorphology, water quality, ecosystem structure and processes, benthic communities, finfish and decapod crustaceans, transportation (vehicle access), flood conditions, and socioeconomics.

The plan has been announced on the heels of news that the NPR wanted the breach to be left open as part of the implementation of the 1997 Breach Contingency Plan.

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