Source: BBPA
Source: BBPA
Beach grass transplanted in the mid-1990s
In 1994, building on the success of the first plan ng, BBPA received addi onal funding to increase plan ngs of woody plants, incuding black pine, beach plum, and bayberry trees from Beach 24th Street to Beach 27th Street, to the north of the boardwalk. Again, local residents aided in the plan ng effort. BBPA paid local residents to water and maintain the plan ngs through the hot dry summer for the first year. Once this plan ng was complete, the dune from Beach 24th to 26th Streets had grasses, shrubs, and trees, while the area west of 26th Street to 27th Street only had the shrubs and trees. The dune area with the grasses held the sand in place and, in a short period of me, the sand increased in height to the level of the boardwalk. In contrast, the dunes that did not have the grasses remained much lower than the boardwalk. With a northern dune along the boardwalk established, BBPA worked with DPR and DEC to create a six-foot sand dune south of the exis ng dunes and closer to
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Grass and trees on Far Rockaway post-Sandy near Beach 2
the water. BBPA hired a local contractor to transplant shoots from the northern dune and plant them in the new sand mound roughly every two feet. Thanks to the aggressive and rapid growth of these grasses and the aid of natural nourishment, including seeding from bird droppings, the grasses – along with a few new shrubs and trees – con nued to grow and bolster the new dune’s growth. This process helped to create a wide southern dune, also known as the primary or sacrificial dune, spanning the en re area between Beach 24th Street to Beach 27th Street and effec vely crea ng a double-dune system. Impact of Sandy According to local residents, during Superstorm Sandy waves were as high as fi een feet during high de. The southern dune between Beach 26th Street and Beach 27th Street was mostly washed away. With respect to the original northern dunes between Beach 24th and Beach 26th Street, where the community planted grasses and trees, the north-
ern dune remained strong and protected the neighborhood from ocean flooding. The shorter northern dune area from Beach 26th to 27th Street, constructed later and planted with trees but no dune grasses breached during the storm surges. As a result, water from one ocean wave passed the lower northern dune and came onto Beach 26th and 27th Streets, causing some minimal flooding. By the me the breach occurred, it was the end of high de, and the exposure to addi onal large waves had passed. Ironically, the worst flooding in the area was not from the ocean directly, but rather from water traveling down Seagirt Avenue from neighborhoods to the west of Beachside Bungalow that had no dune protec on and were subject to flooding (both from the sea and from Jamaica Bay to the north). According to community residents, the Beachside Bungalow neighborhood received about two feet of flooding from Seagirt Avenue and an addi onal two feet from the breach of the dune. However, this flooding went