By Mike Busch 9-17-19
The Dune Restoration project has made some huge progress over the last several weeks, and as of yesterday, the beach east of the Davis Park Casino is clear of equipment and pipes. I grabbed some video from the Fire Island and Beyond Surf cam as contractors from Week’s Marine moved the main pipe that connects the ships to the shore down the beach with the help of a tugboat and other equipment.
Work is continuing on the west side with two ships delivering sand 24 hours a day. You can still view a lot of the work on the beach cam now. It appears they still have to build up the dune on the east side so the Surf cam should still be in play. The final step will be to build new crossovers and the planting of grasses on top of the new dune. For more information on the project, Suffolk County provides occasional updates here. I hope to get a better look at the actual pumping of sand on the beach on the next update.
On Sunday I sent my drone out to get a look at one of the ships, the R.N. Weeks. This 282-foot vessel is called a Trailing Section Hopper Dredge and as you can see in the video above and images below, the sand is pumped out of the middle of the ship and pumped out at the pipe opening about 3000 feet off the beach. The screenshot below shows the track of the vessel. The sand is being taken from a borrow site off Cherry Grove. I included a bunch of aerial images of the ship and beach below and on pages 2 and 3. I also took some shots from the ground in front of the Davis Park Casino on Page 4.
More Images on Pages 2,3, and 4
