Overlook Beach Restoration Complete After Battling Erosion Crisis
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BABYLON, NY —After a decade of battling erosion, the Town of Babylon’s Overlook Beach restoration will be finished Friday, according to town officials.
“Work at Overlook completes today,” Ryan Bonner, Babylon’s Director of Communications, told Patch.
According to the town, the restoration extended the beach 350 feet from the parking lot and increased the bathing area by 1,200 feet.
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In addition, as part of the Fire Island Inlet Shores Westerly Navigation Project, 70,000 cubic yards of sand were dredged from the “sore thumb sand bar,” which is equal to adding 8 acres, or 350,000 square feet of new beach—the equivalent of six football fields.
The restoration follows years of handwringing by officials and concerned community members, including prior “Red Alerts” where Town of Babylon officials “begged” for help from government agencies, including elected officials calling on President Joe Biden to put pressure on the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in January.
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In October, the town announced that restoration work would begin and the beach would close for “essential, long-awaited work to address beach erosion and protect public safety” led by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
At the time, officials thought the work would go into the new year and anticipated its reopening in the spring of 2025.
But now, the work is complete just in time for the holidays.
In a social media statement on Friday, Babylon officials wrote: “After a decade of hard work and persistence, we’re thrilled to announce that the restoration of our beloved Overlook Beach is officially underway!
“We have fought tirelessly to secure this moment – along with our partners in government, Senator Chuck Schumer D-NY, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Governor Kathy Hochul, Rep. Andrew Garbarino, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Headquarters is finally pumping sand onto the beach!”
In January, Babylon Town Supervisor Rich Schaffer pleaded for help from the government during a press conference as an impending storm threatening 14-foot waves was on its way.
That’s when Schaffer and Oyster Bay Town Supervisor Joseph Saladino called on the Army Corps of Engineers and President Joe Biden to help with emergency measures until Memorial Day and for long-term solutions with repeated actions.
The beach later opened for summer on Memorial Day weekend after it “took some major hits” over the winter, prompting various restoration efforts and temporary fixes like adding sand to the shoreline to get the beach through summer.
At the time, Babylon officials said that “through some creative problem-solving and hard work,” they were able to “shift some of the sand and reconfigure the overall layout, expanding the capacity of the western section of the beach.”
In June, Bonner told Patch the town was at “the mercy of the Army Corps.”
“We are working closely with them to get more sand for Overlook before summer 2005 and we are confident that is going to happen based on our discussions with them,” he said.
In a statement on social media at the time, town officials said they’d been “aggressively fighting for a dredging project to be completed by the Army Corp of Engineers to deliver the much needed and long overdue sand.”
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