Asharoken Races to Rebuild Dunes

A nor’easter is coming and Asharoken Village officials are scrambling to rebuild the sand dunes along Asharoken Ave. ahead of the storm.

Asharoken is still shattered eight days after Hurricane Sandy pushed storm surge over Asharoken Ave., through beachfront homes and into Duck Island Harbor. The powerful surf destroyed the dunes that offered a buffer from the Long Island Sound.

“The storm the other day basically leveled [the dunes] and washed over the road,” Asharoken Mayor Greg Letica said. “It put all the sand on the other side of the road.”

With Village Hall also flooded out and unusable, officials met Monday night at Northport American Legion Post 694 to recap how the community fared and meet the challenges ahead. 

While there’s a list of pressing issues, from homes with flood damage, others without power and even some concerned when cable TV will return, one took precedence.

A nor’easter is forecast to hit Long Island Wednesday into Thursday, bringing rain, gale-force winds and possibly more flooding.  

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To keep Asharoken Ave. from being damaged, the village made restoring dunes to the Sound side of the road its top priority. That's also vital to the residents of Eatons Neck, who were cut off from the mainland in the hours after Sandy struck and closed the road. 

“Our fear is if we didn’t put the sand back, if the water came up it could get under the road," Letica said. "This provides a buffer.” 

Four machines worked to push the sand into place Monday and Tuesday, although there’s no estimate how much was lost to storm erosion and deposited into Duck Island Harbor on the opposite side of the road.

It was a replay of what happened in December 1992 when a powerful nor’easter flooded the community.

“Those dunes weren’t particularly substantial,” Letica said. “In order for those dunes to work they should be a lot wider, they should be higher and they should really be vegetated properly. They were negative on all three.”

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