Newsday- Eroded beach in Point Lookout to get help

Thursday May 25, 2006

From Newsday:

Eroded beach in Point Lookout to get help

BY WILLIAM MURPHY
Newsday Staff Writer

May 25, 2006, 3:09 PM EDT

The House has set aside $4.6 million to help restore the badly eroded beach in Point Lookout, Rep. Peter King said yesterday.

The money, approved on Wednesday night as part of an energy bill, would pay for the dredging of the Jones Beach Inlet to the east and dumping of some 390,000 cubic yards of dredged sand on the Point Lookout beach, said King (R-Seaford).

Residents of Point Lookout, a small community at the eastern tip of Long Beach Island, have pleaded for help for years, but they were part of a larger and long-delayed project planned for most of the island's beaches. That impasse was broken earlier this month when the Long Beach City Council rejected the $100-million project drawn up by the state and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

"We are elated," Gerald Ottavino, environmental chairman of the Point Lookout Civic Association, said yesterday. "It will serve to clear the inlet, bring nourishment to our devastated beaches and offer storm protection to our community."

King, chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, said was assured by House colleagues that they would fight to retain the funding during conference deliberations with the Senate. He said Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) had promised to fight for the funding.