An Island, all fired up, battles the Army Corps

Daily Point

Fire Island homeowners lobby top pols, officials to fix damaged beachfront

Summers on Fire Island are full of fun and frolic in the sand. But the cold weather months are often when tough political decisions are made about the future of this fragile national seashore.

Fire Island property owners are battling the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers over whether the agency should rebuild a stretch of beachfront badly damaged by recent storms — a fight that has enlisted a high-powered consulting firm and several federal and state officials in a full-court press.

Leading the local charge is Henry Robin, president of the Fire Island Pines Property Owners Association. Robin says many homes on this heavily populated barrier island face imminent destruction from rising sea levels and storms. His little local group has recently been punching above its weight in the ongoing dispute with the giant Army Corps.

“We’re terrified and we want the Corps to repair our beach,” Robin told The Point. He noted that Fire Island Pines is well known as an iconic LGBTQ community with many friends in high places both on Long Island and New York City.

In rallying support, Robin’s group has corralled many top politicians, including Gov. Kathy Hochul and New York’s two U.S. senators, Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillbrand, all of whom have sided with Robin’s group, which is conducting its own PR campaign. The group has already spent $60,000 for this effort, and recently raised another $70,000 in a fundraising appeal, Robin said.

It is also working with Actum, a prominent Manhattan political consulting firm whose members include several prominent former politicians (one of them, Tom Suozzi, was recently selected by the Democratic Party as its candidate in the special election for his old congressional seat, the one in CD3 vacated by the expelled George Santos). Local Fire Island groups have gathered more than 10,000 signatures calling for more beach repairs.
The political dispute is…