NY - Climate Change Is Threatening Fire Island’s Beaches—and its Queer History

It’s hard to overstate the importance of Fire Island to queer people. Since the 1920s, the barrier island served as a refuge for queer people of all walks of life, attracting countless artists and bohemians over the decades. After the Great Hurricane of 1938, gay people flocked to Cherry Grove at Duffy’s Hotel with the queer literati of the time. Since the erection of the Pines Hotel & Yacht Club in 1953, millions of queer people have flocked to experience the magic and queer euphoria of Fire Island, whether for their first day trip, or to plant their roots permanently. The Island’s Pines and Cherry Grove communities in particular offered a home to a community that was ostracized politically or ravaged by the scourge of HIV/AIDS.

On Fire Island, queer culture and ecology are inextricably linked. The island itself forms the large center of the southern barrier islands that run parallel to Long Island, and starting in the early 1900s, it was reinforced to act as a protective layer—a barrier—for the shorelines and inhabitants of Long Island. Without that protection, many fear, one of the most densely populated coastal regions would be dangerously exposed to a rapidly-warming Atlantic Ocean.

But Fire Island’s beloved beaches, once hallowed ground for visitors and homeowners alike, are all but disappearing. A series of storms—culminating with Tropical Storm Ophelia in September of this year—have wrought havoc, reducing a beach that was once as wide as a football field to one that extends only feet beyond some beachfront residences. Though communities in Fire Island have been largely successful at fending off the beach erosion left in the wake of hurricanes and tropical storms, they are now pushing for emergency relief aid as erosion eats up the remainder of the once-formidable dunes protecting the island from the surf.

The impacts of this erosion are far-reaching. Fire services and EMS are threatened, sewage lines are jeopardized, and traveling between islands is becoming infeasible. Events on the beach like the Pines Party, which draws thousands of people each year, are being moved to safer parts of the beach, while the tourism industry hangs in the balance. Perhaps most urgently, families risk losing their beloved homes, some of which are designated historical sites.

Historically, Fire Island’s pristine beaches have ebbed and flowed much like the waves that eat away at them. Restoring the beach after a storm was once a community effort, paid for by primary and secondary homeowners through established local tax elections that would cover sand, fencing, and other barriers to future ocean erosion. In 2014, however, the communities of Fire Island signed over control of beach replenishment efforts to the federal government under the Fire Island to Moriches Inlet Stabilization project (FIMI). Support for FIMI was initially ubiquitous, and it was understood that the federal government would have an obligation to maintain and repair the beaches as needed. Public Law 84-99 acknowledges the US Army Corps of Engineers’ basic authority to provide for emergency activities in support of State and Local governments prior to, during, and after a flood event.

While homeowners, emergency medical personnel, and workers employed on Fire Island had largely hoped that this system would secure long term efforts to repair the beach, requests for repair have been hamstrung by significant delays and repeated rejections at the federal level. This is largely because PL 84-99 determines the need for relief based on the severity of a storm rather than the current state of the beach, a criteria many Fire Island residents view as arbitrary and inapplicable.

Now, locals and homeowners on the island find themselves in an impossible bind: They’re at the whim of archaic rules for government assistance and at the mercy of a warming ocean that’s causing storms of increasing intensity and frequency. To make matters worse, the FIMI protocol bars residents from taking it upon themselves to repair their own beaches in certain capacities without federal approval.