Mattituck Park District officials say the inlet is nearing a crisis, with sand piling up along the west jetty and spilling into the federal channel while the east side’s Bailie Beach is stripped bare — its sand line now retreating almost to the grass.
The situation poses a “catastrophic threat” of a breach at Bailie Beach during the next severe nor’easter, Park District Chair Kevin Byrne said Monday night at a Mattituck Civic Association forum on the inlet at Veterans Beach.
“If this breaches, I dare say, Mattituck Inlet, for all intents and purposes, could cease to exist until this gets dealt with,” Byrne said. “So it makes good sense for the government and the Army Corps of Engineers to address this problem before it magnifies.”
Yet help from the federal government isn’t coming soon. A minor maintenance dredge — expected to move 6,000 to 10,000 cubic yards of sand to Bailie Beach this fall — has been postponed until late 2026. The delay has prompted the Park District to launch a campaign urging federal officials to act sooner.
At Monday’s forum, Stony Brook geologist and oceanography professor Henry Bukiewicz said Long Island’s North Shore behaves like a chain of curved, “leaky” compartments shaped by wind-driven waves.
“When the wind is blowing from [one] direction, everything is moving that way. When it’s blowing from [the other] direction, everything is moving that way … it’s going to slosh back and forth, so a few bad storms can really change the appearance of any one of those compartments. It’s different than the South Shore.”
The solution, he said, is straightforward: bypass sand from west to east and strengthen dunes to create a storm-resilient buffer above the high-water line. If sand bypassing draws opposition, compatible sand could be borrowed from nearby offshore bars.
“There’s plenty of sand,” Bukiewicz said. “The challenge is getting it to the right place — and keeping it there.”
But before any major work can begin, the Army Corps needs a new Section 111 study — a costly process that could run into hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars.
Francis Martin, an aide to Rep. Nick LaLota, said at the forum that federal law requires the study to re-establish project authority, interagency approvals and placement sites. The last Section 111, completed in 2011, included a 30-year plan, Martin said, but it was reduced to a one-time action in 2014 and cannot be revived or amended.
Martin emphasized that a nonfederal sponsor must request and share the cost of a new study. The state Department of Environmental Conservation is the intended sponsor and has already received letters of support from town and county leaders.
“Step number one is getting DEC on board,” he said.
LaLota’s office, he added, is exploring whether any Army Corps authorities could speed the process — though federal offices cannot directly fund the study, and Bailie Beach is not a federally designated beach.
Cole Yastrzemski, legislative director to Assemblyman Tommy John Schiavoni, said the key question is whether New York can fund the Section 111 study if the DEC requests it.
Schiavoni’s office, along with state Sen. Anthony Palumbo — who was also at Monday night’s forum — and the DEC’s regional director, are reviewing the state’s Section 111 budget line to see if it can cover a Mattituck Inlet study this year. If not, he said, lawmakers will push to include funding in next year’s budget.
The Army Corps of Engineers built the inlet’s jetties more than a century ago: the 775-foot east jetty was completed in 1906, and the 1,100-foot west jetty followed in 1938. The Park District owns the beaches flanking the federal channel.
The Army Corps built the inlet with the understanding that sand would be moved from west to east roughly every decade. The last full dredge was in 2014. A small inlet-only dredge — meant to place 6,000 to 10,000 cubic yards of sand on Bailie Beach — was delayed by equipment failure and is now penciled in for October 2026.
Byrne called that plan “a Band-Aid on a severed leg” unless it’s paired with a full bypass program.
Bukiewicz said there wouldn’t be an issue convincing federal engineers of the need to dredge. The Army Corps has “known forever that you’ve got to bypass sand at these inlets, and I don’t think they’ll have any argument that that’s what should be done … but there’s a problem for funding reasons.”
While the Section 111 process unfolds, officials outlined short-term steps: continue aerial and on-the-ground erosion monitoring to document the urgency of the situation; pursue permit amendments so routine dredging can extend beyond the breakwater; and use local permits for small, seasonal sand transfers to rebuild the dunes on Bailie Beach.
The meeting also explored what happens if the inlet is breached or the channel becomes nonnavigable. In that case, the Army Corps is obligated to reopen the federal navigation channel, officials said. But that emergency authority does not include maintaining Bailie Beach or its wetlands — underscoring why a new Section 111 study is the only path to a lasting fix.
For now, the priorities are to secure the DEC as the nonfederal sponsor, lock in funding for the Section 111 study and obtain permits to better manage sand already in the system.
Glenn Goldsmith, Southold Town Trustees president, said Monday night that more immediate local action is necessary.
“If we’re waiting for the federal government to come in and help us, it’s probably going to be breached before we get to that point … because the studies … the permits — it’s years and years and years.”
He said moving the sand “from point A to point B” is an “easy process. The question is who does it? Who pays for it?”
In the meantime, he urged, “if we constantly, step by step, keep ahead of it, then hopefully the federal government will come in at some point and throw a loan. But I wouldn’t hold my breath. What we can do as locals, what we can do as a town, is address and take small steps, which hopefully over the long term will bring results.”