Brookhaven salt marsh restoration aims to protect Mastic Beach

Dan Panico “For over a decade, we have methodically assembled environmentally sensitive parcels, in partnership with the County of Suffolk, to restore the health of our wetland areas. In Mastic Beach, those parcels total over 300 and are included in an area spanning over 147 acres. Restoring these marshland properties is an ambitious project that we recently presented to NYS for funding at a recent meeting held at the local library.

We are appreciative of the efforts of all of our diligent employees, two prominently featured in this article from our environmental division, with Councilwoman Karen Dunne Kesnig.”

Brookhaven salt marsh restoration aims to protect inland properties

By Carl MacGowan carl.macgowan@newsday.comCarlMacGowan Updated June 1, 2025 6:40 am

A pair of bald eagles circled over Narrow Bay in Mastic Beach on a recent day, the placid water below glistening in the late-morning sun.

In spring’s pastoral charm, you would never know these calm waters could unleash destructive waves. But often in a torrential rainstorm — and sometimes on sunny days — the bay waters lap the shores and creep toward homes on Riviera Drive and Violet Road.

And in Superstorm Sandy in 2012, the neighborhood of single-family houses and summer homes was deluged with a surge of saltwater that flooded the area for days.

“During Superstorm Sandy, where we’re standing now was 5 feet under water,” said Alan Duckworth, a Brookhaven Town senior environmental analyst, as he stood on a town dock along Riviera Drive.

WHAT NEWSDAY FOUND

• Brookhaven Town is planning a 147-acre salt marsh restoration in Mastic Beach to protect inland properties against surge from future storms.
• The plan includes creation of sinuous tidal creeks to help disperse floodwaters, and a maritime hammock — a hardwood forest that would slow the incursion of storm surges.
• The town has acquired more than 300 Mastic Beach properties since Superstorm Sandy in 2012 as part of a plan to remove homes and discourage future development.

Sandy’s devastation — and the subsequent willingness of longtime homeowners to divest themselves of their shoreline properties — prompted Brookhaven to launch an ambitious effort to restore a salt marsh that had existed for centuries along Mastic Beach’s southern shores before suburbanization paved the way for human habitation.

After more than a dozen years of planning, Brookhaven has acquired enough land — hundreds of properties, including vacant parcels and houses either destroyed by Sandy or abandoned by their owners after the storm — to begin laying out a vast field of tidal channels and wooded wetlands stretching from William Floyd Parkway east to the Osprey Park peninsula on the Forge River.

The marsh, covering up to 147 acres, is expected to act like an enormous natural sponge, protecting inland properties by absorbing flooding from hurricanes and tropical storms.