Long Island will keep flooding. What's the plan?

The high winds of last weekend's nor'easter produced videos of surfers riding 10-foot waves and kayakers paddling on the flooded streets of South Shore communities. Next came the buzz of saws attacking fallen trees and the groan of pumps drying out basements. Soon the cursing over denials of insurance claims will take hold.

This was one of the calendar's earliest nor'easters and it likely won't be our last this fall and winter. The strong El Niño underway in the Pacific may have helped spare us from hurricanes this year but it also fuels more powerful coast storms here. It is all part of a larger pattern. Of the biggest floods recorded at tide gauges, some measuring Long Island waters for decades, nor'easters caused 47%, hurricanes 34% and snowstorms or blizzards 19%, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The biggest floods were caused by Superstorm Sandy in 2012.

The Island's municipalities and utilities well met the challenge of the latest storm. Overall, Long Island is good at handling emergencies. What we don't do well is long-term planning.

Recovering from adverse weather events is no longer a sufficient response on its own. We pay millions for sand to restore our beautiful beaches, but without a long-range plan nourishment alone isn't enough. Oyster Bay Town usually spends $3 million a year, after each winter, to pump sand onto Tobay Beach. That happens after an entire offseason of erosion that typically claims around 60% of the shore. Last weekend, that much of the beach was wiped out in one shot.

'BEHIND THE 8 BALL'

A warming globe only compounds the effect of long-established cycles like El Niños by increasing the energy and moisture in the atmosphere. Long Island has no comprehensive playbook for adapting our shorelines and low-lying areas to what is coming next year, let alone two decades from now.

We have to think beyond wondering how our renowned beaches will look by next Memorial Day weekend and focus on a 20-year protection plan. That U.S. Geological Survey of coastal flooding released in December puts the threat this way: By 2050, today's 100-year flood on average becomes a 25-year flood. For a home in this zone, the chance of flooding over a 30-year mortgage rises from under 30% to over 70%.

Suffolk County Executive Edward P. Romaine, the former supervisor of Brookhaven Town, has long been sounding the alarm about the need for a systemic effort to make the Island more resilient. Much of the flooding in low-lying areas, he said, happens when high tides or intense rain overwhelm obsolete storm drains that were designed to empty into bodies of water. All the while groundwater levels are rising.

"If things were done 30 to 40 years ago to fix this we'd be in a much better place," he said. A master plan, along with consistent funding, has been absent for too long. "We are behind the 8 ball now," he said.

The response for the future needs to be multipronged. Our identity is tied to beach culture. Erosion threatens the sales tax revenue tourism brings, the property tax base and the roads and homes near the shore. Restoring sand, dunes and marshes is necessary. Some structures and roads need to be elevated before they are washed away. Since Superstorm Sandy, Freeport Mayor Robert Kennedy has been advocating for two tidal floodgates to protect the area from surges in Reynolds Channel. Meanwhile New York City plans to have deployable gates to protect parts of lower Manhattan ready by as early as next year.

BUILT ON WETLANDS

There are places, however, where retreat and letting nature take its course is the smarter approach. Much of our region's vulnerability is due to neighborhoods built on paved-over-wetlands. But property buyouts are costly and often depend on opportunity. Without a plan in place, the pressure after the next destructive storm to rebuild things exactly as they were will be too intense to resist. And replacing what was there carries the same risk, if not greater, of being destroyed again.

Crafting zoning and other rules for how restoration will proceed when disaster strikes should be done in the calm before the next storm.

The pieces of this puzzle are well-known. The Army Corps of Engineers has been working for decades fortifying the shoreline from Fire Island to Montauk. Long Beach residents have been arguing over sand replacement for a half-century.

One challenge is overcoming local politics and jurisdictional fights to advance a comprehensive plan. Another is being clear-eyed about areas that are impossible to safeguard in any cost-effective way. A united front likely would be the best way to win federal funding and grants from the state's Environmental Bond Act for mitigation.

Keeping our Island resilient requires a greater commitment to act before the next weather calamity, rather than after.