After mounting worries that we’d have to spend another post-Sandy summer without access to Fort Tilden, a National Park Service spokesperson confirmed to DNAinfo that the beach is expected to be back open in time for beach season.

The beach’s clean-up had been stalled by the long, slow back-and-forth of awarding a contract for its cleanup, as it’d been covered in dangerous debris post-Sandy but considered a lower priority than more popular lifeguarded beaches nearby and, as a federal beach, subject to a clunkier bureaucratic process. But spokesperson Daphne Yun confirmed that PARS Environmental, a company that also cleaned up a New Jersey wildlife preserve after the storm, is now on the job. The main priority is removing “large pieces of debris, including pieces of road,” said Yun, who seems confident they’ll be able to handle the job within the next couple of months.

Frustrating that it took this long (and really makes you appreciates the herculean efforts of the city’s Parks Department in re-opening beaches last year), but still, pretty fantastic news for a cold winter Friday, no?

Follow Virginia K. Smith on Twitter @vksmith.