Beach Debate Continues - Ask why Two Mile Hollow was singled out

Three weeks after the Suffolk County Health Department served East Hampton Village with a violation for operating a bathing beach at Two Mile Hollow Road without a permit, the future of the beach continued to be debated at a village board meeting on Friday.

Several regular beachgoers objected to the village's plan to build a bathroom and station lifeguards at Two Mile Hollow, while others said the changes were long overdue.

"We feel it will ruin the culture of the beach," said Annette Kunin, a town resident who has been going to Two Mile Hollow for 30 years. She wondered why the Health Department had singled out Two Mile Hollow and seemed unconcerned with the lack of facilities or protection at Wiborg's Beach. "This seems like retaliatory, discriminatory action based on what happened two years ago," Ms. Kunin said.

In 2003, some Two Mile Hollow neighbors calling themselves the Further Lane Association began to complain to police and the Health Department about problems at the beach. They hired private investigators to patrol the beach, which has long been popular with the gay community, and to videotape evidence of public urination, public sex, littering, and trespassing on the dunes.

Police stepped up patrols and in one night charged a number of people with public lewdness and disorderly conduct. There was an outcry from the gay community and a number of public meetings on the issue, but since then there has been little conflict over the beach until recently.

Early this month, the Health Department told the village that it would take legal action if it did not actively and regularly enforce its no bathing policy and immediately install bathrooms at the beach.

The department claims its concern is triggered partly by the fact that there are so many parking spaces at Two Mile Hollow. "When you have a 200-car parking lot and hundreds of people on the beach and dozens of people in the water . . . people are using it, and they're entitled to protection," Martin Trent, acting chief of the department's office of ecology, said last week. To qualify for a bathing beach permit, a beach needs lifeguards and bathrooms.

Mr. Trent said that Wiborg's Beach, which has neither lifeguards nor bathrooms, is considered mainly a surfers' beach, so is exempt from those state sanitary code rules.

"How many people drowned at Two Mile Hollow?" asked Ginny Hennenberg, another longtime beachgoer. "I would like to see the facts that back up the claims. I, too, think this is retaliatory action."

She and others opposed to lifeguards at the beach suggested that complaints be filed against Wiborg's Beach for not having bathrooms or a lifeguard. "We want to be consistent."

Michael Rosenbaum, who lives near the beach with his family, disagreed. "I find it ironic that some people feel they ng protection. I would ask why we have been discriminated against for so long by not having a lifeguard and a bathroom." If the village waits until someone drowns before putting a lifeguard on the beach, "we'd hang our heads," Mr. Rosenbaum said.

Dolores Danzig, who lives on Further Lane, said bathrooms and lifeguards are a good idea, but wondered what the village would do about the potential for more traffic and more people at the beach.

"I think there are a lot of us on Further Lane that don't necessarily agree with everything the Further Lane Association has proposed," Douglas Danzig said. He urged the board "not to change the character and nature of the beach from what it has been for 30 years. . . . You have the ability almost on any weekend to drive in and find a parking spot there."

Without bathrooms, "it literally smells like a urinal there," Mr. Rosenbaum said.

"Why is it I'm sitting here feeling like Two Mile Hollow is being offered up as the sacrificial lamb?" Ms. Kunin asked.

"Unfortunately, the board of trustees has been put in a very unique situation," Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr. said.

"The Health Department has said to the village, you have two options - run this as a public bathing beach, install a bathroom, and provide lifeguards," said Larry Cantwell, the village administrator. "The other option is essentially shut the beach down, prohibit people from bathing there, and enforce that prohibition. Those are really the two choices that are currently visible to the village."

"The Village of East Hampton, rightly or wrongly, has been taken to task by the board of health," Mr. Rickenbach said. "You pick your battles. There's a time when you litigate and a time when you sit down and try to do the best for all involved."

While the village had already complied with some conditions contained in a consent order from the Health Department, the mayor had not signed that consent order.

"Although the charges relate specifically to Two Mile Hollow, the order provides that the village enforce the no bathing policy on all nonbathing beaches," the village's attorney, Linda Riley, told the board. "The village can sign or proceed to a hearing. If the hearing goes against you there could be civil penalties and fines of $2,000 a day."

The village board passed a resolution on Friday authorizing the mayor to sign the consent order.

"I support the idea of having a facility down there," Edwin L. Sherrill Jr., a board member, said, "This time they really mean business. I understand the people like to go there and see kind of a natural beach, but the whole climate has changed."

Barbara Borsack, another board member, said she would hate to have to provide lifeguards and bathrooms at Wiborg's and Old Beach Lane "because the tax implications are huge and they're going to have to be reflected in the cost of beach stickers at some point."

Also at Friday's meeting, the board formally rescinded a 25-mile-per-hour, villagewide speed limit. The speed limit was changed earlier this summer before the board realized that such blanket changes are not allowed by the state when the speed limit is to be reduced to under 30 miles per hour.

The village also gave commendations to Rebecca Mikan and Vincent Tuths, teenagers who work for the Maidstone Club and came to the aid of a woman who was being assaulted on the beach near the club on June 28. They were recognized for their "judgment and character." The assailant, who was tied to similar attacks in the village and in Southampton, was arrested that day.