Fear of a Neighborhood’s Demise

The lure of waterfront living, the stratospheric value of most South Fork real estate, and fear that a catastrophic weather event could destroy it all were starkly illustrated at Tuesday’s meeting of the East Hampton Town Trustees.

The residents of Lazy Point in Amagansett, who lease the land on which their houses sit from the trustees, had agreed to modest increases in the cost of their leases for the next 12 months, after furious opposition to the terms the trustees first proposed.

 But the sound and fury continued on Tuesday as residents protested proposed amendments to their leases that had been suggested by Diane McNally, the clerk of the trustees, or presiding officer, on April 7. The amendments, they argued, could result in the termination of their leases as well as the loss of their houses.

  Under the amendments, leases would terminate if fire, wind, or water caused damage that would cost 50 percent of the value of a house to repair. They also would require the homeowners to remove whatever was left of their houses at their own expense. Furthermore, the amendments would give the trustees the right to terminate a lease if a lot were “deemed unsuitable for continued placement” of a house due to “events including but not limited to flooding, erosion, increase of ground water level, or loss of natural vegetative buffers.” Again, tenants would bear responsibility for the removal of their houses.

  Gordon Ryan, an attorney who lives at Lazy Point, spoke for his neighbors when he asked Ms. McNally on Tuesday to “think these proposals through before you shoot them out there.” If a house was severely damaged by a weather event, he said, “Now you’ve had a disaster, you have to pay to demolish it, now you’re homeless. You don’t think people are going to be upset?”

The intent, Ms. McNally said, was not to force tenants from the land, but to address ongoing issues such as, for example, the plea by one Lazy Point homeowner, Susan Knobel, for permission to move her house from severely eroded shorefront to higher ground, or, in another matter facing the trustees, that four contiguous property owners at Louse Point in Springs are seeking permission, over the group’s strong objection, to build a rock revetment along the shore.

 “I just threw this out there as the concept to say, long-term, what are we going to do if there’s a disaster?” Ms. McNally said. “I do understand that as it was disseminated among some of the tenants, there was a great deal of concern. I apologize.” The proposal, she said, was “simply for discussion purposes.”

But for residents, the proposal was more cause for sleepless nights. “We don’t understand how you can view it as anything less than death by attrition for us as a community,” David Elze said. “We’re all facing sea-level rise. We’re all facing climate change. We’re looking for solutions, not abandonment of this neighborhood.”

Mr. Elze proposed allowing residents to move their houses to vacant land. That isn’t realistic, Ms. McNally said, saying there are few open lots in the area and that much of the landward areas were freshwater wetlands.

 “The land now is so constrained by environmental concerns that I don’t think you can do it,” she said.  However, she added that the town’s Planning Department would survey vacant lots to determine which, if any, were suitable for a house and septic system.

Tenants should understand, Ms. McNally said, that “we have been inundated with questions, concerns, proposals” about the ocean and bay shorelines. “It’s not a good situation, but it’s one that has to be answered.” Together, she said, the residents and trustees need to create guidelines. 

“We’re talking about local folks, in very small homes, in a neighborhood which touches everybody’s heart,” Ms. McNally said. “But whatever is decided for that locale is going to apply to the multimillionaire who is on the ocean and wants to buy his way through every permit process. We really have a lot on our shoulders here, and it is going to be very hard to work our way through the whole thing. But little by little, we’ll get there.”