Georgica Cove Dredging Hits D.E.C. Snare

East Hampton Village’s zoning board of appeals is likely to grant a freshwater wetlands permit to the East Hampton Town Trustees allowing the trustees to use village-owned property at the end of Cove Hollow Road for access, staging, and dewatering the spoil from a proposed dredging of the Georgica Cove portion of Georgica Pond, following a brief hearing on Friday.

But securing a wetlands permit from the State Department of Environmental Conservation, which is also required, is not going as smoothly, the trustees complained at their meeting on Monday.

The pond has suffered from blooms of cyanobacteria, or toxic blue-green algae, in the past several years, prompting the trustees to close it to the harvesting of crabs and other marine life for much of the summer. The proposed dredging of approximately 378 cubic yards of material from the Georgica Cove section of the pond has multiple objectives: to improve water circulation, remove excess nutrients that are believed to promote harmful algal blooms, and restore access for baymen and recreational users.

Bruce Horwith, a conservation biologist who acted as agent for the trustees before the zoning board, said that the collected sediment, or spoil, would remain at the dewatering site for about a month before it could be transported offsite for disposal. He told the board that the Friends of Georgica Pond Foundation, a group of pond-front property owners, would pay for the dredging project and restore the area as needed after its completion. Project-limiting fence would be installed between the dewatering pile and the pond, he said.

Mr. Horwith provided the board with illustrations of the low-ground-pressure machinery to be used, “but the reality is that we don’t know when this work will be done or what the condition of the pond will be at that point,” so different equipment could ultimately be used. The work would not be performed between April 1 and Sept. 1, he said.

Frank Newbold, the zoning board’s chairman, said that the board shared his concern for the health of the pond, and before the hearing was closed asked if the project was likely to happen before the fall of 2017. “There’s no reason, at least on paper, that it couldn’t still be done this year,” Mr. Horwith replied, but the D.E.C. is “slow to respond.”

A D.E.C. spokeswoman provided a letter yesterday stating that the permit application is complete and a technical review has begun. The agency sent a notice of the completed application to Mr. Horwith, as agent for the applicant, last Thursday, instructing him to publish it in The Star next week, as public comment must be solicited. A final decision will be rendered following proof of publication, the letter said. 

But Mr. Horwith and Francis Bock, the trustees’ clerk, expressed frustration that requests for an on-site meeting with D.E.C. officials have been rebuffed. Such a meeting would be useful to bridge what they feel is a disconnect between the D.E.C.’s understanding of the application and the proposed excavation’s objectives.

Mr. Horwith cited a stand of phragmites that has clogged the upper reaches of the cove, which the agency classifies as a tidal wetland. “They seem to be treating this as if it’s primarily a project whose objective is to remove phragmites — that is definitely not our main objective,” he said of the D.E.C. “I’m not sure why they’ve focused on treating this as phragmites removal which, from our point of view, is incidental.”

Regardless of its classification, “We’re not disputing whatever the D.E.C. claims it to be,” Mr. Horwith said. “The issue is, they’re saying because of the fact that there is vegetation in this ‘tidal wetlands,’ as they designate it, and vegetation is preferable to no vegetation, they’re not disposed to approve a project that removes phragmites and doesn’t replant vegetation in its place. That makes sense if you’re talking about clearing phragmites on the shoreline, but it makes no sense if you’re trying to open a channel.”

“They don’t know the pond,” Mr. Bock told his colleagues on the trustee board. “To them, it’s a drawing on a map.”