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Georgica Pond: Move Plovers?

By
Christopher Walsh

The East Hampton Town Trustees will apply this week to the State Department of Environmental Conservation, the Army Corps of Engineers, and the federal Fish and Wildlife Service for an emergency permit to open Georgica Pond to the Atlantic Ocean, according to Francis Bock, the governing body’s presiding officer.

The traditional spring opening of the pond did not happen this year due to weather conditions and an earlier-than-usual arrival of federally protected piping plovers, the small shorebirds that nest in the ocean dunes. A bloom of cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae, has again compelled the trustees to close the pond to the harvesting of marine life and warn against exposure to it.

The harmful algae have appeared in the pond in each of the last few summers. Opening the pond to the ocean serves to flush it out, lower the water temperature, and increase salinity, eliminating the algal blooms. However, an opening could endanger nesting plovers.

On Monday, the trustees heard yet another plea from the Friends of Georgica Pond Foundation, a group of pondfront property owners who are trying to improve the pond’s water quality, to open it. Sara Davison, the foundation’s executive director, asked the trustees to open the pond in May and again earlier this month.

Priscilla Rattazzi Whittle, a co-founder of the group, told the trustees that vegetative buffers recently planted along the pond by property owners to filter nitrogen and phosphorous from runoff “are entirely underwater.” Trees are sitting in “acres of stagnant water and starting to fall down.” A winter survey found no blue crabs, an indication of the pond’s low salinity, she said.

“Septic systems are inundated, as the depth to groundwater is presently five feet or less,” Ms. Whittle told the trustees. “We know this year was an anomaly, as birds started nesting much sooner and the traditional spring opening could not occur. But my sense is that next year the birds are going to do exactly the same thing. So, for right now, Georgica Pond needs to be opened, and the sooner the better.”

“If it was up to us, it would be opened,” said Brian Byrnes, a trustee. “But we’re handcuffed,” he said, “by the federal government with regard to the piping plovers. We feel badly, but again, our hands are tied.”

The trustees are now negotiating with the Army Corps for a 10-year permit to dredge sections of the pond. They have previously expressed the concern that an opening of the pond to the ocean, through an emergency permit or unilateral action, would jeopardize that effort.

On Monday their frustration was evident, and several trustees wondered aloud if the plovers might simply be moved for the duration of an opening. “I cannot for the life of me understand — and I do appreciate wildlife — how these birds cannot be moved when we have a health issue concerning the pond and the effect it’s having on all the people,” Mr. Byrnes said. “It’s really unfortunate. There have to be exceptions.”

“I have asked several times in the past, Brian, if there isn’t more that can be done with an endangered species, such as incubating,” said Diane McNally, the trustees’ former clerk. “I know it’s difficult to then re-introduce to the wild, I know there’s a lot of complications to it, but it does seem like if we’re not being successful with what we’ve got going on, and we are now endangering the health and welfare of our community, something else should be able to be done.”

Nonetheless, she predicted that the trustees’ application for an emergency permit would be denied thanks to the nesting shorebirds. Ms. McNally is among a minority on the board of trustees that disagrees with the majority’s stance on recognizing state and federal authorities’ jurisdiction on trustee-managed lands and waterways.

“We’d like to have a cooperative, working relationship with the D.E.C.,” said Rick Drew, a trustee, “and will have to see if that evolves.”

Ms. Rattazzi was pleased that the trustees expect to submit the application for an emergency permit this week, but, like her neighbors, disappointed by the slow pace of action. Mr. Byrnes, she wrote in an email yesterday, “made the wisest comment about the fact that a solution will have to be found in terms of figuring out a way to relocate these birds ever so slightly to the east, even temporarily, so the pond can be opened even when the birds are present.”

 

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