Government Briefs 09.14.17

East Hampton Town

Looking at Leaf Pickup

With fall starting and the process of raking and cleaning up fallen leaves set to begin once again, officials are discussing the feasibility of having the East Hampton Town Highway Department collect bagged leaves from the roadsides along properties here.

Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc said Tuesday that he and Highway Superintendent Steve Lynch have been assessing whether the department has the trucks and personnel to reinstitute a version of the town’s leaf pickup program, which was dropped by a previous administration. The vacuum trucks needed to suck up piles of loose leaves left roadside, which was the practice for many years, had reached the end of their serviceable lives and would be costly to replace.

But, Mr. Van Scoyoc said, if highway workers could pick up leaves that property owners have already collected in bags, it would at least save homeowners the step of loading those bags into cars or trucks and taking them to the recycling centers.

A Montauk Septic Update

Plans for a centralized septic waste treatment system to serve downtown Montauk properties are moving forward, according to Mr. Van Scoyoc. The councilman was to participate in a conference call on Tuesday with consultants designing the project and representatives of the Suffolk Health Department and the State Department of Environmental Conservation, agencies that must approve the location of the system. Potential sites were to be discussed.

On the Montauk Study 

Members of the Montauk Citizens Advisory Committee have prepared responses to the suggestions included in a planning study for the hamlet that consultants are working to finalize. Subcommittees of the citizens group examining the issues of coastal erosion, traffic, code enforcement, housing, and the economy will submit their reports to the town board and to the planning consultants, Mr. Van Scoyoc told the town board on Tuesday. 

Mapping Potential Storm Surge

“We hold our breath each time” a new tropical depression or potential hurricane appears on the weather map, Supervisor Larry Cantwell said at the town board’s meeting on Tuesday. A new map depicting the areas of East Hampton that could be inundated by a storm surge under different categories of hurricanes has been posted on the town website, ehamptonny.gov. The map can be found by typing in a search for the site’s Emergency Preparedness page, and clicking on the Town of East Hampton Hurricane Storm Surge Zones heading under Quick Links at the right side of the page.

The zones are based on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Sea, Lake, and Overland Surge From Hurricanes model projections, or SLOSH. The projections have been cross-referenced with East Hampton’s coastal terrain to result in the map showing, as Mr. Cantwell said, “where potential evacuation areas might be.”