Greening The Greens
Sometimes it seems as if all the debates of significance in local government concern the use or misuse of the natural resources with which the East End is graced. Natural amenities have drawn more and more people to the area and they, in turn, have created built environments or tampered with the natural one in ways that challenge our resources. Nothing is inviolate.
The debate about how many people and industrial or recreational uses the land can sustain without endangering the drinking water supply is all-encompassing. Have we permitted land-use practices that contaminate the groundwater and are we continuing to do so? Will there be enough good water for the ultimate number of persons who could eventually live here under current zoning? Who should control from where and how much water is taken out of the ground and where it is distributed?
Some two years ago, The Star offered the opinion that it was "possible to create a nonpolluting golf course." The debate then was about the Bistrian family's Stony Hill Country Club course. While neighbors demanded the town reconsider the potential for groundwater contamination, the Bistrians claimed the town already had contaminated the water in the area and sued for damages.
More recently, the Southampton Town Board has given its approval to a zone change for an 18-hole golf course, which will lie over the thickest part of the underground aquifer on the South Fork in Bridgehampton, and an application for another nine holes for the South Fork Country Club in Amagansett is moving toward East Hampton Town Planning Board approval.
There is little point in debating whether to allow the new Bridgehampton course or the expanded Amagansett one (whose developers have promised to use the integrated pest management system instead of chemical pesticides) per se, since both are well along in the review process. The focus should be on how to insure that the golf courses are good, environmentally friendly neighbors.
We reiterate: It is possible to create nonpolluting golf courses. But two essential ingredients are needed to do so on the South Fork.
The first is a solid and up-to-date plan for the use of our groundwater, which is immutably linked across Southampton and East Hampton Town lines. The second is a set of stringent and enforceable criteria for the use of nonpolluting herbicides and/or pesticides on golf course greens and fairways. These are legitimate and attainable goals.