Homeowner Blames Town for Erosion
The owner of a 28,000-square-foot oceanfront property on Surfside Avenue in Montauk was before the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals on Tuesday seeking a permit for a 10-year maintenance program for a rock revetment on the property’s eastern border.
John Ryan, who has owned the house since the 1960s, has made major efforts in recent years to fight erosion. His house, atop a 40-foot clay bluff, borders Shadmoor State Park to the east. In 2003, he was granted variances and permits to tear down an existing house on the site and build a new one farther away from the receding bluff, toward Surfside Avenue, and in 2011 he received a special permit to construct the rock revetment that is the subject of the current application. A 2014 application to build a 185-foot-long stone revetment at the bottom of the oceanfront bluff still awaits a required analysis under the State Environmental Quality Review Act.
“I’m continuing to have damage to my property caused by the town,” he told the board during a two-and-a-half-hour public hearing on his application. The town, he said, dug a drainage channel through the edge of Shadmoor to the ocean many years ago, creating a gully and causing erosion on his eastern border.
Brian Frank, the Planning Department’s chief environmentalist, told the board there was a problem with the application, in that what was being proposed appeared to be not maintenance, but an enlargement of the revetment.
“It remains unclear if the additional stone is proposed to repair damage to the structure that may have occurred since the revetment’s installation in 2011-2012, or if it is proposed to address a deficiency in the revetment’s design,” Mr. Frank wrote in his memo.
In the past, when appearing before the board, Mr. Ryan has had the engineer who designed the revetment by his side, and a lawyer as well. This time he made the presentation himself.
He held up aerial photographs from over the years depicting the erosion on his property. He told the board that the plan now was to place smaller stones between the massive boulders that make it up.
Cate Rogers said the idea appeared to contradict the original design.
“The rocks drop down. That is a good thing,” Mr. Ryan responded. “The object is to increase the stability.”
This left Ms. Rogers still uncertain. Examining the engineer’s letter from the 2011 application, she said that “the idea is that gaps in the large boulders was so that water would run through there.”
The interaction of ocean wave action with the revetment was a concern for Thomas Muse, a Montauk resident, who spoke against the application. “The project was designed to fail,” he said of the 2011 work. “Drew [Bennett, the engineer] said it would be 50 years before the revetment would see wave action. It was only two or three months.” He then asked for more monitoring of any work done.
Board members also asked how all the work would be staged. The 2014 application called for access to the site via a cut to the beach from South Essex Street. Is that even possible now, given the extensive work on the downtown Montauk beach by the Army Corps of Engineers, they asked?
Mr. Ryan had one speaker on his behalf, Gregory Donahue. Mr. Donahue, who is on the Montauk Lighthouse Committee and has worked for many years on the revetment that protects the historic structure, told the board that the placement of smaller stones between the boulders, as proposed, was needed to stabilize the revetment and prevent the boulders from crashing down onto the beach.
John Whelan, chairman, indicated that if the board were to approve a maintenance permit it would be on a year-to-year basis.
In the end, the board found the application essentially incomplete. Ms. Rogers suggested that Mr. Ryan work with Mr. Frank to prepare another, addressing the board’s many questions. The record was kept open to allow him time to do so.