Plea to Clean Havens Beach

Friends of Havens Beach, an advocacy group seeking to prod Sag Harbor Village officials into improving the condition of the village’s only bathing beach, listed the detritus recently found in the sand there at a public forum at the John Jermain Memorial Library on Sunday. The detritus included jagged pieces of corroded metal, glass shards, and chunks of coal.

The group believes the November 2017 dredging of the wharf, during which 10,000 cubic yards of sand were pumped from the bottom of the harbor onto the beach, is mainly to blame. 

Jean Held, a trustee of the Sag Harbor Historical Society, presented some of the history of Havens Beach at the forum, showing photos of the dredging (one was captioned “the event that brought Friends of Havens Beach together”). Another slide showed patches of what she said was heavy blackened sand. “This upsets me,” she said. “I don’t know what it is.” Ms. Held said on Monday that collecting the sand often left her hands stained. She has sent a sample to be tested.

During her presentation, she noted that three stormwater drainage pipes lead to the beach, one emanating from Bay Street, one from the Cormaria Retreat House, and one from the beach’s parking lot. 

Terry Sullivan, a member of the group, said the Suffolk County Department of Public Works, which had overseen the dredging, has maintained that clean sand was deposited on the beach at the time, but he showed a photo of what he said looked like “black sludge” issuing from the dredge pipe. 

Last January, John Parker, a member of the harbor committee, alerted village board members to the conditions at the beach by bringing three baseball-size rocks he found there to a meeting. Ken O’Donnell, a trustee, disputed the cause of the detritus was the dredge, but said, “We’re going to sift the beach to get rid of the rocks and shells.” The beach had indeed been sifted, but Mr. Sullivan said rain had subsequently caused more debris to be unearthed. 

Ms. Held made the same point to the village board during a public hearing on Nov. 13, at which the Friends of Havens Beach invited board members to join them in touring the beach. No one had taken the group up on the offer, Carol Williams, one of the founders said. “They didn’t respond very much,” she added, of her interaction with the board at the hearing. She had also invited the board to Sunday’s presentation, she said, but no one attended. “We really hoped that they would come,” Ms. Williams said. “What we’ve been asking for is to have one person on the village board who would be concerned with the environmental oversight of the beach.”