Salutary Effects Of Coastal Strategy
East Hampton Town is getting its land acquisition strategy right and developing an approach that other local governments along the country’s coasts could consider a model. The money comes from two sources, the community preservation fund transfer tax and a newer federal program aimed at neutralizing at-risk properties. Taken together, the initiatives could improve marine and estuarine habitats, reduce potential erosion-control costs, and limit calls for government bailouts after catastrophic storms.
In a joint bid with the Nature Conservancy, the town recently won nearly $10 million in federal watershed protection money to buy properties near Lazy Point, a low-slung area surrounded by water in eastern Amagansett. The intent is to remove houses and other structures, allowing the sites to be revegetated as natural flood plain. One side benefit would be reducing the workload of town planners and others whose jobs are increasingly taken up with requests for permission to protect problematic shorefront properties.
On a simultaneous track, the town has been using money from the preservation fund to target properties in the heavily impacted Lake Montauk watershed. In a mailing to property owners there, the town offered to buy undeveloped parcels at fair market value. Many accepted, and deals are being completed that will remove potential development of a number of sites.
The East Hampton Town Trustees, an autonomous board that owns the underlying land of a number of continually threatened houses on Lazy Point, should be paying close attention. As more and more homeowners there come before them for erosion-control structures that alter the environment and restrict public access to the beach except at low tide, an orderly reduction in the number of houses appears necessary. Any future programs of the sort being planned by the town and Nature Conservancy should be extended to the trustees as well.
The upside of these efforts are that they are likely, over time, to cost taxpayers less than doing nothing and then bailing coastal property owners out after a disaster. Consider that a substantial portion of the $50 billion Hurricane Sandy relief package could have been avoided if initiatives like this had been undertaken before the storm.