Survey Is Ordered for Lazy Point Lot
The East Hampton Town Trustees continued a discussion last week about the relocation of an erosion-threatened house on trustee-owned property at Lazy Point in Amagansett, agreeing in principle to support its relocation but insisting on a further exploration of alternative sites.
As they concluded the latest of several debates on the topic, the trustees authorized Susan Knobel to obtain a survey, at her expense, of the lot to which she proposes to move her house, to make sure it can accommodate both the house and a septic system. Should any portion of the house fall within required setbacks, she would have to seek variance relief from the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals, said John Courtney, the trustees’ attorney.
The beach in front of Ms. Knobel’s Shore Road house is severely eroded. Last month she asked the trustees’ permission to move it to a lot that is farther from the water and at considerably higher elevation than the lot she presently leases.
In addition to accommodating the house and a septic system, the new lot would also have to be accessible. Ms. Knobel told the trustees that the narrow Shore Road limited her options. “I called the house mover and he said, ‘It simply won’t go down the road very far,’ ” she said. “The closer, the better.”
The trustees remain wary of setting a precedent. “We’ve already had three, four other requests that we have denied for raising or moving to another lot in order to accommodate a septic,” Diane McNally, the trustees’ clerk, said. “I just don’t want to be unfair to them, but also know that if we do this, can we be fair to everybody else, too?”
Bill Taylor, a trustee and the town’s waterways management supervisor, saw the prospective move as beneficial. Ms. Knobel’s is “probably the house that’s most imperiled right now,” he said. “Also, we’ll be taking a fairly antiquated septic system out of the water and replacing it. . . . Susan is asking to move her waterfront house to another waterfront location, which is a fairly even swap. If there’s another house or a whole bunch of houses that are imperiled, we should do what we can with what we have at the time.”
Mr. Courtney would craft a new lease agreement “in such a way that this isn’t a precedent being set,” said Deborah Klughers, a trustee, and that “future boards’ hands won’t be tied to go along this path.”
Acknowledging that some of the nine trustees still wanted to consider other, landward lots, Brian Byrnes told Ms. Knobel that “the survey would be a crapshoot for you. . . . Go ahead and do the survey; beware that that is not an indication that we’ll okay it.”
Mr. Courtney addressed the trustees on another matter that occupied much of their attention last year, that of a property owner who constructed a rock revetment, over the trustees’ strong objection, on the ocean beach in front of her house on West End Road in East Hampton.
Mollie Zweig was granted necessary permits from the East Hampton Village Zoning Board of Appeals despite trustee claims of jurisdiction. The trustees filed an article 78 proceeding seeking to annul the Z.B.A.’s October 2013 determination, but construction of the revetment commenced shortly after, on Nov. 11.
On Nov. 3 of this year, State Supreme Court Justice Andrew Tarantino found that the Z.B.A.’s characterization of the revetment as having no significant adverse environmental impact was “incorrect and wrongly exempted the application from State Environmental Quality Review Act analysis,” Mr. Courtney said.
David Eagan, an attorney representing the trustees in their lawsuit against Ms. Zweig, the village, and the town, told The Star that Justice Tarantino’s determination effectively meant that the Z.B.A. “issued permits without any environmental review required by the state law.” Although the revetment has been built, “the permits that were granted have been revoked,” he said. “It puts the Z.B.A. in a difficult position going forward.”
Frank Newbold, that board’s chairman, did not respond to an email seeking comment.