Town Is Forging Ahead

A State Supreme Court justice may take until fall to determine the ownership of and access to parts of the Napeague ocean beach, but East Hampton Town is moving ahead in the meantime, come what may, with the process of condemnation, or eminent domain.

On Tuesday, the town board took comments on the potential environmental impacts should it acquire two stretches of beach, some 5,550 feet totaling just over 22 acres, on the eastern and western borders of Napeague State Park.

Attorneys for the nearby property owners’ groups that oppose four-wheel driving on what has come to be called Truck Beach were out in full force at Town Hall that day. The homeowners sued East Hampton Town and the town trustees over questions of title and the right to regulate vehicles on the beach. The trial concluded last week.

The areas to be addressed in an impact statement, said Daniel Russo, a consultant preparing the legally required document for the town, include adjacent land use, potential effects on the environment, traffic and noise, and whether condemnation is consistent with adopted laws and public policy, such as the town’s local waterfront revitalization plan, which addresses coastal issues. Once a draft of the statement is prepared, the public will have another chance to be heard, and the final version will include responses to substantive comments, he said.

Reading a letter from Cindi Crain of Safe Access for Everyone, a homeowner’s group that opposes beach-driving vehicles, Ken Silverman said that the impact statement should have a “far wider scope,” and address the consequences of having 73,000 vehicles driving on the beach in question — the number, he said, that would be expected to use it over the next 20 years. He based the number on increases in four-wheel driving permits, should the town acquire the land and continue to allow beach driving.

Continuing to speak on his own behalf, Mr. Silverman, one of the plaintiffs in the suit against the town, said that the impact statement “should clarify that the purpose of the condemnation is solely to protect beach driving.”

“The point,“ he said, “is the upland, and beach owners do not want the activity for which you are condemning the beach.” In preparing the impact statement, “I would ask you to do as extensive an analysis as possible,” he said.

In his introduction, Mr. Russo said that the point of the eminent domain procedure was threefold: to resolve the dispute over title of the land, to preserve public access, and to preserve town officials’ right to regulate use of the beach.

Steve Angel, who represents a number of the plaintiffs, called the current impasse “a trespass; it’s an illegal activity.” Should the town acquire the disputed sections of the beach, he said, and legally sanction four-wheel driving, it would have to make an exhaustive analysis of the impact on the environment.

Charles Voorhis, a consultant representing a group of homeowners and plaintiffs, described a “number of deficiencies” in the scope of the proposed environmental analysis. Unless corrected, he said, “it will fail to examine the full impact” of the town’s acquisition of the beach. The document should, for example, examine the effects of beach driving on the dunes and beach topography, he said, and other agencies, such as the state and county health departments and the state Department of Environmental Conservation, should be involved.

Jay Blatt, a fisherman representing the Montauk Surfcasting Association and the New York Coalition for Recreational Fishing, said that if beach driving were banned along the two shorefront stretches, fishermen following the fish along the beach in their four-wheel-drive vehicles during the fall run would have to bypass those areas, exiting onto neighborhood roads, and the effects of that should be considered.

The “intense use” of the area by vehicles takes place on only 10 or 12 days a year, and that should be taken into consideration, Tim Taylor of Citizens for Access Rights said. So too, he said, should the question of where four-wheelers would go if they were barred from Truck Beach. Mr. Taylor said his group believes that the “history and tradition” of local residents driving onto and gathering for recreation on that area of the Napeague beach “is very important when related to this site.”

From Atlantic Avenue in Amagansett east to Napeague, the number of town permits issued for beach driving and for public parking, along with the number of parking spaces within “a reasonable walking distance” from a public beach, should be documented, said John Courtney, a former lawyer for the town trustees, “to show the need” for the town to acquire the property for public beach access.

Comments on the proposed scope of the draft impact statement, which is posted on the town website, ehamptonny.gov, may be submitted to the town clerk through June 30.