Uphill Push for Rocks at Louse Point

Four Springs neighbors who believe their houses may be about to fall into Gardiner’s Bay faced off on March 24 against a phalanx of East Hampton Town planners, trustees, environmentalists, and neighbors in a hearing before the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals that lasted almost four hours.

The applicants, who live on adjacent waterfront properties on Louse Point Road, want to stack one-to-two-ton stones in a 560-foot-long revetment at the base of the bluffs between their houses and the beach. The revetment would rise to 13 feet above sea level and be covered by sand and beach vegetation.

The new revetment would connect to existing ones that are a combined 375 feet long and have no sand on them, creating a 935-foot-long continuous revetment.

One of the applicants, Robin Wilder of 86 Louse Point Road, is also the owner of 88 Louse Point Road, one of the two properties protected by existing revetments. Her revetment was built in 2009; the other one was built in 2001 by Dieter Hach. Both were built amid controversy.

In Mr. Hach’s case, he sued the town after the zoning board denied his application to build his revetment the way he saw fit. He eventually won the suit at decision at the New York State Supreme Court Appellate level.

In Ms. Wilder’s case, she applied for a revetment for both of her properties in 2009. Her application was the subject of the first-ever joint public hearing before the East Hampton Town Trustees and the zoning board of appeals. After much compromise, she was allowed to build a revetment for only her northernmost property, which abuts the Hach property. Even that approval came via a split decision by the trustees.

The current applicants, Tom Lynch, John Mullen, Lou Clemente, and Ms. Wilder, each need a variance from the town code to build a coastal structure where one is prohibited, as well as a special permit.

The East Hampton Town Planning Department, the town trustees, who own the beach past the mean high-water mark, and the Nature Conservancy, which owns a parcel south of the applicants, are all opposed to the plan. Several residents spoke out against it as well, as did Kevin McAllister, head of Defend H2O, a new environmental group.

All agreed that the bluffs have eroded. How fast and why was a matter for debate.

“The town says the proposed project is reactive to Sandy,” said Chick Voorhis of Nelson, Pope and Voorhis. “We don’t believe that is true.” His land-use planning firm designed the proposed revetment. “We believe we have demonstrated there is a long-term erosion condition, not just a one-time event.”

Brian Frank, the chief environmentalist for the Planning Department, disagreed. The bluffs, he told the board, are “generally sheltered from strong wave action by a well-developed sandybeach, a shallow depth near shore, and the Cartwright Shoals of Gardiner’s Island.” He added in his memo on the proposal that the properties were in a “bay coastal zone predominantly free of erosion control structures.”

The applications received a public hearing on Aug. 26. That meeting turned out to be a prologue, with both sides requesting time to enter additional documents into the record. Each file is now over eight inches thick.

The applicants maintain that their proposed pile of rocks, stacked on an angle, starting three feet below sea level and rising to a height of 13 feet above is a “softer solution” than an ordinary revetment or bulkhead.

Mr. Frank told the board that the applicants were poor candidates for the variances, as they had never attempted a coastal restoration project. He said that such an effort should be made before considering the normally banned step of a waterfront revetment. If built, he said, the structure would have a radical effect on the beachfront and properties to the south, as it would interrupt the normal drift of sand from beaches to the north.

Mr. Voorhis said that the applicants had already attempted “soft” solutions in the past few years, placing 1,000 cubic yards of sand in front of the bluffs in 2005, which then washed away. Cate Rogers, the vice chairwoman of the Z.B.A., countered that that equaled only 250 cubic yards per property, hardly the recipe for success, and was nothing like a true coastal restoration, a point Mr. Frank doubled down on. “This was harmless beach fill,” Mr. Frank said. “I don’t think it did any harm but it never had any staying power.”

Mr. Frank also told the board that some of the erosion currently visible was caused by the way the owners had cleared their land of natural vegetation, relying, instead, on lawns to stabilize the bluffs. Grass and weeds found in lawns, he said, lack the kind of deep, wide root structure found in plants like beach grass and beach plums, which ward off collapse. In addition, he said, water on the properties from rain was draining down toward the bay, into the bluffs, particularly from the Clemente property, exacerbating the erosion. Another damaging element under the control of the landowners, he said, was the apparent installation of irrigation systems on at least one or two properties, which would stress the bluffs even further. Also, he said, drainage from the Clemente property is damaging the bluff in front of the Mullen property.

In addition to Mr. Frank, Diane McNally, presiding officer of the trustees, and Deborah Klughers, another trustee, told the Z.B.A. that if the revetment is built, public access to the beaches would likely disappear. This point was buttressed by Mr. Frank, who pointed out that the properties with revetments had the narrowest beaches on the strip.

One issue that troubled members was Ms. Wilder’s apparent failure to follow the required mitigation measures outlined in the 2009 approval of her revetment to the north. She was supposed to have followed a similar protocol to what is currently being proposed, placing hundreds of cubic feet of sand over the exposed stone revetment, with vegetation. The sand was supposed to be refurbished annually, as needed. She has done none of this, all sides agreed, though Mr. Voorhis explained that she had personal issues that prevented her from doing the work.

Mr. Frank told the board that Mr. Lynch’s property was the most endangered of the four, but still fell far short of being a legitimate candidate for a hard revetment. It is immediately south of Ms. Wilder’s property.

David Lys, a board member, pressed Mr. Voorhis on the scouring to the Lynch property caused by the existing revetments. Because sand was not placed on the Hach and Wilder revetments, the Lynch property was being deprived of drifting sands, which would have strengthened the barrier between the water and the bluffs, John Whelan, the zoning board’s chairman, said. 

If the applicants could take any solace from the meeting, it might have been from Don Cirillo pointing out, several times, that the entire project was landward of the mean high water mark, meaning it was on private property. However, the code is written exactly for such circumstances.

Anthony C. Pasca of Esseks, Hefter, & Angel, Mr. Clemente’s attorney, did some legal saber rattling. He pointed out another Gardiner’s Bay revetment the board did approve, on Mulford Lane in Amagansett, but admitted when questioned that the two were not comparable. He also told the board that the immediacy of peril to the properties did not have to mean, legally, “tomorrow,” but rather “somewhere down the road.”

Mr. Voorhis asked, at the end of almost three and a half hours, to keep the record open after the hearing was closed. He said he wanted to respond to additional information that had been presented. This clearly irritated most of the board, as well as Mr. Frank. “If these files get any fatter,” Mr. Frank said, “that is what you’ll be putting on the beach.”

“It’s the same set of facts, over and over again. I don’t see the point,” Ms. Rogers said.

“My favorite burger joint is closed,” Mr. Lys said. “I would rather listen right now.”

Eventually, the hearing was closed. The board will review the Planning Department’s environmental assessment of the proposal at its work session on April 13. If it agrees that the project could have “moderate to major impact” in any of several categories, it could require that the applicants prepare an in-depth environmental impact study on the project.