Yes to Dredging 22 Slips

It was Montauk time again at a meeting of the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals Tuesday night as Rick Gibbs, the owner of Rick’s Crabby Cowboy Cafe, received approval to dredge the 22 slips at his Lake Montauk marina and word was received that an appeal of a Building Department certificate of occupancy for a motel at Ditch Plain had been withdrawn.

 The Planning Department had expressed concern over Mr. Gibbs’s original application, which asked for permission to dredge 1,000 square feet of sediment to a depth of 6 feet below mean low water at the slips between Jan. 15 and May 15 for the next 10 years. The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation had previously granted him a multiyear permit for maintenance dredging.

Brian Frank, the Planning Department’s chief environmental analyst, told the board last January that Mr. Gibbs had received similar approval in 2006 and had over-dredged in 2010, going as deep as 10 feet. He was fined about $150,000 by the state at the time; Mr. Frank also had argued at a public hearing in October that Mr. Gibbs had ignored mitigating conditions that the board had required previously, including a 25-foot-wide vegetated shoreline buffer.

Since the hearing, Mr. Gibbs and his agent, Drew Bennett, an engineer, had been negotiating with the Planning Department and come up with an agreement to move the vegetated buffer away from the shoreline to the south border of the property.

However, because of past history, the Planning Department had asked the zoning board to give its approval in one-year increments rather than the 10 years requested. Instead, the board found a middle ground, agreeing to allow the dredging over five years, with one caveat.

The board embraced a proposal made by Lee White, who is from Montauk, to require a new underwater survey before and after every dredging. “I like your suggestion,” John Whelan, the chairman, said, though he added that it was important to require the survey at the end of each dredging cycle.

Don Cirillo, whose five-year term on the board effectively ended Tuesday during the board’s last session of the year, agreed to five-year approval, but suggested making the first year conditional. If all conditions are met, the remaining four years would kick in. “We are keeping him on a very short leash,” Mr. Cirillo said. “The only reason we are doing that is his past history.”

The other Montauk business on the agenda Tuesday was an announcement by Mr. Whelan that the appeal of a certificate of occupancy for an eight-unit motel at 11 Ditch Plain Road issued by the Building Department to Sean MacPherson, a hotelier who has made a major investment in recent years in the Ditch Plain area, had been withdrawn. Laura Michaels, head of the Ditch Plains Association, did not return a call yesterday seeking to learn the reasons why.

The Ditch Plains Association and neighbors had brought the appeal, arguing that the use had been abandoned many years ago.

The appeal also involved the issue of timeliness, which has been heard in several instances in recent weeks. While the neighbors could not be reasonably expected to know when the original building permit was issued, they should have noticed when construction began, according to Anthony C. Pasca of Esseks, Hefter & Angel, at which point they had 60 days to challenge the permit. If no one has appealed within that 60-day period, the owner, who is acting on legally issued permits, should not have to operate under financial duress, he said.