As East Hampton Town works on an improved approach to coastal erosion and inundation, its land-use policies continue to encourage overbuilding on the most at-risk properties. This is the case across the East End, where zoning codes have not kept up with the increased threat presented by accelerating sea level rise and more powerful storms.
In the hunt for the biggest returns, developers want to maximize what they can build, placing new or expanded beach houses in obvious danger. Too-big residences and businesses put on at-risk shorelines become everyone’s problem when expensive schemes to save them are put forth. A state environmental borrowing plan with up to $250 million for voluntary buyouts and habitat restoration will be on the Nov. 8 ballot. Suffolk and East Hampton taxpayers must pay the multimillion-dollar price of keeping a “temporary” seawall in Montauk that was built by the Army Corps of Engineers covered with sand. Meanwhile, attempts to stop the inevitable can result in the loss of the public’s access to beaches, and even of the beaches themselves. One way local governments could reduce the eventual costs — in shoreline “protection,” retreat subsidies, and elevating roads, for example — is to seek ways to discourage this kind of speculative investment in the first place.
An approach that has been looked at elsewhere is to reduce incentives for building in high-risk areas. The ready availability of federal flood insurance is one factor, but local zoning laws that treat low-lying and other vulnerable sites the same way they do upland properties are also at fault.
Towns and villages could tighten the rules for flood-zone building by more sharply restraining the size of new houses and other structures in them. For example, if the maximum extent of construction on an acre in town were 8,000 square feet, at the beach, the most one could build might be 2,000 square feet. This would be a powerful disincentive for speculative builders whose indifference has already dramatically changed many East End landscapes — as well as added to the demand for the services that contribute to overcrowded roads, the housing crisis, and environmental degradation.
The rise of waterfront property values make them nearly out of reach for public acquisition with money from the community preservation fund. This is only made worse by the scale of development allowed under current rules. For example, two badly exposed and nearly sea-level lots on an Amagansett bay beach are listed with an asking price of more than $9 million for the pair, making it unlikely that East Hampton Town would be able to buy them and prevent their development.
A new look at policy for East Hampton was completed in September. It lays important groundwork for tightening coastal policy. It sets a five-year deadline for new regulations. At the current pace of growth here, this is much too long. In five years, there could be very little unbuilt private waterfront left.