Do yourself a favor if you are at all interested in seeing the 10,000-foot view of how far inland the eroding shoreline has reached and have a look in Google Maps at the end of Bay View Avenue near Lazy Point, Amagansett. Zoom in until the street numbers appear. Switch over to the satellite image. Look left, out past the houses at the beach, and notice that there are street numbers out in Gardiner’s Bay — 114, 125, 129 — these were once house lots, too. Then you might want to look to the right at the end of Mulford Lane; 157, 159, and 163 were also once dry land, dry enough for a property owner to design a subdivision and for the town to go along with it.
This week another house, one at 117 Bay View Avenue, is in the news. Its owner wants permission for a permanent seawall made of PVC plastic. Again, look at the view from above: 117 and a house adjacent to it are obviously where the shoreline should be. Thanks to Google, you will see that an existing sandbag wall is well into the water; there is no beach except around low tide. A sizable marsh runs behind number 117, making it look like an island in the aerial view. It is clearly no longer a place for a house.
Yet if anything, the situation at Mulford Lane just to the north is more dramatic — and a sign of what is to come. The town ordered a house at 159 Mulford Lane removed roughly 20 years ago; another sits on pilings 100 feet out into the bay. Two more houses are already on the beach; at high tide, waves slosh around the back, landward side of number 157.
These houses are not unique. Coastlines around the world are shifting. But it is not up to the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals to decide what to do anywhere else. Tellingly, the owner of 117 Bay View opposes a detailed environmental analysis. But really, anyone with boots on the ground or an eye in the sky can see that the property’s fate has long been foretold.