The advent of Covid-19 spurred the East Hampton Town Board to create an advisory group focusing on beaches, parks, and recreation, which would coordinate enforcement among the several departments that have a hand in beach-related issues.
It was such a good idea that the group is now a standing committee. Members gave the board a rundown of Beach Season 2022 during Tuesday’s town board work session.
Chief lifeguard John Ryan Jr. recapped what he called a “great summer,” marred only by one drowning fatality, which happened at Ditch Plain in Montauk when a man went swimming in the early evening, when there were no lifeguards on duty.
Mr. Ryan thanked the board for raising the salaries of the town’s lifeguards, but did note that there were fewer of them — just 88 — thanks to a smaller than usual number drawn from the high school. The town fielded 109 beach rescuers this summer (21 shore-bound rescue personnel in addition to the 88), a lower number, Mr. Ryan said, than in recent years. While the town had certified more than 80 guards this year, along with numerous recertifications, that was also “lower than what we normally have,” he said.
All told, lifeguards performed 137 rescues during 2022, including 15 on unprotected beaches. On July 30, for example, east of Indian Wells Beach in Amagansett, a man on a beach bike had a heart attack, and was unconscious for over 12 minutes. He was saved, Mr. Ryan recounted, by quick action from lifeguards, two of them teenagers, and other emergency workers. The man, David Plotkin, “went back to the beach weeks later to meet with the lifeguards who were still working.”
The summer was also notable for numerous shark sightings and humongous schools of bunker, which kept the apex predators hanging around through the high season. “There’s some bigger fish feeding on that bunker,” Mr. Ryan said, but that was happening 300 yards or more offshore.
A diminished seasonal work force that helps pick up garbage and perform repairs, including at beach restrooms that faced an onslaught of vandalism this summer (especially at Ditch Plain and Maidstone Beach), had its share of stress last summer, said the lifeguard chief. Nevertheless, he said, the morning beach “trash runs” in Montauk were fully staffed. “The work-force pool is tight out here,” he concluded.
The town’s senior harbormaster, Timothy Treadwell, also addressed the board on Tuesday. His agency “had its hands full this summer,” he said, owing to rampant poaching at Georgica Pond and “issues at Ecker Park” in Montauk, among them the commercial-scale harvesting of squid. “We had a presence,” he said, “a late-night presence.” His staffing was “generally adequate,” he said, but he is happy that the Marine Division will add another full-time officer next year, who “will be assigned to a later-night patrol.”
Mr. Treadwell also told the town board that his agency had issued more summonses for driving on the beach without a permit this summer than it did for fires on the beaches. There were fewer complaints about “fire debris left on the beach as well,” he said.
Councilman David Lys then ran through some of the town’s 2023’s beach-related goals, including more “beach mats” to accommodate disabled beachgoers, more informational signs with QR codes, including on bay beaches, and more online outreach highlighting the work of the lifeguards. Finally, he said, he is working on a plan to install book-swap stations at selected beaches, for the enjoyment of literary types heading to the town’s world-class littoral zone. You read it here first.
