It all started when Biddle Duke, a Springs resident who takes part in East Hampton Town’s oyster-gardening program, got a notice from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation in advance of the most recent fireworks show over Three Mile Harbor.
The D.E.C.’s Division of Marine Resources “will designate all of Three Mile Harbor, in the Town of East Hampton, as temporarily uncertified for the harvest of shellfish before, during, and after the 2024 Clamshell Foundation’s fireworks event. The closure will be effective at sunrise on Saturday, July 13, 2024, and continue through Wednesday, July 17, 2024, both dates inclusive.”
The popular fireworks show draws an enormous number of spectators each year who flock to the beaches and to the harbor, where they bob on boats tied to moorings or at anchor as the sparks fly overhead. With that number of people on boats comes the problem of waste.
How does this impact the water quality there, wondered Mr. Duke, who is an avid surfer and often contributes to The Star. He attended Monday night’s meeting of the East Hampton Town Trustees to suggest that the water be tested before and after the next fireworks event.
“It made me think that since we as a community allow that event to happen, and it’s potentially injurious to the water there, that we should know what that event does to Three Mile Harbor,” Mr. Duke told the trustees on Monday. “Presumably, since they close the harbor to shellfishing for a period of time . . . there is a suspicion or assumption that it does something to the water quality.”
He prefaced his remarks by saying that he himself has enjoyed the fireworks since he was a kid, and that he was not asking for future shows to be canceled. Mr. Duke’s uncle Anthony Duke, in 1980, happened to be the person who started the tradition of fireworks over Three Mile Harbor in the first place, when he created an annual fund-raiser for Boys and Girls Harbor, the well-known summer camp for underprivileged children from the city.
Jim Grimes, deputy clerk of the trustees, responded to Mr. Duke’s comments by saying the closure is “just a precautionary measure.” There have been no recorded spikes in coliform bacteria, which is associated with human waste, he said. The trustees’ pump-out boat crews, he added, work overtime during events like the fireworks show to ensure that waste is handled appropriately.
“The thought process behind the closure goes back several years, well before we had the pump-out boats,” Mr. Grimes said, also adding that the East Hampton Town Police Department’s Marine Patrol unit “does a pretty effective job of policing the harbor.”
Three Mile Harbor is “such a treasured body of water,” Mr. Duke told the trustees, that it warrants testing “immediately before and immediately after” the fireworks. “If you have that kind of power to get that kind of testing, it would be interesting to see if that event does have any measurable impact on the harbor at all.”
Patrice Dalton said that she and another trustee, John Aldred, had had conversations about encouraging people to pump out before they enter the harbor for the fireworks shows. “There are more boats and sometimes they have more people on them than customarily. . . . What we were thinking was working with the Clamshell [Foundation] and in some way use their social media to give out little hints like this.”
Ms. Dalton also raised the question of whether the explosive pyrotechnics themselves have any impact on the water quality.
“It wouldn’t be that difficult for us to do a test before and after. It would be good information for us to have,” said Francis Bock, clerk of the trustees.
He went on to suggest they ask Christopher Gobler, who heads the Center for Clean Water Technology at Stony Brook University, to add fireworks-event testing in Three Mile Harbor to his routine samplings for the trustees.
In other fireworks-related news, the trustees conditionally approved the East Hampton Fire Department’s Main Beach fireworks show, planned this year for Aug. 10. The potential complication, Ms. Dalton reported, was the recent hatching of two piping plover chicks in the area, which aren’t considered fledged until they are 25 to 35 days old.
Mr. Grimes made the motion “to approve this the same way we have in the past,” with the condition that the D.E.C. and East Hampton Town Natural Resources Department sign off on it.
