The Town used to have a “private roads” program whereby the town was improving unimproved roads and bringing them into the highway system, at no cost to the property owners. The funding came from excess highway department funds which are now non-existent. John and his group are working to elevate the issue to the Town Board, Supervisor, Highway Department, State and Federal Representatives to restart the private roads program, develop funding sources and begin the assimilation of unimproved and or “private” roads into the highway system.

At our November meeting, Mr. Watson made a well researched and detailed presentation about unimproved roads in Southampton Town.  This issue turned out to be one of great interest to our membership as it was another very well attended meeting.  After his presentation Mr. Watson entertained questions from the audience concerning all matters of concern regarding the roads discussed.  A large number of these roads are located in Hampton Bays and they raise many concerns including maintenance, snow removal and other issues.

For more information please see: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=333788046334&v=wall

Please see the link below for news coverage of this meeting:

http://southampton.patch.com/articles/hb-civic-association-lends-its-weight-to-unimproved-roads-cause

County Legislature candidates on hand were incumbent, Jay Schneiderman, and his challenger, Cornelius Kelly. They addressed the large crowd on hand and responded to questions from the audience. Additionally, current trustees seeking re-election, Ed Warner, Bill Pell, Eric Schulz and Fred Havemeyer were present with challengers, Scott Horowitz and Janet Beck. Southampton Town Justice Ed Burke, running unopposed, handled the duties of swearing in our current HB Civic Association officers for another year.

Our October meeting brought in an even larger crowd to hear what our candidates for Town Supervisor and Town board had to say. Incumbent Supervisor, Anna Throne-Holst, shared the podium with write-in candidate Linda Kabot. Both made brief statements and responded to some questions.

Town Board candidates, Bill Hughes, Christine Scalera, Brad Bender and current incumbent, Bridget Fleming, were next on the program discussing the various issues facing Southampton Town and their various approached to handling them.

Southampton Town Tax Assessor, Theresa Kiernan, made a brief statement as well as Suffolk County Executive candidate Angie Carpenter.

Both meeting were well attended.

Suffolk County is wisely assessing problems with sewage disposal and its capacity to manage that waste. But it’s time to go beyond this analysis and ask what the ultimate capacity is for sewage within the county.

Most of the 1.5 million people living in Suffolk are dependent on cesspools or septic systems for sewage disposal. Some 30 million gallons per day — from 350,000 people — are discharged to marine waters from sewage treatment plants. The balance of Suffolk’s sewage — more than 100 million gallons per day, from 1.2 million people — is discharged to the ground by treatment plants or septic systems.

Many of the septic systems and cesspools are old or poorly maintained, and they leach nutrients and other more exotic chemicals into the upper glacial aquifer. Sewage treatment plants discharging to this aquifer and marine waters remove some of these contaminants, but they aren’t designed to remove them all. If the plant is a private facility, it may not be operated well anyway.

Septage and sewage discharged from these systems create negative impacts on our waters. Just look at the severe summertime oxygen depletion of the Forge River, which is driven primarily by nitrogen leaching from cesspools and septic systems. Great South Bay and Shinnecock Bay often experience nitrogen-fueled brown and red tides, which have strong, negative effects on sea grass beds and clam populations.

Our upper glacial aquifer is, for practical purposes, no longer available as a source of drinking water on Long Island because of pollution by septic systems, treatment plants, past and present agricultural activities, and industrial waste. While it has been long assumed that the Magothy aquifer would remain pristine for future drinking water use, county health officials found that nitrogen levels in this aquifer jumped by 200 percent between 1987 and 2005, exceeding those found in the upper glacial aquifer in 1987.
It’s easy to say that these issues will be resolved by requiring sewerage with connections to newly constructed treatment plants, expanding existing plants, or requiring replacement of existing septic systems with improved systems that can remove nitrogen. But there will still be the same volume of sewage discharged to the same ocean or bays, as well as to the upper glacial aquifer. And how would all these new facilities be paid for?

It may well be that Suffolk’s capacity to handle sewage has reached its limit. We must begin to consider that the county simply cannot handle an increase in population, given the current sewage treatment technologies that are deemed safe by the Department of Health Services.

In Lee Koppelman’s 1964 book, “A Plan for Open Space in Suffolk County,” he points out that Long Island is totally developable. There are no mountain ranges or swamps to constrain build-out and limit population growth. And so it has been. With the exception of saving the Pine Barrens and the county’s excellent open space programs, we are built out.
But while Suffolk is essentially fully developed, there are still efforts to increase density — and those can’t be supported. Smart growth and workforce housing programs can redistribute population more intelligently in the future, but they still encourage population growth. And they haven’t specified how the domestic waste from such growth can be accommodated.

Actually, there are “Limits to Growth” — as postulated in 1972, when the authors of that classic book considered population and pollution as two of the contributors to a collapsing society. Suffolk County, given its soil characteristics and its coastal waters, has reached that limit when it comes to sewage. We are saturated.

Christopher J. Gobler, PhDAssociate Professor School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences Stony Brook University

Another highlight of this meeting was the first presentation of the Hampton Bays Civic Association Scholarship in the amount of $1000 to Bay’s high school senior, Pawel Golyski.  Pawel’s essay was selected from our stack of submissions which were tasked to discuss our topic, “Your Vision of Hampton Bays in 2021″.   Of the many entries we received, Pawel’s best addressed the topic when reviewed by our panel.  Pawel was not only on hand to receive his scholarship but also to read his essay to the 100+ crowd assembled.

We congratulate Pawel and hope that he will wear his HB Civic Association t-shirt proudly when he enters Brown Univeristy in the fall.

After a late start, Nancy King and Andy Godfrey teamed up to get the garden planted hitting the ground running around the first Saturday or so in June.  Tomatos, eggplants, lettuce, beans, radishes and more were planted, some from seed and some from plants.  The weeks since have shown great progress with a number of items havng been harvested including lettuce, basil, arugal, radishes and green beans.

We are still waiting to see if our zucchini will bare fruit but they appear to be growing well.  The eggplant harvest should be ready any day now.

This project has turned out to be an interesting and entertaining pursuit and the various gardners in the project have done a great job in making the Good Ground Community Garden an enormous success.  Stop by and have a look.  It is located behind the Hampton Bays Middle School.

Check out the garden page on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Good-Ground-Community-Garden/178781268847427

(10 East Side of Canal (2 parcels—approx 6.63 Acres) Zoned Resort Waterfront Business/Motel (RWB/MTL). Proposal: Forty Town Homes with private recreational facilities and parking on 3.9 acres. Public promenade along the canal.  The MTL parcel (2.73 acres) across the road is slated for use as an off-site sewage treatment plant.

“As of right” The two parcels would yield approx. 25 Motel Units. CPI Site (1 Parcel, approx. 5.65 Acres) zoned RWB. Proposal: Restoration of the historic inn use, inclusive of 20 Transient Units located within the building to supplement the proposed catering/meeting facility and tavern uses.  Five cottages on site would be restored for extended stay guests.

As of right” The applicant is asserting the pre-existing rights to 28 Units at the CPI plus the 5 cottages and a 35,000 sq. ft. nightclub. Assuming pre-existing rights to the Inn units were granted, conversion to the condominiums status could be theoretically be feasible under existing Town Code.

The above scenario entails a cross-transference of rights— i.e. 33 Units from the West to the East and 25 Units from the East to the West side of the canal. Such a transfer would leave a difference of 7 additional Units (i.e., 40 minus 33) o the East. 

One main public benefit offered by the developer is the renovation/rehabilitation of the Inn in exchange for requested density at the Canal.