Business Park Is Proposed For Archaeologically Sensitive Area In Water Mill

Southampton Town Planning Board members questioned several applicants at its August 23 meeting about the history of their properties—worried about what may lie beneath them.

“Based on recent news at other sites, of bones being found, let’s err on doing [archaeological] surveys even when we don’t think it’s necessarily needed,” board member Phil Keith said at the work session.

He was referring to the discovery of human skeletal remains that were found on August 13 at a construction site on Hawthorne Road in Shinnecock Hills, which are believed by town officials to be of Shinnecock Indian Nation descent. Town officials are now weighing whether to purchase and preserve the land using Community Preservation Fund revenues.

That find, as well as a similar discovery a decade ago, were on Board Chairman Dennis Finnerty’s mind when the panel got to one item on the agenda: a proposed business park about 500 feet away from where human skeletal remains were found at a former hotel more than a decade ago.

In 2006, a 1,000-year-old skull was found on the site of the former St. James Hotel in Water Mill. The town bought and preserved that property with CPF dollars, as well.

Because of the recent discovery, board members opted to start the lengthy state-mandated environmental review process right away, despite the incompleteness of the overall site plan for the proposed Scuttle Hole Business Park. It would include two industrial buildings, each 15,000 square feet, and a 4,947-square-foot office building, near the busy intersection of Scuttle Hole Road and Montauk Highway.

Town planners said that the project hinged on a not-yet-finished lot line modification between two of the three vacant properties at 8 and 12 Scuttle Hole Lane, totaling nearly 126 square feet.

The State Environmental Quality Review Act, or SEQRA, requires the Planning Board to connect with state and local agencies to establish which will lead an environmental impact study of proposed developments. Oftentimes, the coordination is merely a formality, Mr. Finnerty said on Tuesday.

“SEQRA is state law, and there are specific guidelines that we municipalities have to follow,” he said. He expects the Planning Board will be charged with leading the environmental review, with input from the State Department of Environmental Conservation and Suffolk County Department of Health. “As a matter of course, most of the agencies have a very narrow scope of review. [County] health just looks at septic, and the DEC wants to review proposals when watersheds are involved.”

The archeology of a site is always an aspect of SEQRA, but is looked at more closely when the project is located in an Archaeological Sensitive Area—like the site of the proposed business park. These areas are determined and mapped out by the DEC.

The proposal is what’s referred to as a Type I action, which is reserved for projects that have the potential to have the most impact, and have the strictest review process.

According to site plan documents submitted by the developers, the currently vacant properties at 8 and 12 Scuttle Hole Lane and 1164 Montauk Highway will house the 160,661-square-foot project area near DEC- and town-regulated wetlands. The property is zoned highway business, which permits this type of use.

“If it is designated in areas of sensitivity, we always have the necessary surveys done,” Mr. Finnerty said. “There is activity in the area, and we are going to be diligent that what’s needed is done.”