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An East Hampton grandmother is begging East Hampton Town to spruce up the facilities at Indian Wells Beach in Amagansett.
Leonida Karpik has penned a letter to the Town Board imploring the town to improve the poor condition of the beach’s bathrooms and garbage facilities. She circulated it as a petition at the popular residents-only beach over the July Fourth weekend.
“I love our beaches, our beaches are our pride and joy,” Ms. Karpik, 67, said on Monday. “But it is absolutely disgusting down there sometimes.”
The mother of two former town lifeguards, who says she goes to Indian Wells Beach almost every day in the summertime, said that the bathrooms at the beach are regularly in deplorable shape, with lights chronically burned out in the bathrooms, no soap dispensers and filthy wet floors. Last summer, Ms. Karpik said she called the town Parks and Recreation Department to complain about the condition of the bathrooms, including one week when a bat took up residence in the small concrete building.
Garbage cans at the beach overflow with trash, she said, spilling broken glass onto the ground near the entrance to the sand.
Ms. Karpik said that she and other regulars have been working for years to improve the conditions at the Indian Wells beach. She purchased and installed a soap dispenser in the ladies bathrooms last year and another resident bought soap to fill it.
“The lights are always burned out in the bathrooms and there’s only a tiny window so it’s dark,” she said. “I bugged the [Parks and Recreation Department] last year and bugged them and bugged them, so they fixed it, but now it’s out again.”
Ms. Karpik said she and other Indian Wells beachgoers often walk down the beach to neighboring Two Mile Hollow, where they say the bathrooms are much nicer. Two Mile Hollow beach is operated by East Hampton Village.
She said that the regulars at the beach have taken to raking the sand and sweeping the parking lot near the garbage cans themselves to clear it of broken glass.
On Saturday and Sunday, Ms. Karpik solicited support from other beachgoers for her pleas to the town for improvements to be made.
“Everyone agreed with me,” she said. She got more than 100 signatures on her letter, she added.
Mary Grace Ryan, whose husband is a town lifeguard, said the bathrooms at the beach are indeed in bad shape.
“It’s just that the maintenance is not so great,” Mrs. Ryan said. “The lights are out, the toilet paper is always left on the ground so it gets wet and is unusable. It’s a little bit of a problem with the kids down there.”
Indian Wells Beach is the base for the town’s Junior Lifeguard program, which is attended on weekends by as many as 100 young people. It is also the only beach the town operates that requires a town resident sticker for parking and does not have open parking for non-residents. Atlantic Beach, to the east, has paid parking for non-residents and nicer facilities, Ms. Karpik said.
“It is not fair to us local people,” she said. “We pay our taxes. We deserve as good treatment as visitors, to be sure. I’ve been going there since 1968, both my sons were lifeguards and I’ve watched the deterioration of this particular beach. It’s a disgrace.”
Town Councilwoman Pat Mansir, the only board member who returned phone calls seeking comment on Monday, said that she was unaware of complaints from the beach.
Ms. Karpik said she planned to present her letter and ad-hoc petition to the town yesterday, Tuesday.
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