Montaukers Spar Over Plan To Remove Thicket From Benson Reserve

Montauk residents are divided over plans to remove invasive plants from the swath of town-owned dune lands along the south side of Old Montauk Highway just west of downtown.

Critics of the proposal told the East Hampton Town Board last week that they see no purpose to the project other than to improve views for motorists and those who live across the street. They also fear that removing the invasive plants could destabilize the slopes along the roadside, and they don’t think the invasive species — mostly privet and honeysuckle — are so bad as to warrant the use of excavation to remove them.

Those in favor of the plan, which has been pitched by the Concerned Citizens of Montauk, said that removing the bramble along the roadside will restore the land, known as the Benson Reserve, to its native ecological state, luring back native birds and butterflies, and would actually strengthen the slopes of the property.

“The science behind this plan is solid and founded on years of research,” said Jaime LeDuc, the director of environmental advocacy for CCOM, and who said she worked for 13 years for the National Park Service working on strategies to combat the spread of invasive species in national parks. “It incorporates strategies to combat invasives in a comprehensive and sustainable way and could be used as a blueprint for other areas.”

James Grimes, an East Hampton Town Trustee and landscaper, said he was skeptical of the proposal at first.

“I’ve spent the past 50 years doing rehabilitation projects very similar to this, so I went through it piece by piece,” he told the Town Board at its November 16 meeting. “This is a well-thought-out plan. Those who made comments about destabilizing the dunes clearly didn’t listen, because those areas are not going to be disturbed, because those are the only parts of this area that are in sound ecological state.”

The proposal at hand targets the upper one-third of the 39-acre Benson Reserve — the 15 or so acres that runs directly along the highway and then slopes down toward the dunes and beach below.

The engineers hired by CCOM to design the project have said that the land used to be maritime grasslands, dominated by tall, hardy beachgrasses and scrub pines. But in recent decades, the upper third of the property has been swallowed by landscaping plants and nonweeds that migrated from the residential properties in the neighborhoods above and now make up nearly 100 percent of the plants on the upper portion. The middle third of the land is about 50/50 native and nonnative species and the lower third is dunelands that are still primarily native species.

But the project’s designer, Rusty Schmidt of the engineering firm Nelson Pope Voorhis, has said that if left unchecked, the invasive species will continue spreading down the hill and eventually would likely take over the entire 40-acre swath.

To combat that future, Schmidt and CCOM have proposed a plan to mechanically remove the thickets along the roadway and replace them with replanted native beachgrass. In some areas, where the terrain is too steep for excavators, they have proposed using goats to graze away the invasive plants.

Schmidt has said that it would take one summer season for the new plants to root, and that once they had, they would lay deeper, more stabilizing roots than the nonnative species there now, protecting the land from erosion.

The approximately $850,000 project, CCOM has said, would be fully paid for with private donations and state grant funding, and CCOM itself would take responsibility for the long-term maintenance.

The project was immediately met with skepticism from some, and by last week more than a dozen Montauk residents spoke in opposition. One has threatened to sue if the town allows the project to go forward.

Rav Freidel, who said he was actually the one to first propose the project some eight years ago, is now “having second thoughts,” he told board members.

“There is a real possibility that if the invasive species are pulled out … while we’re waiting for the new plants to take root, the land could be undermined if there is a bad storm,” he said. “The money would be better spent on Fort Pond, where the kids of [Pathfinder Day Camp] can’t swim or fish because the water is unsafe.”

He added that he thought that even once invasives were removed and native species planted, the sort of landscaping plants, his own hedges would continue reseeding the nonnative species.

“These invasive species may not quite have the root system of beachgrasses, but one cannot argue that they and the whole reserve have stood the test of time through nor’easters and hurricanes,” said Michael Potts, who also lives in one of the neighborhoods uphill of the reserve. “It’s a big gamble … in order to improve vistas.”

Susanne Roxbury also said she worried that removing the bramble, regardless of its provenance, would be more disruptive than it is worth.

“There is a large amount of wildlife in that reserve — deer, squirrels, birds, chipmunks, etc. Removal of their habitat will be harmful to them,” she said. “These plant species have existed for decades and continue to exist through pollinations — are they really invasive?”

Jeanne Nielsen, whose family owns the Twin Pond Motel, called the proposal ill-conceived and said that it should be scrapped. She also said that the proposal to use goats, which would require temporary fences to contain them in the areas they were grazing, and small shelters, violates a 1980s court ruling. It ordered the developer who previously owned the Benson Reserve land to remove fencing excluding residents of the adjacent neighborhoods who had beach access easements over the land. The fences for the goats, although temporary and not impeding any of the human routes through the land, would not be legal, she has claimed.

Joan McGivern, an attorney representing Nielsen, said that she has already prepared a legal claim against the town if it approves the project, based on the restrictions from the previous court case.

Andy Hammer, a Montauk attorney hired by Dan Cahill, who has pledged to fund a substantial portion of the costs of the work, said that the suggestion that the temporary fencing to corral the goats would violate the easements against blocking access was wrongheaded. The ruling had addressed impeding access, which the goat enclosures would not do.

LeDuc, of CCOM, said that the group was submitting a petition with more than 500 signatures in support of the proposal.

Some critics simply urged that CCOM and the town take a more measured approach to removing the plants.

Kevin McAlister, president of the Sag Harbor-based environmental advocacy organization Defend H20, said that invasive plant control is warranted, but that he thought the wholesale removal was too aggressive. He said the effort should be more “surgical.”

Southampton Town Supervisor Jay Schneiderman, whose mother had initiated and largely funded the lawsuit that Nielsen’s opposition is based on, said that the Benson Reserve property should be restored to its natural beauty.

“This historical park property has changed through lack of management,” he said. “The [reserve] went from picturesque maritime grassland to a thicket of thorny brambles, poison ivy and nonnative species.”

And he said he would put his money where his mouth — and his family’s hotel, The Breakers — is.

“My family stepped up financially to save the [Benson Reserve] from development,” he said. “We stepped up financially to bury the unsightly power lines. And we’ll step up again to help with the cost of this habitat restoration plan.”