3 Photos
Outside the Scheerers' house on Georgica Beach.
Outside the Zweigs' house on Georgica Beach.
Fence in progress on Thursday afternoon on Georgica Beach.
A storm continues to brew on Georgica Beach in East Hampton Village, where a fence has been going up in front of Mollie Zweig’s residence on West End Road.
Bob Sullivan, a contractor who has been building the fence since Hurricane Irene scoured the dune in front of Ms. Zweig’s house, has said he is not blocking access to the public beach, although others dispute that.
Rather, Mr. Sullivan said, he is staking claim to what is now a leveled stretch of land seaward of the house. “The dune passed my fence 40 feet out,” he said, adding that there are monument markers to prove his case.
“Our fence is one foot inside our boundaries,” Mr. Sullivan added. “All we’re doing is putting back what we had.”
On August 29, the day after the storm hit, Zach Zweig, Mollie Zweig’s son, was staking out a portion of property in front of her house with yellow police tape. Idoline Duke, whose family, the Scheerers, own the house just to the west, was arguing that Mr. Zweig had no right to impede access to a public beach enjoyed for years by all. Mr. Zweig countered that he was simply protecting that portion of the property from being taken over by the East Hampton Town Trustees.
In East Hampton, the Town Trustees own the beach on behalf of the public from the crest of the dune to the mean high water mark.
Last Thursday afternoon, Mr. Sullivan was driving tall, galvanized steel poles into the sand at Georgica, between which he has said he plans to install a snow fence. At some point, a “no trespassing” sign went up, as well, in front of the Zweig residence.
By last Thursday, Ms. Duke’s family had signs of their own on the dune in front of their house: “Georgica Beach is for everyone” and “Mi playa es tu playa,” they said in contrast to the Zweigs’.
On Tuesday of this week, East Hampton Village Administrator Larry Cantwell said that, irrespective of who owns what now looks like a beach in front of the Zweigs’ house, “that property is still regulated.” Village officials are “still trying to get a better understanding of what he wants to do in a regulated area,” Mr. Cantwell said of Mr. Sullivan, and what regulations and permit requirements pertain.
On Friday, Mr. Cantwell had said that the fence seemed to be on the Zweigs’ property, but that it was the village’s position that they needed a permit for the work, whether under local dune protection law or coastal erosion hazard law, or both, and possibly from the State Department of Environmental Conservation as well.
“In terms of erosion protection, there may be certain things that the property owner can do there, but not without a review and a permit,” Mr. Cantwell said. Village code enforcement officials were discussing the matter with DEC officials, who were expected to pay a visit on Tuesday, he said this week.
Mr. Sullivan said later on Tuesday that Tom Lawrence of the East Hampton Village Building Department and a “gentleman” from the DEC had been down to Georgica that day and that he had been asked to wait a day to resume work on the snow fence, which he said is intended to contain sand in the next storm. He quit because of the rain anyway, he said, and would probably have to hold off the next day as well.
The no-trespassing sign, he said, was put up after a young girl was hurt on rocks that were exposed on the Zweig property after Hurricane Irene.
A call to Diane McNally, the clerk of the East Hampton Town Trustees, was not returned before deadline on Tuesday, nor was one to Bill Fonda, a DEC spokesperson in Stony Brook.
