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Harbormaster Chris Duryea reports to the Harbor Committee on inspections of vessels in Sag Harbor last summer for compliance with no-discharge rules for septic waste, which more than doubled compared to the 2023 total. PETER BOODY
The Sag Harbor Marine Patrol and the harbormaster’s office more than doubled their efforts to enforce the Peconic Estuary’s no-discharge rule banning the release of septic waste into local waters last summer, Harbormaster Chris Duryea reported to both the Village Board and Harbor Committee this week.
Duryea told the Harbor Committee on November 7 that during the season he and his colleagues boarded 108 vessels for “initial” inspections of sanitary facilities and made 19 follow-up inspections of “vessels we went back to once, twice, three times to make sure they were in compliance. The village crews also worked two weekends with the towns of East Hampton and Southampton and the State Department of Environmental Conservation, he said.
Only 50 boats were boarded in all of 2023, Duryea said.
“We had pretty good compliance among all our vessels,” Duryea told the committee. “We really didn’t have a problem. I don’t know if they were happy to have us on board, but they weren’t protesting when we came on board.”
Inspected vessels were “99 percent in compliance,” he later said in a follow-up interview. “We issued a handful of summonses for noncompliance” with state rules requiring that septic release valves be secured by wire in a closed position or their handles removed while in the Peconic Bay system. No summonses were issued “for dumping that we witnessed,” he said.
Duryea also reported a record-breaking number of calls from boaters in the harbor for pump-out services over the July 4 holiday, which had prompted the village to acquire a second pump-out boat from the Town of Southampton to help meet the increased demand for service. For the summer, the volume of septic waste offloaded and trucked to up-island sanitary facilities rose by 31 percent, from 208,984 gallons in 2023 to 274,540 last summer.
He said the plan is to keep the second pump-out boat in service next summer and operate it on a regular three-day weekend schedule.
Concern about enforcement of no-discharge rules may have heightened early in 2024 when Stony Brook University marine scientist Dr. Christopher Gobler reported that DNA water quality testing in Sag Harbor during the summer of 2023 had shown that “vessel discharge” was a source of human fecal bacteria found at several sites at Long Wharf and Windmill Beach. It was the first time he’d used DNA testing to positively identify human sources for bacterial pollution in the harbor since his annual water quality study had begun in 2018.
Duryea also appeared before the Village Board on Tuesday, November 12, to present the harbormaster’s annual report. He said the harbormaster’s new boat was put in service early this year and had gone out on 149 marine patrols, which typically last between three and six hours. The boat went on 54 calls for service, including a triple drowning at Cedar Point, a swimmer who was struck by a boat in Gardiners Bay, and a boat fire at the Sag Harbor Yacht Club, he said.
Duryea told the board that after there was talk earlier this year about increasing the number of boats allowed in the outer mooring field, the village will hold the number steady at 67 next year.
In 2023, between Fourth of July and Labor Day, there was an average of 28 boats moored each day and another nine that were anchored in the outer field, and this year, during that same time period, there were 33 boats moored and nine anchored on average, Duryea said.
Trustee Jeanne Kane, who serves as liaison to the docks and harbormaster’s office, said the village wanted to keep the same number of moorings to gather more data on the demand for the service.
Duryea also told the board that American Cruise ships visited the village eight times this year, “all on the shoulder season, none between July 4 and Labor Day.”
He said the village earned approximately $4,600 in tender fees for the boat that ferried passengers from the boat to shore.
Kane said the village had spoken with the company and said it would be happy to work with it in the future but had stressed the need for it to not send ships during the height of the season or on weekends, adding that the arrangement this year seemed to work out fine this year for both the harbor and the businesses and nonprofits that benefited from the visits.
