Napeague Resident Sues Over Parking At Oceanfront Preserve

A Napeague resident has filed a second lawsuit against East Hampton Town over its consideration of allowing resident parking at a small beach access on Dolphin Drive, adjacent his home.

Jonathan Wallace, an attorney who filed and then withdrew a previous lawsuit earlier this year over the town’s refusal to ban parking on the roadway, filed the second suit last week claiming that a proposed management plan for South Flora Nature Preserve, still in draft form, would violate the town’s own codes and the State Environmental Quality Review Act, if adopted.

The draft management plan includes a recommendation by the town’s nature preserve committee to create a parking area at the edge of the preserve on Dolphin Drive.

The proposal, as highlighted in the lawsuit, allows space for about 25 cars, but officials have said 10 to 12 cars would be more appropriate. To make way for the parking, the committee proposed that an area of non-native trees would be removed.

Mr. Wallace, and several of his neighbors, blasted the committee and the Town Board earlier this summer for considering the parking area, and declaring the management plan as a whole as not having a significant environmental impact.

In his initial suit, Mr. Wallace said that allowing parking on Dolphin Drive could pose a health hazard to him and his neighbors if ambulances were unable to get past parked cars. In the newer suit, he challenges the town’s consideration of a broader spectrum of factors, from environmental sensitivity to legal jurisdictions.

The lawsuit alleges, much as area residents argued at a recent Town Board hearing, that allowing increased foot traffic onto the beach from Dolphin Drive would erode fragile primary and secondary dune systems in the 37-acre preserve. The management plan and the town Local Waterfront Revitalization Plan promote protection and bolstering of natural dune systems.

In the lawsuit brief, Mr. Wallace claims that the committee “acting to accomplish illegal and extraneous political goals contradictory to its mission” has said the parking would actually be on a town right-of-way, not on the preserve itself. The suit claims the committee should have no basis in making such recommendations in that case and that it should not be making recommendations about beach access parking in general.

Mr. Wallace could not be reached for comment.