Letters

The Southampton Town Board is considering enacting new “tree laws,” allegedly to avoid disputes between neighbors [“Southampton Eyes Protections for, and From, Growing Trees,” 27east.com, July 9]. One Town Board member, Cyndi McNamara, questioned whether the issue involved a personal vs. a public matter. I believe she has a good point.

Property matters can be misidentified by officials who may have been involved in the creation of a problem in the first place.

For example, Lewis Road in East Quogue used to be dotted with farms, a sand mine, empty lots and open space. In a downpour, water flowed from the farm fields and the sand mine driveway onto Lewis Road. But the rain water also had plenty of open space to seep into.

The empty lots were soon developed. And land use boards created a new subdivision with a public street running down a hill onto Lewis Road. Then the land use boards approved the creation of a cluster subdivision as part of a horse farm PRD. The cluster was accessed by a public street running down a hill that converged with the other newly created street.

To this day, in heavy rain, a little pond forms at the conversion of these two newly created streets. Additionally, a recharge basin located in front of the cluster was enlarged, with approval of the Highway Department; this basin subsequently collapsed, causing expensive damage to neighboring properties. Homeowners sued the town, not the farmer.

Yet, in a video of a Town Board meeting attended by the highway superintendent and a former member of the Planning Board, it was implied that the problems on Lewis Road were the fault of the farms. But property damage occurred as a result of land use and highway decisions, and those decisions have been consistently defended by the town.

Misidentification of blame can also apply if the police become involved. When the cluster PRD was created, the land use boards reconfigured a horse farm that included yet another driveway running down a hill onto Lewis Road. That driveway is maintained privately, not publicly. The driveway became the site of multiple automobile accidents, including a fatality. The accidents had nothing to do with sight lines or placement of trees.

If one were to do an investigation of the Lewis Road corridor, a review of court papers describing the fatality might shed some light on how the crime scene was secured. And a review of Planning Board documents will reveal that the driveway was created by filing false paperwork.

Yet, in spite of repeated accidents, the driveway was never questioned. To the contrary the town defends the private driveway created by the land use boards and protected by the Highway Department, and possibly the police.

Susan Cerwinski

East Quogue