Southampton Town To Appeal Judge's Denial Of TRO Against Sand Land

Southampton Town will try for a second time this week to ask the courts for a temporary restraining order blocking the owners of Sand Land in Noyac from processing and selling mulch and other materials at the site.

According to Town Attorney James Burke, the town will appeal to the State Supreme Court Appellate Division, which it hopes will overturn Suffolk County Supreme Court Justice Denise Molia’s recent denial of the town’s request for a temporary restraining order to immediately stop those activities at the sand mine.

“We think it is an opportunity, just a different set of eyes—judges have different opinions,” he said.

Southampton Town officials have interpreted a March decision by the Appellate Division—the court reinstated a 2012 ruling by the Town Zoning Board of Appeals, which had been overturned by a State Supreme Court justice—to mean that Sand Land should be prohibited from “processing trees, brush, stumps, leaves, and other clearing debris into topsoil or mulch.” Additionally, Sand Land should not be allowed to store, sell or deliver mulch, topsoil and wood chips, the town says.

However, Attorney David Eagan, who represents Sand Land, said that is not the case. “The … decision did not say that processing, the storage of mulch and other materials cannot occur at the property,” he said. “What was held was that those particular activities did not constitute the preexisitng, non-conforming business—that is not the sole avenue for legalizing those activities.”

The decision was that those activities were new uses that are not preexisting, meaning that they were not done continuously since before being prevented by zoning. Additionally, it states that they are not a “permitted expansion of any legally established nonconforming use.”

The mine has continued to process the materials, as well as sell them to the public, in order to clear the site. A hearing has been set in front of Justice Molia to hear from both the town and Sand Land’s operators on June 3 regarding the larger issues in the case.