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Southampton Town Trustee President Scott Horowitz
Southampton Town Trustees President Scott Horowitz.
A proposal from the Moriches Bay Project to install oyster and clam farms at three sites on Quantuck Bay was tabled last week by the Southampton Town Trustees while the town attorney’s office determines whether the plan is in sync with a recently adopted town aquaculture program.
“When the town attorney says table it, we hit the brakes,” Trustee President Scott Horowitz said following the August 7 Trustees meeting.
The Moriches Bay Project, founded in 2012 by Westhampton Beach resident Laura Fabrizio, has raised and seeded more than 2.5 million oysters into Moriches Bay over its 10-plus year history, according to the nonprofit’s website.
The organization, which has an office in West Hampton Dunes, also offers educational programs that this year featured oyster-farm outings at the West Hampton Dunes Overlook and at Lashley Beach, both located off of Dune Road.
At issue for the town and the Trustees is that the bottomlands are a shared but limited resource with multiple stakeholders — environmentalists, baymen, homeowners, recreational anglers and the like — all vying for access.
“The bay bottoms are owned by the Trustees, and everyone wants their piece of the pie,” Horowitz said, adding that when the town moves to permit one use — i.e., aquaculture — it is often denying access to bottomlands to other groups or persons.
Fabrizio said she was looking forward to continuing to work with the Trustees to implement her organization’s latest plan. “We are at the last stage,” she said, as the organization has been “getting its ducks in a row” for the necessary paperwork that they’ll send to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation for their consideration.
Once the Trustees vote to green-light her proposal, they’ll issue a letter, said Fabrizio, that will be a part of the paperwork that gets sent to Albany.
“We’re hoping to get that letter soon,” said Fabrizio.
That remains to be seen, as the vote to seed two clam beds and one oyster bed in Quantuck Bay has been tabled “several times,” said Horowitz.
The town attorney’s office, he said, is “not convinced” that the proposal aligns with the town’s aquaculture regulations. And, notwithstanding the organization’s enthusiasm and commitment to the local environment, said Horowitz, “We have to look at what they’re proposing. They have to allow the board and all the other regulatory authorities do their work, and they do take their sweet time. Time and tide wait for no man.”
