Letters

On Thursday, May 27, the Appellate Division of the New York State Supreme Court annulled the 2019 Department of Environmental Protection permit allowing the Sand Land mine to dig deeper (and closer to our aquifer) and to expand horizontally [“State Court Overturns Sand Land’s Mining Permit,” 27east.com, May 28]. The court ruled that the DEC overstepped its authority in granting a permit. The DEC ignored the town’s zoning laws and the authority to protect its drinking water when it issued this 2019 permit.

The Noyac Civic Council worked tirelessly to get the DEC to protect our groundwater rather than allow the expansion of operations at the Sand Land mine when contamination in our aquifer beneath the mine was made known by the Suffolk County Health Department.

This ruling did not just happen. It took grunt work along with tears of frustration for years to bring us to the finish line. Without the tenacity of our NCC members and its partners, we would not have gotten this ruling.

The NCC thanks our partners who helped to achieve this ruling: the Group for the East End, the Citizens Campaign for the Environment, Save Sag Harbor, the Southampton Town Civic Coalition, Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr., Suffolk County Legislator Bridget Fleming, and the Town of Southampton.

We waited a week for the town to take enforcement action. On Friday, June 4, the town finally issued a stop work order at 2:20 p.m. At 4:30 p.m. the mine finally complied and stopped its operations. There is a chain at the bottom of the driveway. No permit. No work.

Now we wait for the DEC to come up with a plan to clean up the pesticides, carcinogens and dangerous heavy metals in the aquifer beneath the mine.

Teamwork got us this far. Thank you, everyone.

Elena Loreto

President

Noyac Civic Council