On Dune Road

Erosion Barrier Allowed

A State Supreme Court Justice ruled on Friday that Ronald and Isobel Konecky, who live next door to William Rudin on Dune Road in Bridgehampton, may install a temporary steel barrier to protect their house from the erosion that has ravaged the beach.

Justice Peter F. Cohalen ruled that the Koneckys, whose house has been partially undermined, were entitled to the emergency protection. The ruling requires them to remove the steel after 30 days, but it allows them to apply for time extensions.

Lisa Kombrink, the Southampton town attorney, said the town would appeal the ruling.

Neighbors Sued

The Koneckys were among a group of eight neighbors, including Mr. Rudin, who sued the town in 1994, when it demanded they do an environmental impact statement as part of an application to build a line of connected steel revetments.

Mr. Rudin later settled his portion of the suit individually when the town gave him permission to build a subsurface dune restoration system with a series of sand-filled tubes.

The settlement between Mr. Rudin and the town in no way precluded other neighbors from pursuing their own erosion-control efforts, Ms. Kombrink said.

Violations Denied

Mr. Rudin's project caused an uproar when the town allowed him to construct a massive steel cofferdam to protect the construction site this fall. Many blamed the structure for erosion during a series of fall and winter storms that scoured away the beach on either side of the Rudin property and washed away dunes protecting Scott Cameron Beach.

The town has advised Mr. Rudin that his project violated the terms of the settlement because it blocked access, left construction debris on the beach, and was not covered with sand.

But in a letter to the town last week, Mr. Rudin's contractor for the project, Aram Terchunian of First Coastal Corporation in Westhampton Beach, denied the violations and argued that the problems were caused by weather and naturally occurring erosion.

His Day In Court

Meanwhile, the Town Trustees, who issued Mr. Rudin a separate permit, have threatened to revoke it, primarily because the structure blocks the public's right to pass along the beach. The Trustees have asked Mr. Rudin and his representatives to meet with them at 1 p.m. on Monday at Town Hall to discuss the matter.

"We have to give him his day in court," Scott Strough, the Trustee president, said last week.

State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. has also become involved. Mr. Thiele said he would introduce legislation that would prohibit the State Department of Environmental Conservation from issuing tidal wetland permits in cases that would block access to public lands.

"Self-Centered Actions"

In a release, Mr. Thiele acknowledged that the legislation was aimed at preventing reoccurrences of the problems in Bridgehampton.

"Today, we are seeing a few public property owners on the beach in Bridgehampton seeking to protect themselves from the inevitable impacts of erosion at the expense of the public," he said in a release. "There are alternatives to these self-centered actions which are causing the permanent loss of the public right to use their beach."