The East Hampton Town Trustees have an important role in balancing the summer popularity of the beaches under their jurisdiction with the protection of those most at risk of Covid-19 infection, a public health expert told them on Monday.
Michael McDonald, a co-founder of Global Resilience Initiatives, which works on health, human security, resilience, and sustainability in the United States and several other countries, told the trustees during an online meeting that “there are ways in which we can maintain quality of life and functional life capacity of citizens and residents on the East End and especially in East Hampton.”
Proclamations from the federal government are “a pretty blunt instrument,” Dr. McDonald, who organized the East End Resilience Network, said. “We have to have local input.”
The town has “some populations at very high risk and we should try to protect them,” he said. “We also have areas that are super transmission sites, and there will be other ones as summer intensifies and more crowds come here, unless that’s managed effectively.”
As beaches have already become gathering places during the pandemic, the trustees expressed concern about the danger posed there.
“We’re already beginning to see people trying to get some kind of improvement in quality of life by traveling out of the city or from other areas to come out to the East End,” Dr. McDonald said. “People are getting bottlenecked, large numbers of people that are going to start finding themselves in tight situations that could lead to social conflict.”
The greatest danger is an increased hazard to already at-risk populations, the elderly and those with existing health conditions. “We need to think deeply about how this is going to be addressed,” he said.
“The supervisor and board reached out to the governor about this issue and discussed what to do with the beaches,” Dr. McDonald said. “I think the trustee issue should be thought through very carefully in regard to social distancing but also the larger issue of summer flow, which would create conditions inappropriate given the pandemic.”
Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc is participating in a Suffolk County working group to develop regional guidelines for the potential operation of beaches and related facilities this summer. That group convened last week.
Separately, town officials, including trustees, lifeguards, Marine Patrol, and Parks and Recreation personnel, were to meet yesterday “to start looking at how the beaches could open and still be safe,” said Francis Bock, the trustees’ clerk.
Another example of how the pandemic might affect trustee beaches was a recommendation, heard in communications with and among property owners associations, that protection for threatened piping plovers and least terns be removed. The federally protected shorebirds nest on the town’s beaches and in the dunes, and large swaths of beach are roped off to protect those nests, typically until August.
“Those kinds of issues need to be discussed and managed appropriately,” Dr. McDonald said. “If we act smartly, if we take into consideration all local, hyperlocal issues, we can do this well.”
