A public hearing on a petition to incorporate Wainscott as a village closed last Thursday, and now a deadline looms for East Hampton Town Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc to make a decision on its legal sufficiency. Mr. Van Scoyoc is bound by state law to do so within 10 days after the hearing is closed.
Last week's virtual event continued a discussion that began on Feb. 5, in which over 35 people spoke, pro and con, on the question of incorporation. A majority said a vote on it, if not incorporation itself, should be allowed. Last week, only eight people commented, most of whom objected both to the petition's legality and to incorporation.
The group Citizens for the Preservation of Wainscott is behind the push to incorporate, its members hoping to thwart the landing of the South Fork Wind Farm's export cable on Beach Lane in the hamlet. C.P.W.'s initial petition was withdrawn after the group learned it did not comply with New York State requirements with respect to village law, as its proposed boundaries incorporated parts of Sagaponack and East Hampton Village.
Under the law, a proposed village must be described in the petition "with reference to existing streets and navigable waters or a combination of same." Sam Kramer, who is chairman of the town planning board but stressed that he was speaking only for himself, told Mr. Van Scoyoc last Thursday that the revised petition describes the 4.4-square-mile proposed boundaries of Wainscott Village as including Georgica Pond, Talmage Creek, Georgica Creek, and the westerly side of the Georgica gut, the latter an impermanent and moving water body connecting the pond with the Atlantic Ocean.
"The only problem with this is that Georgia Pond, Georgica Creek, and Talmage Creek are not navigable waters," said Mr. Kramer, a vocal critic of the incorporation effort. Quoting state navigation law, he read that waters deemed navigable exclude "all tidewaters bordering on or lying within" Suffolk and Nassau Counties. "In other words," he said, "tidewaters in Suffolk County are not navigable waters under the law."
He cited the tidal wetlands map as inventoried by the state, "and you will see that all of Georgica Pond, including Talmage Creek and Georgica Creek, are identified on that map as tidal wetlands areas. . . . In other words, the navigable waters which C.P.W. identified in their petition are specifically not navigable waters as defined by the clear language of those New York State statutes." The petition thus does not comply with the law's requirements, he concluded.
Within hours of the hearing's closing, Mercury Public Affairs issued a statement on behalf of C.P.W. that referred to "preposterous claims that the Atlantic Ocean and Georgica Pond are not navigable waters." In a letter to Mr. Van Scoyoc, a law firm representing Gouri Edlich, chairwoman of C.P.W., argues that "navigable waters of the state" is not applicable in this instance.
In addition to "its flawed description of the proposed boundaries," Doreen Niggles, a member of Wainscott United, a group formed in opposition to C.P.W., cited an "erroneous list of regular inhabitants and the questionable signatures of the three main witnesses and several petition signers." The petition "asserts that 20 percent of residents signed the petition as of Nov. 20, but in fact only 15 people signed the petition before Nov. 20."
C.P.W.'s list of regular inhabitants "includes the names of people who should not be included as they have sold their homes or died, and do not appear on the most recent voter list," Ms. Niggles continued. It also omits names of registered voters in the proposed village, she said.
The statement from Mercury Public Affairs countered that "the submissions from a small number of opponents of incorporation" had added two dead people to its list of regular inhabitants of the proposed village "in order to cast doubt over the sufficiency of the petition."
The statement was also critical of Mr. Van Scoyoc, accusing him of a "purge" of Councilman Jeff Bragman, a skeptic of the wind farm, and replacing him with Cate Rogers, a founder of the advocacy group Win With Wind, on the East Hampton Democratic Committee's slate of candidates in this year's election.
All objections are without merit, the C.P.W. statement says. Ms. Edlich said in the statement that "should the supervisor opt to ignore the will of the people as he has so often done in the past, we will consider all options to ensure our community ultimately decides this issue rather than just one partisan man."
But the right to incorporate is "demonstrably undemocratic," said John Hall of Wainscott, "in that it explicitly excludes from those eligible to vote numerous East Hampton residents whose interests will be profoundly and negatively affected by incorporation. The constitutional and democratic complaints belong to those folks, not to the petitioners who seek to take away their right."
