The East Hampton Town Trustees voted on Monday to conduct an aerial drone survey of approximately 50 miles of shoreline, a companion to the recently commenced on-the-ground survey of docks in waterways under their jurisdiction.
Francis Bock, the trustees' clerk, told his colleagues that the drone survey, which will include all harbors under trustee jurisdiction, will cost an estimated $7,500 and will take five to six days. "This means flying 100 miles total to capture images," he said. Aerial Hamptons, based on Shelter Island, will be engaged to conduct the survey, John Aldred of the trustees said after the meeting.
Last November, soon after the trustees approved the construction of an 80-foot dock in Three Mile Harbor, the nine-member body enacted a 12-month moratorium on construction of docks, catwalks, floating docks, floating structures, and floating platforms in order to develop a policy and also to conduct an inventory of docks in trustee waters.
The trustees banned applications for docks in most waterways under their jurisdiction in 1984, extending the prohibition to all but the eastern shore of Three Mile Harbor in 1987. Their 5-to-3 vote to approve the dock at 275 Three Mile Harbor Road, in October, was the first such approval in more than three decades.
The Peconic Estuary Partnership, which recently solicited priority projects from municipalities, will help the trustees to seek funding for the drone survey, Mr. Aldred said. But as the trustees hope to commence the survey as soon as possible in order to inventory docks that may be removed in the off-season, the eight members present at Monday's meeting voted to approve the expenditure. Should the Partnership secure funding, the trustees would retroactively apply for reimbursement, Susan McGraw-Keber of the trustees said after the meeting. "We would not expect P.E.P. to grant funding as rapidly as is needed for the drone expenditure," she said.
The drone survey is an outgrowth of a January presentation to the trustees by the P.E.P.'s executive director, Joyce Novak, on the organization's own review of docks and bulkhead in town, which asserted increases that were later called into question. The Partnership's numbers came from a hardened shoreline assessment — first conducted in 2001 and updated in 2019 — that surveyed docks, piers, breakwaters, groins, revetments, bulkheads, and jetties.
The statistics on docks that were presented to the trustees were preliminary and derived from a comparison of surveys conducted in 2001 by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service with data from 2016, Ms. Novak told The Star last month, and needed to be "ground-truthed." To that end, the trustees' on-the-ground dock survey is underway.
The drone survey, Mr. Aldred said, "is not intended necessarily to confirm or challenge" the Partnership's statistics on hardened shorelines, but rather for their own inventory during the moratorium on new construction. "But obviously we will see hardened structures — bulkheads, groins, and revetments — as well."
