The East Hampton Town Board voted last Thursday to postpone the planned temporary closure of East Hampton Airport and its reopening as a new, private-use airport following an executive session to discuss the plan, which has incited furious opposition and multiple lawsuits by interests from airport users and the aviation industry to residents who fear diversion of aircraft to their neighborhoods.
For the last 20 years, people have slipped into Accabonac Harbor behind a small stand of cedar trees next to the Springs General Store, a Town of East Hampton-historical site. Sage Island, Wood Tick Island, the Merrill Lake Sanctuary, and Louse Point were all just a paddle away. No longer.
In the contempt hearing in which property owners along the stretch of Napeague oceanfront popularly known as Truck Beach claimed that East Hampton Town failed to comply with last February’s New York State Supreme Court Appellate Division decision that barred driving there, Ed Michels, the town’s chief harbormaster, testified that the best he could do was block access at Marine Boulevard and advise people of the directive.
In what attorneys and lawmakers have described as a rare occurrence, New York State’s highest court has decided it will hear an appeal from the Noyac mine known as Sand Land, which is trying to hold onto its operating permit.
