For the first time in ages, the Montauk Citizens Advisory Committee held an in-person meeting Monday night at the Montauk School that found 14 out of 38 members turning out. It wasn’t enough for a quorum (and thus, no votes could be taken), but it was enough for the organization to hear a range of updates and information from East Hampton Town Councilman David Lys, the town board’s liaison to the committee.
Mr. Lys brought up a few projects and problems in his presentation to the committee, including the anemic response in Montauk to a joint East Hampton Town and Suffolk County program that would provide up to $30,000 to residents to upgrade their septic systems in hopes of improving water quality in the hamlet. The town is ponying up $20,000 from its community preservation fund and Suffolk County is kicking in the other $10,000.
Mr. Lys said that the C.P.F. is providing a total of $1.6 million this year in grants for water quality improvements for residential and commercial interests, “but nobody in Montauk applied. The money is there, but where is the interest,” he asked.
“It’s shocking that we didn’t get any in Montauk this year.”
Applications for the grant program open twice a year and the next period kicks off in December. A few places in Montauk upgraded their septic systems during past grant cycles, including the trailer park in Ditch Plain, the Crow’s Nest restaurant, and the Montauk Library.
Mr. Lys went on to talk up an upcoming dredge project by the Army Corps of Engineers to deepen the inlet leading from Lake Montauk to Block Island Sound. The dredging is slated for next fall, and Mr. Lys informed attendees that the corps would pile the dredge material in Gosman’s parking lot and dump the spoil in the area west of the jetties.
Mr. Lys said the spoils will fortify beaches that have lost much of their material thanks to littoral drift. “Any large placement of sand would bolster their defenses,” said Mr. Lys, who noted that discussions with residents there had emphasized the benefits to their ever-thinning beaches.
Meanwhile, a contested plan to construct a roundabout on Industrial Road near Riverhead Building Supply (where Industrial, Second House, Midland, and North Shore Roads meet), is moving forward and is in the final engineering stage, said Mr. Lys. On Tuesday he said the area in question had “never been engineered” and that the plan would seek to accommodate apparently competing interests — large trucks that come through on a regular basis and residents who use the roadway to get to and from the beach on Fort Pond Bay.
A bicycle and pedestrian path could be a part of the final plan, or, Mr. Lys suggested, the shoulder could be widened to accommodate those users. “It’s a historically mismatched place” that hasn’t served truck drivers or beachgoers especially well, he said.
Another infrastructure project is in the works which, like the Industrial Road plan, has been kicking around for seven to 10 years, said Mr. Lys, and will replace a notorious stretch of axle-busting pavement near the Rough Riders community and Long Island Rail Road station.
That project, said Mr. Lys by phone on Tuesday, was approved by the town board, which “is now moving forward with the final engineering . . . in coordination with Rough Riders residents.” There is a State Department of Environmental Conservation permitting hurdle to clear, he said, informing the committee that the town would bid out the job but use town contracts to fix the road. Rough Riders will pay for the repaving, he said. They’re the ones most impacted by and vocal about the state of that most rough of roads to ride on.