Open Conflict Over Open Land

Environmentalists and developers battle over whether to build or preserve

By Dan Fagin | Staff Writer

The War of the Woods is the handiwork of history. Events that occurred in the distant past shape the ongoing struggle between preservationists and developers over the future of the vast pine barrens forest of east-central Suffolk County.

The 100,000-acre woodland of pitch pine and scrub oak exists because of a glacier that covered the northern half of Long Island 22,000 years ago, and the water-bearing sand deep beneath the forest's needle-covered floor is even older. Long Island's unique geology explains why the pine barrens were bypassed as the rest of the region rapidly developed, and it is also the reason that the fate of the region's last wilderness will help to forge the destiny of all Long Island.

Since 1995, an uneasy truce has prevailed in the pine barrens. That was the year that developers and environmental activists, after tortuous negotiations, reached a sweeping agreement that virtually forbids building in the 52,500-acre core zone and sets strict controls in the surrounding 47,500 acres.

But the war isn't over. Many of the land purchases and trades needed to implement the deal haven't occurred yet, and the two sides are still fighting over a mega-mall being built in Yaphank and other projects similarly proposed for the fringes of the pine barrens.

``It's a battle, day in and day out,'' said Richard Amper, executive director of the Long Island Pine Barrens Society, an environmental group that has spearheaded efforts to preserve the forest.

``These's still quite a lot of activity and pressure,'' agreed Bob Wieboldt of the Long Island Builders' Institute, which frequently spars with environmentalists over plans to build on the fringes of the forest.

The controversy won't go away because of two conflicting but inescapable truths about physical Long Island: the pine barrens is the only huge area left available for building, yet it also contains many of the region's rarest plants and animals and its largest undergound reservoir of uncontaminated drinking water. ``The very same geology that created the rare flora and fauna also created the purest water supply,'' said Amper.

The pine barrens exist for the same reason the rest of Long Island exists: The glacier ran out of gas here. By about 22,000 years ago, the Earth's gradually warming climate was finally temperate enough for the ice sheet to melt as quickly as it was expanding. The glacier that had steadily advanced 1,000 miles south from Canada's Hudson Bay until it covered the entire northern half of North America finally stopped, and then began receding north again.

On Long Island, the leading edge of the ice sheet was resting on the central spine of Long Island when it stopped and reversed direction. In its wake, the glacier left behind an elevated ridge of sand and rock that roughly follows the path of the present-day Long Island Expressway.

Ice-water streams fed by the melting glacier ran south from that ridge and carried huge volumes of sediment to the flatlands of the present-day South Shore. Most of that sediment originated in Connecticut and was carried south by the ice sheet, so the soils on the South Shore took the characteristics of whichever rock types were hundreds of miles to the north. In western Long Island and the East End, the South Shore soils were fertile because of the rich granite that lay due north in Connecticut. But east-central Suffolk is below central Connecticut, where the dominant rock is sandstone. So the glacial streams covered a broad swath of South Shore from Yaphank to Westhampton with sand that was devoid of nutrients and too porous to hold rainwater.

In that harsh and dry environment where wildfires were common, plants and animals survived only through ingenious adaptations, such as the globally rare dwarf pine trees whose cones disperse their seeds in the intense heat of fires. A unique ecosystem arose in what became the pine barrens.

Because the trees were scrubby and the soil was poor, the pine barrens were mostly ignored by American Indians and later by Europeans. Instead, settlers farmed more fertile areas and cut down the sturdy hardwood forests of the North Shore, establishing a development pattern that largely excluded east-central Long Island.

By the 1980s, though, the eastward march of suburbia was cutting heavily into the Suffolk pinelands that probably once covered as much as 250,000 acres. What finally slowed that march was a combination of factors: economic recession, public backlash against traffic and other consequences of growth, and a growing appreciation of the environmental importance of protecting the pine barrens.

For the Long Island Pine Barrens Society and other groups that led the drive to protect the forest, preserving open space and the rare plants and animals who lived there was always a key motivator. But as they sought support from the broader public, preservationists emphasized the pine barrens' role in the aquifer system from which all residents of Nassau and Suffolk Counties get their drinking water.

``The main motivation was always the open space and habitat. That was a pretty hard argument to sell, but everybody gets pretty concerned about drinking water so that's what was emphasized,'' said Lee Koppelman, longtime executive director of the Long Island Regional Planning Board.

Very few Long Islanders get their drinking water directly from the pine barrens, and most probably never will because piping water over long distances is very expensive. Yet Long Island's unique geology assigns the pine barrens an important role in limiting contamination of the island-wide aquifer system. This is because water that falls on the pine barrens eventually migrates to other parts of the Island that do supply large amounts of drinking water.

Most of the rain that falls on the Island moves north to Long Island Sound or south to the ocean before it can reach and replenish the deepest aquifers. Only in a narrow five-mile-wide band that roughly parallels the Long Island Expressway does falling rain eventually reach the deep aquifers, and the pine barrens is the cleanest area in that so-called deep-flow recharge zone. Rain that falls in the pine barrens moves quickly through the sand and enters the aquifer system without picking up contaminants, eventually reaching deep water wells.

That's important because since the 1970s hundreds of shallow backyard wells have been abandoned due to contamination from fertilizer, pesticides and other pollutants. Many water companies now must treat groundwater before pumping it to customers, or extend tainted wells into the deeper, cleaner aquifers that have become crucial sources of drinking water.

``Because of our geology on Long Island, the only way to guarantee clean drinking water is to have the land above it undeveloped,'' said John Cryan, who co-founded the pine barrens society in 1978. ``Over time, people on Long Island have come to understand that.''