Southampton Town to barter sand for money

Southampton Town trustees say they will not give needed sand for a remediation project at Mecox Beach to the town, but instead will barter it in exchange for money spent for a cleanup of Mills Pond.

Mecox Beach, a popular town beach, has lost about two-thirds of the pre-existing ocean dune line, most notably during the mid-January storms, and the stairs to the beach were heavily damaged, officials said. The dune needs to be reconstructed to defer any more damage.

Town officials said the erosion is so severe it is threatening the parking lot and the summer tourism season.

The cost to fix it, according to a town parks department estimate, is about $90,000, of which about $50,000 would be the cost of the sand needed for the remediation.

The town trustees, a separate elected governing body of five members that protects the town's environmental concerns, have passed a resolution that would neither sell nor give the sand outright to the town, but offer it in exchange for $50,000 toward the remediation of Mills Pond.

About 1 1/2 tons of phosphorus is in the polluted Mills Pond, according to trustee Fred Havemeyer. The trustees have been asking the town, which is responsible for remediation of the water body, to fund a cleanup project that would cost about $400,000 and take about two years. The $50,000 would pay for phoslock, a natural substance that attracts the pollutant to it and binds with its clay.

Southampton Supervisor Anna Throne-Holst said she has not heard about the barter, but that "I'm not sure horse-trading has its place here" and that the sand ultimately belongs to taxpayers.

"I maintain that sand dredged in the Town of Southampton does not belong to any one entity . . . This is a remedial project put in place to support public property," she said.

Trustee president Eric Schultz said that since the trustees' budget has been cut drastically -- about 20 percent in the past year in addition to other reductions in previous years -- by the town, they have started using money from the sale of sand. Most of the buyers are homeowners and contractors looking to shore up private residences. Trustees have used the proceeds, which Havemeyer said totaled $200,000 last year, to pay for things trimmed from the budget, such as bulkhead mendings, pump-out boats and piping plover programs.

The sand would come from the nearby Mecox "cut," trustee-owned land that separates Mecox Bay from the ocean. It is excavated every couple of years to let water out of the bay into the ocean, with the sand sold by the trustees for revenue.

In addition to the funding, officials said they must get permits from the state Department of Environmental Conservation in place soon, before the early spring breeding season for nearby animals and birds.