Long Island brush fires prompt requests to clear in pine barrens

Nearly a year after wildfires caused more than 400 acres of the pine barrens to burn in Westhampton, some property owners are seeking permission to clear brush near their buildings as they fear future fires.

In the Westhampton part of the pine barrens, a commercial property owner and administrators of a special-education school want to clear trees, brush and other vegetation by their buildings. They say the clearings are crucial to preventing property damage and injuries from future wildfires. Their requests come close to a year after wind-driven wildfires scorched hundreds of acres and damaged commercial buildings.

But they're not allowed to fell trees or cut vegetation on their own. They must clear a key hurdle first.

The pine barrens are protected by a 1993 state law that limits new development. Under that law, clearing requires a hardship waiver from the Central Pine Barrens Joint Planning and Policy Commission, which governs development there.

“I want to protect my buildings and the people that have to fight the fires," said Joseph Gazza, who is seeking a hardship waiver to clear six properties he owns in the pine barrens, in an interview. “We have a government that's supposed to protect the pine barrens and the people who live here and their property, and they're just protecting the pine barrens — not the people or the property.”

Gazza seeks to clear up to 100 feet around the buildings he owns along Old Riverhead Road.

Gazza’s application is unprecedented, according to the commission's staff. An environmental group worries a ruling in his favor could lead to more clearings in the pine barrens.

The pine trees and vegetation are crucial to the pine barrens' ecosystem, said Nina Leonhardt, acting executive director of the Long Island Pine Barrens Society, a nonprofit preservation group. The plants help protect the area’s porous soil, which filters the rain and snow that replenishes Long Island’s aquifer — the source of its drinking water.

“Everything that lives and inhabits that region affects everything else that's living there. It's an ecological system, and that's what people lose sight of,” Leonhardt said in an interview.

The deadline for deciding on Gazza's hardship waiver application was extended in January. It is expected to be delayed again during the joint commission's meeting on Wednesday, according to a commission spokesman.

Wildfires prompt concerns

Last March, four wind-driven wildfires ripped through the pine barrens over the course of a weekend. Arson investigators deduced the fires were sparked by a family attempting to make s'mores. The area hit hardest was near Westhampton, where authorities said more than 420 acres of woodland were burned.

No evacuations were ordered and no homes were burned. But two commercial buildings — including one owned by Gazza near Gabreski Airport on Old Riverhead Road — were damaged in the blaze.

Gazza said he worries the next wildfire will cause more damage. He owns 14 buildings in the pine barrens, he said, and has asked the commission to approve clearing buffers on six properties.

“This is the third wildfire that I've seen ... and I know they are dangerous, and they are violent,” Gazza said. “There's more than just my buildings at stake. There's the occupants of the buildings, and there's the firefighters who put their lives on the line to try to stop these wildfires and protect property and people.”

School's push to clear

Safety administrators for Eastern Suffolk BOCES said they want to clear undergrowth and remove and prune up to 100 feet of existing trees near the Westhampton Beach Learning Center. The school serves more than 330 students with developmental disabilities, autism and physical disabilities. Thirty students are wheelchair users.

Evacuation during a wildfire, safety officials determined, is “likely impractical, necessitating students and staff shelter-in-place for safety,” said Heather Battaglia, a spokeswoman for Eastern Suffolk Board of Cooperative Educational Services, in a statement. The school system plans to file a request for a hardship waiver with the commission, Battaglia confirmed last week.

Buses picking up and dropping off the school’s students line up next to the wooded area, school officials said in a November letter to the commission.

“These measures are consistent with and drawn directly from wildfire mitigation practices recommended by the Central Pine Barrens Commission to reduce fire intensity, ember spread, and smoke impacts,” Battaglia said.

The Eastern Suffolk BOCES properties, as well as Gazza's, are within the pine barrens' core preservation area. No development is allowed in that component, the more restrictive of the state law’s two land designations, without a commission-issued hardship waiver.

The Long Island Pine Barrens Society's Leonhardt said the commission should agree to "extremely limited" clearing that can be "applied across the board" to other properties.

Otherwise, “anyone will then say, ‘Well, me too,’ ” Leonhardt said. “It is of grave concern."

Waiver weighed

The Central Pine Barrens is Long Island's last protected expanse. Spanning 105,000 acres, its ecosystem purifies the region’s drinking water and supports the health of two estuaries and two major rivers.

But to some, it's also a tinderbox.

About 52,500 acres are designated in the core preservation area. The area also contains a compatible growth area, which has limited restrictions that cannot adversely affect the environment.

Thousands of privately owned parcels with existing homes and businesses remain within its boundaries, many of them created before the region was protected by state law.

Commission staff said Gazza has not met hardship waiver requirements, according to Southampton Town Supervisor Maria Moore, a commission board member. But Moore said she hopes the commission will allow Gazza and Eastern Suffolk BOCES to do some clearing, particularly because the area was affected by last year’s wildfires.

The primary way the commission lessens wildfire risk is through prescribed burns — carefully managed fires that promote the forest’s ecological health. The pine barrens is a fire-dependent ecosystem. If pine cones don’t reach high temperatures, they are unable to release seeds and new trees can’t grow.

Last year, the state Department of Environmental Conservation conducted 15 burns on five different state-managed properties in the pine barrens, according to commission officials and the DEC's website.

“We're reducing potential for aggressive fire behavior and providing a good defensive line in between the wild areas and the communities themselves,” said Jason Smith, the commission’s science and stewardship manager, in an interview.

Controlled burns

Each property must have established its own burn plan to initiate a prescribed burn, Smith said. Private property owners must seek approval for burns on their land.

After last year’s wildfires, the commission received a $185,000 federal grant to develop a community wildfire protection plan for the pine barrens in Southampton Town. The plan will identify structures at serious wildfire risk and how the risk can be reduced during an emergency, Smith said.

Don Metcalf, board chairman of the Westhampton Beach Fire District, has encouraged the commission to allow Gazza to clear vegetation. He said in an interview that the destruction of trees by the southern pine beetle has increased wildfire fuel in recent years. It makes mitigation measures such as clearing that much more urgent.

“You have these risks where a small fire can turn into something large just by having these exposures,” Metcalf said.

Metcalf fought the 1995 “Sunrise Fire,” which burned about 5,000 acres of the pine barrens and forced hundreds from their homes. He said he worries most about the firefighters' safety. Two firefighters suffered minor injuries in last year’s wildfires.

“We need that clearing,” Metcalf said. "We need that buffer."