Oyster Bay sues to halt dredging of clams from Mill Neck Creek

The town of Oyster Bay has filed a lawsuit against a shellfishing company and a state regulatory agency to try to stop clams from being dredged in Mill Neck Creek.

The town attorney’s office electronically filed the lawsuit in State Supreme Court in Mineola on Monday against Frank M. Flower & Sons, a private shellfishing company that leases the underwater land from the town, and the state Department of Environmental Conservation that approved the Oyster Bay-based company’s permit.

The lawsuit seeks a temporary restraining order to prevent Frank M. Flower & Sons from utilizing the permit that allows the company to transplant clams from Mill Neck Creek, an estuary surrounded by Bayville and Mill Neck, to four areas in western Oyster Bay harbor from May 24 through Sept. 1.

“Activities pursuant to the NYSDEC permit would serve to have irreversible effects not only to the clam stock but to spawning potential in the Harbor generally,” the town alleged in its court filing. Disturbing the waters in Mill Neck Creek, an important estuary and spawning ground for shellfish, “would have devastating and permanent effects to the Harbor generally and to the Creek specifically,” the lawsuit alleges.

New York State Attorney General Letitia James’ office, representing the DEC, wrote in a May 25 letter to judge Dawn Jimenez, who is presiding over the suit, that there is no emergency requiring a temporary restraining order. Assistant Attorney General Max Shterngel wrote that the DEC had represented that “the permitted shellfish harvesting activity uses a method which has been in use for decades” and “the disturbance in sediments resulting from such harvesting would be expected to resolve completely in a time-frame of hours.”

The permit allows the company to move the clams for up to 80 hours a week to the western harbor, where they would be left alone for 60 days before they could be harvested, according to the permit. The DEC would supervise the activities.

James Cammarata, attorney for Frank M. Flower & Sons, said in a statement that his client has been a responsible steward of the harbor for more than 135 years.

“Decades of peer reviewed research has established that the sustainable shellfish aquaculture practices employed by Frank M. Flower do not have a negative impact on the Estuary, and in fact benefit the environment,” Cammarata wrote.

The nonprofit Friends of the Bay said in a news release that the DEC “has neglected its responsibility to protect the state’s wildlife resources and habitats” by approving the permit.