Westchester and Rye Town Shut Off Access to Long Island Sound

I've said this before: Those of us who live in New York or Connecticut own Long Island Sound, literally, not figuratively. The waters of Long Island Sound below the mean high tide line belong to the people of New York and Connecticut, and are held in trust by the government for everyone to use.

But in Rye, the Westchester County government and the Rye Town government have locked two Long Island Sound beaches because it's too expensive to keep them open for the winter, or so they say. So even though the people of Westchester and Rye own those beaches (Playland and Rye Town Beach), they can't use them to get to the Sound, which they also own.

Years and years ago (probably the late 1980s), Bobby Kennedy Jr. told me that Riverkeeper or the Pace Law School environmental litigation clinic (or both) was hoping that budget cuts would prompt Westchester County to close the Edith G. Read nature preserve, which is on the Sound in Rye, for the winter, because Riverkeeper/Pace was looking for a public trust doctrine case to litigate.

In essence the public trust doctrine says that the waters and the shores of the sea (among other things) are held by the government in trust for use by the public. I'm not in a position to opine as to whether Rye Town and Westchester County are violating the public trust doctrine, but it'd be nice to hear from some lawyers about it.

We Can All Go to Greenwich's Island Beach Now

For $8 a person you can now hop on the ferry in Greenwich and take it to town-owned Island Beach, whether you live in Greenwich or not.

Until this year, Island Beach was only for residents. But the town opened it up for fear of being hit with the kind of lawsuit that forced it to open Greenwich Point several years ago.

Judging from this story, in the Greenwich Time, it seems as only a couple of old curmudgeons object, including one woman whose opinion was immediately challenged by her husband:

"I think everybody should stay on their beach," resident Miki Dougherty said. "We pay for the repairs of the beach. Everybody in the world wants to go."

While the senior and her husband were waiting for the ferry, the couple got into a disagreement over the change, however.

Bob Dougherty argued that many people in the area cannot afford to live near the water or reside in land-locked communities.

"They don't have a beach in Danbury," Dougherty said.

"That's too bad," his wife replied.

"Where are you going to? Are you going to go down to Florida?" the husband answered.

As a Pound Ridge resident, I’m with him.

So Far, Jamesport's New State Park is Used Mainly By Illegal ATV Riders

It's been years since New York State bought an unbelieveably beautiful piece of Long Island Sound waterfront property on eastern Long Island for a new park. This story, in the Suffolk Times, points out that despite all the fanfare that surrounded the purchase of the Jamesport State Park and Preserve, the park still has no-trespassing signs up and the only users are ATV riders who without question, in my opinion, are damaging the dunes and bluffs.

The Pataki administration bought the park and then left it up to the next administration to figure out what to do with it. The state parks department now says the park is on the top of its list for a new master plan to help them get it ready for public use.

Except for the ATV use -- which should be stopped -- I don't think there's any big scandal here. Buying the land and protecting it was obviously the right thing to do. But with public access to the Sound such an important issue, it would be nice to see the Jamesport park opened.

Stratford and Bridgeport Want to Sell Beach to the Feds

Bridgeport and Stratford are negotiating to sell a fantastic strip of beach to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which will incorporate it into the Stewart B. McKinney National Wildlife Refuge. Much of the beach, which has nesting piping plovers, has been inaccessible since a bridge was destroyed in the mid-1990s, and part of the beach has abandoned cottages on it. The feds will restore public access to a level appropriate for a national wildlife refuge and remove the cottages. Stratford seems close to a deal and Bridgeport is still negotiating. Seems like good news on a dank winter morning. The Connecticut Post reports, here.

No Clean Water Fund, Broadwater Decision Delayed, New Beaches Open and Not

Is it possible that the state of Connecticut still hasn't put money into the Clean Water Fund -- in other words, still hasn't decided to meet its responsibility to help clean up Long Island Sound (among other things)? Hard to believe but apparently true: when I got back from two weeks away there were 52 e-mails in my inbox with "Long Island Sound" in the subject line, and none of them were about the Clean Water Fund.

New York's Department of State will wait until December before deciding whether Broadwater's proposal for a liquefied natural gas terminal in Long Island Sound is consistent with state policies for use of the coastal zone. This is old news -- it broke while I was away -- but it's worth noting nonetheless. Here's the only report about it that I saw.

The state has been buying a lot of terrific parkland on Long Island but it doesn't have the money to open them to the public. The new park on the Sound in Jamesport is among them. In Milford, meanwhile, the city is creating a small new beach out of an area that's been a mess for a while:

When the city acquired the site several years ago, it was covered with large boulders, wood scraps and other debris that officials believed were the remnants of houses destroyed in the 1938 hurricane.

Public Access

It's not that easy for those of us who don't live near the shore to get to the Sound. But this Connecticut Coastal Access Guide is a big help. Last evening, just to get out of the woods and give our eyes a horizon to look at and to feel the soft air, we went to this tiny, tiny park in Westport -- the Canal Road Water Access Area. True, it's not the most poetic name but it had what we needed -- a view of the Norwalk Islands, a shoreline to walk along, a place to park, almost no people, and no personal watercraft ripping across the water to give us a headache.

Here's a view west, down the beach.


And here's the eponymous canal of Canal Road.

To the Beach

Beaches opened over the weekend and the New Haven Register did us a favor by summarizing the access policies and fees in a lot of Connecticut towns (Long Island's beach policies are a mystery to me but then again the beaches are stony and, I think, don't draw as many people as Connecticut's).

I learned that there might be a decision soon on the lawsuit that Stamford's Paul Kempner filed against Greenwich because of the town's restrictive beach access policies. And I learned that Madison's public beach is called the Surf Club and that it's now a relative bargain for out-of-towners to go there:

In Madison, where nonresidents in the past had to pay a parking fee and separate per-person admittance fee to enter the Surf Club and use the beach, visitors will find a new policy in place this summer that charges only a per-vehicle fee. That means the cost of going to the beach for a family of five just dropped from $60 — 10 bucks for the car and 10 per person — to $15.

Scott Erskine, director of recreation in Madison, said the change has nothing to do with the lawsuit from Greenwich.

"We're trying to make it a little more user-friendly," he said.

Anyone who enters the Surf Club on foot or on a bicycle will no longer be charged. Erskine admitted the old policy of charging those people sometimes led to confrontations at the gates.

The $15 car fee is a dollar more than the weekend, out-of-state fee for Hammonasset Beach State Park, but the fee for Connecticut residents is only $9 per car.

Lots of details are on this Connecticut Coastal Access Guide, which is worth bookmarking.

Speaking of access of sorts to the water, the Stamford Advocate writes about why it's so hard to establish more ferry service on the Sound. The one-word answer is "parking." (My former employer, the Gannett corporation, has backed out of its agreement to buy the Stamford Advocate and Greenwich Time, mainly because Gannett is as anti-union as a newspaper company can be and some employees at the Advocate are represented by the United Autoworkers. My first inclination is to say the decision isn't a bad thing for local news coverage, because Gannett makes money by cutting operating costs to the bone; on the other hand, at my old paper there are still four reporters whose main assignment includes coverage of the environment, which isn't bad at all).

And finally since we're talking about beaches and public access, here's a funny and appropriately unfair account of Greenwich's old access policies, as seen through the eyes of Michael Moore's TV Nation show.