Owners of multimillion-dollar Hamptons beachfront homes shouldn't have been allowed to install steel bulkheads and boulders to protect their properties after Superstorm Sandy, town officials said in a recent lawsuit.
Southampton Town trustees — elected officials charged with protecting beaches for public benefit — argue that the structures behind at least eight homes erode public beaches and make surrounding dunes more vulnerable during storm surges, Newsday reported Tuesday. The trustees filed the lawsuit Dec. 24 against the Southampton Village government and the state.
The suit points to state coastal policies that call for responding to storm damage by moving homes farther from the water, not rebuilding bulkheads. Yet some of the replacement structures are 5 to 10 feet higher than their predecessors, town Trustee Fred Havemeyer told the newspaper.
The homeowners "are taking advantage of a situation to go all out, make themselves very secure in their position on the beach," Havemeyer said. "They didn't take into account the disastrous ramifications in the future for beaches and the public."
The state Department of Environmental Conservation declined to comment. But Southampton Village Mayor Mark Epley called the lawsuit "absolutely ridiculous."
"They're expecting the village of Southampton to tell homeowners to pick their homes up and move them back? When they spent tens of millions on homes, on maintenance?" he told Newsday. Officials followed the village code when allowing the structures, he said.
Sandy washed out up to 100 feet of dunes in some spots in October 2012, Southampton Village building inspector Jon Foster said.
Southampton Town doesn't allow bulkheads or other hardened coastal-protection structures. Instead, it has spent $26 million in recent years to pump 2 million cubic yards of sand onto some beaches.
Southampton Village, on the other hand, does allow some hardened structures along the ocean.
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