Dan’s Papers April 1, 2011 danspapers.com Page 25
SELLING BEACH SAND, BUT WHO OWNS IT? By David Lion Rattiner The beaches of the Hamptons are surely the most valuable resource in our towns. Because of those beaches, people from all over the world travel to the Hamptons and buy oceanfront houses, pay into the tax system and move our economy. Without the beaches, the Hamptons has nothing. The beaches are the lifeblood. For years now, they have been eroding. Ever since I was born in Southampton Hospital, beach erosion has been an issue. The science is pretty clear, the ocean eats away at the sand on the beach, some spots get replenished, some spots don’t. In general, the beaches seem to come back when they go, but over time, it’s become clear that they are getting smaller. As such, a small gold rush has broken out in the sand business. Contractors with the right equipment can get sand from one location and replenish it to another location for a price. Oceanfront homeowners, who become terrified when they watch the sea rise into their backyards, are happy to pay for it to protect their property. But who owns the sand? Well it’s all pretty interesting. In the past, sand was never a real commodity out here. Very rarely was anyone ever hired to replenish their oceanfront property with new sand. But today, it’s becoming more common. There are contractors who focus on just that business alone, and they even offer installation of beach grass to lock the sand in. Where they get the sand is also pretty interesting. A lot of time it is given to them in exchange for sand removal. Some places have too much sand, such as Mecox Bay, which can become clogged by a build-up of sand. Southampton Town hires a contractor and pays them to remove it and the contractor can keep the sand. It’s a bit of a win-win for both the Town and the contractor, who can then take the sand and resell it to somebody that wants to replenish their beach, where for about $20 a cubic yard, the contractor is happy to dump the sand right in front of your oceanfront house. But the Town has now caught on to this deal, and now thinks that instead of giving the sand away, they can charge contractors for it, who, thanks to sand demand, will pay to essentially mine the sand, sand that needs to be removed in the first place, and will get washed back to the exact location that it was excavated from over time. It’s like an endless sand mine. So the question you really have to ask yourself is, doesn’t the sand that was purchased by the contractor, then resold to the oceanfront homeowner, and then moved by God back to the Town location still belong to the oceanfront homeowner? After all, he paid the contractor for it, who paid the Town for it, who got it from God. Just because it has moved down the beach doesn’t mean that the oceanfront homeowner doesn’t own it anymore, right?
Of course, this is just poking fun at the situation, but what a perfectly harmonious economic scenario for the Town. An endless supply of dumped sand, to be mined and sold to desperate buyers. It’s a sand rush! But what is not such a nice thought is that our beaches have less sand, and as such, people are getting more and more territorial over sand. Beaches have always been a territorial catastrophe. On paper, and by law, the beaches are to be used
by everybody and are for everybody. They are a gift from God to all of us. But everyone from the 11-year-old boogie boarder, to the 16-yearold surfer, to the 40-year-old oceanfront homeowner, like to mark their territories on “their” beaches. This is happening, quite embarrassingly and pathetically, at Napeague Beach in Amagansett, where an oceanfront homeowners’ association has literally hired lawyers to keep people from going to “their” beach. Hopefully, we will keep the right to enjoy the beaches for all of us, after all, this is America and beaches aren’t only for the rich, right?
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