Backwards

Does the Sun Rise in the West? Is the Earth Flat? It's Open for Discussion

By Dan Rattiner

As you may know, a resident of Sagaponack named Cynthia Ireland is suing Suffolk County for allowing some jetties to be built to the east of her summer home that she says have caused massive erosion in front of that home because sand moves from east to west, gets caught up in those jetties built there, leaving very little for the other side, and so on the other side there is this huge problem. Ireland has had to move her house back twice, and now is facing the possibility of a third time. She's demanding that the County pay to pump thousands of tons of sand back onto the beaches. Suffolk County is the governmental agency that approves the building of jetties. Thus the lawsuit.

I mention this because during the summation proceedings of this trial - and it has come to a trial - the lawyer for the County got up and said that there is no evidence that sand moves from the east to the west. Indeed, he said, what little evidence there is shows that sand moves from the west to the east. So obviously his client is innocent.

Now what I find so extraordinary about this is that he can stand up in court and say this and the judge and everybody else takes it seriously. There goes the whole case. It's just too bad for Ireland. Everybody starts running around.

What if this $500-an-hour lawyer had stood up and said oh, no, the sun rises in the west, not the east. It sets in the east. Just look at these studies. I think, once again, everybody would be running around looking at the studies. He must know something, right?

I am writing this down at the beach. A piece of driftwood is out there bobbing along, going from east to west. It always, or almost always goes east to west. Maybe it goes the other way for a few hours. But the ultimate destination along the beach is to the west, down to Far Rockaway, where they have to periodically dredge the sand so the ships can get through the Narrows.

What's most amazing is that Suffolk County, for which this expensive lawyer works, built what is perhaps their greatest erosion project ever because sand flows from east to west. In the 1960s, they began building a series of 22 jetties at half-mile intervals from east to west along the beaches in Quogue and Westhampton. They did this so that the sand drifting east to west would get caught up in the jetties on the eastern side, thus creating so much sand in the teeth of these jetties that you'd have to walk a football field of sand to get down to the beach. And that happened. Unfortunately, they never finished building this jetty field. Instead, they started in the east, got about 15 of them put in, and then stopped building the jetties because of public protests about artificial obstructions on the beach. They had gotten everything in except the last three miles to the west leading to the Moriches Inlet.

The scouring action that occurred to the west of the last jetty because it was all caught up on the east was so bad that during the next 15 years, more than 100 homes fell spectacularly and unceremoniously into the sea for lack of sand to protect the dunes on which they sat.

Isn't it amazing that a lawyer can get up and say the most remarkable things and everybody has to take his ridiculous stuff seriously?

They want studies? The lawyers for Ireland and for the Town of Southampton, which is a friend to this lawsuit, will give them studies. He'll give the judge a thousand studies - indeed, every study there has ever been about this. And the wheels will turn and the lawyers will, just because they are on the clock, be making more and more money.

And here, writing this, I find myself compelled to point out this case and that case, which overwhelmingly prove what everybody already knows.

Montauk Lighthouse, the farthest east you can go, was built 263 feet from the edge of the island in 1796. Due to the drift of sand from east to west, so much sand got scoured away that the land it protected all fell away so that now the lighthouse is less than 60 feet from the edge of the island.

When Juan Trippe, the millionaire owner of Pan Am and the oceanfront home at Georgica, built his string of jetties in the 1950s, the very ones under discussion here, he built them to the west of his house so the sand would pile up to the east in front of his house, and it did. That's why he did that.

Michael and Leonora Kennedy, who own the house directly to the west of where Juan Trippe built those jetties, have had to move their house back three times to keep it from falling into the sea. And to the west of that is the Ireland's house. And it is Ms. Ireland who is filing this lawsuit.

I could go on and on with this. Every surfcaster I know down at the ocean throws his line slightly to the east so it will drift to the west. There are two of them out here just now doing exactly that. Should I go on and on with this?

Well, I don't know. Here's a $500-an-hour lawyer saying that something is so. Maybe it is. Ya think? Isn't it true that a person is presumed innocent until proven guilty? So if the sea goes the other way, nah, I am not going there.

On the other hand, if this has been going on for centuries and centuries, why isn't the sand piling up into an entire Sahara out at Far Rockaway? Tell me that.

Wasn't it Copernicus who said the world is round in front of a courtroom of people who believed that the world is flat?

Thus do lawyers earn their keep.

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