Dan's Papers - May 23, 2008 - Plow Up And Take Away That Farmland

About eight years ago, an eco-farm opened up directly across the street from the East Hampton High School on a piece of property that, until recent times, had been a potato farm. The eco-farm people announced they would be planting and growing fresh, organic vegetables there. Within a year, it was discovered that the soil was just barely fit for growing anything - it was heavily laced with arsenic, left over from some agricultural chemical spray that had been put on the potatoes decades earlier when nobody suspected that the sprays could be bad for humans.

The eco-farm is still there, although I believe they are farming only on special plots using soil that has been transported in.

The rest of the property is divided between a potato field farm and a tree farm.

Three weeks ago, there was a big dust storm in the community and some of the soil was carried across to the high school property. Monitoring equipment there determined that at one point during the storm the arsenic levels were so high as to be off the charts.

Since then, I believe the town has done absolutely nothing.

Not long ago, in Southampton, I visited the Olde Towne land development project being built on the former farm across from Southampton Hospital. This project will result in ten houses on 40 acres, with another 24 acres left as open space, with much of it available to the public.

When I was there, however, the topsoil of the farmland was being cleared into great piles, exposing the underlying sandy soil that covers much of the bedrock that is eastern Long Island.

Walking with Bob Gianos, the developer of the property, I asked about this great mound of topsoil. I told him that it reminded me of the fuss made ten years ago in Sagaponack, when Ira Rennert cleared the topsoil off 75 acres of potato farms and had it shipped away. He subsequently brought in new topsoil and on top of that built his single 110,000 square foot home.

"Everybody loves farmland," Gianos said to me. "I do too. But the dark side of farming, at least back then, was all the pesticides that were put into the land. We removed the topsoil here too, although we really didn't have to. There was never serious commercial farming on this site. And when we checked the soil, it was in good shape. So we will be putting much of it back."

Gianos explained that back then when a farm was in heavy commercial use, they needed these pesticides to not only kill potato bugs, but also to re-enrich the farmland, which would fail in its nutrient levels if it was not sprayed and mulched. Bridgehampton loam, as it was called, was among the richest in New York State back then.

"They did farm on my property for many years," he continued. "But no water irrigation was ever installed, so it was just for the family's immediate use, for friend's use and for some sales on stands. It was never a business in need of turning a profit. When I bought it, on advice from others, I had pumpkins planted while I waited for approvals. They require almost no spraying to grow and they are above the ground and not in it. So the ground remains stable."

It seems to me that in East Hampton, an attempt should be made to find out whether the current owners of the land are capable of paying to have the topsoil cleaned. And if they are not, rather than forcing them to do it through lawsuits and superfund laws, for the sake of the kids, preservation fund money should be spent to purchase this land, have bulldozers remove the arsenic-laced farmland on Long Lane, and have it replaced with healthy topsoil. It won't be cheap, but if there was ever a project that could be considered an appropriate expense for the Town's preservation fund, now endowed with tens of millions of dollars, this would be it.

East Hampton claims there is little left to buy in the Town, and that the preservation fund, which is now loaded with money supplied by the Real Estate Transfer Tax, should be dipped into for ordinary expenses. Indeed, against the law, that is exactly what they have been doing in recent years.

I disagree. And frankly, I do not understand why having arsenic laced dust at 100 times the legal limit blown into the high school where our kids are, is not an urgent situation requiring immediate action.