Equal Time: Enough with scapegoating the state DEC

It was the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan who famously said, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.” The same is true for News-Review editorials.

Oh, there’s nothing wrong about the newspaper’s lamenting the Town of Riverhead’s incapacity for nearly 20 years to get much of EPCAL on the tax rolls, but the job is never going to get done if we don’t understand why it hasn’t happened.

For years, Riverhead politicians have scapegoated the environment for their incapacity to market the property. One or two supervisors even admitted to me that because they couldn’t get the job done before Election Day, they had to blame something for the failure.

Last week’s News-Review picked up the same time-worn song and dance, the facts be damned.

Your editorial said, “It’s no secret environmentalists would like to see the whole thing remain a nature preserve.” That’s not true. When the Pine Barrens Act was enacted, we set aside only 450 acres of the 2,500 within the fence-line for preservation to protect drinking and surface water and critical habitat. The remainder was placed in a Compatible Growth Area where development is permitted.

I’ve been campaigning for decades for development of the former Navy/Grumman airbase. Whenever an endangered species has been discovered, I’ve come out publicly time and again, saying the critters can be protected without compromising economic development. It’s been done repeatedly at EPCAL.

It’s also false that the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation “officials seem to be at war with everything and anything proposed for this land,” as your editorial declared. Not so. The DEC has granted permits for everything from the Burman development to the rail spur to a water ski park at the site. The DEC has not denied a single permit application since the Navy transferred the land to Riverhead. So what’s standing in the way?

Well, harebrained ideas like a Hollywood film studio, an international jetport, racing that even NASCAR disavowed, the “Wilpon Deal,” an indoor ski mountain and on and on.

EPCAL seems to be where bad ideas come to die.

The idea of doing a marketing study to decide what would work there was a good one. That way, Riverhead could find out what kind of development would work, rather than simply responding to the latest crazy scheme advanced by someone without the capacity to deliver it.

Eighty percent of Long Islanders call themselves environmentalists. Nobody truly believes that they’re all “anti-growth,” that they prefer poverty over prosperity and hope that the economy gets worse. That’s ridiculous.

Most believe that economic growth is possible without destroying our environment.

When the News-Review buys into the never-ending excuse-making of supervisors Stark, Villella, Kozakiewicz, Cardinale and Walter — and calls for federal intervention to blame environmentalists for Riverhead’s bipartisan incompetence — it’s reinforcing a myth that somehow protecting water and nature is the problem.

I have three suggestions on how to finally get EPCAL properly developed.

First, blame local politicians, not environmentalists. Second, prepare a workable subdivision map as required by state law. Third, stop proposing stupid things like cutting down hundreds of acres of Pine Barrens to create grassland habitat, as Supervisor Walter has, or pretending that state environmental laws don’t apply at EPCAL

State officials including Peter Scully at DEC, Senator Ken LaValle and East End assemblymen such as Fred Thiele and Dan Losquadro are committed to responsible development at Calverton.

But if the Walter administration and the News-Review still believe the do-nothing federal government should intervene on behalf of incompetent Riverhead government, then it should just take back the land and give it instead to New York State, which would have EPCAL up and running in no time. If the first step in solving any problem is recognizing you’ve got one, then the second is recognizing what the actual problem is and doing something about it.

Mr. Amper is the executive director of the Long Island Pine Barrens Society, an environmental nonprofit group based in Riverhead.