Signs for beaches in the works

Shelter Island town officials  are discussing language for signs at beaches where Suffolk County has demanded that the town ban swimming.

Without being specific about what the signs might say, Supervisor Jim Dougherty said in his State of the Town speech to the League of Women Voters on Sunday and again at Tuesday’s work session that the signs should resolve the issue and keep the town from facing fines for allowing illegal swimming at Fresh Pond, Shell Beach and Menhaden Lane this summer.

But the Suffolk County Department of Health Services remained firm about the language that must appear on signs.

“They were advised to post ‘Swimming Prohibited’ signs,” said Department of Health spokeswoman Grace McGovern. Anything short of that is a violation, she said.

“It’s the state sanitary code that we’re enforcing,” Ms. McGovern said in a telephone interview Tuesday morning. As the swimming season gets under way, representatives of the Department of Health “will be watching,” she added.

If town residents really want one or more of the sites that have been labeled as town landings to be used as public beaches, officials can provide the required facilities and file an application for each of them, Ms. McGovern said.

Should the town elect to seek a permit allowing swimming beyond the two public beaches — Wades and Crescent — it would have to file an application with the New York State Department of Health outlining its plans for providing lifeguards, bathroom facilities and signage. Water quality would also have to be tested to assure it posed no health threats, in line with the state code.

Town officials have made no mention of plans to upgrade the facilities offered at Fresh Pond, Shell Beach or Menhaden Lane. At a recent Town Board work session, Councilwoman Chris Lewis said there was no money in the budget to build necessary facilities. Finding qualified lifeguards for the two public beaches was difficult enough without trying to man other sites, Ms. Lewis said.

The widely distributed Shelter Island Chamber of Commerce map already identifies Shell Beach not as a town landing as the other two sites are listed but as a town beach. Mr. Dougherty said on Tuesday the town was urging the chamber and checking its own literature to make sure there were no suggestions that Fresh Pond, Menhaden Lane or Shell Beach were public beaches.

In a March 23 letter to the Shelter Island Recreation Department, Nancy Pierson of the county Bureau of Marine Resources, a division of the Department of Health Services, advised that the three listed areas lack permits to be operated as public bathing beaches and she warned town officials not to “install any type of bathroom facility” at any of the sites without going through the required approval process.

Councilman Peter Reich pointed out in an interview Monday that the water at Shell Beach and Wades Beach — which are on opposite sides of West Neck Harbor —  is the same, yet swimming is banned at one and allowed at the other.

“You can’t pee in just one half of a pool,” Mr. Reich said.

When he first saw the county’s letter last month saying swimming was prohibited at the three sites, his response was, “What individual is screwing the residents of this town out of their beach rights?”

That brought Vincent Novak, whose home on Fresh Pond is adjacent to the town landing there, to the forefront. He acknowledged having complained to the county about illegal swimming at Fresh Pond after he said he couldn’t get a reasonable response from local officials.

In an email Monday to the supervisor, copied to members of the Town Board, Mr. Novak called Mr. Reich’s words an “angry public response” and said it was “uncalled for and could incite others to violence.” He also said he requested extra police patrols around his home near Fresh Pond.

“I will continue to exercise my legal and constitutional rights, whether you agree with it or not,” Mr. Novak wrote. “When necessary, I will contact any county, state or federal entity as I see fit; it is every citizen’s right to do so. Governing with vengeance, harassment and intimidation is what bureaucratic dictators do in communist countries.”