All not well on Island


To the Editor:


Even as a full time resident, I don’t read the local paper, like many others, it is far too disturbing to see how a once good local source of responsible reporting has turned into anything but and the effect it has had on Shelter Island. But, after numerous emails and calls this week, I had to read the story about Cornell, the 4-posters and how everything is fine. Boy would I like to know what they are smoking in that office! I might even think about inhaling after 38 years.


In what is now an annual event, what a surprise! Cornell, who because of the lack of leadership/backbone of some of our Town Board members, is overseeing their own permethrin contamination program on Shelter Island, once again after doing their own analysis assures us that “it is unlikely” that anyone eating venison would suffer any health issues. “Unlikely” of course being the key word.


This after last year assuring us that no permethrin was in the deer meat and even issuing a press release to that effect. However when the meat was testing [sic] by a lab other than Cornell’s, guess what? Permethrin showed up as it did each and every time a lab other than Cornell’s tested the deer and also the environment. 


Remember how we were assured by Mat Pound, Cornell, Rae Lapides and all the other permethrin ‘experts’ that it wouldn’t be found in the environment as a result of the 4-posters. Well not only was it, but also at a depth of 18 inches below the surface and also over 250 feet away from a 4-poster.


The reality, whether people want to wake up to it or not, is that our Island and our wildlife are contaminated with this carcinogenetic [sic] pesticide and become more so each year. All this while some members of the Town Board who sold their souls to get reelected using their support for the 4-posters, sit in their chairs and let this farce continue to be perpetuated [sic] on their constituents.


In any event, we have not seen the end of it. Our supervisor who is supposed to ensure things like this do not happen is up to his neck in it, and continues to allow our island and waters to be contaminated with permethrin. Ever wonder why we had no scallops again this year in local waters? 


He was told by a real expert, with no agenda, at a work session and in an email that testing programs are never done in the manner that Cornell’s is, yet with a total disregard for our Island he allows it to continue and also condones it! 


All the while aided by a local newspaper more concerned with perpetuating an illusion that “all is well” and more concerned with selling ad space to realtors than protecting our Island’s environment, and a bunch of permethrin cheerleaders who make the most outrageous and unsubstantiated statements imaginable about this pesticide and its dangers.


This is a fairly well orchestrated farce being perpetuated [sic] on all of us by this paper and a couple of Town Board members along with Cornell’s “expert” staff, not one of which is a topologist [sic]. When are people who are aware of this, and I know there are many, going to finally stand up and put an end to this? Do you really want to wait until our bays are completely dead from this pesticide, and our wildlife and environment unquestionably contaminated?


I don’t and won’t. Next year I will raise enough money to initiate a real independent testing program, done by a real laboratory, with people who have no agenda and/or association with this farce now going on. Guess what? I predict that we will find it in every animal we test and in every soil and sediment sample that we test. 


These dangerous lies that are being perpetuated [sic] on us by a select few will end, and the truth about the permethrin legacy on Shelter Island will once and for all and unquestionably become known. You heard it here first.


CAPTAIN BILL SMITH


SHELTER ISLAND