New causeway zoning proposal goes to the public
More than three months after withdrawing the first version of a proposal to limit development on the low-lying Ram Island causeways, the Town Board unveiled an overhaul on Tuesday that calls for a minimum size of 5 acres for any new building lots instead of the 3 acres that would have been required by the first proposal.
Many of the draft restrictions are similar to those that would have been imposed by the board’s first set of proposals, unveiled in May and withdrawn in June. Like the original proposal, the overhaul calls for a limit on the size of houses according to lot size; a ban on swimming pools, garages, docks and bulkheads; a ban on lawns and a 25-foot height limit that would keep the roofline of any house lower than the highest cedars that populate the sandy terrain.
Town Attorney Laury Dowd, who drafted the new proposal working with Town Board members to sift comments from the public, presented a slide show outlining its elements at the Town Board’s work session on Tuesday. She said the proposal required three amendments to the Town Code to implement and would be posted on the Shelter Island Town website, shelterislandtown.us, for the public to review.
The Town Board has been working to develop the building rules ever since the owner of the only house on the causeways, built in the 1960s, obtained permission from the town in 2010 to replace it after a fire. With no regulations to bar the new house, there was widespread worry that other property owners might decide to develop their parcels in the otherwise scenic and undeveloped shoreline area.
The board imposed a moratorium on all causeway construction in March 2010 and has, in effect, extended it twice. It’s due to expire December 31.
Ms. Dowd and Supervisor Jim Dougherty urged residents to review the new proposal and send any suggestions to Town Clerk Dorothy Ogar as soon as possible. The deadline for comments will be November 10, when the board is expected to finalize the proposal and set December 2 as the date for a hearing — just in time for the board to enact the necessary amendments before the end of the year, when the moratorium will expire.
SEPARATE ZONING DISTRICT
Under the proposals, which Ms. Dowd said were still “evolving,” the Town Board would abandon the idea of creating a floating overlay district to regulate causeway construction. It also would repeal the Undeveloped Coastal Barrier Zone of the Zoning Code, which created broad rules a decade ago giving the Zoning Board of Appeals authority to review construction projects in barren coastal areas. Instead it would create a new zoning town district with specific rules for the Ram Island causeways.
The proposed causeway zoning district’s rules are aimed at prohibiting construction that could be damaged by the frequent flooding that occurs on the causeways; they also are designed to protect the fragile and isolated freshwater aquifer that lies underground, according to Ms. Dowd’s presentation.
The only major structures to be allowed would be houses. No accessory structures, such as tennis courts, swimming pools or garages, would be permitted; nor would docks, bulkheads or any shore-hardening structures. Public infrastructure, such as Ram Island Drive, boat storage structures and catwalks over the intertidal zone also would be permitted.
Under the rules, new lots created by the subdivision process would have to contain at least 5 acres.
The footprint of any house — determined by an overhead view of the proposed construction, so that it would include any overhangs — would be limited to 1,800 square feet on a 5-acre or larger lot. On pre-existing lots containing at least an acre but less than 5 acres, no house could exceed 1,200 square feet. On lots smaller than an acre, the maximum would be 1,000 square feet.
Property could be cleared only within a 25-foot radius of the house, well and septic system. Only invasive species could be removed from any other location. A native species re-vegetation plan would be required before any construction could begin.
To hide structures from view, no straight driveways would be permitted; they would have to be aligned in an “S” pattern. No vegetation could be disturbed during construction within a 20-foot buffer between the road and the house site.
No fill would be permitted to raise the grade of any house site. Septic systems would have to be 150 feet from any wetlands or shoreline and if they are elevated above ground level they would have to be screened by plantings. Any retaining wall required for a septic system mound would have to be at least 5 feet from the property line.
Reverse osmosis systems to eliminate salt from well water would have to include a collection system so that the brine they produce would not be dumped into the bay or Coecles Harbor.
SPECIFIC STANDARDS
Not only would people seeking to build in the Causeway Zone have to get a wetlands permit from the Town Board, as required under existing regulations, they also would have to get a “causeway permit.”
Ms. Dowd said that, under the proposed regulations, the board would have to follow “specific standards” to determine whether or not a permit should be granted:
• Is the construction reasonable and necessary or are there alternative designs that would limit its impacts;
• Will it increase flooding or erosion;
• Does it prevent or minimize any adverse effects;
• Will it put too much stress on the aquifer?
There are activities in the zone that would be “unregulated,” Ms. Dowd said: maintaining one’s property, grooming the beach and removing invasive species.
There was almost no discussion of the proposal at Tuesday’s work session. Audience member Paul Shepherd, a Town Board candidate this fall, said he’d been on Ram Island that day and “the First Causeway already is under water. It looks like a swamp.”
Another Town Board candidate, Will Anderson, asked if the proposal would set a minimum grade requirement. Ms. Dowd said federal flood plain regulations established that minimum. Another Town Board candidate, Ian Weslek, said federal rules also set a minimum height for all the utility systems serving a residential structure in a flood zone.
LAST PROPOSAL REJECTED
The board’s first proposal for limiting causeway development would have created a “Causeway Overlay District” under which the residential zoning requirements of the area would have remained in place. The new proposal calls for completely replacing those rules.
Unlike the new proposal, the first one would have raised the minimum size for new lots to 3 acres instead of 5. But like the new proposal, it would have imposed a ban on docks and bulkheads and set new rules to limit the size and height of any buildings: 1,000 square feet for an acre or less; 1,200 square feet for lots larger than an acre but less than 3; and 1,800 square feet on parcels larger than 3 acres.
The original proposal, like the new one, also prohibited clearing beyond 25 feet of a house, well or septic system and it prohibited all accessory structures.
When the Town Board aired that first set of proposals at a hearing in June, Town Hall was packed with critics who said the rules should be tougher and the goal should be preserving the area, not setting guidelines for construction.
The two areas to be covered by the rules total 91.24 acres known as the First Causeway and the Second Causeway along Ram Island Drive.
About 65 percent of the properties within the proposed causeway zone are held in pubic ownership and not subject to development, according to Kyle Collins of KPC Planning Services of Westhampton Beach, the environmental consultant hired by the town to review the impact of the original proposal last spring.
There are six parcels on the First Causeway whose owners could obtain a permit for construction, he reported to the Town Board. A house with an 1,800-square-foot footprint could be built on one of the properties; two properties, if combined, could accommodate a house with a 1,200-square-foot footprint; another lot could accommodate the same size house on its own; two lots could be subdivided into three building parcels, each to contain an 1,800-square-foot house; and a sixth parcel could contain a house with a 1,000-square-foot footprint.
There are six small private parcels on the Second Causeway for which permits from the Town Board would be required for any construction, Mr. Collins has told the Town Board. But only one lot of the six parcels has enough land area to construct a 1,000-square-foot dwelling, he has said.
On the advice of the Group for the East End, resident Richard Kelly and others, the Town Board hired another environmental consultant this summer to designate the wetlands areas on the causeways where no construction should be permitted and a surveyor to chart them. Supervisor Dougherty said their results should be presented soon.
