Codger’s column: Season’s end

Codger needs a drink. Of water.

Ever since the Suffolk County Water Authority (SCWA) declared “a Stage One Water Emergency Alert,” Codger has been dry-mouthed with concern. And then the Gardiner’s Bay Country Club (GBCC) cleared its throat in preparation for officially asking to almost double its water usage.

It’s one thing to follow SCWA requests to cut back on showers during a drought, thinks Codger. But it’s another to “embrace other water-saving measures indoors,” whatever SCWA means by that (more beer?), so some fat cat golfers can stroll on fairways as lush as the ones they irrigate at midnight at home.

Friends of Codger (yet another new local verbal militia that might buy an ad) are worried about his blood pressure. He has always had a thing about country club golf as a symbol of all that is retrograde and exclusionary in sports. This latest trifecta — the East End water shortage, an added 6.1 million (or much more) gallons a year for GBCC and the attempt to hijack the game by Saudi Arabia and Trump — may just push the old man into an extreme position, like…Stop watering golf courses!

Let’s take a deep breath here.

With less than two weeks to the end of the season — an historic season at that — such radical attitudes may just be too much late posturing. We’re winding up a summer that felt almost “normal.” People went out at night.

There was fresh money and energy from the new hotel and restaurant oligarchs and the latest doom-and-zoom controversy — community housing — hasn’t quite risen to the vicious levels reached by the debates over short-term rentals.

Which it should.

Two weeks ago, Albert Dickson, a former Town Board member and one of Codger’s all-time favorite politicians, made a brief, cogent, important speech to the Board. It either went over their heads or they simply chose condescension to deflect it.

Dickson basically asked the Board to defer its hasty plunge toward a November referendum that will impact the community housing campaign and perhaps even derail it in the name of progress. People will be asked to vote to allow the 0.5% real estate transfer tax to be used for community housing before the community gets to fully understand exactly what community housing means here.

Dickson called for complete studies on the environmental and legal issues so people can understand what the housing plan is — if indeed there is one. He called out the Board’s “arrogance” for not “sitting down with constituents,” hearing them out and answering their concerns. There are people who do understand these issues and there are websites, surveys and public chats, but no Town Hall meeting.

As usual when Albert makes sense, Board members thank him and pat him on the head. No wonder he didn’t run again.

Codger often wonders how it’s possible to expect residents to understand and vote for community housing without knowing how it will affect tax rates and environmental concerns, especially water.

And how can something so critical to the future of the town go forward without a viable comprehensive plan?

Codger wants to go back to water.

The GBCC’s water grab trial balloon — which reportedly came from the club’s Irrigation Committee, not its Drinking Committee — is arriving at a chaotic time. Should it even be considered seriously until the Town knows more about water needs in a time of continuing water shortages? Was this water coming from our shared aquifer or off-Island tank trucks? Where is SCWA — still only operating in Dering Harbor and West Neck — in all this?

Codger is no sensible, moderate Albert Dickson, a seeker of common ground. Codger thinks in draconian measures. He says choose —  either stop watering golf courses or stop watering lawns. Now there’s a referendum.

Codger would vote against watering lawns. Does grass produce anything other than ticks? Is that green look worth the poisonous chemicals that drain into our drinking water and kill our pollinators? Wouldn’t a meadow of wildflowers or fields for softball, cricket, lacrosse, sprints, picnics, however brown and scrubby, be more useful and spiritually beautiful?

The case for limited watering of golf courses is simple — that acreage, like the undeveloped land that comprises almost a third of the Island, is a buffer against development and water abuse. More fresh air. Let the fat cats have their game, just not their lawns. Life is compromise.

Codger does not want people to think he has solved this. He hasn’t even run it past Albert. But for starters, postpone the referendum (affordable housing will still be on the table), cancel any GBCC request, complete an up-to-date comprehensive plan and an environmental impact report and turn off your sneak sprinklers.

Also, attend the Sept. 3 Shelter Island Friends of Music concert. You’ll feel better.