New waterways regulations aimed at moving the activity of Flyboard Long Island out of a downtown Riverhead cove stalled again yesterday when a majority of the town board voted to table a resolution scheduling a public hearing on the measure.
This is the second time the board balked at calling a public hearing on the proposed code amendments — though all five board members say they favor moving the flyboarding operation away from the downtown shoreline and the residents who object to the activity there.
Flyboard Long Island principal James Bissett IV told RiverheadLOCAL last month if the restrictions are adopted, he may move his business out of Riverhead.
Residents near Treasure Cove Marina, where last summer Bissett began taking thrill-seeking tourists on airborne adventures tethered to his jet ski, would like him to do just that. They complain that the noise of Bissett’s operation is depriving them of the enjoyment and use of their properties and they argue that the jet-powered thrust in the cove’s shallow waters is further degrading the water quality of a river that’s already classified by the state as “impaired.”
On Monday, residents filed with the town clerk a petition containing 31 signatures asking the town board to ban flyboarding in Treasure Cove as well as in the connecting river and estuary.
At Monday’s work session, when the board reviewed resolutions to be acted upon the following day, no board member objected to bringing the measure up for a vote. Councilwoman Jodi Giglio, who made the motion to table the resolution yesterday, said she wanted the code to require the jet ski to be accompanied by a boat with someone who is CPR-certified aboard, but got no support from any other board member. Councilman James Wooten, who joined Giglio and Councilman John Dunleavy in yesterday’s vote to table the resolution, said Monday he had “concerns” about the code’s shoreline setback requirements and believed the operation should move east of the Cross River Drive bridge, to a location near Indian Island golf course.
Councilman George Gabrielsen, who on Dec. 17 voted to table a resolution calling a public hearing, was taken aback by the motion to table. “It’s news to me,” he said when Giglio announced, “I think we’re going to table this.”
“Two weeks ago I was part of tabling it because one of the councilmen clearly said he needed two weeks,” Gabrielsen said. “We had the two weeks. We had a work session yesterday so I thought it was — I think it’s ready.”
Supervisor Sean Walter asked Wooten why he wasn’t prepared to schedule a public hearing. “You wanted two weeks. We gave you two weeks,” Walter told him.
“Yeah but two weeks right before Christmas,” Wooten answered, explaining that he wanted to sit down with bay constable Jim Divan to go over “a few things” and was not able to arrange a meeting.
“My whole goal is to get this out of the river altogether,” Wooten said before voting to table the resolution, “and you know, what I think is we can simplify this. It’s redundant in so many ways and this town has been so reactive in throwing laws together… But you throw a law together so quickly and then you do 9,000 amendments over the next 10 years because it’s redundant or it didn’t capture everything you wanted it to capture,” he said.
Wooten said he would work with Divan on “just a couple of wording changes” so that “it can be done and be done right.” He said there was no need to “rush through it.”
Local residents attending yesterday’s meeting and former Peconic baykeeper Kevin McAllister, founder and president of Defend H2O, criticized the board for
failing to move forward.
The activity contributes to low dissolved-oxygen levels in the already-impaired waterway, which puts marine life in jeopardy, McAllister said.
“It’s just purely wrong for the river,” McAllister said. “This has no place, I would argue, within Riverhead’s waters, and particularly the Peconic River. As a scientist and advocate for clean water, this is really a no-brainer. I would say put it to rest as quickly as possible… I implore this board: Dispense with kicking it down the road any longer. Just say no.”
Howell Lane resident Glenn Brewster expressed dismay and frustration with the board. “All I ask is just get yourselves together. Take half an hour to work it out. Write it down,” he said. “It’s already been four months.”
This summer, neighbors’ complaints prompted enforcement action by the town bay constable, who issued Bissett multiple summonses for alleged violations of town code provisions that prohibit waterskiing within 500 feet of shore. Officials acknowledged that the existing code does not address the new water sport and hastily drafted revisions intended to do so. That first draft was the subject of a public hearing on Oct. 7, after which the board decided the proposed rules needed to be reworked. Board members discussed revisions with the town attorney, bay constable and members of the town’s conservation advisory committee last month. All five board members agreed to push the flyboarding operation off shore, citing safety and environmental concerns. They directed the town attorney to revise the code amendment to require a minimum distance of 300 feet from the shoreline. Since the revised draft is substantially different from the draft on which the board held a public hearing in October, a new public hearing is required.
Riverside Drive residents Chris and Jen Parillo, their 17-year-old daughter Liz and neighbor Lee Eskin all questioned why the board was not ready to move forward.
“This has been going on for quite some time,” Jen Parillo said. The activity will begin again before you know it, she said. She said all residents along Riverside Drive oppose the flyboard operation in Treasure Cove, “not just two people,” as Atlantis executive director Bryan DeLuca said in a previous interview. “Look at the petition. You can see it’s four pages of people that signed the petition.”
The supervisor assured them the resolution will be on the agenda again in two weeks. “We’ll get it done,” he said.
In interviews after yesterday’s meeting, Dunleavy said he supports banning flyboarding in all town waters but Wooten said he wouldn’t got that far because Riverhead needs to embrace tourism and tourist activities.
Wooten acknowledged that the draft code revision in fact does what he’d like it to do — the restrictions it would impose on the flyboarding operation would limit the activity to the area where he believes it should be allowed — but its language is too complicated and needs to be simplified, he said.
“I’ll work on this this week,” Wooten said, “and I’ll have my answers done this week. Make it simple enough that this is the environment that you can do it in —
X,Y and Z. I just find it’s a lot easier to write something where something’s allowable than it is to write something where it’s not allowable.”
Yesterday’s delay was the second time a motion to table the flyboarding regulations caught the supervisor by surprise. After the Dec. 17 meeting, when the resolution calling a public hearing was tabled over his objection, Walter blamed the delay on town Republican leader Mason Haas. Yesterday, when Giglio moved to table it again, Walter exclaimed “Wow.” He confronted the council members, asking why they didn’t object to it the day before at work session, but didn’t get a clear answer on the dais.
In the post-meeting interview, Wooten admitted Haas had spoken to him about the code revision “a few weeks, maybe a month ago” and asked him to take a closer look at it.
“I think what Mason’s looking at is — I don’t know whether because he’s on the East End — I don’t know what the East Creek advisory committee has to do —or because he’s a boater, he thinks he has reasonable solutions, or
or maybe he’s been working with Jim Bissett. I don’t know. I don’t know what his motivating factor is,” Wooten said.
“He felt that as a boater keeping them out of the channel was imperative but that you don’t have to push him out into the middle of the bay. You can probably do it with less of a setback as far as shore to shore goes, and that’s — it’s the same stuff we’ve all been talking about,” he said. “But nothing saying, ‘Hey, you gotta do it this way or that way.’ He’s not trying to devise it. He’s just saying, Have you really looked at it?’ I think he thinks it’s a good business. He just wants to make sure it was better defined,” Wooten said.
“I don’t know whether he’s advocating for business or advocating for the residents and I didn’t ask him. That’s not his responsibility — it’s mine,” the councilman said.
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