Riverhead Seeks Second Opinion on Endangered Owls

By Jennifer Smith, Newsday, Melville, N.Y.

Feb. 19–Riverhead Town officials want an outside expert to confirm what they have already been told by the state environmental agency: that endangered owls have been hunting in grasslands at the former Grumman property, where the town expects to reap millions from a proposed resort that includes a 350-foot indoor ski mountain.

Supervisor Phil Cardinale said the state Department of Environmental Conservation failed to provide proper documentation of the short-eared owls’ presence at Enterprise Park at Calverton. Cardinale also said he will ask legal experts if the birds, which are endangered in New York State, are entitled to state protection in this instance since they use the site for winter hunting grounds but breed elsewhere.

DEC Regional Director Peter Scully called Cardinale’s statements “bizarre” and urged the town to cooperate with the agency as it maps out which parts of the 800 or so acres of grasslands at EPCAL the owls frequent. The DEC is sending the town a package containing photos and video footage of the birds recorded by a local television news crew, Scully said.

“It seems clear we are well past the point where legitimate questions could be raised as the birds’ being on the site,” Scully said. “Taking an adversarial position on this issue will help nobody.”

The recent sightings of as many as four short-eared owls by the abandoned Grumman runways has intensified scrutiny of development projects planned for the site. The Navy handed the 2,900-acre property over to Riverhead in 1998 for economic development after a jet-fighter assembly plant there closed.

Last month the town agreed to sell 755 acres there to Riverhead Resorts for $155 million, with additional payments as the project goes through environmental reviews as well as a cut of the gross revenues once the project is completed. The project’s environmental analysis will consider the issue of the short-eared owls, said Mitchell Pally, a partner with Weber Law Group, counsel for Riverhead Resorts. “The runway is where our lake is going to go,” Pally said. “We will provide the mitigation measures that we have to to make sure everybody is protected.”

In a Feb. 8 letter to the town, the DEC said agency staff and independent observers documented short-eared owls and northern harriers, marsh hawks that are threatened in New York State, at EPCAL. “DEC is concerned that ongoing development activities in the area, as well as future development projects, may result in a take [the kill or capture] of short-eared owls or northern harriers, either through disturbance of these species or through the adverse modification of their winter foraging habitat,” the letter said.

The DEC asked for details on all current and planned developments and for contact information for developers and property owners. The agency also sought permission to access town-owned land on the site. Cardinale said the town has not yet replied to the letter, which it received Feb. 11, but that it plans to supply the requested information.

Access may prove to be a more thorny issue. “Before I would consider permitting access to the site, I would want them to explain how they got access to obtain the data they already have,” Cardinale said.

He said the town had to be “careful” about conceding jurisdiction, and questioned whether the DEC — which he called “an enforcement agency” — had yet proved its case.

Trish Pelkowski, Pine Barrens site director for the Nature Conservancy on Long Island, said birders have known for years that short-eared owls come to EPCAL, which she called the largest remaining grassland on Long Island.

“If Cardinale wants an outside source, he needs to get out there in the next few weeks or so,” she said, because the birds typically leave Long Island in late February or March for upstate breeding grounds.

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