A Hamlet In Crisis

There is a map included in the draft version of East Hampton Town’s recently unveiled Coastal Assessment and Resiliency Plan that should be placed on a banner and towed behind a plane flying over the South Fork’s beaches this summer — it’s that important.

It shows what town researchers who developed CARP have found to be the expected condition of the eastern half of East Hampton Town in 2070, less than 50 years from now, if efforts to combat climate change and sea level rise are unsuccessful. After Amagansett, land ends just short of Napeague, which is completely submerged. To the east is a mini archipelago. From Hither Hills on, Montauk is split into three — with most of the downtown no longer part of the landmass.

This is Montauk’s future. But it’s also the entire region’s future.

Last week, the Express News Group hosted an Express Sessions event to discuss this dire situation in Montauk, but no resident of the East End should think it’s a conversation they can ignore. The fact is that Montauk will be an early casualty of this global crisis, but it won’t be the last. And the choices made there can help chart a course for other waterfront communities, here and elsewhere.

Solutions are still out there in the future, just out of our collective grasp, but we’re starting to see some directions to take.

Beach nourishment is costly and temporary, but it can be part of the strategy to ward off rising ocean and bay waters, at least in the short term. However, it seems inevitable that, as CARP concludes, “managed retreat” is the only realistic way forward for both houses and commercial properties. Simply put, we need to move away from the waters’ edge and find higher ground, and we need to do it before it’s a matter of urgency, while there’s time to devise a workable plan.

Managed retreat is going to mean some very difficult choices. It will mean tough zoning questions, investment in sewerage and other infrastructure, and money to incentivize property owners to abandon to the sea some structures that will end up destroyed, inevitably, at a time when that outcome is still in the future.

Montauk is not alone in this, and neither is East Hampton Town. Rising waters, and a related rise in groundwater levels, will impact every waterside village — Sag Harbor, Westhampton Beach, even Southampton Village — and many, many other businesses and houses throughout both South Fork towns and the entire East End.

And in case it’s less obvious, that map of the eastern half of East Hampton Town in 2070 shows that roadways will be underwater — the CARP plan says that 35 to 45 miles of town roads will be “flooded and impassable.” Even those whose homes and businesses won’t be wet will find themselves living in a submerged community.

Does that community have a plan? It has to, soon. For East Hampton Town, CARP is a start of a long conversation that has to bring results for Montauk, quickly. But it’s doing the rest of the South Fork a favor by showing what’s really at stake, and how urgent the threat is. As Montauk goes, so goes the entire region — for better and worse.