Worth the Fight

The ongoing, baffling and seemingly eternal legal fight over Sand Land Corporation’s bid to continue mining sand at a 50-acre site in Noyac is about a lot of things. But, with the State Department of Environmental Conservation’s inexplicable decisions along the way, it’s really about one important thing in particular: the rule of law.

Because, as the state’s highest court ruled last week, there is no question that Southampton Town has the right to decide whether a sand mine operation should be allowed to expand operations — and the DEC has simply ignored the town’s role.

As with all such things, it’s complicated. The Noyac mining operation has operated since the 1960s, when a permit was all that was required. But the town rezoned the area in 1972 to prohibit new mining. That didn’t stop the mine’s then-owners, in the 1980s, from continuing to operate under the existing permits and, in the 1990s, to selling the operation to Sand Land. The new owners were allowed to mine 31.5 acres to a depth of 160 feet above mean sea level — and began processing organic waste as compost on a portion of the site.

The town and DEC allowed mining to continue under the original terms as a prior nonconforming use; the town granted a certificate of occupancy as recently as 2016. But, in 2014, Sand Land asked DEC for permission to modify its permit, allowing mining on 4.9 more acres and 40 feet deeper overall. The DEC rejected that request, and an administrative law judge initially upheld that decision, saying it amounted to a new application — and, by that time, the state had passed a law giving towns like Southampton the right to have a say in whether mining was legal or not.

That’s when things got weird. The DEC ended up reversing course and granting a mining expansion, treating it as a continuation of the original operation. The town went to court, arguing that the expansion amounted to a new application, not a preexisting right. The court sided with the town — and the new State Court of Appeals decision, which agrees, appears to settle the matter.

The impact of this ruling is not limited to Noyac, or to Southampton Town. There are active sand mines in various spots on the South Fork and elsewhere on the East End, and this ruling underscores that towns have the right to decide if mining operations — which, plausibly, have come under fire for potentially damaging the drinking water supply not far below where they’re digging, and from composting in a hole dug so deep — are no longer a good idea. The DEC used to be a ready partner in that discussion, but the department has become more of a lap dog than a watchdog.

The battle isn’t entirely over: Wainscott Sand and Gravel, which runs the facility, has seen the benefit of using the courts to buy time and delay. The courts still have not firmly settled the central issue, whether digging deeper and wider constitutes a new application, though the town has reason to expect it will, in its favor.

But it could be that the Sand Land ruling last week is a landmark of sorts, a major statement on home rule with impact in towns throughout Suffolk County and elsewhere — and a clear rebuke of the DEC’s recent abdication of its primary mission, to protect the health of state residents. Credit Southampton Town, and the environmental groups that supported it in the battle, for persevering. This was a fight worth seeing through to the end.