Now, a new Suffolk County law might ease that pressure.

County Executive Ed Romaine signed the “working waterfront” bill at Greenport’s railroad dock Sept. 29, establishing protections for the area’s commercial fishing and maritime heritage. The county has allocated $9.5 million through 2028 to support conservation easement acquisitions.

“My concern would be people who aren’t necessarily boaters, or aren’t as connected with the water, may not understand how high priority this is to help keep the fabric of the North Fork what it’s always been,” Mr. Strong told the Suffolk Times. “It’s clearly an integral piece of what the North Fork is all about.”

Steve Clarke, owner of Greenport Yacht & Shipbuilding, has watched property prices climb over the years. He worries the working waterfront could disappear within a decade because waterfront property is so valuable that owners decide to cash out rather than continue operating.

“I’d hate to see that,” he said.

The groundbreaking legislation establishes a framework for acquiring conservation easements on working waterfront properties, allowing the county to purchase development rights from owners of commercial waterfront sites. That secures the properties for maritime activities indefinitely.

Commercial waterfront property owners can apply to a newly formed 17-member working waterfront committee for conservation easements. The protective framework is modeled after the county’s farmland preservation program, launched 50 years ago.

Industries including aquaculture, marine repair, commercial fishing and recreational boating are protected under the guidelines.

For oyster farmers like Ian Wile, the bill addresses a critical need.

“One of the biggest challenges for nearly all oyster farmers is land-based access to do work,” said Mr. Wile, co-founder of Little Creek Oysters Farm in Greenport. “Unfortunately, the number of those land-based places has shrunk over the years and continues to shrink.”

Mr. Wile said that while the bill is a major step forward, he’d love to see it extended to recognize that “the working waterfront is most often supported by non-waterfront properties.”

Shipyards and marinas can be protected, but support businesses can’t.

Nate Phillips runs the pack house at the end of Monsell Place in Greenport. His whole livelihood has been the waterfront — he jokes that after he was born, his parents took him on their boat before going home.

Mr. Phillips constantly travels between Greenport and Mattituck, picking up seafood from boats and bringing it back for packing and distribution. He goes directly to the boats, giving fishermen two to three more hours on the water instead of traveling to Greenport themselves.

“Anyone who works on the water has to come back to a place — a place to either unload their product, do their gear work, do their mechanics, their maintenance,” he said. “You can’t do that at sea.”

For Mr. Phillips, the bill ensures he has that place.

Communities on the North Fork will compete with places like Montauk and Shinnecock Marina in Hampton Bays for the funding. There’s no specific sequence for the rollout — any property owner can apply for the funding.

“I think it’s going to be enormously helpful to property owners throughout Suffolk County,” Greenport Mayor Kevin Stuessi said.

Mr. Stuessi hopes Southold Town will update its Community Preservation Fund plan so the town and village might partner on opportunities. He doesn’t have specific projects in mind but said Greenport has several people who might apply.

To Mr. Clarke at Greenport Yacht & Shipbuilding, the bill is already creating awareness of just how many working waterfront properties and businesses exist.

“It lets everybody know, and people that normally wouldn’t know, that there is a large amount of working waterfront in Suffolk County,” he said. “It shines a light on the fact that there really is such a thing as a working waterfront, and it’s vitally important.”

Chris Pickerell, marine program director for Cornell Cooperative Extension’s Back to the Bays program, has worked for over 30 years on coastal and marine habitat restoration. As the son of a bayman and oyster farmer, he knows first hand the difficulties those professionals face in getting water access.

“We have bumper stickers that say, ‘no farms, no food,’” said Mr. Pickerell, referring to the landmark farmland preservation program. “The same goes for, ‘no docks, no water access, no fish.’”

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On April 22, at a press conference outside the Yaphank corrections facility, Suffolk County Sheriff Errol Toulon Jr., Suffolk County Executive Ed Romaine and Brookhaven Town Supervisor Dan Panico spoke about two recent cases that were investigated through interagency cooperation and increased surveillance.

One incident involved the dumping of construction debris in Yaphank. According to officials, deputy sheriff investigators discovered more than 24 tons of concrete debris illegally dumped in a remote wooded area off Long Island Avenue. A six-week collaborative investigation between the Criminal Investigations Bureau and the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Biological, Environmental, and Animal Safety Team (BEAST) followed. The investigation used license plate checks, vehicle tracking, background checks and witness interviews to lead to the arrest of Joao Abreu of Port Jefferson. 

“[He] is charged with felony criminal mischief, facing up to seven years in prison. Additional charges are pending, including fines of up to $150,000,” said Sheriff Toulon. “On top of that, [Mr. Abreu] had 27 license suspensions and did not possess a valid CDL license to operate his commercial vehicle. When we seized the truck used in the dumping, our commercial vehicle enforcement unit found 19 violations during inspection and immediately took it out of service.”

The other incident involved a number of large household items left in the core Pine Barrens area off Wading River Road in Manorville. The sheriff stated that a trail camera captured a U-Haul truck dumping mattresses, box springs, dressers, a television and other items. 

“[Jeanne Rodriguez of Riverhead] is now charged with criminal mischief in the second degree, which is a Class D felony punishable by up to seven years in prison, plus multiple local illegal dumping violations,” Sheriff Toulon said. 

“On Earth Day, we remind residents of the severe consequences of dumping in and around these protected areas,” the sheriff added. “I’m proud of the exceptional investigative work by our deputies to keep the Pine Barrens pristine and protected, and that is what they do.”

With the recent closure of the Brookhaven landfill to construction debris, that waste must now be carted up-island for disposal. Mr. Romaine said that the closest facility now accepting construction waste is in Melville, some 42 miles from Riverhead. 

“We have an obligation to maintain the Earth, to maintain it and not to spoil it,” Mr. Romaine said. “The Pine Barrens is one of the areas of our county that is protected from development, and to see people dump their garbage? Absolutely not.”

The county executive also called on New York State to provide a regional solid waste plan to help curb illegal dumping and give businesses alternatives.

“We need to step up with a regional plan for Long Island for solid waste management, and the time could not be more desperate,” he said. “We are well past the time that this plan should have been put in place. I am challenging the [Department of Environmental Conservation] and the governor to come up with a regional plan for solid waste so we don’t have to deal with this.”

Mr. Panico noted that many of the household items found dumped in Manorville would have been accepted by the regular garbage service provided by the town. 

“Quite honestly, the furniture that was dumped in Manorville, that would have been picked up by the biweekly garbage pickup in front of residential houses. That could have all been picked up,” the supervisor said.

The Manorville section of the Pine Barrens is a common site for illegal dumping. The Riverhead News-Review previously reported on an abandoned boat in the same area. A trip to North Street, less than a mile from Wading River Road, on the same day as Tuesday’s press conference revealed numerous bags of household trash and a pile of unused cement waste. The bags of trash were broken open and the contents were blowing the length of the street and into the woods. 

Mr. Panico said the closure of the Brookhaven landfill is not a legitimate reason to dump construction debris in the Pine Barrens, as there are other sites that accept that type of waste and disposing of construction material is part of being in that business, which may actually be cheaper than the landfill.

“There were economical places and proper places, lawful places that all of this could have been disposed of,” he said. “But it is greed and selfishness that drive people to this criminal behavior.” 

Anyone wishing to report illegal dumping can leave a tip at 1-877-BARRENS.

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Have drones been spotted over the East End?

There have been multiple reports of unexplained drone activity on both forks, including several over Southold and three over Riverhead last month, as well as at least one over Shelter Island and one in Laurel this month. Just after the New Year, county officials revealed that Francis Gabreski airport in Westhampton Beach has experienced repeated breaches of restricted airspace surrounding the airport, which serves as the headquarters of the 106^th Rescue Wing of the New York Air National Guard.

There is little uniformity among the sightings. Some drones have been observed hovering for hours in one place, while other reports detail clusters of drones or unidentified objects flying in various patterns.

Southold Police Chief Steven Grattan — himself a licensed drone pilot — said recently that residents and police officers reported sightings of “sedan-sized” drones above Orient, Mattituck, Cutchogue and Southold on Dec. 13 and 14 that appeared to be flying in an unusual pattern.

According to this report, “[law enforcement] personnel observed drones [that] appeared to be flying in a zigzag-style pattern near Route 48 and Route 25 in the Mattituck, Cutchogue and Southold areas.”

North Haven resident David Wind was in his backyard under a “crystal clear sky” just after dusk on Christmas night when he spotted what appeared to be a large drone about 1,000 to 1,500 feet in the air, hovering in a stationary position.

“As I watched it, I started looking around, and I noticed a couple [of] planets, and then I saw a few more [drones],” he said in an interview. “And as I started counting, I identified, the first night … seven distinct and similar shaped items, all with the same pattern of blinking.”

Mr. Wind, an attorney and a drone pilot, said the light patterns on the drones were triangular in shape, unlike the quad copter design of many consumer drones, including his own DJI Mavic.

“These were not ordinary aircraft,” he said, adding that there was “no discernable noise whatsoever.”  

Then Mr. Wind spotted another drone, “even lower,” hovering over the bridge connecting North Haven to Sag Harbor, and called police.

“They sent a bunch of officers out, and they were able to corroborate they were drones,” he said, adding that afterward, the officers “went to Long Beach and saw an even higher number of them.”

Mr. Wind said that he watched the drones hover for what “must have been four or five hours. A few of them moved, but really with no discernable pattern.”

The sightings continued for three nights, he said.

What’s being done in terms of detection and deterrence?

At a Jan. 3 press conference, county officials pressed for federal help after the rash of drone sightings over or near Gabreski became a threat to airport operations. As with all working airports, the five-mile radius surrounding the base is a no-fly zone for drones.    

Suffolk County Chief Deputy Sheriff Chris Brockmeyer said drones are being spotted “over the airport, over taxiways, over runways — and that’s a serious safety concern.”

A 2018 FAA study found that drone collisions can cause more structural damage to airplanes than birds of the same weight at a given impact speed.

In response to the Gabreski airport press conference, an FAA spokesperson said in a statement that the agency “looks into all reports of unauthorized drone operations and investigates when appropriate.

 “The FAA works with federal and local law enforcement partners to educate them about how to respond to unsafe or unauthorized drone operations,” the statement said. “FAA personnel in the 77 local Flight Standards District Offices (FSDO) across the country perform investigations and, when necessary, take appropriate enforcement actions.”

A DeDrone detection system was installed earlier this month at Gabreski airport, according to Suffolk County Sheriff Errol Toulon’s office.

The system works by using a combination of sensors that include radio frequency detectors, radar and cameras which are analyzed by AI algorithms to spot, track and locate drones in real time. The devices can sometimes pinpoint pilot locations, according to the manufacturer, Axon — a multi-billion-dollar technology company with a focus on public safety, which also produces police Tasers and body-worn cameras. A drone detection system made by Robin Radar Systems is also in use in New York state, according to NBC News.

While Suffolk County officials said that attempting to shoot down drones flying in restricted airspace is extremely dangerous — “too dangerous” — Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman said last month that his county police were authorized to fire on drones that pose a threat.

“We don’t want to wait until we have some kind of disastrous event to then say, ‘Well, we could have done this and we could have done that,’ ” Mr. Blakeman said.

“The Nassau County Police Department has the authority and certainly has my approval that if there is a mass gathering anywhere and there is a drone that is a threat to the public at large, they have the authority and the jurisdiction and the right to shoot down that drone.”

Mr. Blakeman’s statements followed the FAA’s implementation of a temporary drone ban over parts of New Jersey and New York, which authorized local law enforcement agencies to use “deadly force” if a drone presented an “imminent security threat.”

Geo-fencing, “directed energy” weapons designed to neutralize drones remotely and other counter-drone strategies are evolving rapidly, but most are currently out of reach for local agencies.

What are the rules for legal drone operations?

All drones that weigh .55 pounds or more must be registered with the FAA and more than one million are currently registered in the U.S., according to the agency. Recreational operators are required to pass the FAA’s Recreational UAS Safety Test, known as TRUST. To become a commercially licensed drone pilot, which generally includes anyone who profits from drone use, requires far more extensive training and passing the FAA’s Part 107 exam. Both commercial and recreational drones must remain at or below 400 feet at all times, and the drone must remain within the line of sight of the pilot or, in some cases, a spotter.

Drone pilots cannot fly in restricted airspace without explicit permission — which in some instances can be obtained by using LAANC [Low Altitude Authorization and Notification Capability], an online tool to secure real-time authorization through apps like B4UFly. Until a few years ago, it was illegal to operate a drone at night in the U.S. without a federal waiver. In 2021, the FAA began authorizing night flights for drones equipped with anti-collision lights that are visible for at least three miles.

Has anyone been caught in connection with the unexplained sightings?

Suffolk County officials said that none of the drone pilots behind recent aerial incursions into Gabreski airspace have been identified. Despite a Congressional mandate to incorporate millions of consumer and commercial drones into U.S. airspace in recent years, the FAA remains severely limited in its ability to enforce its own regulations. Between October 2022 and June 2024, the FAA fined a total of just 27 operators for violating federal drone regulations.

When did this phenomenon start?

The nighttime drone sightings began in mid-November in New Jersey and have spread throughout the tri-state area, with more than 5,000 sightings reported across the Northeast. Witnesses have described seeing clusters of what appeared to be drones — many of them larger than typical hobby drones, and some as large as cars — racing through the night skies. Public concerns first spread in November after the unidentified objects appeared near the U.S. military research and manufacturing facility known as the Picatinny Arsenal, as well as over President-elect Donald Trump’s Bedminster golf course.

Gov. Kathy Hochul first acknowledged the sightings on Dec. 13 but said that, “at this time there’s no evidence that these drones pose a public safety or a national security threat.”     

In a joint statement issued last month, the departments of Homeland Security and Defense, along with the FBI and the FAA, said the public should not be concerned.  

“Having closely examined the technical data and tips from concerned citizens, we assess that the sightings to date include a combination of lawful commercial drones, hobbyist drones and law enforcement drones, as well as manned fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters and stars mistakenly reported as drones,” the statement said. “We have not identified anything anomalous and do not assess the activity to date to present a national security or public safety risk over the civilian airspace in New Jersey or other states in the Northeast.”

The Association of Uncrewed Vehicle Systems International, the nation’s largest nonprofit industry trade group, weighed in last month as well, with AUVSI president Michael Robbins saying that drones have become a vital component of dozens of industries ranging from first responders and law enforcement to agriculture, film-making and infrastructure inspections.  

“However, the lack of adequate government investment in airspace awareness technology has left the nation ill-equipped to reliably distinguish between lawful drone operations, careless activity and potential threats,” Mr. Robbins said in a statement. “This week’s sightings highlight the urgent need for the U.S. to modernize its approach to airspace monitoring and regulation. The lack of clear rules and sufficient airspace awareness has led to these positive applications being overshadowed by concerns of misuse and safety. ”

What to do if you spot a suspected unauthorized drone

State, county and local police departments are fielding and in some cases investigating reports of drone sightings. Chief Grattan said that sightings logged by his department are forwarded to the New York State Office of Counter Terrorism, Homeland Security and the Suffolk County Police Department. A spokesperson for the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Office said that drone sightings can be reported to  SheriffTips@SuffolkCountyNy.gov or by calling 311. The FAA’s 77 field offices also take reports directly on the agency’s websites.

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The officials asked that the federal government “empower” the FBI to investigate illegal drone activity in the area and that the Federal Aviation Administration better enforce existing laws prohibiting the illegal use of drones in restricted airspace. They said a mobile drone detection system being put in place at the county airport this week would also aid in locating those responsible for the unlawful drone activity.

Suffolk County Executive Ed Romaine pointed to the 28 unauthorized drones seen operating over or near the airport in recent weeks and called on federal officials to “empower the FBI to begin investigating these drones and to arrest and charge,” their operators.

The airport sightings included 17 on Christmas day alone, said Suffolk County Sheriff Errol Toulon. Gabreski is also home to the Air National Guard’s 106th Rescue Wing. Beyond the Westhampton area, there have also been numerous drone sightings reported over the North Fork in the last month, according to Southold police.

Suffolk County Chief Deputy Sheriff Chris Brockmeyer said five miles of airspace around Gabreski airport is off-limits to drones. As for the multiple sightings around the airport last month, he said, “we’re not talking about five miles out. We are talking about over the airport, over taxiways, over runways — and that’s a serious safety concern. It’s impacted air operations and we’re not going to stand for it.”

Mr. Brockmeyer said Gabreski’s air traffic control tower monitors for airspace intrusions and notifies the FAA of breaches, but that local officials’ efforts to investigate the unlawful activity are not enough.

“We need cooperation with our federal partners, because this is a federal problem.”

The deputy sheriff said that a new “mobile detection system … will allow us to help identify not only where these are taking off from, but also the IDs that are associated with these drones.”

Mr. Romaine said local officials need more federal help.

“Once we get this mobile detection system in place, we will be looking to our federal partners to pursue whatever remedies are necessary to shut this down and send a signal that this is not acceptable.”

An FAA spokesperson provided a statement to the News-Review in response to the press conference, and provided a link to instructions on how to report a drone sighting to the federal agency.

“The agency looks into all reports of unauthorized drone operations and investigates when appropriate,” the statement said. “The FAA works with federal and local law enforcement partners to educate them about how to respond to unsafe or unauthorized drone operations. FAA personnel in the 77 local Flight Standards District Offices (FSDO) across the country perform investigations and when necessary, take appropriate enforcement actions.”

Powered by the latest microtechnology and driven by billions in defense industry and commercial research dollars, domestic drone use has exploded since 2016, when the FAA first implemented operational rules for commercial or non-hobbyist use of small drones, known as Part 107.

As of May, there were more than 392,000 recreational drones and more than 383,000 commercial drones registered in the U.S., according to the FAA.

In recent months, the tri-state area has experienced a barrage of mysterious drone sightings, mostly at night. In response, the FAA last month temporarily banned drone flights in 22 areas of New Jersey and 30 areas in New York, including Calverton.

One of the biggest challenges to incorporating hundreds of thousands of drones into U.S. airspace in recent years has been the limited ability of the FAA – which has jurisdiction over all U.S. airspace — to effectively enforce restrictions.

Shooting down drones is not only illegal and dangerous but exceedingly difficult, according to experts. When operators flying unlawfully are identified, penalties are generally restricted to civil fines and license suspensions or revocations, though criminal charges could apply in some cases.   

Local law enforcement officials are limited to investigating the airspace breaches in their jurisdictions, and to date have not identified any of the operators behind the unlawful drone flights near the airport.

“Shooting anything down in the air is extremely dangerous, so what we have to do is really just investigate,” Sheriff Toulon said.   

The officials also took the opportunity to alert local hobbyists and commercial businesses of the requirements to register any drone that weighs more than .55 pounds with the FAA, and observe federal flight restrictions by using the LAANC [Low Altitude Authorization and Notification Capability] system, an online tool to secure permission to fly in certain restricted airspaces through apps like B4UFly.

Holding aloft a DJI Mini 3 Pro, a popular consumer drone and one of the few models on the market that weigh less than the .55 pound threshold for FAA registration, Mr. Romaine said, “this is a personal drone. But the ones we’re talking about could be 20 times larger than this, sometimes as large as a car, that pose a challenge.”

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Local lawmakers want to prevent what Mr. Krupski’s letter calls a “solid waste disposal crisis affecting over 3 million residents of our towns.”

The lawmakers are trying to underscore to Albany the importance of Long Island’s four waste-to-energy facilities, located in Islip, Hempstead, Babylon and Huntington. According to a 2023 letter to the federal Environmental Protection Agency from Martin Bellew, president of the Islip Resource Recovery Agency, these facilities were built and began operations between 1989 and 1992, and all currently operate under long-term service agreements with municipalities and receive residential waste streams from nine of Long Island’s 13 towns.

“Collectively,” Mr. Bellew told the EPA, these facilities “provide Long Island’s only ‘on-Island’ disposal capability for 1.5 million of the more than 2.6 million tons of municipal solid waste generated here each year.”

Mr. Krupski’s recent letter notes that this waste produces 970,000MWh of electricity for the region annually.

The idea for all town supervisors to write to Ms. Hochul emerged from a meeting of the Suffolk County Supervisors Association a few months ago, Mr. Krupski said. They support an Aug. 19 letter to the governor from Suffolk County Executive Ed Romaine on the same topic. The letters were all sent together as one package as the end of September, Mr. Krupski added.

“All the supervisors are very concerned about this,” Mr. Krupski said in a recent interview. “I think 75% or 80% of the solid waste is shipped to the incinerators right now. They burn the garbage and generate electricity on Long Island. If New York State decides that these incinerators have to close, then we have to ship all the garbage off. They said it’d be another 180,000 trucks a year on the road. It’s a tremendous amount of garbage so we’re trying to prevent that.”

The letters identify some immediate priority action issues for Gov. Hochul to address. The first item requests that public and private waste management facilities not be designated as “obligated entities” under the New York Cap and Invest Program, which is meant to encourage consumers, businesses and other entities to transition to low-carbon alternatives by applying a price on pollution.

The second item urges that the Long Island Power Authority should renew and provide long-term extensions of Power Purchase agreements with the four Long Island WTE facilities, “with a rate not less than the average cost of purchased power paid by LIPA from all sources, escalating annually and preferably closer to the rate LIPA has agreed to pay for offshore wind energy.”

The letters’ final request calls for designation of the energy produced at WTEs statewide as a “renewable source, as it is by the federal government and in most other states. WTE facilities must be able to continue to sell their electricity to the grid post-2040.”

The letters conclude that failure to address these issues will only add to the already increasing costs of solid waste management — particularly for households — and will directly result in town budgets that exceed the 2% cap on tax levy increases.

Finding ways to reduce the waste stream is one way of taking action immediately, Mr. Krupski said.

“We’re looking for more of a regional solution. We’re working on seeing if we can do a better job with food waste, which takes up about 20% of the waste stream, and do anything we can do locally so it doesn’t have to be shipped,” he said.

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“About 6% of Suffolk County is in farmland,” County Executive Ed Romaine said at a press conference at Garden of Eve farm on Sound Avenue.  “We want to make sure that continues.”

Mr. Romaine pointed out that Riverhead Town and Suffolk County were pioneers in open space and farmland preservation dating back 50 years to 1974 —  when then-county executive John Klein purchased the first parcel for preservation in Riverhead.

“He had the wisdom to realize that developers were buying up farmland and that if they continued, we would not have any farming,” Mr. Romaine said. 

Mr. Romaine noted that the county is currently in contract on another land purchase in Riverhead — not far from where the press conference took place — that would preserve 33 additional acres at a cost of $2.5 million.  

“The money they are spending on Riverhead goes a long way,” town Supervisor Tim Hubbard said. 

County Legislator Catherine Stark said the money will be focused specifically on farms and on keeping farms together.

“When you have a willing seller and you are competing with developers who want to buy large swaths of what’s left, it’s very important to have contiguous farms,” Ms. Stark  said. “It creates a whole farm belt.”

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