In a county long known for its landmark farmland preservation program, a new Suffolk committee this week took the first formal step toward what they hope will be its waterfront equivalent.
The newly formed county Working Waterfront Committee convened for the first time on Tuesday morning in Sayville, marking the start of a program designed to protect the county’s shrinking marine economy from mounting development pressure.
Last fall, a bi-partisan group of county officials, legislators and community leaders turned out on the Greenport waterfront to celebrate County Executive Ed Romaine’s signing the legislation into law (Pictured above, and in the video below).
Early on in Tuesday’s inaugural meeting, committee member Joseph Sanzano, the director of planning for the Suffolk County Dept. of Economic Development and Planning’s director of planning, referenced the birth in the 1970s of Suffolk’s original Farmland Preservation Committee.
“Many of us … feel like this is that committee, from the 1970s, the new farmland program … This first meeting is very reminiscent of that … this is a historic kind of moment.”
Later in the meeting, the committee recommended its first working waterfront property to the county legislature — a 6.25 acre Remsenburg marina.
But first the committee reviewed a county-commissioned survey that queried 164 working waterfront businesses, offering a detailed snapshot of a sector often discussed but rarely quantified.
The findings were, in several respects, stark.
$3 billion ‘blue’ economy in Suffolk
More than half of respondents, 55%, said they had been approached within the past five years about selling their properties for development, a figure that drew particular attention from committee members.
“That was a pretty alarming number,” said committee member Robert Carpenter of the county’s Dept. of Economic Development & Planning.
The businesses themselves are not newcomers. The survey showed that well over 70% have been operating for more than a decade, underscoring both their economic durability and their vulnerability to rising land values. The survey found the vast majority of Suffolk’s waterfront businesses are involved in commercial fishing, shellfish/seaweed operations and marinas.
Drawing on federal and regional data, the county estimates that Suffolk’s so-called “blue economy” — encompassing fishing, aquaculture, marinas, marine construction and tourism — generates more than $3 billion in economic activity and supports roughly 68,000 jobs, or about 5% of the regional workforce.
With targeted investment, that number could grow significantly, Carpenter said.
While the East End often dominates the public imagination of maritime Suffolk, the survey found that more than half of working waterfront properties, 535 of them, are located in the towns of Babylon and Brookhaven, with a combined waterfront acreage of about 907, nearly 38% of the county’s waterfront land.
By comparison, the towns of Southold and Southampton are home to 171 waterfront properties, comprising about 465 waterfront acres.
“There are working waterfront properties throughout the entirety of Suffolk County,” Carpenter said. “This is not going to be an east, west or north, south program, because there are unique properties around all 10 townships.”
‘Huge’ considerations
The program itself borrows heavily from farmland preservation, relying on conservation easements, voluntary agreements in which property owners sell development rights to the county while retaining ownership and continuing to operate their businesses.
The county legislature has appropriated an initial $2.5 million to buy easements in 2026.
Future changes, from building expansions to dock modifications, would require committee review.
That permanence prompted early questions among committee members about flexibility in an ever-changing marine environment.
Southampton representative Ed Warner pointed to sea level rise, storm damage and the lessons of Superstorm Sandy as critical variables.
“These are huge” considerations, he said, pressing for assurances that waterfront businesses would retain the ability to adapt, including to elevate structures, rebuild docks or otherwise respond to climate pressures.
Carpenter said those contingencies had been built into the easement framework, though the details will ultimately be tested as projects move forward.
‘Not a final determination’
The 17-member committee does not have final authority to purchase conservation easements. Its role is to evaluate properties using a legislatively mandated scoring system and recommend acquisitions to the Suffolk County Legislature, which retains ultimate approval power.
“This committee… is to recommend to the legislature where that capital funding is directed,” committee counsel Michael Camacho said. “It’s not a final determination.”
Even at this early stage, procedural questions surfaced.
Among them: whether members could send designees in their place — an issue raised by Huntington representative Tom Kehoe, who warned that attendance gaps could complicate high-stakes votes involving public funds and local properties.
“We’re going to be voting on some pretty important issues,” Kehoe said, noting the potential political and economic consequences in individual towns.
Committee chair Sarah Lansdale said she’d need to confer with counsel on whether the law that created the committee allows for proxies, but contended that “there is a benefit to having a continual representation,” invoking the farmland committee as precedent, where institutional memory and consistent participation have been key to decision-making.
Committee counsel Michael Camacho said that he would report back at the next meeting on designees, but said county committees generally require members to personally attend a minimum of 75% of meetings.
County vs. town funds
The most substantive debate of the afternoon centered on funding, and a question that has long shaped land-use policy on the East End: county versus local control.
Kehoe raised what he framed as a practical concern.
With East End towns sitting on substantial reserves from the Community Preservation Fund (CPF), why should the county deploy its relatively modest $2.5 million initial allocation instead of relying on local dollars?
“Why wouldn’t we use their funds,” he asked, “as opposed to the two and a half million that is in the county budget?”
The responses revealed both the complexity, and the opportunity, of the new program.
Committee members noted that while CPF funds can be used for waterfront preservation, the category is relatively new and lacks the established framework that farmland preservation has developed over decades.
“This is something that the towns haven’t had yet,” Southold representative Lilly McCullough, the town’s executive assistant for land preservation.
Others argued that the county program should proceed independently, at least initially.
Southampton’s Scott Horowitz urged the committee to “see how it works” before layering in additional funding mechanisms, emphasizing the need to test the scoring system, gauge participation and build consensus.
Yet the prospect of partnership loomed large.
The program’s scoring rubric explicitly rewards projects that secure financial contributions from local municipalities, meaning coordination, not competition, will be key to successful efforts.
‘Six $12 million houses’
The first property to come before the new Working Waterfront Committee was the Remsenburg marina, a largely recreational facility that nonetheless quickly exposed the complexity of the county’s new preservation effort.
Owned by brothers Richard and Willie Bartel, the site includes more than 130 boat slips, jet ski capacity, fueling and pump-out stations, repair space and open acreage for storage, a scale that makes it one of the few sizable marinas between Center Moriches and Shinnecock.
What it is not is a traditional commercial fishing hub. The owners made clear that the property is “primarily a recreational boat facility,” with minimal commercial fishing activity, though it has occasionally supported government and marine operations.
Still, its location, deep-water access and development potential placed it squarely within the committee’s mandate. Zoned residential, the parcel could be redeveloped into high-end housing or condominiums.
“We can fit six $12 million houses on that land,” Richard Bartel said, outlining the economic pressure facing waterfront properties.
That pressure was central to the discussion. Committee members noted that the marina serves as a critical recreational asset in a high-demand area, with capacity for hundreds of vessels in winter storage and limited comparable facilities nearby.
Losing it, one member suggested, would create a “burden on the community,” particularly given the scarcity of large, functioning marinas along that stretch of the South Shore.
But even as members acknowledged the property’s apparent value, the discussion revealed early friction over process.
Several members pressed for more detailed materials, including survey maps, zoning analysis and environmental data, before advancing the application, warning that “you can’t get it wrong” when public funds are involved.
Others, including committee member Mary Bess Phillips, whose son and husband are veteran commercial fishermen, countered that the committee’s role at this stage is not to approve a purchase, but to decide whether a property merits further review by the legislature.
The committee ultimately decided to recommend the site to county lawmakers as a viable candidate for the new easement program. They tabled discussion of a second applicant’s property, a shipyard in Hampton Bays.
