Shinnecock leaders seek to resume limited work on gas station for safety reasons
A view of the partially built Shinnecock gas station/travel plaza along Sunrise Highway in Hampton Bays. Credit: Newsday / Drew Singh
Leaders of the Shinnecock Indian Nation are asking a state Supreme Court judge to allow limited construction to resume at their half-finished travel plaza/gas station off Sunrise Highway in Hampton Bays, citing “significant risks to public safety.”
In a filing in state court Tuesday, lawyers for the tribe acknowledged a preliminary injunction issued last week by Judge Maureen Liccione at the Town of Southampton’s request led them to cease “all construction” at the site, which has already cleared dozens of acres of land, paved a long road and begun erecting a building.
Liccione, in approving the preliminary injunction last week, called the tribe’s financial predicament “hardships … of their own making" and ruled the gas station construction would "substantially disrupt the settled expectations of the community" and "pose a danger to the public's safety and health."
The construction site, “as it exists after abrupt termination of all construction activities, poses significant risks to public safety,” the Shinnecock Nation’s lawyers wrote in the Tuesday filing. “Without immediate relief, not only will those risks increase, but the degradation of the site will inequitably and significantly increase the cost of construction and remediating the damage from avoidable degradation of the site …”
The limited construction the tribe is asking the judge to allow includes “stabilizing two incomplete structures,” and securing them from “foreseeable harm threatened by both human trespassers and risks of weather, saltwater damage and other natural phenomena.”
Lisa Goree, chairwoman of the Shinnecock Nation Council of Trustees, told Newsday last week the tribe will "take whatever necessary steps that we have to see that project is completed." She said the tribe will attempt to move the case to federal court.
Meanwhile, the tribe’s lawyers, in their filing Tuesday, pointed to their motion to dismiss the case earlier this month, noting that the nation, a sovereign, federally recognized tribe, has rejected the state court’s authority to rule in the case. The tribe argues that because its 80-acre Westwoods parcel has been declared “restricted fee” land by the federal Department of the Interior in December, it is part of its sovereign, aboriginal reservation.
Newsday visited the travel plaza site last week along a path from a neighbor’s house. Security guards were nowhere in sight, and all construction had ceased.
The nation is also seeking to cover “open excavation sites at the emergency shut-off location.” The work, according to the filing, would take “a matter of weeks.”
Tribal lawyers said they have made repeated “unsuccessful and increasing urgent” attempts to negotiate a stipulation with lawyers for Southampton Town.
Town Attorney James Burke said he and the town’s outside lawyers have been talking to lawyers for the nation to try to “come up with an agreement on allowing work to secure the site and address any type of exigent circumstances that may exist.”
Burke, in an email, said he also has spoken with tribal council members “and discussed the possibility of having personnel from the town and/or outside engineering consultants meet on site with the contractors to review and discuss what exactly is needed to be addressed.”
Residents who live around the Westwoods site want town zoning to apply to it, to allow for buffers from light and noise, and to make sure the gas station complies with environmental regulations. The tribe, as a sovereign government, said it has been complying with federal environmental rules, and that it follows its own stringent rules for its sovereign land.
Papers submitted by the Shinnecock Nation said the gas station, with 20 bays for gas and 56 parking spaces, is essential to its economic development. Most tribe members are living under the poverty level and the travel plaza is expected to generate some $900,000 a year by 2030.
The tribe indicated it’s paying some $16,500 a day to pay contractors on site while the case moves through the court.
Mark Harrington, a Newsday reporter since 1999, covers energy, wineries, Indian affairs and fisheries.
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