Brookhaven to buy 33 acres of pine barrens in Manorville for preservation

Brookhaven Town is close to purchasing 33 acres of pine barrens forest in Manorville that will be preserved as open space for the public to use for walking and biking, officials said.

The L-shaped property off Hot Water Street, currently owned by a family trust, is partly surrounded by the 6,000-acre Manorville Hills County Park — one of the largest publicly accessible properties within the state-protected Long Island pine barrens. 

Brookhaven plans to pay $668,580 to purchase the tract from the Tyler J. Histand Family Trust, Councilman Dan Panico said, adding the trust has accepted the town's offer.

The town was awarded a $300,000 state Community Forest Conservation grant to help fund the purchase, the state Department of Environmental Conservation said in a Nov. 29 news release.

Long Island Pine Barrens Society officials said they supported the town's purchase of the property, adding it "complements" their goal of adding about 4,000 acres of open space to the 106,000-acre pine barrens.

Panico and pine barrens society officials said the property includes a wide variety of wildlife, including box turtles, deer, fox, migratory warblers and various types of raptors. The undeveloped property is expected to protect about 18.8 million gallons of drinking water annually, they said.

“It’s a beautiful piece of property, and [it is] part of the overall plan to save as much wooded wilderness” as possible, Panico said.

Harry Histand, a member of the family that owns the property, said his parents bought the land decades ago as an investment. But no one has ever lived there — “just the deer,” he said — and restrictions on pine barrens development made it impossible to build on the site. 

“There's no reason to hold on to it,” Histand said Monday. “It’s stupid to pay property taxes on something you can’t do nothing with.”

Development in the pine barrens is banned or restricted by the state's landmark Pine Barrens Protection Act, enacted in 1993.

Roughly 57,817 acres — mostly public lands such as forests and open space — form a core preservation area, where development is prohibited. The remaining 48,665 acres, called compatible growth areas, allow development, but building is strictly limited by rules that go above and beyond standard municipal zoning rules.

The state grant for the Manorville purchase was one of four grants totaling $1,035,340 announced by the DEC. The other grants helped fund purchases of three upstate sites, DEC officials said.

By Carl MacGowan

carl.macgowan@newsday.comCarlMacGowan

Carl MacGowan is a Long Island native who covers Brookhaven Town after having previously covered Smithtown, Suffolk County courts and numerous spot news and feature stories over his 20-plus year career at Newsday.