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Work begins on a 10-acre gas station and travel plaza on...

Work begins on a 10-acre gas station and travel plaza on eastern Sunrise Highway in Hampton Bays in September 2024. Credit: Newsday/Mark Harrington

The Town of Southampton on Wednesday filed court papers seeking to stop leaders of the Shinnecock Indian Nation from continuing to build a gas station on Sunrise Highway in Hampton Bays.

The town's motion for a preliminary injunction, which seeks a court hearing on Feb. 19 in State Supreme Court in Riverhead, follows its Dec. 20 filing of a lawsuit that seeks to block tribal leaders from building the travel plaza. The nation has said the gas station/travel plaza is essential to its economic development and is being built on long-held tribal land over which the town has no zoning authority. 

Earlier this month, the Shinnecock Nation received a letter from the U.S. Department of the Interior affirming that the 80 acres that constitute its Westwoods property are part of its legally protected, aboriginal sovereign land.

Separately, lawyers for Shinnecock leaders, including chairwoman Lisa Goree and other council members, on Friday filed a motion to dismiss the town's suit against the gas station, arguing they had not been properly served.

In an interview Wednesday, Lance Gumbs, vice chairman of the Shinnecock council of trustees, called the town’s latest court filing a "modern-day land grab."

"It’s not just about jurisdiction," Gumbs said, "it’s about the town's seeking complete and utter control of our land at Westwoods, which has been clearly identified by the Department of the Interior as our sovereign, aboriginal land" with a special federal status known as "restricted fee."

Gumbs said the nation has not stopped construction, nor has it stopped operating its adjacent billboard and monuments on Sunrise Highway which are the subject of an ongoing lawsuit by the state Department of Transportation.

Westwoods "has been affirmed as what we always said it was," said Gumbs. "It’s aboriginal restricted-fee land and not under the jurisdiction of the state or the town."

The town’s papers state the federal affirmation about Westwoods "does not purport to make a finding that the nation holds aboriginal title to Westwoods, or that Westwoods is 'Indian Country.' "

Southampton Town attorney James Burke, in an email, said he’d recently spoken via Zoom with an attorney in the Bureau of Indian Affairs office in Knoxville in which he requested "any documentation" that the Westwoods property is "not subject to local zoning control" because of its "restricted fee" status.

"I have not seen authority that clearly provides that lands held in restrictive fee make such lands sovereign from local municipal authority," he said. He’s awaiting further response from the agency, and noted "the town would much prefer to work with the Shinnecock Nation for economic development of the Westwoods property and other matters." He said state and local law give Southampton "municipal land-use control and authority over development of lands within the town’s borders."

In papers filed Wednesday, lawyers for the town cited a ruling from a state appellate court in December that held the lower court in the billboard case should have granted a preliminary injunction requested by the state Department of Transportation to stop construction and operation of the billboards.

The town says tribal leaders’ efforts to build the gas station/travel plaza are "highly disruptive and cause material adverse impacts to the surrounding residential community."

Tribal construction efforts "disregard town regulations and authority, ignore questions from the town about the environmental and safety impacts, flout zoning and permitting requirements, trample on town property rights, and otherwise threaten the quiet enjoyment of the surrounding area," the town's papers stated. 

The suit includes aerial photos from November alleging the "natural character of the land has been utterly destroyed by the perpetual and increasing activity."

Gumbs said the town's filings haven't impeded the nation's work. 

"Right now we’re continuing in the same vein as our government implemented" when work began on the billboards in 2019, Gumbs said. "We are continuing our governmental jurisdiction over our signage and our lands." 

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