Letters to the Editor

SOUTHOLD

Trouble on the vine

We have met the enemy and he is us.

Those famous words, once spoken by comic strip character Pogo Possum, have become a part of our vocabulary. Most recently we have been witnessing a trend in Southold Town that may very well result in the end of a way of life for us all that has been a foundation for our quality of life on the North Fork.

I am referring to the recent trend of loud and intrusive music becoming more and more a major aspect of “entertainment” at different places and events.

Not only is the music intrusive, but now the people who are using it do not cut off at a reasonable hour, but continue into the night up to and sometimes even past 11 p.m.

Last week, Jon Ferris wrote about Sparkling Pointe in The Suffolk Times letter section asking if the place was a farm or a restaurant/bar. More importantly, I ask why they are there in the first place, operating the way they do.

If you read their schedule of events, you can see that they will be relying on a lot of loud events throughout the season. On July 17 and 18, they will be featuring “Carnaval with music by Escola de Samba BOOM.” Their slogan is “Rio de Janeiro Comes to the North Fork.”

I see there is also going to be a major rock festival that will run for two days hosted by our former supervisor, Josh Horton, that has the distinct possibility for tying up traffic and possibly driving local people crazy with the sound.

In last week’s Suffolk Times, the new restaurant The Portly Grape, which has replaced The Shady Lady, has an advertisement “Featuring Music by Latin dance band Mambo Loco in our outdoor air-conditioned Tent” Saturday and Sunday, July 10 and 11, from 8 to 11.

I have had no objection to vineyards holding weddings and events on their property. The festivities usually ended at reasonable hours and the vineyards have behaved like responsible citizens. The true vineyards have been important partners with Southold Town in the use of farmland for growing their crops and I wish them all success.

What I am deeply concerned about is that this recent trend has the possibility of turning our bucolic and quiet town into something that will destroy the reason we live here.

I truly feel that Southold Town is the last holdout for the beauty that was once Long Island, and I feel we must do everything we can to save it. Just riding around with a bumper sticker that says “Save What’s Left” is not enough.

Is anybody in our town government listening?

John D’Angelo

EAST MARION

It’s about privacy

Last week, William Gibbons took a shot at the Group for the East End by implying there was some monkey business involved in not releasing the personal information of those who have contributed to our Orient water fund.

His letter got a lot of things wrong, but most importantly here is what he missed. The Group for the East End, like other responsible nonprofit organizations, has a privacy policy, which protects our members’ personal information to avoid significant problems ranging from identify theft to personal harassment. Such policies are the industry standard, not governed by freedom of information laws, and widely appreciated by those protected.

Mr. Gibbons also failed to point out that, within the confines of our privacy rules, we still tried to address his burning desire to know who contributed to the fund. We shared the exact number of gifts we had received, the cumulative amount of those gifts and the number of gifts coming from local addresses (nearly all, by the way). While this is not required, we tried to answer all his questions to the best of our ability.

We welcome Mr. Gibbons’ views on the public water, but nothing is well served by destructive innuendo. To find out what we are up to, I encourage your readers to explore our website at eastendenvironment.org, give us a call at 765-6450 or, most importantly, talk directly to the residents of Southold Town with whom we are working proudly to protect the environment.

Robert DeLuca

president, Group for the East End

PECONIC

We need answers

Orient may need some improvement of its water, but to claim that Suffolk County Water Authority water is high quality takes some questioning (“The real hazards,” by William Gibbons).

The SCWA is a publicly operated water distribution system. The source of the SCWA water is the same aquifer as the private well and often in very close proximity to each other. SCWA treats the water as does most every public distribution system, while the private well owners filter their wells. One removes impurities, the other destroys the impurities.

We need to ask several questions to find out if the public system is truly better than the private.

What does the public system add to the water to make it drinkable? Chlorine? Fluoride?

How often does the public operator test the water and for what?

How does the private owner filter and for what? How often does the private owner test the water and for what?

Mr. Gibbons writes about the problems associated with well water and the advantages of SCWA water. He writes about the upside of having public water as a reliable supply of high-quality water, protection of the aquifer by eliminating reverse osmosis and an enhanced ability to fight fires.

Perhaps after we find the answers to the above questions, the only advantage to public water might be the increased ability to fight fires and to provide a form of insurance that eliminates any private cost of replacing a private pump.

Joel Reitman

EAST MARION

We’ve made progress

I am writing this as a member of the Board of Education of Oysterponds School.

I have been a member of the board