Amper blasts town for auto storage use at EPCAL: wrong place for an ‘auto dump’

Use of the Calverton Enterprise Park site for the temporary storage of vehicles ruined by Superstorm Sandy has raised the hackles of environmental activist Richard Amper of the L.I. Pine Barrens Society.

“I can’t think of a worse place to create an auto dump than in a state-designated special groundwater protection area,” Amper said.

The town board on Thursday authorized a six-month runway use agreement with an insurance servicing company to allow for the storage of vehicles on the unused 7,000-foot runway and taxiways at the former Grumman site. (See prior story.) Insurance Auto Auctions Corp. will use the site to store storm-ruined vehicles awaiting inspection by insurance company adjusters. The company will pay the town $2,300 per acre for 52.14 acres, according to a resolution passed by the town board last week.

Representatives of the company said Thursday they anticipated a total of about 30,000 vehicles would be brought onto the site over the term of the license agreement. At any given time only 6,500 to 7,500 would be stored on the site, Supervisor Sean Walter said.

Autos are also being stored on privately owned grasslands, and that’s even worse, Amper said. Property owned by a developer Jan Burman’s company is also being used for auto storage, he said.

Amper said he has complained to the state DEC and to the Pine Barrens Commission about the use of the EPCAL site for this purpose.

“These vehicles have gasoline. They have oil. They have lubricants and solvents and parts that have chemical reactions with salt water,” Amper said. “The Town of Riverhead has now outdone itself with bad ideas for EPCAL. It’s outdone the water ski park in the aquifer and the indoor ski mountain.”

Walter told RiverheadLOCAL last Tuesday he “ran the idea past DEC officials” to make sure there wouldn’t be a problem with environmental regulators. He reiterated that today, in response to Amper’s complaints.

“The DEC doesn’t have a problem with it and they told me I’d have something in writing on it today,” Walter said.

“Certain people are using this as a great opportunity for groups to bang the drums to raise cash,” Walter said.

“This is not a nuclear weapons facility. Rain soaked cars do not an environmental disaster make,” he said. “What is the difference between what’s going on at EPCAL and what’s going to happen at Tanger on Friday,” Walter asked.

The difference is the designated groundwater protection area in which the enterprise park sits, Amper says. He said the use is a “natural disaster we can prevent.”

Walter, Amper said, “is waging a one-man war on the environment.” The didn’t even think about environmental impacts, he said. “No one considered the inappropriateness of this,” he said. The fact that the vehicles are being parked on the runway doesn’t mean there won’t be impacts to groundwater.

“There is such a thing as runoff,” Amper said.

Amper said the DEC has not approved of this use by the town, contrary to the supervisor’s statements.

The state agency is performing “triage,” Amper said. Its first concern is the storage of cars on grasslands owned by the Burman company. The cars are being parked in a protected area, he said.

The DEC press office in Albany could not be reached for comment.