Enough is enough: Riverhead must put its foot down with Island Water Park, once and for all

Island Water Park Corp., owner of Scott’s Pointe in Calverton, has done it again. The company, which has a history of flouting town permit requirements, has now built a racetrack at its amusement park without any approvals. 

A video was posted to Scott’s Pointe’s social media on June 2 brazenly promoting the new racetrack. It shows go-karts and a stock car skidding around an asphalt track on a spit of land in the middle of the man-made “lake” at the site.

This is a recurring scenario with Island Water Park, which seems to operate on the theory that it’s easier to beg forgiveness than ask permission — especially in the Town of Riverhead. It’s worked well for Island Water Park in the past, so why do anything different?

But this time, the morning after that video went up on Scott’s Pointe Facebook page, town officials opened an investigation, went to the site and issued summonses and a “stop-work” order to halt future use of the track.

Props to them for taking immediate action. And props to the powers-that-be in Town Hall who allowed the folks in the trenches to actually do their jobs. That’s a refreshing change of pace when it comes to Island Water Park.

But the story of Island Water Park and the Town of  Riverhead is more than a story of a “bad actor” ignoring town code, building things without permits at its commercial establishment and getting away with it — with an occasional slap on the wrist when the administration of “justice” became unavoidable.

That history is worth reviewing. It goes back decades — longer than the memory or even the lifespan of some people complaining that the town is opposed to “fun.”

Let’s start with two basic propositions: 

(1) Fire and safety codes matter: They exist to protect the public and must be enforced. 

(2) Clean drinking water matters: Humans need clean drinking water to live and we must protect our source of clean drinking water.

Converting a storage building into a place of public assembly for a variety of recreational uses requires protections such as well-marked emergency exits, fire suppression systems (sprinklers), electrical safety inspections and more. That’s easy to understand and tough to argue with.

But drinking water? What does this have to do with drinking water?

That man-made “lake” is actually a 19-acre open wound inflicted on Long Island’s sole-source aquifer in the Pine Barrens.

Years ago, Island Water Park bought its 42-acre property from the Town of Riverhead. The property was part of the U.S. Navy’s land “gifted” to the town by the federal government after Northrop Grumman shut down. A water-ski park in the Pine Barrens? How?

Island Water Park got permission to dig a really big pool — a 19-acre pool — on the site. The pool was to be lined with bentonite clay to prevent contamination of the drinking water aquifer flowing beneath the surface. And it was to be filled with water purchased from the Riverhead Water District.

Then, while digging the pool, the developer’s contractors dug into the water table, due to an apparent miscalculation of the depth at which it was actually located — oops. But the developer wasn’t required to fill the hole in. The State Department of Environmental Conservation, which has never met a mine it didn’t love, gave the developer permission to keep right on digging. It issued a mined land reclamation permit allowing Island Water Park to “reclaim” the mined land “by creating a groundwater-fed recreational pond.” 

However, uses of that “groundwater fed recreational pond” were limited to “an electric cable tow system for water skiing and wake boarding,” according to the DEC permit.

Those restrictions remain in place to this day. The current site plan approval, granted by the Town Board in February 2022, makes that clear, and so does the declaration of covenants and restrictions filed with the county clerk, as required by the preliminary site plan approval granted in July 2021. 

And Scott’s Pointe’s own videos and photos posted on social media make it equally clear the company has no regard for those restrictions, just as it has consistently made clear it has no regard for the laws of the town. 

Between its preliminary site plan approval in July 2021 and final site plan approval in February 2022, Island Water Park continued work without permits at the site, including work on an indoor surf pool. The town issued a stop work order for the unauthorized construction in November 2021, one week after the Riverhead Industrial Development Agency approved financial assistance for the company, including 10 years of real property tax abatements.

Last summer, the operator threw a large Fourth of July party with food, drinks, fireworks and attractions — the whole shebang — without necessary safety approvals, permits or a C.O. for the building. The event was not an outlier. Dozens of publicly available social media posts, made by visitors to the park as well as the business itself, indicate the Fourth of July party was not the first time — or the last time — that it was occupied without the C.O. required by town code. Pictures and videos going back several years showed multiple people on the property having parties or using its amenities — including its indoor surf pool and floating structures on the man-made lake.

In a phone interview, owner Eric Scott said of the party, “I’m allowed to have it here. I’m allowed to, as long as I don’t charge a dollar….“So if I’ve been breaking the rules for 24 years, nobody’s said anything to me for 24 years.”

Interesting. But the question remained — and still remains— why?

Much to our surprise, the town attorney had no objection to the use and occupancy of the facility without a C.O. “What I can say they definitely are not supposed to be doing is they’re not supposed to be open to the public for commercial purposes. If it is, you know, friends and family, I think there’s a little bit of leeway there,” Town Attorney Erik Howard said.

How much leeway?

After last summer’s Fourth of July bash, it would seem the answer is simple: a lot. There were no consequences. The operator got a gentle warning — no civil or criminal penalty, just a simple note from the fire marshal that said: “Don’t do it again, please.”  

You start to understand why Island Water Park’s owners could do these things when you look at their connections to town officials. 

The owners are friends with Assembly Member Jodi Giglio, an influential figure in Riverhead politics and a former Riverhead council member who previously said Island Water Park was a client of her permit expediting firm prior to her election to the Town Board. She recused herself from at least two votes on involving Island Water Park, explaining the prior business relationship, but cast later votes in favor of their project. 

Island Water Park and its employees pumped thousands of dollars into town officials’ campaign coffers — including one above the legal limit to then-Supervisor Yvette Aguiar.

It was no wonder Aguiar was telling a regional TV station and the New York Post that Island Water Park was a mini Disney theme park and making the ridiculous claim that it would provide 500 jobs. 

After it opened, Aguiar even had a bylined article published in Dan’s Papers promoting the place, touting the facility’s amenities like the PR piece it so obviously was.

And the beat goes on. 

Or does it? Supervisor Tim Hubbard — who last summer gave us a nonchalant reaction to Island Water Park’s violation of town law — says the town will not tolerate the operator’s “brazen” behavior. Will the supervisor stick to his guns? Will the consequences be more than a slap on the wrist?

In our opinion, the town should insist that Island Water Park rip that asphalt track out — and, if Island Water Park wants to build it there, it must apply through normal channels, submit to a thorough environmental review and provide adequate mitigation measures before doing any work to reconstruct it.

The operator has proven, repeatedly, that it can’t be trusted not to violate the law with races on the illegally built track while any application is pending. And this time, there’s just too much at stake to rely on the honor system. The track, as built, is a few steps away from the edge of the groundwater-fed recreational pond. Any discharges of fuel, oil or other substances to the asphalt surface of the track could potentially wash right into the waterway — a direct discharge to our drinking water aquifer. Have any measures been taken to prevent that from happening? 

Should that happen, the consequences to our drinking water supply could be devastating. And the cost to the taxpayers to clean up the resulting mess would also be devastating. 

Furthermore, the Riverhead Industrial Development Agency must take swift action to enforce its own agreement with Island Water Park. 

In that agreement, signed to secure a decade of real property tax exemptions as well as state and local sales tax exemptions, Island Water Park promised to abide by all laws, codes, ordinances, rules, regulations and permits. 

The operator also promised that it will maintain 283 full-time equivalent employees as of Dec. 1, 2023 and for the rest of the 10-year term of the agreement. Yet, the Riverhead IDA’s year-end report for 2023 states that the water park had just 10 FTEs as of Dec. 31. Despite these apparent violations of the agreement signed by Island Water Park to secure tax exemptions — net exemptions of $427,426 in 2023 alone, according to the RIDA’s own report to the State Comptroller— RIDA Executive Director Tracy Stark-James continues to post promotions for the water park on her personal Facebook account.

The RIDA should and must exercise its rights under the agreement, including its rights to recapture benefits — i.e. tax exemptions — granted to the company on the condition that it honor its contractual commitments to the agency and to the taxpayers of the Town of Riverhead. But will it? If it neglects to enforce its agreement with Island Water Park, essentially allowing the company to once again thumb its nose at the town, will the Riverhead Town Board do anything about it?

Given this history, why would the operator of Scott’s Pointe respect the town’s orders, codes and rules? Why should he? He makes a mockery of the town’s law, as well as of the town officials who have time and again let things slide for reasons about which town residents can only speculate. And, time and again, it doesn’t matter in the least.

When is enough enough? The time has come. This cannot continue. Riverhead officials must do everything in their power to make sure it stops once and for all.

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