(rshsdepot) Southampton, NY

[Bernie Wagenblast <brwagenblast_@_comcast.net>]

Temporary Block on Southampton Railroad Tower

By Mitchell Freedman
STAFF WRITER - Newsday

June 4, 2002

Escalating its battle against the Long Island Rail Road, Southampton Village
has obtained a temporary restraining order blocking the completion of a
planned 150-foot tall communications tower at the village railroad station.

The order issued Thursday in State Supreme Court in Riverhead is in effect
until June 11, when the village is scheduled to argue the project should be
permanently halted. The case has not been assigned to a judge.

The railroad, which is not normally bound by local zoning codes, is
constructing the powder blue metal monopole to fill communications gaps
among trains, security patrols and railroad workers on the North and South
forks.

Railroad spokesman Brian Dolan said the tower was replacing a 30-year-old,
80-foot-tall lattice tower on the south side of the tracks. "This is not a
commercial venture, and the tower has no commercial application. We believe,
when all the facts are known, we will win the court action," he said in a
statement.

But to village officials, the proposed tower poses a major problem. "We have
a large safety issue on our hands," Mayor Joseph Romanoski Jr. said Friday
at a news conference at the railroad station. "This could be a disastrous
situation."

He said that if the tower fell to the north, it could crash into a
half-dozen fuel oil storage tanks. That, he said, could lead to a
half-million gallons of flaming fuel oil running down from the Southampton
railroad station and flooding the sewers running under the village business
district.

If it fell to the south, he added, it could smash into the village railroad
station, taking down some high-tension power lines as it crashed.

William Esseks, a Riverhead attorney hired by the village to try to stop the
project, said the best way to stop the tower lies not in its potential
danger, but in its threat to the historic heritage of the village.

The Southampton station is a turn-of-the-century Victorian-style railroad
station, and a full environmental review of the visual impact of the tower
and a search for alternate sites should have been done before construction
started, Esseks said.

"The station is the key," he said, adding that while the Long Island Rail
Road is normally not required to follow State Environmental Quality Review
Act regulations, it does fall under them if there is a substantial change in
the way a property is being used.

It would be up to a court to determine if building the tower on a new site
north of the tracks, and tearing down the old, smaller tower south of the
tracks, would substantially change the use of the property.

The new tower's 40-foot base was put up in April, and at the time railroad
officials said they had discussed the project with the village a year
before.

But village officials said they were unaware of the work, since the tower's
concrete foundation is in a freight yard not easily visible from the road.

Romanoski, on Friday, noted the freight yard and the fuel oil tanks are
higher than almost anything else in the village. And, he said, if the tower
crushed those tanks, it could also rupture the dikes designed to contain
spilled oil.

"It would flow past a parochial school with 500 children, and get into the
sewers beneath the village. I don't know how we would deal with that,"
Romanoski said.

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The Railroad Station Historical Society maintains a database of existing
railroad structures at: http://www.rrshs.org

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End of RSHSDepot Digest V1 #394
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The Railroad Station Historical Society maintains a database of existing
railroad structures at: http://www.rrshs.org