As the summer sun wanes over Ho Hum Beach on Fire Island, the fight over beach access between Bellport and Brookhaven Town is heating up. Town of Brookhaven Supervisor Dan Panico accused the Village of Bellport—which pays for the Whalehouse Point beach ferry and beach maintenance, including marinas on both sides of the Great South Bay – of illegal discrimination and threatened to sue.
Bellport Village and its Mayor, Maureen Veitch, are fighting back. The implications for beach access across the U.S. are enormous. This has become a brawl that pits government against government for access to this stretch of sand and sea.
“Fire Island National Seashore is open to everybody, but it’s the village residents who pay for the ferry, the maintenance of the Warehouse Point Ferry, the staff lifeguards,” Bellport’s Mayor Maureen Vitch told Great South Bay and Fire Island News, adding that the village of Bellport “pays the town [Brookhaven] about $80,000 and in there is a $4,000 administrative charge.”
Complicating matters is that Fire Island’s ocean beaches and dunes are federally protected. Ho Hum Beach is a 17-acre beach within a national wilderness site between the Fire Island National Seashore’s Watch Hill and Suffolk Country’s Smith Point Park. It is accessible only by the village ferry and private boats.
“The whole property is fragile, not just the piece we own,” Bellport’s Mayor said.
Veitch talked about the beach’s history as a wildlife preserve and the vital nesting site for piping plovers (Charadrius melodus), a small migratory shorebird on the federally threatened and New York State endangered species lists. She said there are restrictions on the beach, such as no pets, which the village and the federal government enforce to protect the environment.
Presently, the village has limited the capacity at Ho Hum to 300 bathers, following the permit they obtain annually from the Suffolk County Dept. of Health. There are only two bathrooms, an artisanal well that the Village checks monthly, and a small septic system that will flow into the bay if too many people use it since Fire Island has no sewage system.
Some village officials think the fight for Ho Hum is about politics – the fight between Democratic and Republican leadership in Suffolk Country.
So, how did all this happen?
In February 2023, the Suffolk County GOP nominated Dan Panico for Brookhaven Town supervisor. In November, he was elected, promising open access to Ho Hum Beach in his inaugural address.
The announcement shocked Veitch.
Since then, she has attempted to contact Panico and claims she has only gotten stone silence. Her office said she sent him her cell phone number but received no call. Fast forward to August, and without notice to Veitch or the town of Bellport, the Town of Brookhaven announced on Instagram that ferry service to Ho Hum Beach would be available August 25, 27, September 1, and 8 for all who register, that would be docking at Bellport Marina, with a jitney available to transport interested individuals to the Marina from the Kramer Street Middle School in Brookhaven with the cost to be paid by the town of Brookhaven.
“I’m concerned about safety,” Veitch said. “So on Sunday [August 25], when H2O came, they did not tell us when they were coming.” She noted that the Sailing Club was active. A paddle race to the point with 130 children was taking place on that same day, posing a risk: “They don’t even coordinate with the Village as to when we might have a race or with over a hundred kids who are enrolled in the Bellport-based Sailing Club.”
“There’s a transient dock on what we call the ‘stick doc’…we’re currently working on a project to improve that, but it’s not a wide dock, and it’s not built or intended for 25-30 people to be walking down there at the same time, loading and unloading from a water taxi. If we re-did the marina and had a safe and intentional place for a water taxi, yes, I could see that that is happening, but it’s a fragile system over there,” Veitch said. “Panico had six months to plan this ambush, and I’ve had less than a week now to respond.”
On Sunday, August 25, the Town of Brookhaven began the cross-bay water taxi service.
Bellport village issued a summons to the water taxi, and Panico held a press conference on August 26.
The press release for the August 26 press conference said that the “NAACP and Brookhaven town to join outraged residents …that allege discrimination over access to Fire Island beach.”
“You owe the people behind me an explanation. The children of the people behind me who were not able to go to the beach,” said Brookhaven Town Supervisor Dan Panico.
An NAACP official at the press conference said that there has been “a premeditated exclusion to people like myself.”
Bellport Village Trustee Michael Young told Fire Island News that the dispute had reached a boiling point over Labor Day weekend because the beach had reached capacity – a number determined by the Village itself.
Young, also a lawyer, stated that the village purchased Ho Hum on April 10, 1963.
At issue is September 2018 annexation agreement. Panico says that the agreement gave Brookhaven residents (not the general public) a right to access.
“Brookhaven created a document speaking about the annexation for code enforcement purposes of Ho Hum, which had in fact happened years and decades before,” says Young. “What Brookhaven did does not affect whatsoever Bellport’s ownership of the beach. There have been press reports suggesting that somehow Brookhaven acquired Ho Hum Beach, or Brookhaven controls access to Ho Hum Beach. All of that is misinformation.”
On the other side, the lawyer retained as outside counsel by Brookhaven Town, Mark Lesko (the Town’s former Brookhaven Town Supervisor), tells Great South Bay and Fire Island News that Panico said the capacity concerns are hard to believe. He noted that H20 was authorized to dock but that he represents the Town, not the water taxi company. He said that the dispute would go to state court, not a federal court and that the New York Attorney General Letitia James’ office had been notified. The NAACP was a formal participant in the press conference.
Lesko explained the Town’s arguments: “One is the lease with the village for the bay bottom, underneath the dock on the island side. And the second thing we’re looking at is the annexation of the beach, which was conditioned when the Town authorized the annexation and its resolution, conditioned that authorization on the continued use and enjoyment of the beach by town residents.”
The optics are at issue. Swirling around this situation are the demographics – i.e. the racial divide – of Bellport and Brookhaven. The 2024 U.S. Census reveals that Bellport Village’s population consists of 2,195 residents who are 91% white and that the Town of Brookhaven’s 483,351 person population is 77% white, with a larger minority population. And, if you take the 10,592 residents of neighboring North Bellport the racial composition is 55% white and 23% black, making access an issue that has brought in the NAACP.
Ultimately, with all the heated issues pitting the village against the town, both sides are saying the fundamental questions are Ho Hum’s capacity, who pays for and maintains it, and the legal question of property owner rights.
The author, a former 25-year CBS UN correspondent, shares a home in Bellport with her husband, a lawyer with Greenberg Traurig, LLP, the firm representing Brookhaven, who is not involved in the lawsuit in any way.
