Riverhead Local
By Denise Civiletti
Sep 4, 2025
The Suffolk County Legislature Wednesday unanimously passed a resolution creating a Working Waterfronts Program.
The resolution establishes a framework for acquiring conservation easements on working waterfront properties in order to help forever preserve the county’s commercial fishing and waterfront heritage, First District Legislator Catherine Stark (R-Riverhead) said in an announcement of the vote.
The program will give the county an invaluable tool to preserve and protect Suffolk’s aquaculture and marine industries, Stark said.
Those industries pump more than $3 billion annually into the county’s economy, employing nearly 40,000 people, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The county’s waterfront lands are under increasing development pressure, Stark said in an interview today. The program will help working waterfront property owners keep the property in active use for marine, fishing and aquaculture, by allowing the county to acquire conservation easements on qualified working waterfront properties.
Stark said she has worked on developing the program for more than a year. It is the first of its kind in New York State, she said.
“I took all the knowledge I had from the original farmland program and fashioned this after it,” said Stark, who worked as a legislative aide prior to her election to the First Legislative District seat in 2023.
“I worked with representatives from various environmental and aquaculture entities, as well as members of the Executive’s office, to clarify the critical details – the “fine print” if you will — to ensure this program’s effectiveness and to encompass the many organizations and individuals in the aquaculture industry,” she said.
“With over 800 properties identified by a recent county study, this measure will benefit everyone from Greenport and Fishers Island all the way to Babylon and Huntington,” she said.
The county’s Planning Department will rank the properties and a new Working Waterfront Committee will receive and review applications from property owners and make recommendations to the County Legislature, much in the same way as the farmland committee does, Stark said.
The amount to be paid to acquire the conservation easement will be determined by an appraisal, she said.
The easement will be granted in perpetuity and will “run with the land” — that is, the property may be sold, but the easement must remain in place, unless the negotiated provisions of the easement allow it to be modified or extinguished.
The property owner must agree that the land under the easement will not be further developed, built upon, or otherwise changed except that “bona fide conservation measures may be permitted pursuant to a conservation management plan approved by the committee” and further development “in furtherance of the [owner’s] working waterfront activities” may be permitted permitted by resolution of the Working Waterfront Committee and/or the County Legislature.
The acquisitions will be funded through county borrowing, Stark said. The county executive put funding for the program into the capital budget last year, providing $9.5 million over three years, beginning in 2026, she said.
“Long Island has had a long and proud marine history, and the overwhelming support for this effort demonstrates that my legislative colleagues and the County Executive are committed to protecting and preserving our working waterfronts for future generations,” Stark said in a press release announcing the passage of the resolution.
