Newsday (Suffolk Edition) from Melville, New York • 15

Baymen Battle Firms For Control of Clams By Bill McTernan Islip- -A battle between big and little business has hit Great South Bay's venerable clamming industry. On one side of the dispute whose dredges plow clams from with jets of air or water. Their leases on shellfish preserves in Islip Town waters expire April 1. Fighting renewal of the are the companies the soft bay bottom leases are the men who work from small boats, raking or probing the sand with tongs, a method used by generations of bavmen. The struggle is over a harvest whose value in 1965 was assessed at $1,910,042 by the U.S.

Bureau of Commercial Fisheries. Loss of the leases would mean that the companies would have to get out of Great South Bay. In 1959, an independent bavman, William Bevelander of Bayville, argued before the State Supreme Court that the town should have had a referendum before renting the land. The court ruled that the town could act without public permission. Today, the baymen say they will go to court again if the town renews the leases.

Their attornev, John Braslow of Bay Shore, admitted. "We're not on 100 per cent firm ground, though by the same token they (the town) are not altogether sure where they stand." Braslow declared that Islip "must act properlv and not allow the waste of public property, which is just what they're doing now." Islip Town leases to the companies 1,867.4 of the 20.036.7 acres it controls in the bav. The Great South Bay Baymen's Association represents 1,200 independents, and says the number can be expected to grow as the population grows. At the same time, the association says, the land the independents can work is being reduced by pollution and new boat channels. The baymen say they need the leased land to survive.

They accuse the companies of improperly marking their boundaries and of poaching on public land. They complain that the clam dredges are killing off marine life and insist that the early rent of $2.50 an acre for the leased land is "ridiculously low." They have hinted that the companies have influence to assure themselves a continuance of the leases on favorable terms. Last month, Supervisor George Raven publicly denounced bayman who charged at a town board meeting that there was a conflict of interest in George H. VanderBorgh Sr. holding a seat on the planning board while being a Newsday Closeup partner in one of the lease-holding shellfish firms.

Raven insisted that the planning board had nothing to do with bav bottom leases, and said that the administering of the leases is the responsibility solely of the elected members of the town board. The baymen say they are unconvinced. There are seven leaseholders: Shellfish, with 1,173.7 acres; Fire Island Fisheries. 334.8 acres; G. VanderBorgh Son, 258.1 acres; Tucker 88.9 acres; Sunrise Fish 6.3 acres: Benjamin Selleck, 3.6 acres, and Albert Wageli, two acres.

The larger leaseholders maintain that twice a year they mark their boundaries, determining them carefully with a sextant, and that they stay scrupulously inside them, although, they sav, an occasional independent has to be chased out. Far from destroying marine life, they say, their dredges have been beneficial to shellfish, and David Wallace, director of the State Bureau of Marine Fisheries, in Oakdale, agrees. The leaseholders concede that the rent is low and that they would be willing to pay twice as much. Charles Hart, president of Shellfish. said all his business, worth $100.000 a year, is tied up in Great South Bay.

"If the leases are not renewed," he said, "we're out of business." Fire Island Fisheries and VanderBorgh spokesmen said their other interests would keep them going, but that loss of the leases would be a great setback. Newsday Photo by Lyons Independent Clammer Stands Silhouetted by Setting Sun School Bonds Set for Vote As Injunction Fails By Robert Sandler and Seamus McGrady Half Hollow Hills- Tomorrow's vote on school bond issues totaling more than $3,000,000 is to take place as scheduled because a State Supreme Court ruling yesterday denied an injunction sought by three property owners to stop the district from building an elementary school. Voters will be asked to approve two elementary schools estimated to cost additions and alterations to the Hills Elementary School at a $550,000 swimming pool for the high school; two 12-acre school sites at $105,000 each, and an administration building at $370,000. Voting will be held tomorrow at the high school on Vanderbilt Parkway from 10 AM to 9 PM. A school board spokesman said if all the proposals were approved the tax rate for each $100 of assessed valuation would be increased by 48 cents in Huntington and 40 cents in Babylon.

He said that the school district would not have to start paying off the bonds until the 1968-1969 school vear. The present tax rates for each $100 of assessed valuation in Huntington are $14.79, $14.83 and $14.84. In Babylon they are $12.49 and $12.44, he said. Property Owners' Contention Yesterday in Riverhead, Supreme Court Justice William R. Geiler.

refused to grant a temporary injunction to stop the vote tomorrow on one of the proposed elementary schools. Three property owners, Vincent and Elizabeth Fox and Mrs. Marion Rowan of Huntington, had contended that the school board did not negotiate with them before initiating condemnation proceedings on land they owned. The parcel in question is a 12-acre site 820 feet south of Northern State Parkway on Round Swamp Road. Geiler ruled that the board had abandoned the condemnation proceeding in question last year and begun a new one last month.

He said the suit, therefore, had nothing to do with the new condemnation porceeding. Richard Cahn, the attornev for the land owners, said yesterday that he would have to talk to his clients before deciding whether to appeal Geiler's decision. He said that he would definitely take the matter to court if the board did not offer a "reasonable amount" for the land. Cahn said the board contacted him Jan. 7 and offered the owners $4.400 an acre for the land.

"This is below market value," he said. He suggested that the land might be worth $10,000 an acre. Last March voters authorized the board to spend $57,000 for the parcel of land. If the referendum is passed and construction begins, Cahn said, the taxpayers would have no option but to pay the increased amount if the eventual sale price goes higher than the amount authorized. "They would be left holding the bag," he said.

Friday, March 3, 1967 Companies Seed Lots Hart's company and Fire Island Fisheries have a shellfish hatchery in West Savville where, according to Hart, more than 8,000 bushels of tiny seed clams are being grown for planting in their lots. All the companies say they do a certain amount of planting of mature shellfish. The independent baymen do no planting at all. The town spends $2.000 a year to plant about 700 or 800 bushels of mature clams each spring in the public land. According to Assistant Town Attorney Peter F.

Cohalan, the business of renting bay bottom goes back at least to 1874. Then, Cohalan said, a leaseholder paid an initial fee of $2.50 for "location of the lot," and $1 an acre a vear. In 1931, he said, the Legislature granted Islip proprietary ownership of all underwater land in its boundaries. New leases were granted in 1931 and renewed in 1937 and 1942 and then in 1952 for 15 years. Cohalan said the present leases contain an option for automatic 10-vear renewal.

with only the $2.50 rental charge open for negotiation. Duryea Says Calverton Could Be Jetport Site Huntington Station--Assembly Minority Leader Perry B. Durvea Jr. said last night that Calverton probably will be proposed as the site for the metropolitan area's fourth jetport, but Gov. Rockefeller was noncommittal.

Duryea, questioned at the Suffolk Republican fund-raising dinner at the Huntington Town House, said that the report on the site would be forwarded to Rockefeller by the Metropolitan Commuter Transportation Authority within the next 10 days. When the Montauk Republican was asked if he thought Calverton would be selected, he said: "I suspect it will." Durvea, who has taken no position on the proposal, said that he would have to look into the situation further before deciding where he stood on the idea. Calverton is in Duryea's district. Rockefeller denied published reports that Calverton had already been selected as the site. "I have not seen it (the report) and it would come to me." When asked if he, favored Calverton, Rockefeller replied: "If I did, I would not have asked for the report." Rockefeller requested the study after the Port of New York Authority, which operates the other major commercial airports in the metropolitan area, suggested a fourth site in New Jersey.

Rockefeller laughed when asked if he knew that "constituents" in the Calverton area opposed the jetport. Rockefeller winked, and said, "Whose constituents?" He apparently was referring to Rep. Otis Pike (D-Riverhead) who is opposed to the Calverton jetport. No matter where the jetport is located, Rockefeller said, "you're bound to have opposition." Babylon Supervisor Gilbert Hanse, chairman of the all-Republican Suffolk Board of Supervisors, refused to comment last night, saving that he wanted to wait for the commuter authority report. Meanwhile, William Ronan, authority chairman, said earlier yesterday that the report had not yet been finished and no final decision had been made on a jetport location.

Message Is Garbled, But Fadeout Is Clear Newscaster Chet Huntler is signing off from ownership in Long Island's first proposed television station, but no one seems sure just why. Peter Koff, attorney for WRIV-TV, said Huntley is withdrawing as vice president of the corporation because NBC does not permit staff members to have ownership in another station. But NBC denied this. Huntley said. the policy was the FCC's; Koff said he knew of no such federal regulation.

Spokesmen for the FCC, which is expected to license the Riverhead station soon, could not be reached. Neither could Brinkley..