What the Cluck is going on With Rye’s Hen Island

Reprinted from this week’s Westchester Guardian

It’s just a ten minute boat ride from the water front mansions that dot the shoreline in Rye but once you get on to the tiny 26 acre Hen Island, you would think you are stepping  onto an island that time forgot.  Hen Island, as a matter of fact is so small that most of the residents who live on the mainland in Rye are unaware of its existence.   However, if you’ve ever driven into White Plains via Rt. 119 or past through downtown Rye on a busy weekend during the summer, you’ve probably seen a van in a parking lot with a full sized toilet on the roof.  On the side of the van is a painting of a whimsical piece of poop wearing a sailor’s cap.  Motorists and commuters, meet Mr. Floatie, the mascot of website www.healtheharbor.com.  The van, the toilet, Mr. Floatie and the website belong to Hen Island summer resident and environmental activist Ray Tartaglione.

Tartaglione, who owns a towing company in White Plains, has also owned a summer cottage for over a decade on Hen Island. He’s also been at war with the island’s (their official name is the Kuder Island Colony Corporation) governing board since around 2007. The crux of Tartagione’s complaints is not the island itself but with some of the summer residents, the City of Rye and the County of Westchester who have allowed some summer residents to turn the island into an environmental hazard.  But the hazard of this island extends well beyond its shoreline; it’s affecting the residents of the mainland, Mamaroneck and quite possibly New Rochelle as well.  You see, Hen Island has become the epi-center  of mosquito breeding. There is no electricity, no conventional plumbing, no sanitation services, no running water and no outside interference; and that is just how many of the residents want it. 

Not long after Ray Tartaglione purchased his tiny piece of paradise, he began to  understand that this just wasn’t Paradise Lost; this was more like the Island of the Damned.  Islanders collect their water from rainwater that rolls off their roofs and into large cisterns. Add a hot muggy day, a little seagull guano, and add it to the water you are bathing and cooking with. Gross!  The average person would probably think it quaint to collect your own water and sort of live off the land. But what’s really scary is the fact that nearly all of these water gathering receptacles are uncovered and breeding mosquitos isn’t quaint at all.  Just the thought of standing water, bird poo and mosquito breeding is making my skin crawl and I don’t even live in the Sound Shore area.  And so years after begging, pleading with the island’s board of directors, and suing the Rye City Council and others, nothing has been done about the unsanitary conditions on Hen Island. Well not exactly… there have been a few inspections, but as usual in the land of politics and political favor, those honest inspectors were usually taken off the case or dishonest inspectors wrote that there were no viable violations on the island even though their water cisterns tested positive for West Nile Virus during the summer of 2012..  So there you have it, the friends and family network even reaches out into the Long Island Sound.

The whole mosquito gate thing is pretty interesting to those who follow county politics and municipal politics as well.  Former Rye Mayor Doug French didn’t see it as a large problem and did his very best to cover it up because it would be politically un-beneficial for him to do anything to correct the problem.  All he ordered was that residents of the enclave would have to go out and purchase composting toilets.  The installation of those toilets was never approved or inspected and after Superstorm Sandy, most of them were washed away and are probably sitting at the bottom of the Long Island Sound.  The rest of his well- connected city council also adopted a hands off approach.  All in all they thought they would wear Tartaglione down but that plan sure has backfired; he’s all the more committed to not only cleaning up Hen Island, but to exposing the corruption that is keeping it filthy.

Last summer, Tartaglione enlisted the help of Massachusetts based Kimberly King who is a licensed expert in the field of mosquito control.  While conducting studies on Hen Island she uncovered fresh water mosquito larvae in the rain collecting barrels, salt water mosquitos that live in the marshy high reeds that fill with tidal water and the newly discovered deadly  Asian Tiger Mosquito known to transmit The West Nile Virus.  Ms. King actually lost her 5 year old daughter in the matter of a week after being bit by an infected mosquito and found that Hen Island was so infested that she could barely complete her studies there.  When she reported her findings to the Rye City Council, they practically yawned in her face.  The lack of government intervention on the part of Rye and Westchester County left Ms. King no alternative other than to contact the CDC concerning raw sewage, mosquito larvae and the resident’s tradition of burying their garbage and outhouse effluence. Yuck.

This reporter also had a question aside from garbage, sewage and mosquitos and that was concerning fire protection.  Since the cottage owners pay taxes to Rye, included should be the 2% fire tax that provides fire protection for taxpayers.  The fire safety of these cottages is at question.   Most homes have large battery packs, used for power and in most cases are literally stored right next to multiple propane tanks.  What would happen if a spark from a firing battery made contact with a propane tank bank; the fire would be disastrous.   This could happen as well during a freak summer lightning strike anywhere on the island.   With the amount of debris and garbage on the island, the destruction to the island in its entirety wouldn’t take long.

And in a nutshell, there you have it.  Ray Tartaglione isn’t a nut-job nor is he a guy who has a bone to pick with the City of Rye or Westchester County, he’s a guy who sees a wrong and wants to make it a right.  The classic case of just doing the right thing has changed Ray Tartaglione; he’s become a legitimate environmentalist. 

***Part 2 of this story will explore which elected officials  made promises they never intended upon keeping and how they all played Pass the Problem along.