By Scott Brinton
Richard Schary bounds into the woods behind the Central High School District's Brookside School in North Merrick as if the property were his backyard. He knows the forest well. He visits it often to record the environmental devastation that vandals have wreaked there.
"You see, you see," says the North Bellmore environmentalist as he points to a dozen or more dirt mounds, each measuring about five feet tall.
Teenagers have cut down numerous nearby trees, sliced them into logs about two feet long, piled the sections into pyramids and covered them with a light brown, clay-like soil to form the miniature hills. Kids ride their stunt bikes over the mounds like skiers flying across moguls.
Schary notes that this illegally built play arena appears to lie both on Central High School District and New York State land. Vandals have ripped out a length of chain-link fence separating the two properties and constructed the bicycle obstacle course on both sides of the one-time boundary.
Schary, a retired New York City teacher, is giving this reporter a tour of the state-owned forest behind Brookside's athletic fields. Joining us are Nassau County Legis. Norma Gonsalves (R-East Meadow), Robert Young, a Merrick civic activist who is fighting to save a similar state woodland in Merrick (see front-page story), and Schary's wife, Lisa, who is also an environmentalist.
Vandalism, ever-growing threat
The North Merrick forest is likely part of the Meadowbrook and Southern State parkway rights-of-way and is one section of the hundreds of acres of green space that line state thoroughfares throughout the area.
This particular property, Richard Schary says, is a prime example of the enormous destruction that vandals can cause to state woodlands. The truly disturbing part, he says, is that, in this forest, the vandalism occurs in the shadow of the state Department of Transportation, which he believes is supposed to maintain the property.
Standing amid the bikers' hills, Schary points to a set of cone-shaped buildings about 300 feet to the north. That, he says, is the DOT's community office for central Nassau.
Eileen Peters, DOT regional spokesperson for Long Island, could not say whether the Transportation Department maintains the property, but said she would look into the matter.
"We have to document exactly what you're talking about," she said.
As for the vandalism, Peters said New York State Troopers are responsible for stopping it along the parkways. "We don't do enforcement," she said. "We have no jurisdiction to. We have no enforcement capabilities. We maintain the roads."
The elaborate bikers' course behind Brookside, says Schary, is only the beginning of the ever-growing threat that vandals pose to North Merrick's state woodland and dozens of other properties like it.
With his eyes trained ahead, Schary races into the forest on this sunny Wednesday. He quickly comes upon three teenagers, ages about 13 to 15, jumping bicycles off a plywood ramp that is nailed to a tree. The boys say they often ride their bikes on the property, as do many other local kids.
Worn down by constant use, there is not one patch of underbrush surrounding the bike jump.
A hundred feet away, Schary finds a fire pit where teenagers hold drinking parties. Inside, he and Young dig out half a smoke bomb and a charred chemistry textbook, likely used as kindling to start a fire. Behind the pit, beer cans are piled high in the bushes.
Such party hot spots are common up and down the parkways, Schary says. Young people, he says, "are congregating in [places] where they feel they're more secluded."
Soon after, Schary uncovers evidence of what he believes is the biggest scourge to this property -- all-terrain vehicles and dirt bikes. Along a beaten path, he spots several sets of ATV tracks crisscrossing one another in the damp soil.
The ATVers, many, if not most of whom are under age 16, erode the ground around trees as they speed through the woods. Roots become exposed as soil drops away. With long-term root exposure, the trees die and fall. Rather than remove the dead logs, the ATVers start new paths, causing erosion in other places and killing more trees.
ATV riders also often remove the required, U.S. Forest Service-certified spark arresters that cover their mufflers so that the ATVs sound louder. Spark arresters prevent hot mufflers from setting dry grass and underbrush on fire.
According to the Department of Motor Vehicles, riding ATVs on public lands is illegal. The Central Pine Barrens Law Enforcement Council in Suffolk County has begun a vigorous campaign to confiscate ATVs driven on state land, and police have taken almost 270 of them so far. In Nassau, however, Schary knows of no ATVs that have been confiscated.
Additionally, children ages 10 to 15 can only ride an ATV under adult supervision, or on their own if they have completed a state-certified ATV safety course. Under age 10, children can never ride ATVs by themselves, unless they're on land owned by their parents or guardians, according to state law.
In recent weeks, the Herald has observed several teenagers riding ATVs and dirt bikes on state land in the Merrick area, never with an adult supervisor present.
In the Merricks and Bellmores, "There is no place legally where [ATVers] can ride," said Lisa Schary. Except, that is, on private properties, which generally measure a quarter-acre or less.
Richard Schary follows the ATV tracks to a nearby stream, which riders have dammed so they can easily cross. Gonsalves notes that pools of standing water have formed on either side of the dam.
The pools, which are overgrown with think, dark-green, algae-like plant life, are prime breeding grounds for mosquitoes, the legislator says. And, with the threat of another West Nile virus outbreak ever present during summer, the pools represent a serious danger to human health, she says. In recent summers, dead birds that have tested positive for West Nile have been found in the Merrick-Bellmore area, and last year, two East Meadow residents died of the disease.
The state Department of Environmental Conservation, says Gonsalves, "has to come in and check this for mosquitoes."
Just to the northeast, Schary discovers a "fort" that kids hide in during paint-ball wars. The forts are scattered throughout the woods. This one, however, was set on fire, and the blaze got out of hand, scarring about an eighth of an acre.
Schary says he wouldn't have such a problem with the paint-ball wars (the paint is water-based and harmless to the environment), except at the end of their wars, the kids set one another's forts on fire. This particular blaze broke out in the woods just behind DOT headquarters.
Schary notes that there are no signs throughout the property indicating who owns the land. Any police official can write a ticket for violations on the property, he says. The lack of signage, however, discourages law-enforcement officers from writing citations to ATVers and other vandals. The reason is that, on the ticket, the officer must indicate exactly on whose land the offense took place. If officers don't know, they must leave the space blank. In court, the ticket could then be thrown out as incomplete.
"Police can't give a ticket without knowing whether it [the property] is state, county or town," said Schary.
Destructive pattern
Throughout the forest, the pattern of destruction is repeated with mind-numbing regularity.
Young is taken aback by the vandalism. "The state police department should establish a task force and take care of this," he says. "I don't buy that there's no money in the budget to enforce this. I just believe it's a matter of getting it taken care of. The fact is nobody says anything, and it's allowed to go on. Why can't they reallocate some manpower to take care of this, to deal with this problem?"
Schary takes the group by car to another DOT-maintained property along the Southern State. The narrow forest in North Bellmore is squeezed between the parkway and the Central High School District's Jerusalem Avenue School, which is rented to the Board of Cooperative Educational Services.
Again, vandals have cut a hole in the fence around the school. Again, they have sawed down trees to build bikers' mounds.
This section of woodland is especially devoid of greenery. The vandals have left a line or two of trees along the Southern State to hide their activities, but inside the forest, primarily rows of stumps remain.
"This is a cancer," Schary says. "If we don't stop it the first [time], it spreads."
Schary believes the state should lay down hiking/mountain biking paths through parkway green spaces. In this way, there would be a constant flow of vigilant people moving through the properties to watch out for them and report violations to the proper authorities.
Neither the Central High School District nor state police could be reached to comment for this story.
