Group for the East End Celebrates Advocacy, Conservation, and Education Efforts at Monte Carlo Night Benefit
GROUP FOR THE EAST END CELEBRATES ADVOCACY, CONSERVATION, AND EDUCATION EFFORTS AT MONTE CARLO NIGHT BENEFIT
Funds Will Support Water Quality Restoration Efforts
(Bridgehampton, New York… June 2023) Group for the East End (groupfortheeastend.org) is celebrating more than 50 years of environmental advocacy, conservation, and education at their Monte Carlo Night benefit on Saturday, June 17 at 6 p.m. at The Bridge in Bridgehampton. As the organization’s largest fundraising effort, this critically important event will help protect eastern Long Island’s land, water, and wildlife. Funds raised at this year’s event will be used to support one of the most critical water initiatives since the founding of the Community Preservation Fund in 1999 – the Suffolk County Water Quality Restoration Act.
“As the pressure for development moves ever eastward, the collective consequences of our actions represent an increasing threat to the health of our local environment and the remarkable quality of life that still exists here on the East End,” shares Group president Bob DeLuca. “That is the primary challenge the Group was founded to address. Over the course of five decades, we have learned that the most effective mechanism we have for protecting this vulnerable coastal landscape is building an informed citizenry of all ages, armed with an understanding of the importance of local land use decisions, and motivated to speak up with confidence for those natural resources that cannot speak up for themselves. As a result, these are the areas where we focus our professional attention.”
Having been instrumental in the founding of the Community Preservation Fund, which created a stable, recurring revenue stream to protection open space, the Group helped to also expand the program in 2016 to allow for the five East End towns to allocate 20% of these funds for water quality improvement measures. Now, the Group is working to raise awareness of the Suffolk County Water Quality Restoration Act. If passed this summer by the county legislature, and then a November ballot referendum, the Suffolk County Water Quality Restoration Act would extend the county’s Drinking Water Protection Program (providing nearly $2 billion in water quality, land preservation and wastewater improvement funds), and establish a new Water Quality Restoration Fund dedicatedly largely to the installation of advanced treatment wastewater systems for the hundreds of thousands of individual properties that currently need replacement. Together, this groundbreaking environmental investment will raise some $5 billion for water quality by 2060.
“Today, as never before, we must increase public awareness about the growing and connected impacts of short-sighted land use and development proposals, and press our elected leaders to act with urgency and conviction in support of our fragile local environment,” says DeLuca. “We must also develop the innovative strategies for environmental protection and restoration that will be needed to achieve a sustainable future for beautiful, but vulnerable ribbon of land sitting 80 miles out in the Atlantic Ocean.”
The annual gala hosted by Stéphane Samuel and Robert M. Rubin of The Bridge, will feature cocktails, beer from Top Hops’ Half Pint truck, an auction led by CK Swett, dinner, dancing with DJ Biodynamic, and casino, not to mention the most spectacular sunset water view on the East End.
ABOUT GROUP FOR THE EAST END
Group for the East End leads the way in protecting and restoring the environment of eastern Long Island through education, conservation, and advocacy. We fight for the protection of our land, water, and wildlife, we inspire children to become stewards of the environment, and we engage the community to embrace a conservation ethic and take action.
