Reading about Chelsea Clinton’s wedding in Rhinebeck on Saturday reminded me of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s visit to East Hampton in August of 1998—and the day that some of Georgica Pond went missing. When you consider the extraordinary prices people will pay to live on this pond, losing or misplacing even a small part is pretty serious business.
I first noticed the loss on the Tuesday evening before President Clinton’s visit when I observed the shoreline at Eel Cove was five or six feet out from where it had been the day before, and the sandy banks were exposed. Draining Georgica Pond may sound like a major engineering achievement—but it’s not. Anyone with some energy and a shovel can do it—and rowdy teenagers as well as homeowners with soggy lawns and wet basements have been known to try, and sometimes succeed.
The ocean breaks through the beach periodically, introducing salt into the fresh water, and bringing migrating fish into the pond for breeding. The action enables an ecosystem that produces vast quantities of finfish that eventually swim out to sea. If nature doesn’t do it, the Town Trustees open the pond on occasion by channeling a gut across the beach. Since the pond is several feet above sea level, pond water drains out to the ocean. When it happens in September or October, you can see literally millions of small fish on their journey to the oceans of the world. But the pond is not normally let out in mid-summer.
On that Monday night someone had breached a small sand dike that the trustees had constructed in June and that had been enriched by southwest winds. Neither Village Hall nor the Town Trustees, when I inquired, knew who did it, but the Secret Service was a prime suspect. It clearly improved security at the Spielberg house on Georgica Cove, where the President was to stay. No one could launch a boat from the public landings or navigate to the head of the cove where the house is located, for innocent sightseeing or more sinister reasons. But could—and would—the Secret Service do it without coordinating with local authorities?
Twelve years later we know less about it than we do about Chelsea’s hushed wedding plans. After all, they are the Secret Service, aren’t they? They’re not going to chat about it at cocktail parties with the rest of us.