The feathers are flying in Westhampton Dunes, where state officials and homeowners are squaring off over a bird called the piping plover.
The state Department of Environmental Conservation wants to make the 4-square-mile village on a barrier island a protected habitat for the tiny gray, brown and white creatures.
The state plan would essentially halt any construction in the sandy enclave of 330 homes. Federal authorities would be able to fence off large portions of neighborhoods and control how homeowners use their property, local officials fear.
“It’s absolutely outrageous and cannot be supported scientifically,” said Gary Vegliante, mayor of Westhampton Dunes.
There is no logical explanation for the policy change, said Aram Terchunian, a coastal geologist who serves as the village’s commissioner of wildlife protection.
“There has not been a physical change that would prompt that designation,” he told The Post.
If one of the endangered piping plovers, which lay their eggs in the sands of East End beaches, comes within 300 feet of a home, federal authorities “could prevent you from coming out of your house,” under the plan, Terchunian said.
Westhampton Dunes, once just part of the much larger town of Southampton, sits at the western edge of the tony Hamptons and was created in 1993 after hundreds of homes were nearly wiped out by erosion.
The village sued, claiming the federal government mismanaged projects meant to protect the beach. A federal court settlement required authorities to maintain the beach and gave homeowners the right to rebuild whenever they needed to, as long as they met certain conditions approved by the state.
In exchange, Vegliante said, the village helped create public access to the oceanfront, including free parking, and volunteered to watch out for the tiny piping plover.
The only catch in the 1994 court order, which was supposed to be in place for 30 years, came from the DEC, which refused to issue a 30-year permit governing construction procedures for the village, according to a Brooklyn federal court lawsuit filed by the village last week.
Instead, the DEC took years to issue any permit, and when they did, it was only for 10 years. When the village sought to get the permit renewed in 2009, officials claim the DEC dragged out the process again for years and then added the inexplicable new restrictions — including the bird-habitat designation.
The new rule “unlawfully designates the entire village as a piping plover habitat,” and also requires the village to give the state “a list of every future construction project” that could take place there, according to the lawsuit.
Westhampton Dunes has built or rebuilt more than 200 homes since the court order without any building-code violations, said Vegliante. “We’ve really played by every rule so what’s the reason for this?”
The DEC did not return requests for comment.