Quogue Mayor Robert Treuhold on Preserving the Village's Idyllic Nature

Robert Treuhold took a while to find his way to Quogue, but once he did, he stuck his roots in deep. Quogue’s mayor of two years and an attorney by profession, he came to Quogue in 1997 with his wife, Nancy, when the couple wanted to be closer to family who lived in the area.

Treuhold retired from practicing law in 2017, and the then-mayor of Quogue encouraged him to become more active in the village. Treuhold had already been serving as the chair of the village’s Zoning Board of Appeals. This led to him being elected as a village trustee and, in turn, mayor, having just been elected to a second term this past June.

“It is a quaint village and we’d like to keep it that way,” he says of the village — one that is so off the beaten path that Montauk Highway doesn’t go through its downtown as it does with so many other places in the Hamptons. An incorporated village in the Town of Southampton, Quogue was established in 1928, and Treuhold says it doesn’t look much different than it did in the 1920s. “We’re residential, we’re quiet, and we want to keep it that way.”

Don’t mistake Quogue or its residents as antisocial, however. They’re not. They just enjoy their walking and biking atmosphere and want to preserve and protect what makes Quogue unique.

“As mayor, that is my principal mandate,” Treuhold says of residents’ desire to maintain the idyllic nature of the village. “We also have to be forward thinking. For example, last year we lowered the speed limit throughout the village from thirty miles per hour to twenty-five to make things safer for pedestrians and bikers, especially in the summer when a lot of kids ride their bikes to the beach.”

Another of Treuhold’s top priorities is the environment. This includes being the first town or village in the area to sign the Mayors’ Monarch Pledge that aims to take measures to restore the monarch butterfly habitat by planting milkweed, their only food source.

“I was the first mayor in the area to sign on,” says Treuhold, who adds that the mayors of East Hampton, North Haven, Sag Harbor, and Westhampton Beach have now also signed the pledge. “The Hamptons are along the monarch migration path.”

Another environmental initiative of focus is the seeding of oysters in the waters surrounding Quogue. In collaboration with the Moriches Bay Project, they have installed an oyster FLUPSY, short for Floating Upwelling System at the Village Dock. A FLUPSY is able to accelerate the growth of up to 500,000 oysters in a season through a system of containment barrels connected to pipes and pumps to draw nutrient-rich water from the depths and pass it rapidly over the baby oysters, known as spats. A single adult oyster can filter 50 gallons of water per day.

“We recently obtained a grant from the Southampton Community Preservation Fund (CPF) to fund the installation of a second FLUPSY at the village dock,” Treuhold says. “We also received a CPF grant to construct a series of bioswales and rain gardens to catch untreated storm water before it runs off into the bays surrounding the village.”

Treuhold emphasizes that one of the most important green initiatives is incentivizing residents to upgrade their individual septic systems throughout the village. Of the more than 1,600 homes in Quogue, only about 120 households have upgraded their septic systems to modern nitrogen-reducing systems.

“There are state, county and town grants available to reimburse homeowners for the cost of installing upgraded systems,” Treuhold says. “We have 17 miles of waterfront, and the scientists tell me that the new septic systems reduce 70% of the nitrogen that currently seeps into the groundwater and the bays. This is crucial to improving the quality of our surrounding waters.”

Treuhold’s environmental roots go all the way back to the first Earth Day in 1970, when he still was in middle school.

“I had an environmentally conscious teacher when I was in the eighth grade, and he gave us the afternoon off from school to pick up garbage and join a march in support of Earth Day,” says Treuhold. “He made us aware of the importance of taking care of the environment. It is really important to me to be able to do things like this on the local level. This is where you get things done and lead by example.”

On the theme of preserving the historic “little village” nature of Quogue, Treuhold explains that “we have a historic district that was listed in 2016 on the National Register of Historic Places. The village is full of beautiful homes. The Quogue Historical Society runs the Pond House Museum and offers walking tours. The Quogue Library offers an ongoing stream of entertaining and educational programs. The Quogue Wildlife Refuge is a fabulous resource and a great place to take a walk.”

While Quogue doesn’t have any restaurants that serve dinner, they do have Beth’s Café and Schmidt’s Country Market, both of which are ideal places to purchase a picnic basket to take on your walk or bike ride.

Quogue has a lot of activities to enjoy — but there’s never so much going on that they’ll lose their quaint, “small village” feel. Treuhold is there to see to that.

Todd Shapiro is an award-winning publicist and associate publisher of Dan’s Papers.