The Riverhead Town Board ratified the town's Comprehensive Plan Update on Wednesday after removing a controversial recommendation to rezone a section of the town's north shore to allow for the development for agri-tourism resorts.

The change followed significant pressure from opponents, including Southold Town Supervisor Al Krupski and a coalition of Riverhead civic and environmental groups, who had scheduled a press conference outside Town Hall before Wednesday's vote. A planned Sept. 18 public forum on agri-tourism has been cancelled.

The agri-tourism debate is one of numerous issues that have pitted local activists against town officials in recent years, including the cancelled EPCAL development deal, the removal in June of a recommendation in the Comp Plan to allow charter schools on industrial land, and voters' rejection -- twice -- of the 2020-2021 school district budget.

After ratifying the modified Comp Plan Update on Wednesday, town officials warned residents opposed to the agri-resorts that if the town couldn't come up with new ways to fund the preservation of thousands of acres of farmland and open space, taxes could skyrocket.

Riverhead Town Supervisor Tim Hubbard, who said he initially endorsed the agri-resorts idea but ultimately changed his position in response to public opposition, said that farmland in Riverhead is disappearing.

"We have a lot of problems in front of us," Mr. Hubbard said at the end of the meeting. "Our farmers are selling their land. Our farmers cannot afford to make a living with regular farming. That's why agri-tourism has become so big out here. The farmer has had to do it to survive."

Between the drying up of local potato and duck farms, competition from subsidized Canadian farmers, and existing farmers' ongoing struggles to survive, the supervisor said, Riverhead's farming community is in a state of decline.

"The farmers' children are saying, 'Sorry, Dad, I see what you're going through. I'm not going to do that.' And they're leaving, and the generational farms are disappearing -- and this is a reality. No farmers, no food."

Town Councilwoman Denise Merrifield said that much of Riverhead's farmland is zoned residential as of right, meaning "the farmer can sell that land at any time. That is a big problem."

She went on to say that there are 6,342 acres of unprotected farmland in Riverhead.

"That's 42% that is still unpreserved. The town bonded in 2015 $72 million against future revenue to ensure that the town preserved key properties," Ms. Merrifield said. "The bond will not be paid off until 2030, the town [purchase of development rights] tool preserved 1,126 acres. We can't buy any more land in our town. The town's [transfer of development rights] program so far only preserved 338 acres."

Noting that Riverhead is projected in the next decade to add 5,000 residents to its current population of roughly 36,000, Ms. Merrifield said that "those residents are going to require services: our police department, our sanitation department, our highway department, our schools."

With the threat of an influx of new students to the Riverhead Central School District from Southampton's planned redevelopment of Riverside, "the Riverhead school tax is going to go astronomically up," she said. Last month, Riverhead launched legal action to stop Southampton's plan.

"We want to make Riverhead affordable for everyone to live in," Ms. Merrifield continued, "and if we just keep zoning 2-acre homes, that's not going to preserve much land. That's not going to give us the tax base that we're going to need to be able to keep all the citizens we want to keep in this town."

Ms. Merrifield said that the town's largest tax revenues come from commercial development.

"We have to do something," she said. "To keep saying that 'Sound Ave., or this place or that place is pristine and we have to keep it that way' is ignoring immense tax problems that are coming because the population is coming."

She said that relying on revenue from a future sale of property at Enterprise Park in Calverton is a long way down the road, since that property is likely to be tied up in litigation for years to come. In January, developer Calverton Aviation & Technology sued the Town of Riverhead. CAT's 2018 contract to buy 1,643 acres of land at EPCAL for $40 million was cancelled by the Town Board last fall, after Riverhead's Industrial Development Agency denied CAT's request for tax incentives, citing a failure to adequately demonstrate "the viability of a financially successful project."

Riverhead is federally designated as an Area of Persistent Poverty, an Environmental Justice Area and is considered Historically Disadvantaged.

Councilman Ken Rothwell said with the initial proposal for agri-resorts, "we thought we were doing good for the farmers.

"And then there were concerns that came forward and we changed it. That all comes from the fact that we need to find financial ways to move forward. For every parcel of land that we preserve, it comes off the tax rolls. It's less income, and we, as the remaining residents, have to make up for it, and that's the most difficult thing."

Councilman Bob Kern said that Riverhead officials have a fiduciary duty to keep taxes as low as possible, and noted that in all the letters of opposition to the agri-tourism proposal he read, "I've seen no solutions."