As East Hampton Town begins to undertake various water quality improvement projects that have been recommended as part of a comprehensive wastewater management plan, the impact of waste from the Springs School, just a stone’s throw from both Pussy’s Pond and Accabonac Harbor, is being examined.

According to Kim Shaw, the town’s natural resources director, tests will be conducted with researchers from Cornell Cooperative Extension within the next few weeks. A DNA analysis will be used to pinpoint the source of fecal contamination in the nearby waters. “The enterococcus is through the roof,” Ms. Shaw said. The tests will determine whether the contamination is from human or other waste.

The school has 745 students and generates “very concentrated wastewater” coming mostly from toilets and not, for example, from showers or laundry facilities, where waste would be diluted, Ms. Shaw said.

Six or seven years ago, before the Springs School was hooked up to the public water supply, Ms. Shaw said, its well was found to be contaminated with septic waste.

Septic systems, said Ms. Shaw, “don’t function with high groundwater,” which is found in the area of the school. The site is within a range where groundwater, and any effluent it might contain, takes less than two years to reach Accabonac Harbor, she said.

In a letter to the editor this week, Ira Barocas, a Springs resident, suggested that the school district use some of its accrued capital improvement money to install a state-of-the-art wastewater system. He discussed the idea with the town trustees on Tuesday and is planning to discuss it with the school board. He has also spoken with Ms. Shaw, who said there are grant programs that could ameliorate the cost.

Including a wastewater treatment facility in any school upgrade or expansion will, Mr. Barocas wrote in his letter, “do Pussy’s Pond and Accabonac Harbor a favor that will resonate through our community now and into the future.”

School district voters recently rejected the district’s proposal to spend a $2 million reserve fund to pave two ball fields and create a parking lot, and to make changes to the school driveways.

The effluent from what Mr. Barocas described as “more or less a thousand flushes a day” is clearly related to the degradation of water quality, and associated algal blooms and shellfishing closures, in both Pussy’s Pond and the harbor, he says. “When it swirls down, it’s going somewhere,” he wrote. “If it weren’t going anywhere near our water, our fisheries and recreational water bodies, let alone groundwater, that has to be better.”

Other facilities in the area, such as the Springs Library, Ashawagh Hall, and the Presbyterian church, might also be hooked into a wastewater system, Loring Bolger, who chairs the Springs Citizens Advisory Committee, has suggested.

“Given modern technology, and such a robust capital improvement program,” Mr. Barocas suggested that the school facilities committee, as it formulates a plan for the school campus, might “see the wisdom in providing those of us who pay the bills with the enduring gift of keeping the most concentrated waste stream in our community out of our surface waters. . . .”

Doing so, he said, would put the school at “the forefront of protecting our environment” and set an example for the students as future leaders.

The Wainscott Citizens Advisory Committee honored one of its own on Saturday, presenting Rick Del Mastro, a committee member for 30 years, with a custom baseball cap and a banner put up outside the Wainscott Chapel.

Mr. Del Mastro, 70, has been a Wainscott resident since 1979. He has been the chairman or co-chairman of the committee 10 times, including this year. Dennis D’Andrea, another longtime committee member, said Mr. Del Mastro had been “the thread that has run through the W.C.A.C.’s entire 30-year history.”

“Whatever side of an issue a committee member or member of the public was on, he insisted that everyone be heard fairly,” Mr. D’Andrea said in an email. “He wanted everyone who spoke before the committee to be assured they would be addressing open minds. The Wainscott committee came to be known as the Athens of the C.A.C.s.”

The East Hampton Town Board appoints members of the Citizens Advisory Committees to advise the board on matters that concern their hamlets.

Mr. Del Mastro’s contributions to public service stretch beyond the town limits. He is the owner of outdoor advertising, marketing, and event planning businesses, and also heavily involved with Life’s WORC, a Garden City-based non-profit organization that supports individuals with autism and other mental health challenges and their families. Mr. Del Mastro recently cut the ribbon on the Family Center for Autism in Garden City, and called the organization one of his passions. He is also passionate about the Wainscott community, and while he will soon step down as chairman, he said he would continue to be very involved.

“I love Wainscott. I’ve gotten to know the people and the landscape, and for all the years I’ve been there, we’ve worked on trying to maintain Wainscott and make it the best home it can be,” Mr. Del Mastro said in an interview. “We feel very proud of what we have accomplished. . . . The nice thing is the relationship you build with the people who live in the hamlet. I consider them not only neighbors, but friends.”

East Hampton Town’s efforts to enact restrictions on the use of East Hampton Airport in order to reduce aircraft noise have a backer in Representative Lee Zeldin, who this week successfully added an amendment to a Congressional transportation appropriations bill that would block the Federal Aviation Administration from using its money to “institute an administrative or civil action against the sponsor (Town of East Hampton) of the East Hampton Airport.”

In a press release issued Wednesday afternoon, the East Hampton Town Board applauded him.

"Congressman Zeldin supports local control,” Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell said in the release, “and I want to thank him by sending a clear message to the F.A.A.: Stand down. Allow the Town of East Hampton and its residents to determine how best to support our airport and reasonably reduce aircraft noise.”

“Local control is the heart of the issue over East Hampton Airport and helicopter noise,” Mr. Cantwell wrote.

"Will the people of East Hampton, through their elected representatives, be able to reasonably regulate our municipal airport, or will the bureaucrats in Washington and the national aviation interest groups control it?”

The town officials called on New York’s senators, Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, to support the adoption of the transportation bill amendment in the Senate.

The F.A.A. had said in a 2012 letter to former Representative Tim Bishop that it would not challenge “reasonable restrictions” on airport use imposed by the town. However, a United States attorney representing the agency recently told the district court judge reviewing two lawsuits challenging the town’s airport restrictions that the agency is not beholden to that stance, which it called “simply a response to a hypothetical posed by Congressman Bishop.” The town’s restrictions were adopted but are on hold pending a court determination.

The response does not “in any way waive the F.A.A.’s ability to seek an injunction or to enforce anything under the appropriate regulation,” the attorney said.

SunEdison, a solar energy company, will build solar power plants capable of producing more than four megawatts of electricity on three sites in East Hampton Town.

The company is leasing the land — on Accabonac Road, Bull Path, and at the capped landfill on Springs-Fireplace Road, all in East Hampton — from the town following a vote of the town board last September. The town planning board must approve the proposal. It will consider the Accabonac Road site at its meeting on Wednesday.

SunEdison’s plan for East Hampton is one of five agreements with municipal entities on Long Island. The company has also contracted with Southold Town, Suffolk and Nassau Counties, and the Suffolk County Water Authority. The electricity will be sold to the Long Island Power Authority over the next 20 years through a power purchase agreement, as part of the feed-in tariff program of LIPA’s Clean Solar Initiative. Cumulatively, the five Long Island projects will generate 15 megawatts of electricity.

A statement issued by SunEdison said that construction of the solar plants will create more than 100 jobs in the Long Island area. The plants are expected to produce enough electricity to power more than 1,100 homes.

While the electricity generated by the solar installations falls far short of LIPA’s previously stated goal of 280 megawatts of clean, renewable energy, it will assist East Hampton in achieving its own goals to meet 100 percent of electricity needs with renewable energy sources by 2020 and all of its energy consumption in other sectors, including heating and transportation, with renewable sources by 2030. In December, citing prohibitive cost, LIPA rejected a proposed 35-turbine offshore wind farm that would have been constructed 30 miles east of Montauk and produced some 210 megawatts of electricity.

“It’s helping us get there,” Kim Shaw, director of the town’s Natural Resources Department, said of the solar plants. “The wind farm was the big one, but these are great installations, and besides getting solar on a large scale, the town is leasing the lands, so it’s a win-win.”

Preliminary work is under way at the Accabonac Road and Bull Path sites, Ms. Shaw said, with an “aggressive timetable” for construction pending planning board approval. The installations will be unobtrusive and secure, she said.

Gordian Raacke, executive director of Renewable Energy Long Island and a member of the town’s energy sustainability advisory committee, called the installations “a huge step forward for East Hampton, because we’ve never had solar power plants being built here.”

The “scaled-down versions of what was originally proposed” by LIPA are nonetheless “a quantum leap,” Mr. Raacke said. “You can look at the glass as half full or half empty. These are not small rooftop solar systems — which we also need to grow, and we need to have parking-lot solar installations and on commercial rooftops — but three megawatts of solar power generation constructed here in the Town of East Hampton is a big deal. Obviously, there’s a lot of work that needs to be done to achieve a 100-percent clean-energy future, but it always starts with the first few steps.”

On one side of the question is the now well-established and very popular resort-night club Surf Lodge, on Edgemere Street in Montauk; on the other, East Hampton Town’s Architectural Review Board.

“I didn’t know that A.R.B. stood for Art Review Board,” said Thomas W. Horn, the club’s lawyer, after his client was arraigned Tuesday afternoon in East Hampton Town Justice Court. Surf Lodge is charged with one count of violating the town code, which requires approval from the Architectural Review Board for signage and exterior changes to a building.

The summons was issued on May 22. According to Mr. Horn, Jen Stark’s wall mural, whose cascading colors wrap around a corner of the building, angered a neighbor enough to bring about a complaint to code enforcement. Mr. Horn asserted that when agents showed up they weren’t even sure what the violation was, but after a phone call, the ticket was written.

Julien Bizalion, Surf Lodge’s director of operations, appeared in court on behalf of the club. “It’s a signed art piece, and it’s temporary,” Mr. Horn argued before Justice Steven Tekulsky.

Michael Sendlenski, attorney for the town, was unmoved, and indicated the town’s willingness to go to trial, which could result in a $1,000 fine. June 26 is the next court date.

“I think it is a little silly,” Mr. Bizalion said outside the courthouse.

Amos Goodman, a financial consultant who lives in Springs, was formally nominated by the Suffolk County Republican Committee on Monday as the party’s candidate to represent the Second Legislative District, a seat now held by Jay Schneiderman, who cannot seek re-election because of term limits. Mr. Goodman, who is mounting his first campaign, will face Southampton Town Councilwoman Bridget Fleming, the Democratic Party’s candidate, in the November election.

Mr. Goodman had already received the East Hampton and Southampton Town G.O.P.’s backing. In a statement, Tom Knobel, chairman of the East Hampton Town Republican Committee, called Mr. Goodman “an exciting, inspiring leader who will be a highly effective and independent fighter for the East End.”

Mr. Schneiderman, a former East Hampton Town supervisor who was elected to the Legislature in 2003, is running for Southampton Town supervisor. The Second District includes all of East Hampton Town, Southampton Town, and Shelter Island, and a portion of Brookhaven Town.

In a statement issued on Tuesday, Mr. Goodman pledged to “tirelessly defend my constituents’ wallets, businesses, jobs, environment, and quality of life.” In February, when he announced his intention to represent the district, he told The Star that “The East End towns are already subsidizing a lot of Suffolk County in terms of paying a lot more in than we’re getting back.” He complained of misplaced priorities and a lack of leadership at the county level, which he said was creating an unfavorable climate for businesses and driving longtime residents away.

Mr. Goodman established a political action committee called Forward Long Island in 2013. He was previously a senior associate of the Cohen Group, a consulting firm founded by William Cohen, a former United States senator and representative who served as secretary of defense under President Bill Clinton.

From 2007 to 2008, he was a fellow at the Project on National Security Reform, a nonpartisan organization formed to update the country’s national security system to better address post-Cold War global security conditions. He is a graduate of the University of Chicago and earned a master’s degree in national security studies at Georgetown University. Locally, he is a member of the Springs Citizens Advisory Committee and the Maidstone Gun Club, among other organizations.

The planes will undoubtedly flow in tomorrow, bringing weekend visitors to East Hampton, and fly out after the weekend, also inevitably causing those under their flight paths and bothered by aircraft noise to once more become irritated and perhaps call a noise hotline to complain.

While a legal decision had been expected on whether three regulations that would restrict access to East Hampton Airport to reduce the impact of aircraft noise will come to bear, town officials announced Wednesday afternoon that the decision has been put off until June 26 at the request of Judge Joanna Seybert, who cited the complexities of the issue.

The East Hampton Town Board adopted laws in April establishing an overnight airport curfew and limiting types of aircraft deemed noisy, such as many helicopters, to one takeoff and landing per week during the summer season and extended curfew hours.

The restrictions, developed in response to ongoing outcries from hundreds of citizens across the East End — many of whom attended a forum on the issue last summer — were to be implemented by Memorial Day, but a lawsuit by aviation interests has kept them up in the air.

At a May 18 conference at United States District Court in Central Islip, Judge Seybert requested three weeks to make a determination regarding the issuance of a preliminary injunctionagainst the laws.

A United States attorney representing the Federal Aviation Administration, which was sued separately by the aviation group, also requested more time. The plaintiffs have asked that the two lawsuits be joined and reviewed together by the court.

While town officials worked for many months in conjunction with fact-finding committees and legal and engineering consultants to craft airport restrictions tailored to the noise problem here, and that they believe are allowable under federal aviation law, opponents charge that the restrictions fall outside of the town’s jurisdiction and of F.A.A. regulations, and will have a detrimental effect on business and the economy here.

An outright ban on helicopter use of the airport during the summer season was originally proposed, but then dropped.

The F.A.A.’s stance on how much authority East Hampton Town may exercise over operations at the airport — which must comply, overall, with federal guidelines — is central to the issue. In 2012 correspondence with former Representative Tim Bishop, the agency said that it would not challenge “reasonable restrictions” imposed by the town. But recently, the agency seems to have indicated it might reverse that stance by expressing support for the temporary restraining order affecting East Hampton’s new laws.

In response, Representative Lee Zeldin, who succeeded Mr. Bishop and is the vice chairman of the subcommittee on aviation, sent a letter to the F.A.A. expressing his disappointment and urging the agency to “stand by its assurances previously made in writing that the Town of East Hampton would not face negative action from the F.A.A. if they chose to enact reasonable restrictions, as long as the town agreed to not take any new F.A.A. funding.”

"The people of East Hampton, through their democratically elected town board,” Mr. Zeldin wrote, “have chosen this path because they believed the F.A.A. would stand by its word.”

The congressman said that he intends “to pursue what is necessary to hold the F.A.A. to its assurances and to work with all interested parties on an effective solution that reduces helicopter noise on the East End this high season and in the long term. Reaching a real solution is more important than politics or bureaucracy,” he said.

After the May 18 meeting with the judge, East Hampton Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell wrote his own letter to Senator Charles Schumer, expressing his concern about statements by Robert W. Schumacher II, the assistant United States attorney who attended the meeting on behalf of the F.A.A.

They indicated, Mr. Cantwell said, that “the F.A.A. is reneging on its legal interpretation expressed in writing to former U.S. Congressman Tim Bishop.”

“The assistant U.S. attorney and F.A.A. officials said in court this week that the F.A.A. disagrees with the import and legal effect of the agency’s position in its response to Congress,” Mr. Cantwell told Senator Schumer.

The supervisor made an urgent request that Mr. Schumer “write to the F.A.A. to encourage it to respect the clear advice it outlined in its 2012 letter to Mr. Bishop, advice that East Hampton has relied upon in enacting a set of local laws designed to curb aircraft noise impacts on residents across the East End of Long Island.”

The owners of Montauk’s Royal Atlantic Motel have asked to be included as defendants in Defend H2O’s lawsuit seeking to stop the Army Corps of Engineers from building a reinforced dune along the downtown Montauk beach.

Defend H20 filed suit in March against the East Hampton Town Board, Suffolk County, and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation as well as the Army Corps to block the project, which they claim would cause further beach erosion, obstruct public access to the beach, and destroy recreational opportunities and the commerce related to them.

Earlier this month, the Royal Atlantic Corporation, Royal Atlantic East Condominium Owners Association, and a group called the Montauk Beach Preservation Association applied to the United States Eastern District Court to intervene in the lawsuit as additional defendants in order to provide information and to make a counterclaim against Defend H2O.

With 2,900 feet of oceanfront property, they say that their buildings, since Hurricane Sandy, have been “completely exposed to the elements and the ravages of storms and the Atlantic Ocean,” and that they will be adversely affected if the Army Corps project does not proceed.

Earlier this spring, the Army Corps awarded an $8.4 million contract to H&L Contracting of Bay Shore to use 14,560 sand-filled geotextile bags to create a 3,100-foot-long and 50-foot-wide artificial dune along the beach from the Atlantic Terrace motel on the west to Emery Street on the east. It would be covered with three feet of sand, some of which will be stockpiled from beach excavations and the rest trucked in from an offsite sand mine.

The work was to have begun this spring and suspended for the summer season, but due to delays that left little time before Memorial Day, it has been postponed until fall.

The petition to join the lawsuit is signed by Themistocles Kalimnios as president of both the Royal Atlantic Corporation and the Royal Atlantic East Condominium Owners Association, and by Steven Kalimnios, as president of the not-for-profit Montauk Beach Preservation Association.

They claim in the court filing that they represent “a majority of the largest hotel and motel facilities in Montauk,” which have an economic impact, based on their income, of more than $186 million a year.

“It is not the plaintiffs who bring economic sustenance to Montauk,” they wrote in the petition to the court, but rather their group.

If Defend H20’s lawsuit succeeds, they say, “in all likelihood it will cause the strangulation of Montauk as a town,” and threaten their survival.

Should the Army Corps beach project be scuttled, they said they would hold the plaintiffs personally liable for physical and monetary damages, as a result of loss of income.

Their request to the court concludes with the Biblical adage, “As you sow, so shall you reap.”

The Army Corps plan, formally called the Downtown Montauk Stabilization Project, was authorized under a post-Hurricane Sandy emergency beach repair program, and is designed as a stop-gap measure until the Army Corps undertakes a more extensive project as part of its Fire Island to Montauk Point reformulation study. That study has been under way for decades, and observers have questioned when and whether it might occur.

The reinforced dune would be built with federal money, although the town would be responsible for its maintenance.

The head of Defend H20, Kevin McAllister, and the other plaintiffs — Mike Bottini, Rav Freidel, Jay Levine, and Thomas Muse — assert in their lawsuit that the project conflicts with numerous shoreline policies in the town’s state-approved Local Waterfront Revitalization Plan, including a ban on hard structures on the ocean beach.

A 150-foot communications tower erected behind the Springs Firehouse on Fort Pond Boulevard, which spurred complaints by neighbors and other hamlet residents over aesthetics and safety, has prompted an appeal to the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals that seeks to overturn its building permit.

David Kelley, an attorney and resident of Talmage Farm Lane in Springs, submitted the appeal last week through his attorney, Anthony C. Pasca of Esseks, Hefter and Angel of Riverhead. Mr. Kelley has been a vocal representative of concerned neighbors, gathering information about the pole, and initiating discussions with the elected Springs Board of Fire Commissioners, which authorized its construction. The pole was erected without community discussion, and, neighbors said, without adequately proving the need for it.

Fire commissioners have said the antenna was needed to improve communications for the radios and pagers used by fire and ambulance volunteers, and that the tall pole is the only way to address that need.

The pole was constructed and is owned by a company called Elite Towers, which can rent space to up to five private cellular communications companies for interior antennas. According to the fire commissioners, Elite will pay the district $1,500 a month in rent, plus $3,000 a month for each cellular carrier that locates equipment in the pole.

Mr. Kelley asserts that the town Building Department improperly exempted the Fire District from review by the planning board and that the antenna does not comply with several applicable building and zoning regulations.

Even under the terms of an exemption, Mr. Kelley believes the district should have been required to conduct a New York State Environmental Quality Review Act study of potential environmental impacts.

Asked about the SEQRA requirement at a May 11 meeting with concerned community members, fire commissioners said the study would be undertaken.

Not only does the Z.B.A. appeal ask that the building permit be rescinded, but that the fire district be required to apply to the planning board for site plan approval and a special permit under the town code or to ask the planning board for an exemption pursuant to previous case law.

Using the community preservation fund, the East Hampton Town Board has authorized the purchase of three properties, from which houses will be removed in order to return the lands to their natural states.

In Northwest, 6.4 acres will be purchased for $2.5 million from former Town Councilwoman Theresa Quigley and her husband, Hugh Quigley. The land, at 78 Swamp Road, includes three separate lots, one with a residence, which will be removed before the purchase. The land abuts over 500 acres of preserved town, county, and state open space, and contains pine barrens and wetlands as well as the majority of a freshwater pond.

On Gerard Drive in Springs, an ecologically sensitive beach peninsula where the town has made several land buys in order to remove septic systems and structures, a .59-acre lot will be purchased from the estate of Dorothy King, for $900,000. The removal of a small house on the site will allow the re-establishment of a natural buffer area that helps filter water flowing into Accabonac Harbor, according to Scott Wilson, East Hampton’s director of land acquisition and management.

The third purchase approved at a meeting last week was once the home place of Zebulon Montgomery Pike Field, a fisherman who worked Three Mile Harbor. The house, on 2.75 acres at 30 and 32 Three Mile Harbor Road, near the head of the harbor, dates to around 1800, with a mid-1800s addition, according to Bob Hefner, a consultant to the town on historic preservation. The structure, however, is not salvageable and will be taken down. Mr. Hefner said Mr. Field, who was known as Uncle Zeb, would sell herbs that he had harvested on East Hampton Main Street. His house, one among a number of small houses in Springs that reflect different building types than the historic structures seen in the village, was of note back in the day, Mr. Hefner said, as its owner would whitewash it, but only up as high as he could reach.

The property, which will be purchased for $1 million, is currently owned by Jonathan Miller. Mr. Wilson said it contains an oak and hickory woodland and will become a “pocket wildlife reserve area.”

A number of land purchases made by the town of late have been of improved parcels from which houses are removed. The strategy enables the town to restore natural areas and eliminate development, and associated septic waste, from environmentally sensitive areas such as that around Accabonac Harbor.

After an outreach program to owners of land around Lake Montauk, which resulted in a number of preservation fund purchases, Mr. Wilson’s department has begun to focus on acquisitions in Springs.

The acquisition of land with houses has been criticized by David Buda, a Springs resident who submitted written comments to the town board on the three purchases approved last week. Mr. Buda questioned whether the town was paying full price for houses that are then removed. He suggested that there should be a review of whether the preservation fund is being used according to “sound and fiscally prudent policies,” and whether the town is getting “the most bang for the buck.”

The town, he said in his letter, should pay for the value of the land component only.

Mr. Wilson said yesterday that the appraisals on which the town bases its purchase offers do, of necessity, include the value of any houses on a lot. However, he said, “Do we try to strive for a bargain sale on each property? Sure we do.”

In the King and Miller cases, he said, the houses added “no real contributing value” to the sites.

After years of land preservation efforts, he said, and with few large vacant parcels left undeveloped, preservation opportunities often focus on reversing the buildup of areas that perhaps should never have been developed. Some lots, for example, were created by hauling in fill, he said. “Why wouldn’t we try to protect Accabonac Harbor?” he asked.

By returning to nature lots that are contiguous to other preserved areas, he added, “we are filling in the missing pieces.”