The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation late Wednesday announced that it would partially lift a temporary ban on shellfish harvest in some East Hampton waters. Several areas remained off-limits, awaiting the results of water tests. The closures were put in place as a precaution following heavy rain on Sept. 3. No specific human health threats have been identified.

As of sunrise on Thursday, harvesters will be able to take shellfish from Accabonac Harbor, Napeague Harbor, and Lake Montauk. Hog Creek, Three Mile Harbor, Northwest Creek, portions of Northwest Harbor, and around Sag Harbor remained off-limits.

In Southampton and Brookhaven Towns, the state will reopen portions of Moriches Bay at dawn Thursday. Closed areas remained Quantuck, Shinnecock Bay, Cold Spring Pond, North Sea Harbor, Noyac Creek, and the Sag Harbor coves and their tributaries.

        The East Hampton Town Board will hear comments from the public tonight about plans for new parking regulations along School Street in Springs, developed in concert with the Springs School.

    According to the proposal, parking would be prohibited between 7:30 a.m. and 4 p.m. on school days along a stretch from the corner of Springs-Fireplace Road toward the school, on the school side of the street, with a short section of “no stopping, no standing” adjacent to the school driveway. Parking would also be prohibited, from 7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Monday through Friday, from the intersection of Ed Hults Lane and School Street toward Old Stone Highway.

    On the Pussy’s Pond side of the street, a two-hour limit on parking would be instituted all day Monday through Friday from Old Stone Highway toward the school. In the area directly across from the school to Sand Lot Road, stopping and standing would be prohibited at all times.

    Cars would be allowed to park for one hour during school hours on the school side of the street, in the area between Ed Hults Lane and the school driveway. In addition, left turns onto School Street from Ed Hults Lane would be prohibited between 7:30 and 8:30 a.m. and 3 to 3:30 p.m. during drop-off and pick-up times, and a stop sign would be installed at that intersection.

    The hearing will begin at 7 p.m. at Town Hall.

G.O.P. Primaries Tuesday

    Registered Republicans will go to the polls Tuesday to cast their votes in primaries for county sheriff, district attorney, and East Hampton Town supervisor. The supervisor primary is a write-in one, with many Republicans urging people to write Larry Cantwell’s name on the ballot. However, Mr. Cantwell, who is running on the Democratic, Independence, and Working Families lines, has said that he would decline the G.O.P. nomination. No Republican candidates have announced their interest in the nomination.  For district attorney, Thomas Spota is running for a fourth term, challenged by Ray Perini, a longtime criminal attorney. Mr. Spota is also running on the Democratic ticket, without a challenger. For sheriff, Sam Barreto, a Suffolk County police officer for 25 years, is looking to wrest the G.O.P. nomination from Vincent DeMarco, who has held the post since 2006. Voters will cast ballots at their usual polling places on Tuesday between the hours of 6 a.m. and 9 p.m.

Democrats’ Gala

    East Hampton Democrats will hold a fund-raising party for their candidates on Saturday from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at Katharine and William Rayner’s house on West End Road in East Hampton. Representative Tim Bishop will be the keynote speaker at the event. Also on hand will be the Democrats’ candidates for town supervisor and town board, Larry Cantwell, Job Potter, and Kathee Burke-Gonzalez, as well as the candidates for trustee, assessor, and town justice.

    The Rayners’ estate, known as Woody House, includes extensive gardens designed by Ryan Gainey that are rarely open to the public, according to a release. Guests on Saturday will be able to explore the property and its gardens, which offer views of Georgica Pond and the ocean.  Partygoers have been asked to park in the Georgica Beach parking lot. Shuttles will be provided from there to the Rayners’ property. Tickets cost $200 and can be reserved in advance by e-mailing [email protected]. They will also be available at the door.

For Carl Irace

    Friends of Carl Irace, the committee supporting the Republican, Independence, and Conservative Party candidate for East Hampton Town justice, will host a beach party to give voters a chance to meet the candidate tomorrow at the Maidstone Beach pavilion on Three Mile Harbor. Mr. Irace will be joined by other running mates at the party, which will run from 5 to 9 p.m. There will be free hot dogs, hamburgers, and, with luck, a prime sunset view. The party will go on rain or shine.

    The Sagaponack Village Board will hold a special meeting on Saturday at 9 a.m. to get community input on a proposal to create a village police force.

    A budget, prepared by former Southampton police chief William Wilson, is expected to detail a timeline and the costs involved. Mayor Donald Louchheim believes the village will get more service for less money with its own force as opposed to its current arrangement for policing through Southampton Town Should residents and village board members agree, the mayor hopes to have a new police department in place by Jan. 1.

    The quality of the Town of East Hampton’s waterways, which are managed by the town trustees, is good, Stephanie Forsberg, a trustee, reported to her colleagues at the board’s meeting on Tuesday.

    “It’s been a relatively quiet summer for us,” Ms. Forsberg said in delivering an aquaculture report. On Monday, she said, she had received a report of cochlodinium, also known as red tide or rust tide, in Southampton, but at “slightly lower densities than they’ve seen in the past. We’re hopeful that cooler temperatures may be helping us and we won’t see it in the coming weeks.”

    The trustees will be paying close attention to Three Mile Harbor, and all waterways, from now through the end of September, Ms. Forsberg said. “We encourage any of the public, if they see these rust tides — they look like red streaks running through water — to notify our office as soon as possible. We have a team ready to act that day to take increased sampling and monitoring. But the good news is, we don’t have it right now.”

    Every sample taken in Georgica Pond, Ms. Forsberg said, “has come back crystal clear.” Last September, she said, a dog died after apparently drinking water containing a toxin, which “could have come from a small pond adjacent to where Georgica Pond is.”

    She said that she has asked Dr. Christopher Gobler of Stony Brook University, an expert on algal blooms, to present all his data this winter. Ms. Forsberg, who earned a doctoral degree in marine biology from Stony Brook last year, had announced in March that the trustees would fund a comprehensive monitoring of the waters the body oversees, in cooperation with the university. She had worked in Dr. Gobler’s laboratory as part of her studies.

Pumpout Duty

    Prior to its formal meeting, the trustees met, interviewed, and hired Michael Bye, who will become a third pumpout boat operator. Mr. Bye, a bayman, is the son of Sidney Bye, who is also a pumpout boat operator for the trustees.

    “He knows boats, knows the waters, and is more than willing, without having a set schedule or definite annual salary, to work on an as-needed basis,” Diane McNally, the trustees’ clerk, told The Star yesterday.

    Ms. McNally said that the trustees are working with the State Department of Environmental Conservation to “try to get a town employee to their office to be instructed in the process of collecting water samples so we can augment what it has been doing.” Mr. Bye, she said, will assist in testing done specifically for shellfish beds to determine if there is a need to open or close any such beds. “We’re trying to assist the other agencies,” she said. Mr. Bye will be paid $14.50 per hour.

    Ms. McNally also told the board that she had received information from Drew Bennett, a consulting engineer who works on behalf of the Village of East Hampton, and spoke with Scott Fithian, the village’s superintendent of public works, about the Hook Pond outfall pipe, which has become clogged and needs to be cleared. “They had machinery mobilized for last Friday,” Ms. McNally told the trustees. “When I said, ‘You can’t do that without trustee permission,’ they said, ‘No problem.’ ”

    Village officials agreed to postpone the work pending the trustees’ approval. The exchange, Ms. McNally said, “was an exercise in government working well together. They are ready to go, and are looking for our permission to do so. I make a motion that we allow East Hampton Village to clear the outflow pipe.” The motion was unanimously passed.

Sandbagged

    Toward the conclusion of a meeting with a relatively light agenda, Joe Bloecker, a trustee, reminded his colleagues that “storm season is coming up.” He urged the board to clear its agenda to the greatest extent possible in its next few meetings so that, in the event of extreme weather, “we’ll have the time that we really need to concentrate on it. There’s not much here that can’t be done in a couple weeks. That way, if we do have a real issue coming up, we can deal with it.”

    In fact, an item on Tuesday’s agenda illustrated Mr. Bloecker’s point. In response to Hurricane Sandy, the D.E.C. issued an emergency authorization for stabilization, cleanup, and restoration work last winter. The permit specifically authorized installation of sandbags “at the toe of damaged structures or eroded escarpments.” Nine months later, a homeowner on Napeague had not removed all sandbags from the beach.

    “Boy, did it kill us,” Mr. Bloecker said of the permit. “We’re still trying to catch up to it.”

    Responding to a move by some East Hampton Republicans to get him on their ticket for town supervisor via a write-in G.O.P. primary, Larry Cantwell said this week that he was not interested.

    “I am filing a candidate declination form with the Suffolk County Board of Elections for the Republican primary on Sept. 10 in order to make clear that I am not a candidate in this primary election,” Mr. Cantwell said in a statement issued on Tuesday, adding that he did not want “Republican voters who may cast a vote in the primary to be misled.”

    “The effort to promote my candidacy has not been authorized by me; in fact no one even asked me if I would agree to accept,” he wrote.

    Republican leaders had asked the former village administrator, who is already running on the Democratic, Independence, and Working Families Party lines, to screen with them in the spring after Jay Schneiderman announced that he would seek a final term as county legislator rather than run for town supervisor as the G.O.P. had hoped. “I politely declined because I honestly believed the voters of East Hampton deserve a choice in the election for supervisor,” Mr. Cantwell said in the release.

    With no chosen candidate for the spot, Republican Party members mounted a successful petition drive to force a write-in primary in hopes that Mr. Cantwell would accept the nomination of the Republican rank and file, if not the leadership. Republicans will already be going to the polls that day to select district attorney and sheriff candidates. The person with the most votes — even if that is just one — can win the nomination, but he or she does not have to accept it.

    “I don’t know of any politician who honestly seeks to have an opponent to discuss the issues. . . . That’s clearly not the case here,” said Thomas Knobel, the vice chairman of the East Hampton G.O.P., who has urged Republicans to support Mr. Cantwell on primary day. 

    “The real issue is the unity campaign that he has propounded in the past, contrasted with his refusal to work with the Republicans,” Mr. Knobel said yesterday. “A pre-emptive declination clearly says that’s not so,” and it may have no legal bearing. “Republicans can test Larry out on this, and say, ‘Hey do you really mean it when you say you’re going to be supervisor for all of us?’ ”

    “The Democrats claimed Carole Brennan [town clerk] and Steve Lynch [highway superintendent] after our nomination without a blink of the eye,” said Mr. Knobel.

    Mr. Cantwell said that appearing on the Republican ticket along with the town board candidates Fred Overton and Dominick Stanzione might also call into question his “enthusiastic support” for his running mates, Kathee Burke-Gonzalez and Job Potter. He is sharing the Independence ticket with Mr. Overton and Mr. Stanzione.

    Those who might not want to vote for him on the Democratic line have two other options, Mr. Cantwell noted. “I hope the participants in the write-in primary for supervisor will choose a candidate so an honest debate of the serious issues our town faces can occur.”

    With or without an opponent in November, Mr. Cantwell promised that “my style of governing, of building consensus, and seeking compromise that leaves everyone well-served will be the same.”

   The New York State Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation has invited bidders to submit their proposals for operating a tennis concession at Montauk Downs State Park. According to a release, the state is looking for a “creative and visionary business entrepreneur” to manage the lessons, pro shop, and maintain the courts.

    The contract would be for four years with an option to extend for up to two more. According to a request for proposals, the average annual income for the last five years has been $77,400. Interested parties can request details from [email protected], with R.F.P. X001140 in the subject line. Bids are due by 2 p.m. on Sept. 25.

    Demonstrators were at East Hampton Airport on Friday afternoon to call attention to the noise generated there and its effect on South Fork residents.

    More than 30 residents and members of the Quiet Skies Coalition from Sag Harbor, Springs, East Hampton, Wainscott, and Noyac, carried signs and stood along the road and at the tarmac edge, hoping to raise the awareness of passengers and pilots that the noise from helicopters, jets, and seaplanes disturbs those living near and under flight paths.

    Among the protestors were residents of the Sag Harbor Hills neighborhood, which is experiencing increased air traffic due to a new departure route being used to relieve air traffic over Noyac. In a Quiet Skies Coalition press release, Becky Young said, “The air traffic over our neighborhood has increased so much that it has negatively impacted our quality of life. We’d consider selling the house, but this air traffic has decreased the value of our home,” she said.

     “Route distribution is a losing strategy, as the basic choice is to decide into which of your neighbors’ yards you’re going to throw your trash,” Kathleen Cunningham, the chairwoman of the Quiet Skies Coalition, said in the release.

    “The only effective noise mitigation plan is to limit access to East Hampton Airport,” she said. “Without meaningful access limits, someone is always going to be victimized by uncontrolled aircraft noise.”

    The organization has been pressing the East Hampton Town Board to stop accepting Federal Aviation Administration money and to allow existing agreements with the agency over airport operation to expire. Then, they have said, the town would be able to impose use limits, including curfews, and even be able to ban the noisiest aircraft. The degree to which federal regulations would allow local autonomy over such decisions has been a matter of debate.

    A survey of the candidates for East Hampton Town Board regarding airport noise will be released soon, the Quiet Skies Coalition has announced.

    Income from a real estate transfer tax into the Peconic Bay Region Community Preservation Fund continued to rise this year in all five East End towns, providing money for the public purchase of land for open space, historic preservation, and farmland protection.

    In East Hampton, the fund has swelled to about $42 million, Scott Wilson, the town’s director of land acquisition and management, said Tuesday. Of that, $2.7 million will be spent this year on debt from previous land purchases.

    The town closed just last week on five open space lots totaling 1.8 acres on Copeces Lane in Springs, for $1.8 million, and it has money earmarked for another five acquisitions. They include almost three acres off Old Stone Highway, along Accabonac Harbor in Springs, a wetland lot in Montauk, as well as money for the purchase of development rights, with the Peconic Land Trust, on almost 10 acres of Stony Hill Farm in Amagansett. The aquifer at Stony Hill is understood to supply drinking water to the surrounding hamlets.

    Only a handful of large parcels, including woods and farmland, remain in the town’s sights, Mr. Wilson said, as many large tracts of open land have already been preserved.    

    Between 15 and 20 appraisals have been ordered by the town this year on potential purchases, and another 15 to 18 are expected to be ordered before the end of 2013, Mr. Wilson said. The town has offered to buy about half a dozen other properties, he said, although community preservation money can only be used to buy land for which there is a willing seller.

    In 2012, East Hampton Town purchased 16 parcels of land using the community preservation account. This year, Mr. Wilson said, the total is expected to be 13. During the first seven months of this year, the real estate transfer tax earned East Hampton $16.8 million, compared to $10.4 million during the same period last year.

    In all five towns, this year’s January through July total reached $52 million from a total of 4,840 real estate transactions, versus $34.5 million last year stemming from 3,533 sales. Since its inception in 1999, the Peconic Bay Regional Community Preservation Fund has generated $841.9 million. According to Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr., an author of the legislation establishing the fund, this year’s  revenues are on track to be the highest annual total since 2007, at more than $90 million.

    The fund’s revenue for the first seven months of this year grew by more than 119 percent on Shelter Island, with $1.3 million coming in, and by approximately 50 percent in both Riverhead and Southampton Towns, with revenues, respectively, of $1.3 million and $30.8 million. In Southold, this year’s revenues so far are up 10 percent, to $2.2 million.

    “You are accountable to the East Hampton Town residents, to do something to protect our health,” Ilissa Meyer told members of the town board on Tuesday.

    During the development of a town deer management plan, which was recently adopted, Ms. Meyer reminded the board that she had been “begging you to take action” to address not only the population of deer, but of the creatures they often host — ticks. According to the town plan, which contains a variety of options for future actions, such as enacting a deer contraception program, or culling the herd, one goal of deer population control is to stem the transmission of tick-borne diseases.

    Ms. Meyer has provided the board with information about the prevalence of those diseases and with research and contacts for those studying the problem, including the Centers for Disease Control.

    On Tuesday she said that initial findings released by the C.D.C. indicate that the number of people nationwide diagnosed each year with Lyme disease, one of the most common of the illnesses contracted after a tick bite, is estimated to have reached the 300,000 mark. The preliminary estimate, based on findings from three ongoing studies, was presented on Sunday in Boston at the 2013 International Conference on Lyme, Borreliosis, and Other Tick-Borne Diseases.

    In a press release, Dr. Paul Mead, the chief of epidemiology and surveillance for the C.D.C.’s Lyme disease program, called Lyme “a tremendous public health problem in the United States” and said there is an “urgent need for prevention.”

    “How many tourists do you think will continue to come to East Hampton . . . if they know there is a 50-percent chance of contracting a tick-borne disease?” Ms. Meyer asked the board.

    The C.D.C., she said, along with other researchers, is working to identify new methods to kill ticks and prevent the illnesses they transmit. She urged the town to immediately form a tick task force, with members including experts in the field, such as doctors, veterinarians, and C.D.C. personnel.

    The Centers for Disease Control is also advocating a proactive approach. “We need to move to a broader approach to tick reduction, involving entire communities, to combat this public health problem,” the agency said in its release. “This community approach would involve homeowners trying to kill ticks in their own yards, and communities addressing a variety of issues. These issues include rodents that carry the Lyme disease bacteria, deer that play a key role in the ticks’ lifecycle, suburban planning, and the interaction between deer, rodents, ticks, and humans. All must be addressed to effectively fight Lyme disease.”

    Most Lyme disease cases reported to the C.D.C. are in patients living in the Northeast and upper Midwest. Lyme disease is caused by the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi and is transmitted to humans through the bite of infected blacklegged ticks. Other tick-borne diseases include ehrlichiosis and babesiosis. All can be serious if left untreated.

    Southampton Hospital has planned to establish a Center for Tick-Borne Diseases, and on Sunday will team up with the Tick-Borne Disease Alliance for an event called Bite Back for a Cure, part of the alliance’s national campaign to raise awareness and encourage local advocacy.

    The event, which will help raise money for the new center, will begin with an eight-mile bike ride through Southampton Village for riders of all ages. Registration is $30 per person or $60 per family. Check-in will begin at 8 a.m. at the Rotations Bicycle Center on Windmill Lane, and the ride will start at 9:30. Bicycles will be available for rental.

    According to Marsha Kenny, a spokeswoman for the hospital, the Center for Tick-Borne Diseases, which they hope to open next spring, would provide information for residents and visitors, as well as serve as an educational resource for the resident physicians in the hospital’s medical education program, along with other South Fork doctors. The hospital would not provide treatment for tick-borne diseases (except to patients visiting the emergency department), but would provide referrals to physicians familiar with the diseases.

    According to Ms. Kenny, “the hospital recognizes tick-borne disease as a serious public health problem for the South Fork and we feel that we must provide resources to help people.”