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.

   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.

    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 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.”

East Hampton Town

Arts Council Appointments

    After establishing an East Hampton Arts Council last month, the East Hampton Town Board appointed 12 members to the group at a meeting last Thursday. The group includes visual artists and art instructors along with an art lawyer, a collector and photographer, a theater director, a writer and publisher, and owners of a gallery and a music store.

    The council, according to a resolution passed unanimously by the town board, will “advise the town on issues concerning the arts and various artists, including education opportunities, business opportunities, areas for performing and producing art, and [will] interface with various artists groups, businesses, museums, and associations.”

Seeking Pet Safety Signs

    Seeking to protect dogs whose owners might think it is safe to leave them in parked cars during hot weather, Lynn Lehocky approached the town board last Thursday about erecting signs in parking lots or along public streets reading “Warning: Heat Kills Pets in Parked Vehicles.”

    She said that state law prohibits leaving pets in cars under certain conditions, under penalty of a $250 fine. Councilman Dominick Stanzione said that he had already forwarded an e-mail about posting the signs to Pat Gunn, a town attorney and head of the public safety division. But Councilwoman Theresa Quigley protested the idea. “I think the more we assume people don’t have common sense, the more they lack common sense,” she said.

Farm Museum Go-Ahead

    Restoration of the historic Selah Lester house, on town-owned property on the corner of North Main and Cedar Streets in East Hampton, is set to proceed, following the town board’s acceptance last week of a $296,700 bid for the project. Carter-Melence, a company from Sound Beach, will do the work. Thanks to the efforts of a volunteer committee, the house is slated to become a farm museum depicting the life of an East Hampton farm family in the early 1900s.

    The Revolutionary War-era house was built for Capt. Jonathan Barnes of Amagansett and was moved to its present location in 1870 after being sold to Selah Lester. The house and barn remain on the large open lot, which was purchased by the town using the community preservation fund. After structural work on both buildings is completed, the town plans to sign a license agreement with a new nonprofit agency that will be set up for the purpose of running the farm museum.

Two Employees Suspended

    The town board suspended two town employees last week pending the disposition of disciplinary charges of misconduct and incompetence. Steve Arkinson, an electrical services supervisor in the town’s Parks and Building Maintenance Department, was suspended without pay for 10 days, while Frederick Windisch, a minibus driver for the Human Services Department, was suspended without pay for 30 days.

    Both men are entitled to request a hearing, pursuant to New York Civil Service Law. Eileen A. Powers will be assigned as a hearing officer in both cases should that take place.   

    The Peconic Baykeeper organization has taken legal action against the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation over what it says are more than 1,400 septic systems and sewage treatment plants across Suffolk County that are not being held to environmental standards.

    Permits issued by the D.E.C. for those systems are deficient, the organization claims, in that they fail to require the facilities to limit nitrogen emissions or do not contain requirements that the facilities meet the minimum standards for emissions set by the federal Clean Water Act and administered by the state and county for discharges into drinking or surface waters.

    Kevin McAllister, the Peconic Baykeeper, said this week that the organization had submitted information to the D.E.C. in September after reviewing public records to compile a list of the allegedly deficient permits.

    Since 2005, Mr. McAllister said, the organization has focused on the significant impact that septic waste and nitrogen in treated wastewater released into the environment are having on drinking water supplies and open water bodies.

    The number of fresh and saltwater bodies deemed “impaired” by the state based on their level of pollutants has been steadily increasing, he said on Tuesday. “I don’t care where you live in this county,” he said, “you’re probably within a mile or two of impaired waters.”

    In East Hampton, permits for three wastewater treatment plants — those at the Rough Riders condominiums and the Montauk Manor in Montauk and the town’s scavenger waste plant in East Hampton, which is currently off line — and for approximately 40 individual septic systems that discharge more than 1,000 gallons of wastewater per day were called into question in a lawsuit filed by the Peconic Baykeeper in State Supreme Court.

    Among the individual systems are those at the Montauk Yacht Club, Gurney’s Inn, the Amagansett East Side Tennis Club, the Montauk Shores condominiums, the Coast Guard station in Montauk, and the Montauk Downs State Park.

    Countywide, the Baykeeper said in the Article 78 lawsuit, there are 79 sewage treatment plants and 1,338 septic systems that should be held to tighter standards by the D.E.C.

    A legal action filed in federal court under the Clean Water Act names additional facilities, including a number of state parks and the Stony Brook Southampton campus.

    “It’s not noncompliance as much as non-enforcement,” Mr. McAllister said of the permit holders. The state and county, he said, “are not administering the law properly.”

    The lawsuit seeks to force the D.E.C. to modify the permits it issues for sewage treatment plants and septic systems that discharge into groundwater “that is hydrologically connected to surface waters” so as to limit nitrogen emissions to levels that will not “result in growths of algae, weeds, and slimes that will impair the waters for their best usages,” as described in a statewide water quality standard. They also asked that permits be modified, with stringent emissions standards imposed, for those that discharge into “nitrogen-impaired surface waters” or to groundwater with water quality deemed “poor” or “unacceptable” based on nitrogen levels.

    “What we’re trying to do is move these facilities to incorporate the best available technology,” said Mr. McAlllister in a phone interview on Tuesday.

    Nitrex, one wastewater treatment system approved for use in Suffolk County, treats wastewater to a level where there are only 3 parts per million of total nitrates, he said, while other approved, conventional systems in use result in 60 to 70 parts per million of nitrates in what is discharged into the ground or water.

    “I’ve been fighting to introduce these technologies in some of the developments on Long Island,” Mr. McAllister said of the more effective treatment. “We’ve got to really start introducing advanced treatments at the highest level of performance.”

    And, he said, “we need the mandates that say, ‘no, your discharge will not exceed this level.’ ”

    The Peconic Baykeeper “believes litigation and more aggressive advocacy is necessary,” Mr. McAllister said. “There’s urgency now. We’re at a juncture in time that we need bold actions.”

    In a split vote last Thursday, the East Hampton Town Board declined to join forces with other municipalities bordering the Peconic Estuary in an effort to pursue ecosystem and water quality protection goals.

    An intermunicipal agreement calls for each entity to contribute to the costs of achieving the goals of a comprehensive conservation and management plan developed by the Peconic Estuary Protection Committee — goals such as restoring and enhancing tidal wetlands, controlling and reducing pollution, and complying with federal, state, and local coastal regulations.

    Joining forces, according to the failed resolution, would “save personnel, time, and money, and lead to a better level of coordination” in East Hampton’s pending efforts to meet state stormwater management requirements.

    Councilwoman Theresa Quigley, who was originally slated to sponsor the resolution to enter into the agreement, not only refused to support it, but expressed outrage over an issue of protocol — that Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc, upon learning that Ms. Quigley had asked to have the resolution removed from last Thursday’s agenda, had himself brought it to the table for a vote.

    “I don’t understand it to agree with it or disagree with it,” Ms. Quigley said, adding that the board had not “properly vetted” the agreement.

    But Mr. Van Scoyoc said that the matter had been discussed in detail at  “at least two” previous meetings, and raised again at a meeting earlier in the week from which Ms. Quigley was absent.

    “I know nothing about it,” Ms. Quigley said, demanding that Mr. Van Scoyoc provide the date of the earlier meetings. “I want discussion on it, and it’s my right.”

    According to the resolution, the Towns of Brookhaven, Riverhead, Shelter Island, Southold, and Southampton, along with Suffolk County, the Villages of Greenport, North Haven, Sag Harbor, and Dering Harbor, and the State Department of Transportation, “recognize the importance of the Peconic Esturary as a vital coastal ecosystem essential to the environmental and economic well-being of the people in the areas surrounding the Peconic Estuary,” and therefore have entered into the agreement.

    Mr. Van Scoyoc said it was important to join them “to protect our Peconic Bay region, its economy, [and] its resources,” and that it would put the towns on a better footing to obtain grants to support the work.

    Councilwoman Sylvia Overby voted with Mr. Van Scoyoc in support of the resolution, while Supervisor Bill Wilkinson voted against it, siding with Ms. Quigley.

    Councilman Dominick Stanzione, who would have been the swing vote, abstained. Mr. Stanzione said that though he had “every intention of supporting the proposal,” he would honor Ms. Quigley’s request for further discussion. “I’m extending a courtesy to a colleague . . . who has requested it,” he said. “But I expect us to act on this expeditiously.”

    “I feel fully versed on this,” said Ms. Overby, noting that the town’s natural resources director, Kim Shaw, had made a presentation about the matter to the board.

    “I am liaison to natural resources, and I asked to have it removed,” said Ms. Quigley of the resolution. “How did it get put back on under Peter’s name?” She looked to John Jilnicki, the town attorney, for an opinion about the procedure.

    “As I understand, Theresa Quigley thinks, as liaison, she can prevent something from being voted on,” said Mr. Van Scoyoc. “I can understand if she doesn’t support it,” and would decline to sponsor the resolution, he said. But, he added, “a single councilperson, because they’re the liaison to a particular department, should not be the gatekeeper to doing the town’s business.”

    If a board member has questions about a proposal regarding an area for which they serve as liaison, Mr. Wilkinson said, they should be able to “pull it back and have the board discuss it at a work session.”

    “Again, this has been discussed at several work sessions,” Mr. Van Scoyoc said.

    “I don’t remember it myself,” said Mr. Wilkinson.

    “It has to do with secret meetings, Peter,” Ms. Quigley charged. She did not elaborate.

East Hampton Town

Eyeing Cemetery Expansion

    The East Hampton Town Board is pondering a land purchase that would allow for expansion of the Oak Lane Cemetery in Amagansett. Board members said Tuesday that, before deciding to proceed, they will first examine the status of other cemeteries in the town to see if additional space will be needed, review the costs, including purchase price and ongoing maintenance costs of the expansion, tally the potential proceeds from gravesite sales, and discuss who would be able to purchase the cemetery plots.

No to Wave Monitoring

    A Rutgers University representative was sent packing on Tuesday when town board members advised him to look to New York State rather than town beaches for a place to put an antenna for a wave-monitoring system.

    Ethan Handel of the Coastal Ocean Observation lab at the university’s Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences had originally asked for permission to install a 35-foot transmission antenna and a smaller receiver antenna, anchored by thin guy wires in a 20-foot radius on dunes near the bathroom at Ditch Plain Beach in Montauk.

    When Councilwoman Theresa Quigley objected vehemently, Mr. Handel worked with the town’s Planning Department to identify alternate sites for the radar equipment, which collects data on ocean currents and waves that are used by the Coast Guard and can provide information about coastal erosion.

    On Tuesday, when he said Atlantic Avenue Beach in Amagansett seemed to be a “great location,” Ms. Quigley said that she would not approve the installation at any of the town’s public, lifeguarded beaches.

Considering LTV’s Contract

    On Tuesday the town board discussed a new contract with LTV, the cable television station that is East Hampton Town’s public access provider. The station receives a portion of the franchise fees that Cablevision pays to the town, which are based on a percentage of what customers pay for Cablevision’s service.

    In recent negotiations, Councilwoman Theresa Quigley said, LTV representatives appeared to agree to a new formula by which the station would receive a “base” amount from the town ($550,000 has been suggested) to cover basic services, and then would have to make a case proving the need for any additional requested money. Almost 90 percent of the budget for LTV, a nonprofit organization, is provided by the town, Ms. Quigley said. The town’s previous contract with LTV expired in November of last year.

    A hearing will be held at Town Hall tonight at 7 regarding the town’s agreement with LTV to provide coverage of government meetings and educational programming. Members of the public can weigh in regarding the station’s performance.   

    Approval of an agreement through which East Hampton Town would join forces with other East End municipalities to work together on water-quality protection issues, including those mandated by federal and state agencies, got put off for the second time at an East Hampton Town Board meeting on Tuesday.

    An initiative by Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc to have the board pass a resolution and become a participant in the group sparked a spat at a recent meeting after Councilwoman Theresa Quigley said the idea had not been properly vetted, and complained that Mr. Van Scoyoc had stepped into an area — natural resources — for which she is the board’s liaison. Mr. Van Scoyoc countered that the concept has long been on the board’s agenda and should no longer be put off.

    On Tuesday, the parameters of the proposal were described by several visitors asked to provide details, but not before Ms. Quigley revived the political tete-a-tete.

    Both she and Supervisor Bill Wilkinson said they had gone through records of board meetings and ascertained that the agreement had not been talked over by the board. “I went through — copiously — what would amount to two years of e-mails and meetings. . . .” Mr. Wilkinson said. Ms. Quigley said she listened to tapes online and scoured agendas from over three years to prove that she was right.

    She said that she had just received a copy of the six-page draft inter-municipal agreement, and “there is not a single meeting where we reviewed this document.”

    Mr. Van Scoyoc was absent from the meeting, but Councilwoman Sylvia Overby expressed frustration that the board had not embraced the inter-municipal effort.

    “I don’t understand the pushback,” Ms. Overby said. “In 2011, you were told of an inter-municipal agreement” in the works, she said to Ms. Quigley and Mr. Wilkinson, who were in office then, before Ms. Overby took a seat on the board.

    Ms. Quigley said she could agree in concept with the idea, and allow the town’s attorneys and other staff professionals to ensure that the details were acceptable. “I want the policy in front of me,” she said. “I don’t need to have the exact language.”

    Both Eileen Keenan, a program manager for the New York Sea Grant NEMO (Nonpoint Education for Municipal Officials) program, and Alison Branco, a program director at the Peconic Estuary Program, were on hand. The NEMO program assists Long Island town officials with the federal and state requirements known as Municipal Separate Storm Sewer Systems, or MS4, and with natural resource protection. The Peconic Estuary Program has been coordinating the effort to have the towns and villages surrounding the estuary band together.

    To introduce the topic, Ms. Quigley gave her own overview of the town’s obligation under MS4.

    Ms. Keenan interjected. Besides Ms. Quigley’s misstating the name of the program, which Ms. Keenan did not mention, “there’s a basic very factual error in your presentation,” Ms. Keenan told Ms. Quigley. The MS4 requirements “are far more comprehensive and complex than was presented.”

    However, Ms. Quigley said, for the town board’s purposes, the gist of it is that because four water bodies within the town have been deemed “impaired” under state and federal guidelines, East Hampton must ensure that pollutants no longer enter those waters, and they must be “cleaned up.” The areas are Lake Montauk, Accabonac Harbor, Northwest Creek, and Georgica Pond.

    Ms. Branco said the proposed agreement between the municipalities calls for coordinated efforts not just for MS4 compliance, but on other water quality protection efforts.

    Annual dues would cover salary and administrative costs for a part-time coordinator. It is estimated that East Hampton’s share would be between $5,000 and $7,000. If the towns as a group apply for grants for agreed-upon projects, and matching funds are required, that amount would be added to the dues as well. Kim Shaw, East Hampton’s natural resources director, said that a grant could be available to cover that cost.

    A committee with representatives from each party that has signed on to the agreement would develop an annual scope of work, Ms. Branco said, and each municipality would have the opportunity to opt in or out for the year.

    So far, she said, the towns of Southold and Brookhaven have signed on. As in East Hampton, the agreement is still being discussed by legislative decisionmakers for Suffolk County, for Riverhead, Shelter Island, and Southampton Towns, the Villages of Greenport, North Haven, Sag Harbor, and Dering Harbor, and the State Department of Transportation.

    Similar joint efforts are underway by several groups of other municipalities across Long Island, she said. After Ms. Quigley expressed fears about a loss of local control, Ms. Branco said that once the group is set up, the only actions undertaken will be those agreed upon by the group.

    “The estuary program saw an opportunity to help the East End municipalities and waters,” said Ms. Branco, “by bringing municipalities to work together on stormwater.” In addition, she said, “There has been interest in expanding to other water quality issues . . . that are important to everyone,” such as wastewater, setbacks, etc., “because all share the same waters.”

    “I wish,” said Nathaniel Miller, “that whoever it is would be a man and come and talk to me, or yell at me, or something.”

    In recent months, multiple acts of vandalism have targeted the boat, mooring line, nets, and truck belonging to Mr. Miller, a 13th-generation bayman and, since his election in 2011, an East Hampton Town Trustee. Last winter, windows were broken at the Lamb Building in Amagansett, where the trustees meet. Floodlights were cracked, a fence rail was broken, and a tire iron was found on the floor of the meeting room.

Mr. Miller, and Diane McNally, the trustees’ clerk, firmly believe that the ancient governing body’s enforcement of existing laws is behind the vandalism. “I think because Nat is a bayman and people know where his equipment is kept, it makes him an easier target,” Ms. McNally said.

    This year, the trustees moved to improve and enforce the mooring grid system in Three Mile Harbor, in an effort to tighten regulations from which boaters had drifted. The action, Mr. Miller said, was taken to preclude the State Department of Environmental Conservation from closing the entire harbor to shellfishing should the agency decide the water was polluted.

    The grid, Mr. Miller explained, was established in the 1980s. “If you put the boats in a mooring grid, if the D.E.C. feels there’s too much pollution, they just shut off the mooring grid instead of the whole harbor. We were afraid that with boats being all over the place, they would close down the harbor. We’re just bringing back the mooring grid.”

    In October, Mr. Miller had expressed concern at a trustees’ meeting about scallop poaching in protected sanctuaries or prior to the season’s opening. Another activity, the powering of softshell clams (using an outboard motor to churn the seabed), is in some circumstances “a wonderful thing,” he said. “But when you start powering clams in eelgrass beds or when there’s planted oysters, that application doesn’t do good. There’s the possibility of a lot of bug scallops in Napeague, and we don’t want to affect them. There’s a right time and a wrong time for everything. Just going and doing it is not the answer.”

    Taking the long view, Mr. Miller said, is consistent with the trustees’ responsibility to manage the town’s common lands. “A lot of people were so used to doing what they want,” he said. “A lot of people like to go and make that initial dollar now, and they’re not thinking about the ten dollars down the road, of the future.”

      If he has learned one thing as a trustee, he said, it is that “you’re never going to make everyone happy. Everyone that pays taxes in this town has a right to go get a mess of clams or scallops to eat, but to have one greedy person, whether it’s somebody who wants those small clams for that night’s pasta, or a commercial guy, or somebody from out of town, it doesn’t matter. It’s a resource, and you’re fighting all the pollutants that are in the water.”

    “I’m trying to do my best,” he concluded.

    Ms. McNally denounced the vandalism at the trustees’ July 2 meeting, calling on the “cowards” responsible to speak with the trustees if they were unhappy with the body’s decisions, which she emphasized were made collectively. “It’s odd that occasionally people will take it upon themselves to do this,” she said Tuesday. “It’s as though you somehow are allowed to harass a public official if you disagree with them.”

    The recent vandalism is occurring against a backdrop of the annual influx of summer visitors, putting greater strain on both the environment and those charged with enforcing the law and maintaining order. Hurricane Sandy and the extreme weather events that followed last fall also made for an especially heavy workload for trustees as owners of waterfront property urgently sought to repair and bolster manmade and natural barriers against the sea.

    For the trustees, all of this means more applications to scrutinize and approve or disapprove: for bulkhead and staircase construction and repair, the installation of shoreline fencing, and mass-gathering permits, for example. The group monitors water quality and vector-control spraying, and routinely fields requests and complaints from individuals and businesses that utilize the beaches and waterways under trustee jurisdiction.

    “We have not made one new law,” said Mr. Miller. “We have just tried to reinforce every old law. Everything that we, and the other trustees, have done has been laws that are on the books, that were put there for a reason and a purpose. For so long, people did whatever they wanted to. There are so many people around, we just can’t do that anymore. If you do, the resource is going to be gone. My personal thing is just to try to keep what’s left.”

    Town harbormasters, said Ms. McNally, “have the boating rules to do, they’re patrolling our nature preserves, now they have beaches as well. Their responsibilities have increased, compared to their numbers going down and the population going up.”

    Ms. McNally worried about the chilling effect harassment of public officials might have. “It’s quite a conundrum here in this town,” she said. “It’s hard enough to get local people to want to seek public office, because you put your name out there. If it’s not just your name people can drag through the mud but your livelihood and family, we’re going to have a harder time finding competent people to do that.”

    At a meeting of the trustees last month, Mr. Miller acknowledged that in light of the vandalism to his property he had considered quitting his position. But, he told his colleagues, the anything-goes attitude of some commercial fishermen, contractors, and homeowners were behind his decision to run for office in the first place.

    “I’m not going to give up,” he said last week. “I think if there’s one person angry at me, there’s 100 that are happy with what I’m doing.”

    At press time, calls to the East Hampton Town Police Department seeking comment on its investigation of the van