A state plan to rid approximately five acres of invasive phragmites within a section of the Walking Dunes on the eastern end of Napeague using an herbicide has been delayed until spring so as not to threaten the annual cranberry harvest.

    The decision by Brian Foley, deputy regional director of the State Department of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation, was made on Friday. The Parks Department, which had earlier approved the use of chemicals to stop the spread of the invasive beach reeds, oversees the scenic expanse of inland dunes on the western edge of Hither Woods.

    The department reversed its position after a group of cranberry pickers were surprised to find the operation under way. The pickers brought their concerns to the Concerned Citizens of Montauk environmental group and the East Hampton Town Department of Natural Resources. The office of Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. was also brought into the phragmites fracas.

    The stand of phragmites in question grows in the midst of the dunes’ sweeping concavities that got their “walking” appellation because of their centuries-old northwest-to-southeast migration across the Napeague isthmus. The dunes are home not only to cranberry bogs, but also to a number of rare species of plant life, including a type of prickly pear cactus.

    On the weekend of Oct. 13, a group of cranberry pickers were alerted to the start of the project by the sound of chain saws. The project, which involves the application by wick of the herbicide AquaPro, a glyphosate herbicide, was announced in the Environmental Notice Bulletin of the State Department of Environmental Conservation in August. A call for bids was published in Newsday. The state awarded the winning bid to Warren’s Landscaping of Water Mill.

    Larry Penny, former director of the town’s Department of Natural Resources, said on Tuesday that he had seen the call for bids and brought it to the attention of Warren’s Landscaping. He said he had signed on as a consultant out of concern that the Walking Dunes ecosystem would be lost to phragmites. The reeds in question were beginning to take over one of the Walking Dunes cranberry bogs.

    Mr. Penny said annual cutting of the phragmites stand had been tried but was unsuccessful at stopping its spread. “In fact,” he said, “cutting alone might spur additional shoot development. The rhizomes are so deeply imbedded, cutting can’t get to them.” Prior to the outcry, the plants in question had been cut close to the sand and were about to have the remaining stems wicked with AquaPro, he said.

    Mr. Penny said the goal was to prevent a monoclonal stand, acres wide, like the one to the north of the Walking Dunes that stretches nearly all the way to Goff Point. Such stands crowd out all other plant life, including cranberries.

    The former natural resources director said he was in the process of obtaining a state license to administer herbicides in both upland and aquatic environments and had planned to help Vicky Bustamante, a Montauk resident and botanist working for Warren’s Landscaping, apply the herbicide.

    “The invitation to bid was very exacting,” Mr. Penny said. He said AquaPro was registered with the state as acceptable if used properly by trained applicators who applied the herbicide by hand to avoid the danger of affecting other plants by spraying. The work had to be done near the end of September or early October. “Now it won’t be done until next spring,” said Mr. Penny.

    Maybe and maybe not. “Because of the cranberry harvest and the chemical, they’re going to hold off until spring, but that doesn’t solve the problem,” said Jeremy Samuelson, executive director of the Concerned Citizens of Montauk. “This is a transparency issue,” he said, referring to the fact that the project took the local community by surprise.

    “Beyond that I’m not sure it’s the right solution. There are state and federally protected plant species there. They need to put a map on the wall. People are harvesting food there,” Mr. Samuelson said.

    Kim Shaw, East Hampton’s director of natural resources, said on Tuesday she had asked for a meeting with state officials, and would seek information regarding the herbicide from the Suffolk County Water Authority and the U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife. “This is a pristine environment, if the state wants to experiment, they have other opportunities.”

    The season might be over, but the summer days at Indian Wells Beach in Amagansett have not faded from the memories of local beachgoers, who found themselves inundated by large groups of visitors who were encouraged by blogs and online social media to meet at Indian Wells to “party hearty.”

    Throughout the summer, residents complained to the East Hampton Town Board of the crowds and their behavior, including urinating in the dunes and the consumption of large amounts of alcohol. Parking at Indian Wells is by resident permit only, but taxis and party buses were dropping off groups, and in doing so were creating a hazardous situation in the parking lot, people said.

    East Hampton Town lifeguards also reported the crowded beach situation to the town board, expressing concern about the safety of swimmers and the amplified music, which made it hard for those in the water to hear lifeguards’ instructions.

    The lifeguards’ efforts to educate beachgoers about noise and other town regulations, along with extra patrols by Marine Patrol officers, toned the situation down somewhat, residents said.

    But action is still needed before the same problems arise again next summer, Ashley Silverman, a resident of Indian Wells Highway, told the town board at a meeting last Thursday.

    “This group started three or four years ago,” she said of the primarily young people who have begun gathering at the beach en masse. “I think what the difference is now is the Internet.” She told the board about a recommendation on  a site called Guest of a Guest, that people “bring a 30-pack” of beer to the beach at Indian Wells.

    In an e-mail circulated to other residents, eliciting advocates for official action, Ms. Silverman asserted that the crowd has doubled in each of the last three years, and that “young professionals in Manhattan view Amagansett as a sort of Fort Lauderdale/spring break-type place.”

    Ms. Silverman said at the meeting that she had seen groups of people walking past her house, to and from the beach, with open containers of alcohol. “I think, by next summer, there are going to be people upgrading from the Jersey Shore to the Hamptons because they know they can drink all day,” she said.

    The drinking, she explained in her e-mail, is the real problem, not the crowd. “The drinking leads to a decrease in inhibitions,” she wrote, which makes people “loud and inconsiderate of other people.”

    The visitors congregating at the beach, she said, do not contribute to the local economy, except perhaps for spending at bars and eateries. “These people . . . they’re not buying houses out here,” she said. “They’re not going to restaurants. I don’t see them shopping in town.”

    But, she said at last week’s meeting, the influx will result in more costs to the town for extra lifeguards, patrols, litter pickup, and the like.

    Ms. Silverman made some specific suggestions, to which the board did not specifically respond. The town, she said, could ban drinking on the beach during the hours lifeguards are on duty. In addition, the noise limit at the beach could be set at a lower decibel than at other places in the town: The crowds on the beach set up generators, she said, to play music.

    And, she noted in her e-mail, “It seems to me that if your group at the beach requires a generator and concert speakers or a full-size volleyball net, it could be argued that you should have a mass gathering permit.”

    Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson reported that he had recently had a two-hour meeting with East Hampton Town Police officials to discuss the summer. Topics included incidents that occurred, police staffing, mass gatherings, and the issues at the beaches, he said.

    This year’s Concerned Citizens of Montauk meet the candidates forum will be held at the Montauk Fire Department on Sunday at 1 p.m. It traditionally draws a standing-room-only crowd, so you might want to get there early for a good seat. Expected to attend are State Senator Kenneth P. LaValle, a longtime incumbent, and his Democratic challenger, Southampton Town Councilwoman Bridget Fleming, as well as Representative Tim Bishop and his Republican challenger, Randy Altschuler. Also on hand will be Wendy Long, who is challenging Kirsten Gillibrand for her Senate seat on the Republican and Conservative lines.

     Although most of the candidates have already met in debate-type settings, in Montauk they usually focus on problems specific to the hamlet and the surrounding area. The candidates will introduce themselves and state their positions. They will be able to ask one question of their opponents. The candidates will also take questions from the audience. Admission is free and refreshments will be offered.

    A lawsuit brought by a neighbor of the Empire gas station site on East Hampton’s North Main Street, challenging a Zoning Board of Appeals decision that paved the way for construction of a convenience store on the property, has been dismissed in Suffolk County Supreme Court.

    In an Oct. 5 decision, Justice W. Gerard Asher upheld the zoning board’s decision and dismissed the matter “in its entirety.”

    Attorneys for the property owners at the Scarlato and Baldwin firm in Sag Harbor could not immediately be reached to determine if and when construction will begin.

    Residents of the neighborhood, including Jeffrey Slonim, the plaintiff in the suit, who lives two doors down from the gas station, had said the addition of a convenience store would add traffic and parking problems in an area already inundated and hard to navigate. “Traffic is already terrible on North Main. Parking, nil,” Mr. Slonim wrote in a 2011 letter to the Z.B.A..

    The owners of the property, Ali Yuzasioglu and S&A Petroleum Group, received site-plan approval in October 2010 from the town planning board to replace two existing buildings, which have housed a barber shop and a car rental business, with one store building of an equivalent size.

    Mr. Slonim initially challenged that decision with an appeal to the Z.B.A. asserting that a certificate of occupancy for the property was issued erroneously.

    Tom Preiato, the senior building inspector, had issued a certificate permitting occupancy by a motor vehicle repair garage, with gas pumps, and two buildings that could house “central business” uses, as defined by the zoning code. That includes retail stores.

    Mr. Slonim and his attorney, Michael Walsh of Water Mill, argued that a town law prohibiting filling stations and retail stores on the same property should prevail. However, Mr. Preiato found that the retail uses on the property pre-existed that code and therefore could continue, and the Z.B.A. upheld his ruling.

    Mr. Walsh said yesterday that he was “not at liberty” to discuss whether his client would appeal. “Judge Asher is a well-respected jurist, and we respect his opinion. But we are reviewing it, and we will make that decision in the coming days,” he said.

East Hampton Town

Committee Appointments

    The East Hampton Town Board made several appointments at its meeting last Thursday night.

    Two new members were added to the town’s nature preserve committee, which oversees public properties designated as nature preserves, develops management plans for them, and makes recommendations as to new preserves. Laura Stephenson and Phil Berg will be the new members. The committee is chaired by Zachary Cohen.

    Other appointments were to groups connected to the Peconic Bay Region Community Preservation Fund and its administration in East Hampton Town.

    Pursuant to the law creating the fund, which assesses a 2-percent tax on most real estate transfers in the five East End towns to buy and preserve open space, historic sites, or farmland, each town has its own community preservation fund advisory committee.

    As Michael Denslow, a member of East Hampton’s committee, is unable to complete his term, the town board appointed Barbara Miller as his replacement. She will fill the remainder of his term, through March 23, 2013.

    Richard Hammer, a Montauk attorney, was appointed to sit on a regional community preservation fund advisory board. Established by State Senator Kenneth P. LaValle and Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr., who sponsored the preservation fund concept and law, it was created to assist the towns in applying the preservation regulations in a consistent and proper manner. Each town is to appoint a member to the regional group.

    The town board also recently appointed Alex Balsam, a farmer and attorney, to a seat on the Suffolk County Farmland Committee. The town is authorized to appoint one member to the county group; the seat was formerly held by Bill Gardiner. Mr. Balsam will serve for four years.

Two Land Buys

    After holding hearings last week on two proposed land purchases using the community preservation fund, which drew no speakers, the town board voted on Thursday to move forward with both acquisitions.

    A 4.9-acre parcel on Town Line Road in Wainscott will be purchased for $600,000 from Richard Pratt, Robert Pratt, Paul Pratt, John Beebe, Robert Beebe, Trevor Beebe, Nancy Havens, and Kathleen Waygood. It is adjacent to a 71-acre nature preserve, and surrounded by other preserved open space.

    At 889 Fireplace Road in Springs, another parcel just shy of five acres will be bought by the town for $575,000. It is owned by Charles Mac Miller, Valerie Meyer, Denis Gates, and Debra Gates, and will be preserved for agricultural use and open space.    

Preserves for Adoption

    A two-year Adopt-a-Preserve pilot program will allow volunteers to assist East Hampton Town’s Natural Resources and Land Acquisition and Management Departments to maintain and protect tracts of preserved open space within the town — a total of 4,570 acres.

    Under the supervision of town staff, volunteers would assist with monitoring the properties and reporting any illegal activities such as dumping or use of trails by all-terrain vehicles and could also help with tasks such as minor trail maintenance, removing invasive plants, or litter cleanup.

    Individuals and groups who would like to lend a hand will be required to submit an application. Initially, the program will be tried out on 5 or 10 nature preserves or properties purchased with the community preservation fund, for which the town has adopted management plans.

    After the trial period, the town board will assess the success of the program and determine whether it should be made permanent

    A hotly contested appeal by East Hampton’s senior building inspector seeking to overturn a certificate of occupancy issued by his predecessor was coolly disposed with by the town’s zoning board of appeals on Oct. 9.

    Tom Preiato, the building inspector, was trying to reverse a 2008 C. of O. for two stone pillars with attached gates at the entry to 17 Beverly Road in Springs that he believed was issued by the late Don Sharkey based on “erroneous and misleading information.”

    After months of discussion, the board  dismissed the appeal without debate, acting on the advice of its attorney, Robert Connelly.

    The certificate had been issued by Mr. Preiato’s predecessor, the late Don Sharkey.

    The owner of the property, Lee David Auerbach, had obtained approval for the pillars and fixed front gate following a hearing before the town’s architectural review board.

    In 2011, Mr. Preiato made a formal appeal to the zoning board to reverse the certificate of occupancy issued by Mr. Sharkey.

    Alex Walter, the chairman of the zoning board, addressed the issue at length on Oct. 9, after noting that Mr. Connelly had done extensive research on the process used by Mr. Preiato to launch the current appeal.

    “Normally, the building inspector issues a revocation, then brings it to us for confirmation or denial. That wasn’t done here,” Mr. Walter said. “He wanted us to tell him to revoke it, and that isn’t our job. I don’t think this board has the [standing] to act on this. If Mr. Preiato wants to revoke it, he has to issue the revocation and have us verify that he did it correctly, not the other way around.”

    The board voted 5-0 to dismiss the appeal.

    Also on Oct. 9, the board was split on a request for a prefabricated pool house at 38 Jacqueline Drive in Amagansett.

    The applicant, Boris Nepomnyoschy, offered the board two locations for the pool house, which would not have a foundation. His small yard is surrounded by freshwater wetlands. The first would have had the pool house 23 feet from the restricted wetlands when 100 feet are normally required. Don Cirillo, a board member, pointed out that this proposal would save the homeowner money. “The purpose of the variance is to try to help the homeowner,” he said.

    However, though absent, Lee White, another board member, voiced his position in writing.

    “There is a more conforming location almost three times as far from wetlands,” he said, supporting the second choice offered by the owner.

    “I agree with Lee. The owner gave us the option,” Sharon McCobb said.

    Mr. Walter agreed with her. “We’re not depriving him of what he wants to do, but we’re also doing what is in the best interest of the town. That’s the reason we have a town code and that’s the reason people come to us.”

    The board voted 3-2 against the first proposal, before unanimously approving the second.

    What it lacked in controversy, another before the board made up for in star, or perhaps better put, sun power.

    Jerry Seinfeld is looking for permission to install two 65-by-10-foot solar panels at the edge of his property on Further Lane in Amagansett, between a swimming pool, which is at the dune side of the oceanfront property, and a Nature Conservancy preserve. The panels, made by a firm called SunPower, will be flush to the ground and therefore invisible to Mr. Seinfeld’s neighbor, who supports the project, despite the fact that they would be only a few feet from the neighboring property, when a 30-foot distance is normally required.

    Ms. McCobb noted the neighbor’s support for the proposal.

    “Anything good for the environment is a positive,” said Bryan Gosman, a board member, before the board voted 5-0 to approve the variance.

    On  Oct. 2, Laurie Wiltshire of Land Planning Services said that her clients Christine Lemiuex and Joshua Young, who own property on Mulford Lane at Lazy Point, have made major modifications to their plan to build a 147-foot stone armor revetment on Napeague Bay, where such structures are prohibited. Their request for a similar structure was denied earlier this year.

    What to do about the town’s aging scavenger waste treatment plant, the question of whether residents would be willing to pay taxes to hire additional code enforcement officers, and issues of budget strategy — specifically, what to do with some $4.2 million that was borrowed to help address a budget deficit, but was not needed — took center stage during a discussion of East Hampton Town’s 2013 budget on Tuesday.

    Town Councilwoman Sylvia Overby asked about the disposition of the $4.2 million, which was part of a total of $26.7 million borrowed under special New York State authority to get the town back in the black after deficits accumulated under a prior administration.

    After 2011, when budget cutbacks and careful spending left the town coffers “better than expected,” Len Bernard, the town budget officer, said, there was a $4.6 million surplus.

    The town had first borrowed $15 million for the deficit financing. For a second round of borrowing, “the original plan was to borrow $14.8 million,” Mr. Bernard said, to cover the full amount of the deficit “and an additional amount, in order to create some kind of cushion in the A and B funds,” the town’s two main operating funds, which were affected by the deficit.

    However, he said, “we didn’t want to over-borrow” but “to borrow a reasonable amount.” The plan, he said, was sanctioned by the state comptroller and the town’s financial advisers.

    The $4.6 million has not, so far, been allocated, Mr. Bernard said, although several reserve funds, permissible under state finance law, were created, including funds to accrue money for state retirement system costs for employees, to cover accrued benefits payouts to employees, and for capital projects.

    Once earmarked for one of the funds, money may not be spent on anything other than its stated purpose.

    Ms. Overby said that the town is paying interest on the borrowed money, and that she would feel more comfortable if there was a “game plan,” or set of rules regarding how it could be used.

    State finance law governs use of the dedicated funds, Mr. Bernard said, and allows a town board to use the entire amount in a reserve fund in a single year to pay the costs for which it is earmarked.

    “That’s a problem,” Ms. Overby said. “Because if you do that in one year, it creates a hole in the budget for next year,” which would need to be filled by a rise in taxes.

    The tentative budget prepared by Supervisor Bill Wilkinson proposes the use next year of $1.2 million from the retirement cost reserve fund. As retirement funding is an ongoing expense, should that fund be depleted in 2014, that money would have to be raised through taxes. The draft budget also relies on the use of over $900,000 from two reserve funds for debt service.

    Also on Tuesday, Ms. Overby relayed an interest on the part of members of the Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee in the addition of seasonal code enforcement officers to address violations regarding “noise, litter, and quality of life” during the summer. She asked the board to consider adding money to the budget for those positions.

    “What I’m hearing,” said Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc, “is that people would be willing to bear the additional cost to protect their quality of life . . . given [that] the negative aspects far outweigh the financial impact.”

    “I would not support that,” said Councilwoman Theresa Quigley, citing her recent time spent in New York City, where she is living most of the week in order to be near a daughter who is recovering from an injury. People feel more free there, she said. “I don’t believe that we need to turn our town into any more of a town that has people ready to ticket us,” she said.

    “I would prefer that we took the approach of educating people. I’m not suggesting there isn’t a problem. I’m suggesting there’s a more positive way to address the problem,” Ms. Quigley said.

    Though not disagreeing with the idea of education, “I’m not sure that alleviates the problem,” Ms. Overby said. Councilman Dominick Stanzione suggested that Mr. Wilkinson might be able to get more code enforcement coverage by shifting personnel.

    A discussion of the future of the town waste treatment plant — now being operated as solely a transfer station and the topic of perennial disagreement among board members — resulted in no change to the tentative budget, which contains funding to keep the transfer station open for the first three months of the year.

    Ms. Overby and Mr. Van Scoyoc had inquired about including enough money to keep it open for a longer period, as the process of crafting a comprehensive wastewater management plan that will, among other issues, address the future of the plant, has just begun. Mr. Stanzione suggested shutting it altogether.

    However, after Mr. Bernard informed the board that state finance law and the state comptroller, who is overseeing East Hampton’s budgeting, would allow money to be advanced to the transfer station, if necessary, from other parts of the sanitation budget, board members did not press for revisions to the draft budget.

    One change to the budget the board agreed on was the addition of a $10,000 budget line, suggested by Mr. Van Scoyoc, to begin work to identify and address town properties where handicapped access does not comply with the Americans With Disabilities Act. Mr. Van Scoyoc has been working with town staff to fix the problems, and suggested a minimum allocation of $15,000 for the project next year.

    Mr. Wilkinson asked what year the act went into effect and was told it was in the 1970s. “Where have these inventories been?” he asked. “It’s never come up until now.”

    “I’m proud of the fact, then, that I’m the one bringing it up,” Mr. Van Scoyoc said.

    Monday’s monthly meeting of the Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee saw an unusually small turnout, only nine people including the chairman, Kieran Brew; the vice chairwoman, Sheila Okin, and the committee’s liaison from the East Hampton Town Board, Councilwoman Sylvia Overby, who began the brief session with an upbeat report on Eli Zabar’s Farmers Market.

    ACAC members had complained for much of the summer about deteriorating conditions there: a broken fence and trellis, dilapidated furniture, weeds, and more. Ms. Overby said she had talked with Pam Greene, vice president of stewardship for the Peconic Land Trust, which manages the property, and been told that the trust was working with Mr. Zabar to polish up its appearance. The broken fence has been repaired and the front gardens will be replanted, among other improvements.

    “They’ve already pulled the weeds,” said Joan Tulp. “It looks much better.”

    “And more will be done,” Ms. Overby promised.

    Mr. Brew had a question for the councilwoman about the community preservation fund. “How, as ACAC, can we advise the town board on issues of community preservation?” he wanted to know.

    Start with the C.P.F. committee, Ms. Overby advised. “Anyone can bring a suggestion to the committee — a real estate agent, a homeowner, the Suffolk County Water Authority might be divesting. . . .” The committee, she explained, looks at the suggestions and “grades” (ranks) them in order of desirability.

    Members seemed surprised to hear that such a committee existed. “At one time, each [advisory committee] was given a list of all the properties,” said Ms. Okin.

    “We didn’t have a C.P.F. committee at that time,” Ms. Overby said.

    Ms. Tulp wanted to know how the committee members were appointed. “Is there anyone from Amagansett?” she asked.

    Ms. Overby said there was no one from Wainscott — she wasn’t sure about Amagansett — and no women on the committee, whose chairman is Tim Brenneman. “They’d like a woman,” she said, going to on explain that not all the properties that are ranked wind up on the official C.P.F. list. Those that do must first have a public hearing before the town board.

    As an example, she mentioned two parcels at Promised Land near the fish factory. In early August, the board approved the $1.1 million purchase of a parcel of land at 427 Cranberry Hole Road, on the bay side of the road, for a public access to the beach along Gardiner’s Bay. However, at another public hearing a week later, Ms. Overby said, “We lost the one that was cater-corner across the street from the one on the water.” The second parcel had been envisioned as an unpaved parking lot, and neighbors objected.

    Rona Klopman said she’d happened to catch two sessions of the East Hampton Architectural Review Board on LTV, “and it seemed to be dysfunctional.” Ms. Overby answered that there were three new people on that board, and “it’s a learning process.”

    “They’ve done some very good things,” the councilwoman continued, citing the St. Michael’s Lutheran Church project, now in its final stages. “A.R.B. made sure the buildings were shingled. The community center is adorable.”

    Mention of the St. Michael’s complex, which will provide 40 affordable housing units for senior citizens whose incomes are below 50 percent of the region’s median, led to a brief back-and-forth about the traffic pattern there. The complex is directly across Montauk Highway from the Amagansett Post Office and the I.G.A.

    “How are these seniors going to get across the highway?” someone wanted to know. “How are they going to survive?

    “Some will, some won’t,” Bill Jackson remarked dryly.

    A median strip and crosswalk have been built between the complex and the supermarket there, and “the highway narrows there, which is called traffic-calming,” said Ms. Overby. “We can do some things at the crosswalk, such as push a button to cross.”

    Mr. Jackson was skeptical. “I predict a traffic light,” he said.

    As the clock neared 8 p.m., Ms. Klopman announced that she’d attended a town board meeting in Montauk last week, hoping to hear the board discuss reports from Ms. Overby and other advisory committee liaisons. “But there were no liaison reports,” she said. “They said the agenda was too long.”

    “It’s happened several times,” said the councilwoman. “Tomorrow we have another very long meeting.” She read out Tuesday’s town board agenda, which included discussions of deer management, the north-south approach airport controversy, the town budget, and other big issues (covered separately in this issue). There were 10 items in all. Liaison reports were last on the list.

    The Peconic Baykeeper organization has asked the New York Department of Environmental Conservation to reduce nitrogenous water pollution through more stringent septic discharge standards and has threatened a federal lawsuit if it does not respond.

    The request, made on Sept. 17, seeks modifications to state pollutant discharge elimination systems, known as SPEDES, permits for sewage treatment and septic systems. The permits, said Kevin McAllister, the director of the Peconic Baykeeper, fall under the federal Clean Water Act, which was passed in 1972.

    “We’ve found an atrocious record of violations relative to levels of nitrogen that are coming out of these systems. They’re excessively high in most cases,” Mr. McAllister said, citing Three Mile Harbor in East Hampton and Lake Montauk, and Fort Pond in Montauk, among the impaired water bodies.

    The request was also addressed to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s regional administrator, Judith A. Enck, and the commissioner of the Suffolk Department of Health Services.

    “We’ve got to start regulating for ecological standards, Mr. McCallister said. “The noncompliance is egregious. There are wholesale violations that are going unchecked. Where is the enforcement? It falls on the D.E.C. or the county, and they’re both failing us miserably.”

    The state Department of Environmental Conservation is legally obligated to respond to the Baykeeper request, Mr. McAllister said. “It they don’t, they are in violation as assigned to them by the federal government and Suffolk County. They better respond to this petition in a meaningful way. If they don’t our next step is a lawsuit.”

    The petition will undergo a thorough review, said Lori Severino, the D.E.C.’s press officer. She would not comment on specific elements. “D.E.C. does not have detailed empirical data indicating what impacts either the subsurface discharge systems, or the additional regulatory requirements sought by Baykeeper, would have on nitrogen levels in the many estuarine water bodies surrounding Long Island,” Ms. Severino wrote in an e-mail.

    The county’s director of planning, Sarah Landsdale, agreed that the county’s water systems are under pressure. In an e-mail, Ms. Landsdale wrote, “We are reviewing the data that came out of last year’s Groundwater Management Plan and along with several sewage treatment studies currently being conducted are moving toward implementation of both stronger policies and infrastructure improvements.”

    Bob DeLuca, president of Group for the East End, applauded Mr. McAllister’s efforts. “Kevin is connecting the dots,” said Mr. DeLuca. “It’s a good move to put the state on notice that at some point the bill comes due. There are a lot of implications for that, economic and environmental.”

    Mr. DeLuca said he thought that a statewide legislative approach is necessary for action on water quality, and that time is of the essence. “There’s going to have be an imperative for New York State to deal with nitrogen levels. The standards we have for drinking water may be okay, but they’re not for surface waters. The amount of degradation you have to clean continues to go up.”

    “If we start tomorrow, it’s going to take a while. We don’t need any more algal blooms or fish kills. As soon as we can stop that, there’s an economic and environmental benefit,” Mr. DeLuca said.

    Mr. McAllister warned that the situation is urgent and procrastination on the state and county levels may be ruinous to the environment and local economy alike.

    “Enough kicking the can down the road,” he said. “Look at East Hampton’s economy: it’s based on beaches and water. For those that say the costs are prohibitive, when pollution reaches a level where it threatens people — a red tide, where you cannot eat the shellfish, or bacterial levels shutting down beaches — the cost factor goes out the window. We’re going to enforce this. If we have to get into a courtroom to make everyone understand this, we will do so.”

    After a presentation by Dominick Ninivaggi, superintendent of the county’s Division of Vector Control, members of the East Hampton Town Board decided not to act on calls by several residents to ask the county to stop using the chemical methoprene to spray for mosquitoes in salt marshes here.

    Mr. Ninivaggi said there was “a lot of misinformation and misunderstanding of what the scientific data show.”

    The county vector control program was adopted in 2007 after an extensive review of its details, including an environmental review of the chemicals to be used, he said. “Methoprene was looked at very thoroughly,” and a secondary review was performed by outside agencies such as the State University at Stony Brook and the United States Geological Survey. Sampling of salt marshes that have been sprayed, Mr. Ninivaggi said, showed that the amount of the chemical remaining in the marsh is “extremely minute, and disappears very quickly.”

    “This is by no means any kind of deadly poison or environmental concern.” And, he said, “the amount of material that we use is far below the amount of material that would be deleterious. The margins of safety are several hundredfold.”

    There are no known effects to shellfish, he said, or to humans.

    Methoprene has been used since 1995, Mr. Ninivaggi said, along with a biological larvicide, Bacillus thuringiensis, or Bti, which some have suggested could be used exclusively as a safer substitute for methoprene.

    “Bti alone does not do the whole job,” Mr. Ninivaggi said. Alternating the agents of attack prevents mosquitoes from becoming resistant to one of the substances, he added.

    Besides the West Nile virus, which is spread by mosquitoes, of particular concern, he told the board, is a virulent strain of equine encephalitis called Triple-E, which has a 50 to 75-percent mortality rate in humans and often leaves survivors with neurological damage. “It’s important to remember that there is more than one mosquito-borne disease,” he said.

    Mosquitoes that carry both diseases live in local salt marshes, and the most effective strategy is to kill larvae in the marsh, he said. Once adult mosquitoes reach residential neighborhoods, an “adulticide” — a broad-spectrum pesticide — must be used to kill them, he said. Because that chemical is “toxic to a lot of different species of insects,” and the spraying exposes residents, county vector control tries to avoid the need to treat adult mosquitoes. “We do very little of that.”

    West Nile was found this year in mosquitoes from the Three Mile Harbor and Beach Hampton areas of East Hampton Town, he said. Salt marshes around Napeague and Accabonac Harbors, as well as in Beach Hampton, are the areas of the town routinely treated by the county, he said.

    Although in 2007 the East Hampton Town Board adopted a resolution asking the county to discontinue the use of methoprene here, Mr. Ninivaggi explained to the board that local municipalities are “specifically pre-empted” by state law from enacting their own laws regarding pesticide use.

    “There’s always more to be learned. There’s always a possibility of some very subtle or sub-lethal effects that nobody’s seen,” the county official said of methoprene. But, he said, “we are 30 years in” to its use, “and you have to consider the alternatives.”

    Board members said after Mr. Ninivaggi’s presentation that, given the information he had provided, they felt comfortable with the county’s spraying program.