The East Hampton Town Board has voted to approve the lease of a town-owned parcel on Pantigo Place in East Hampton for the construction of an emergency care facility. 

Having been urged by various officials at a public hearing last Thursday to do so — including the mayor of East Hampton Village, the chief of the Montauk Fire Department, and the chairman of the East Hampton Healthcare Foundation — the board voted to approve the lease at a meeting later that day.

The Southampton Hospital Association, which will build and operate the facility, will sign a 50-year lease for 40 Pantigo Place at a cost of $20 per year and hold an option for a 25-year extension and, upon its completion, an additional 24-year extension. 

The $35 million facility, for which New York State will provide a $10 million grant, will displace two playing fields that are used for Little League games, among other events. The association has pledged up to $1.7 million for the construction of two new lighted ballfields and associated amenities on property to be provided by the town. 

Parts of the structure of Stony Brook Southampton Hospital are nearly 80 years old, Robert Chaloner, its president and chief executive officer, told the board, and the long-range plan is to build a new facility on the State University’s Stony Brook Southampton campus, farther to the west. “Accessibility to the hospital is currently a challenge” for people to the east of the existing hospital, he said, particularly in the tourist season. “We don’t see the traffic getting better anytime soon, and we believe that the best solution to that is to create a more robust health system with facilities that are able to care for people closer to home.”

The distance to Stony Brook Southampton Hospital, and the crowded roadways, “are not only an issue in health care but in recruiting ambulance volunteers as well,” Mr. Chaloner said.

Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr. of East Hampton Village read prepared remarks that included a sobering statistic. Last year, the mayor said, the village’s ambulance corps made 1,225 trips to the hospital. 

With the construction of an emergency-room facility in East Hampton, demand on volunteer emergency medical technicians and paid paramedics in East Hampton Town would be reduced, allowing them to get ambulances back into rotation sooner, to respond and treat other patients sooner, and, in the case of the volunteers who make up the great majority of those running calls, to return to home or work sooner.  

“This project has our full support,” the mayor said. “The time is now to bring our community hospital to East Hampton. Not later, today.” 

“I can only echo some of the sentiment,” said Chief Vincent Franzone of the Montauk Fire Department. “I’ve got 30 personnel that run 762 calls,” he said of Montauk’s volunteer ambulance crews, citing last year’s total. “Think about the time frame it takes to do that. The numbers are unimaginable to get that done.” 

And, he said, without the construction of the East Hampton emergency facility, the added travel time to Stony Brook Southampton Hospital itself, if and when it moves west, could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. “If we have to go even farther . . . it’s just going to make it that much harder for our personnel and the residents of our town.”

Jay Levine, a Montauk resident who serves on Stony Brook Southampton Hospital’s board of directors, also emphasized the importance of short transport times to a medical emergency’s outcome. Should one have a stroke in the summer, he said, he or she might not arrive at the hospital for 90 minutes or more. “My prognosis is not good in that time frame,” he told the board. “If we can cut that in half,” chances for recovery rise significantly. “I implore you, please approve this lease agreement with the hospital,” he said. 

Mr. Chaloner told the board that a site on Stephen Hand’s Path in East Hampton had also been discussed, but “we prefer the Pantigo site location. It’s already adjacent to doctors’ offices. Keeping doctors near each other . . . encourages the doctors to work together.” 

Martin Drew, a Springs resident, advised the board not to decide in haste. “We don’t have a site for the ballfields” that would be displaced by the emergency facility, he said, “but you want to give this up to the hospital. . . . The reality is, you’ve got to answer some questions before you just give this away.” 

Henry Murray, chairman of the East Hampton Healthcare Foundation, answered that the Pantigo Place location is greatly preferable to Stephen Hand’s Path. “The reason it is sited where it is, is because it is centrally located in East Hampton Township,” he said. “It really has to be in this site, because it’s adjacent to the current health care center, where we have doctors’ offices. . . . The people of East Hampton deserve it, and they deserve it where they can get to it without traveling all the way to the west end of the township.” 

Mr. Franzone, adding that his son plays baseball, said, “I have to agree that we need to come up with a plan and have that in place, as well . . . but I believe the board will do the right thing and have that accomplished. Please pass this,” he said of the lease. “We do need it.” 

The hearing was closed, and the board later voted to approve the lease. 

Almost an hour passed before Representative Lee Zeldin’s name was uttered at a forum featuring six candidates for the Democratic Party’s nomination to oppose him on Saturday, but once it did, he was roundly criticized as a rubber stamp for President Trump’s policies, particularly with respect to immigration.  

The forum, hosted by the Southampton Progressive Caucus, drew an overflow crowd to Chancellors Hall at the State University’s Stony Brook Southampton campus. It also featured an activist fair with groups including the East End Action Network, Indivisible North Fork, Let’s Visit Lee Zeldin, the Long Island Progressive Coalition, Progressive East End Reformers, and the Southampton Town Democratic Committee. 

The president’s reported language in reference to Haiti and African nations  during a discussion with lawmakers last Thursday on immigration matters was widely criticized. Mr. Zeldin, a second-term Republican representing New York’s First Congressional District, defended the president on CNN and on social media, saying on Twitter that he would not “call for the President’s mouth to be washed out with soap” and reiterating his support for him. A story on Mr. Zeldin’s comments appears elsewhere on this page.

Mr. Trump’s remarks were bad, said Brendon Henry, one of the candidates at Saturday’s forum, but Mr. Zeldin’s were worse. “I actually told him on his web page, ‘This is why I’m going to beat you in November,’ ” he said to applause. “We can’t become a nation that turns its back on people.” 

Mr. Henry, who lives in Center Moriches and works as a bartender, said that immigrants are “hard-working people. They’re families, people in your community. . . . I know these people, and all they want is a chance.” 

Mr. Trump’s meeting with legislators could have led to a resolution on what to do about the so-called Dreamers — undocumented immigrants brought into the country by their parents — but “Trump shot it down,” said Perry Gershon, a candidate who lives in East Hampton. “And you can look at where Lee Zeldin has come out on this. He’s not attacking Trump. He says we’re not going to wash his mouth out with soap. That’s not the way we fix our problems in America. We need our congressman to be pushing for immigration reform.”

Vivian Viloria-Fisher, a former County Legislator from East Setauket, said that for a time Suffolk County was “ground zero for immigrant issues” and that the county has a history of shameful incidents. 

Ms. Viloria-Fisher said that when Mr. Zeldin was campaigning against his predecessor, Tim Bishop, in 2014, he used “immigration as a fearmongering tactic to try to get votes.” Immigrants applying for legal status under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals initiative  “have had to put their lives on hold,” she said, and Mr. Trump has pulled the rug out from under “people who have a proven record of being great participants in our county’s culture, in our country’s communities.” 

“Lee Zeldin has not done anything to make their lives whole again,” Ms. Viloria-Fisher said. “We must have a comprehensive immigration policy, because we can’t continue to have 12 million people, maybe more, living in the shadows.”

Elaine DiMasi, a former project manager at Brookhaven National Laboratory, also spoke about illegal immigration being used as a political tactic: “Why are we still afraid that Lee Zeldin is going to succeed with this wedge issue? It’s because we know that he’s going to pull out racism, that we now know exists, much greater than ever before.”

When the candidates’ conversation turned to a discussion of foreign policy, David Pechefsky, a Patchogue native and former staff member of the New York City Council, criticized Mr. Zeldin as appearing eager for military conflict. “That guy seems to want us to go to war with Iran,” he said. “We need to stop this right now.” 

The candidates were in general agreement in their condemnation of Mr. Zeldin, and seemed to be mostly in agreement on other issues raised by the moderator, Stephen Kotz of The Sag Harbor Express. 

On health care, they voiced support for the Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act, introduced in the House of Representatives one year ago. “We can’t be the only country in the civilized world that doesn’t have” universal health care, Mr. Henry said. “We need to take the power from the insurance companies.” 

Mr. Pechefsky, whose wife is an emergency room doctor, said that Medicare for all is “the only solution to having a better, fairer, more cost-effective health care system. We must get the profit motive out of health care. It’s unconscionable, how many people are denied health care through our current system.”

The obstacles posed by insurance companies and other interest groups are immense, Mr. Pechefsky said, but, as with all momentous changes in public policy, “there’s going to have to be organizing, education, awareness campaigns.”  

“Voters already agree that the costs are too high,” said Ms. DiMasi, who decried Republican-led efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act. “People do not want to lose what they already have.”

Mr. Gershon was in agreement about the Medicare for All Act. It would take “the burden of purchasing health care away from businesses,” he said, and be “a big step forward.” 

“We can’t leave the health and welfare of the people to the vagaries of political manipulations,” Ms. Viloria-Fisher said, citing Congress’s failure to reauthorize funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which covers nine million people and is quickly running out of money. She also criticized the Trump administration’s recent efforts to encourage states to impose a work requirement for Medicaid recipients. 

“If Medicare for All is not perfect at the outset, look, Social Security wasn’t perfect at the outset,” she said. “We are moving in the right direction” with the Medicare for All Act. 

Suffolk County Legislator Kate Browning of Shirley, a dissenting voice, said that the country is not ready for it. “We need to make sure that people are educated as to what it is,” said Ms. Browning, an immigrant from Northern Ireland. “There’s a lot of fear out there about what this is going to do, and ‘Why should I be responsible for everybody else’s health care?’ ”

Ms. Viloria-Fisher disagreed. “People in red states are seeing how much they need the A.C.A. now,” she said. “We’re ready for the next step, we’re ready for universal health care.”

All of the candidates advocated a more compassionate foreign policy than Mr. Trump’s. 

“We need a real sea change in our foreign policy,” Mr. Pechefsky said. “We need a foreign policy that’s not driven by the priorities of defense contractors.” The current administration, he said, practices “overt racism, both in domestic policy and foreign policy.”

He criticized America’s alliance with Saudi Arabia, saying that country’s intervention in Yemen, during which an estimated 10,000 civilians have been killed, is immoral, as is the United States’ 2017 arms deal with the Saudis that is worth $350 billion over 10 years. “Our support . . . so they can bomb infrastructure in Yemen, it is immoral, and we are complicit in that,” Mr. Pechefsky said.

Mr. Trump “is supporting strongmen” in Turkey and Russia, Mr. Gershon said. “Congress is not officially behind what Trump is doing, but it’s not standing up to stop him. We, as congressmen, need to . . . stop what Trump is doing.” He noted that the ambassador to Panama had just resigned over differences with the president. 

“We have spent so much in blood and treasure on Iraq, and where has it gotten us?” Ms. Viloria-Fisher asked. “We have to drop the false dichotomy that if you’re against war, you’re against the young men and women who are in the military. You’re protecting them if you’re opposed to war.”

Mr. Henry described himself as “the son of two hippies,” and thus antiwar. “We need to take care of the veterans we have and not create more,” he said. “We need to evaluate any alliance with any country that violates human rights, women’s rights, gay rights, any rights. . . . You have to lead by example — we’re Americans.”­

With one dissenting vote, David Lys, a member of East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals, president of the Amagansett Life-Saving and Coast Guard Station society, and a founder of Citizens for Access Rights, was appointed to the town board at its meeting on Thursday night. He fills the open seat vacated after Peter Van Scoyoc was elected town supervisor in November and sworn in on Jan. 2.

Mr. Lys and his wife, Rachel, who live in Springs, own East Hampton Physical Therapy and Weekend Warriors Tours and Outfitters. He graduated from East Hampton High School in 1994 and from Penn State University in 2000 with a degree in kinesiology.

The board seat Mr. Lys will occupy will be contested in a special election in November. The winner will serve until the end of 2019.

Mr. Van Scoyoc said that the board had spoken with "a number of very able candidates" and that he was "very impressed with the high quality and caliber" of them. Mr. Lys, he said, is "the father of four young children. He has a small business. He knows the challenges working people face." He has distinguished himself for the last five years on the zoning board, he said, and is a supporter of environmental protection, public access to beaches, affordable housing, "and all the values that the current town board holds dear," Mr. Van Scoyoc said.

After the supervisor, Deputy Supervisor Sylvia Overby, and Councilwoman Kathee Burke-Gonzalez registered their votes in favor of Mr. Lys's appointment, Jeffrey Bragman, the board's newest member, asked to preface his vote with a comment. He had discussed several issues with Mr. Lys, including East Hampton Airport, the zoning code, and immigration. "I tell you in all candor," Mr. Bragman, who was elected in November, said, "that I had some concerns about issues where I thought we might not be on the same page."

As to the airport, "I came away with the feeling that we might not balance the interests of local recreational pilots and the corporate interests . . . and the interests of the community in quite the same way, which was a concern to me," he said. Ditto the zoning code, which Mr. Bragman suggested might be modified to "help people feel that they are not getting priced out of the market."

"I know that David is the son of an immigrant and sensitive to the issue," Mr. Bragman continued, but their discussion about the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, "its presence in the town, and its effect on our residents" left him "a little bit uneasy that we might not be on the same page."

"My vote is respectfully no," Mr. Bragman said, but added, "I may be the last to vote on the nomination, but I can still be the first to say welcome to David Lys. I'm hopeful that as we get to know each other better, the values that we share, particularly to protect the town we love, are going to be more important than the things we differ on."

The gray seal pup found wandering on Bendigo Road in Amagansett late Tuesday afternoon was released back into the wild on Friday.

According to a press release from the Riverhead Foundation for Marine Research and Preservation, the pup, who was only a little over a month old, "is completely weaned from its mother." That is normal for the species, Halichoerus grypus, meaning hooked-nosed sea pig in Latin, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's web site. The animals live up to 35 years in the wild.

Rescuers at the foundation named the pup Fudge Brownie. They released him into Shinnecock Bay around noon on Friday.

The animal was spotted by drivers on Bendigo Road late Tuesday afternoon. It had apparently come up a 150-yard driveway on a property that faces Gardiner's Bay. Three men, Sgt. Dan Roman of the East Hampton Town police, Dell Cullum, a local wildlife expert, and Bud Pitt, one of the drivers who had come upon the seal, kept it safe on the side of the road as the sun set until the foundation's rescue unit arrived. "The animal unfortunately traveled too far from the water line and was unable to redirect itself," according to a press release from the foundation.

Normally, such animals can be guided back to the water without being touched. With night having fallen and water a good distance away, the decision was made over the phone by Maxine Montello, rescue supervisor, to bring the pup to the foundation, and check it over, before releasing it back into the wild. "The animal is very alert and active," the press release says, and is in good health.

The marine mammals are a protected species, and the foundation's advice for those who spot seals in the usual places, such as on rocks on the beach, or in the sand, is to stay 50 yards away from them. That was not an option on Bendigo Road Tuesday evening.

The Town of East Hampton has acquired the Wainscott property on which the former Star Room nightclub, once known as the Swamp, is situated.

The town will pay $2.1 million for the 1.1-acre commercially zoned property on Montauk Highway using the community preservation fund and a $300,000 donation from the Friends of Georgica Pond Foundation. The not-for-profit organization was founded by pondfront property owners to identify sources of pollutants contributing to the algal blooms that have fouled the water body in recent years.

The closing is to take place on Tuesday at 11 a.m., at which time the foundation is to present a check.

The derelict buildings on the property are to be demolished and removed, according to a release issued by the town on Monday. The town will develop a management plan that will address the open space values and potential use of the land as part of a soon-to-be-finalized Wainscott hamlet study and plan.

The announcement comes three months after the town board voted to purchase the property, a move that many Wainscott residents had urged. The property was owned by the estate of Isha Kausik, but a bank, which held a $2.5 million mortgage on it, had to approve the town's purchase.

A recent proposal to build a car wash on the property was stridently opposed by members of the community, who feared an increase in traffic and a detrimental environmental impact.

Scott Wilson, the town's director of land acquisitions and management, said in October that the town has been eyeing the site since 2015.

In hindsight, the Beatles were as Nobel worthy as Bob Dylan or Albert Einstein.

They’re always quoted. Their words mutate, not into gold, like a surreal version of the Midas touch, but into printer’s ink. They inspire intense admiration. They stand on tall pedestals. They display outrageous behavior. Boldness. Notoriety. Irreverence. Blasphemy. Albert Einstein, the Beatles, and Bob Dylan inhabit public universes linked by Google. 

Google “the Beatles” and you get 81.4 million results, “Albert Einstein” yields 131 million results, and “Bob Dylan” 52.9 million. This is “Google fame” (which didn’t exist in the heyday of the Beatles), not Nobel selection committee voters. Would the committee have attached appropriate importance to the apparently infinite I.Q. of Google fame?

A triple coincidence — of their work, their personalities, and an avid press — produced a perfect storm of publicity and an avalanche of recognition for Einstein, Dylan, and the Beatles. Today we would call them rock stars, defined as those special individuals who inspire intense admiration. Original, thoughtful, creative rebels, they rejected what came before them. “To punish me for my contempt for authority,” Einstein said, “fate made me an authority myself.”

The Beatles ignited a firestorm of negative publicity in 1966 when John Lennon asserted, “I don’t know which will go first — rock ’n’ roll or Christianity” and “We’re more popular than Jesus.” (Not true, by the way: “Jesus” gets 10 times more hits on Google than “The Beatles.”)

In 1919, a journalist asked Einstein what he would do if observations failed to match his theory, and he famously replied, “Then I would feel sorry for the good Lord. The theory is correct.” Dylan said, “I’m the spokesman for my generation.” Is that as irreverent, confident, and arrogant as the blasphemous Beatles?

Media coverage of both Einstein’s 1921 tour of the United States and the Beatles’ many visits here in the 1960s bear striking resemblances. The Beatles, with sales of more than 800 million albums worldwide, are the best-selling band in history, in the United Kingdom and in the U.S., becoming, as the music critic Jonathan Gould has said, “a catalyst for an explosion of mass enthusiasm for album-formatted rock that would revolutionize both the aesthetics and the economics of the record business” and the sensibilities of generations of fans. 

In 2007, Gould rhapsodized: “The overwhelming consensus is that the Beatles had created a popular masterpiece: a rich, sustained, and overflowing work of collaborative genius whose bold ambition and startling originality dramatically enlarged the possibilities and raised the expectations of what the experience of listening to popular music on record could be.” (Emphasis added in both instances.) 

The italics apply equally to Einstein’s physics, and to Dylan’s creative lyrical music.

In his 2006 book “Albert Meets America,” Jozsef Illy says that journalists were bewitched, charmed — even awed — when reporting on “Einstein’s straightforward simplicity, kindliness, patience, genuine modesty, and naive humor,” which “almost made one lose sight of the transcendent mental power.” He quotes reporters who noted the “spell of [his] wizardry,” the necromancy of . . . strange theories . . . that catches the gaping crowd,” the “beauty and terror of this . . . deeper music of the spheres.”

Again, italics anticipate the similar celebrity worship, reverential attitudes, and rock-star status of Bob Dylan, and of the Beatles during their visits to America.

In 1921, the press began admiring Einstein’s luminous genius. His enigmatic notion of curved space, published in 1915, had been validated in 1919. Sir Arthur Eddington, a highly regarded astronomer, had determined from astronomical observations during a solar eclipse that light from a distant star was bent by the gravitational field of our sun. The New York Times lead headline — “Lights All Askew in the Heavens” — and a heartfelt tsunami of praise made Einstein a household name to the public at large, and an icon of 20th-century genius.

In 1985, Marshall Missner wrote a scholarly article, “Why Einstein Became Famous in America.” He suggested that it was a “tale of serendipity . . . a public campaign run by an invisible hand,” a multifactorial convergence of the right timing, the right language (“curved space,” “four-dimensional space-time continuum,” “finite universe”), Einstein’s amusing, warm, earthy presence, and his absolute indifference to fame. 

Serendipity, the right timing, and the right words also helped the fame of Dylan and the Beatles.

Movie stars, presidents, politicians, philosophers, and plain citizens sought Albert Einstein. Once glamorized, he was invited to Hollywood premieres. At a film opening, he and Charlie Chaplin were surrounded by hundreds of cheering fans and journalists. Chaplin said to Einstein: “They’re cheering me because they understand me; they’re cheering you because they do not understand you.” Einstein said to Chaplin, “What does this all mean?” Chaplin answered, “Absolutely nothing.” 

Fans and fame also became burdensome to the Beatles and Dylan. 

Not only was Albert Einstein selected by Time magazine to be its cover story as “The Man of the Century,” but the Beatles were prominently included in Time’s list of the 100 most influential individuals of the 20th century. 

In 1915, Einstein revealed what gravity is — unlike Newton, who told us what gravity does. Chekhov said, “Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glints of silver on the shards of broken glass.” Newton told us, but Einstein and the Beatles showed us their glints of silver. 

Einstein received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics, and its 2017 edition was awarded to Kip Thorne, Rainer Weiss, and Barry Barish for their single-minded determination to experimentally confirm Einstein’s theory of gravitational waves. Of course it’s too late for the Beatles.

Dylan, Einstein, and the Beatles entered human consciousness through unlikely back doors, revealing strange harmonic splendors and astonishing originality. Both his physics and their music commanded our attention, imagined new directions. Google fame, though it came in different flavors, became the driver of a “new normal,” inventive styles, new ideas, and new twists on the very idea of newness itself. 

Dylan, Einstein, and the Beatles made the world culturally and conceptually richer, a better place to live. With or without the Nobel. 

Stephen Rosen will speak about “Albert Einstein: Rock Star” at the East Hampton Middle School on Feb. 1 at 6 p.m. He is at work on a musical about Einstein.

Climate change activists have ample reason to despair in 2018, as President Trump has mocked and denied the phenomenon that an overwhelming majority of climate scientists have concluded is a real and urgent threat to civilization. More than 700 people have left the federal Environmental Protection Agency since the president took office, The New York Times reported last month, and most are not being replaced. 

Under Scott Pruitt, the E.P.A.’s administrator, the agency began to dismantle its climate change website last spring and announced a repeal of President Obama’s Clean Power Plan. Also last spring, the president announced that the United States would withdraw from the 2015 Paris agreement on climate change.

At the same time, however, there is a growing movement for states to bypass the federal government and enact policies consistent with the Paris Accord, under which nations pledge to reduce greenhouse gas emissions with the goal of limiting an increase in the global average temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. 

Last week, Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington made a renewed push for his state to implement a tax on fossil-fuel emissions, asking legislators to approve a $20-per-ton tax on carbon emissions. The revenue would be allocated toward renewable energy initiatives and climate resilience efforts. 

Previous efforts to implement a carbon tax in the state were doomed by opposition from conservatives as well as disagreement among its proponents as to how to allocate the money. 

California’s Air Resources Board designed a cap-and-trade program that the state implemented in 2012, which established a limit on greenhouse gas emissions. Polluters subject to the cap are able to trade allowances to emit greenhouse gases, with the cost paid for those allowances set at quarterly auctions. The effort is aimed at reducing emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2020, and an 80-percent reduction from 1990 levels by 2050.

That approach failed in Washington in 2014, according to The Seattle Times, and Governor Inslee is now promoting a tax such as that implemented in British Columbia in 2008. 

In New York, where Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has set ambitious goals to dramatically reduce emissions by transitioning from fossil fuels to renewable energy, a bill before the State Legislature would levy a carbon tax and issue 60 percent of its revenue as a rebate to moderate and low-income residents, with the remainder allocated to support a transition to 100-percent clean energy and mass transit, and to improve climate change adaptation. These efforts would include payments and subsidies for renewable energy, energy conservation and efficiency measures, infrastructure and mass transit capacity improvements, agricultural adaptation measures, protection of low-lying areas including coastlines, and emergency responses to extreme weather. 

Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. is a co-sponsor of the bill. “I see the carbon tax as a viable option to reduce reliance on fossil fuels and make the transition to clean energy,” he said last week. He called the bill’s provisions to mitigate a carbon tax’s impact on low and moderate-income families through a tax credit a strength, but added that there has not been much activity on it in the Legislature to date. There is a sponsor in the Senate, he said, but little support in that chamber. 

In a subsequent email last week, Mr. Thiele said that he had spoken with its sponsor in the Assembly, Kevin Cahill. “This is definitely a priority for him,” he said. “I think this issue will get an airing in 2018 because there will be a lot of focus on climate change in Albany.” 

Local chapters of Citizens Climate Lobby, a national, nonpartisan organization that advocates the phased-in imposition of a fee on fossil fuels that would be collected by the Treasury Department, placed into a trust fund, and rebated in full to households, are pushing for state-level action, said John Andrews, co-leader of the Long Island East chapter. Last summer, “we endorsed a statewide statement of support for climate action,” he said, “and we are planning further activities this year.”

Citizens Climate Lobby continues to advocate a national carbon fee and dividend plan, Mr. Andrews said, “but each state is likely to approach this differently, and I am confident that C.C.L. will not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” 

“It is believed that state-level carbon fees can have the dual benefit of reducing carbon released into the atmosphere and helping to push the balance toward national enactment,” said Joshua Lipsman, a physician, attorney, and member of the climate lobby’s Brooklyn chapter and statewide planning group. “At smaller levels of government such as county, town, and village, green efforts are very important, but a carbon fee is impossible due to carbon product production being out of local jurisdiction.”

Dr. Lipsman said that the carbon tax bill in the Legislature is unlikely to garner enough support to become law “until the partisan composition of the New York State Senate changes.” C.C.L representatives have visited the offices of 24 of the Senate’s 32 Republicans, he said, and staffers “have indicated it would be difficult to support the Democratic bill for a variety of reasons, one of which is the use of the revenues.” 

Money raised from a carbon fee can be used in a revenue-neutral or non-revenue-neutral fashion, Dr. Lipsman said. “These terms refer to whether the funds raised are kept by the government for its purposes or returned to the public,” less reasonable administrative costs. If kept by government, they are subject to being used for a variety of purposes, “from laudable ones such as sustainability and social justice programs to purposes completely unrelated to climate change such as balancing a needy state budget.” The latter course contributed to the infighting that damaged previous efforts in Washington State, while conservatives tend to oppose legislation they believe will expand government. 

Citizens Climate Lobby, he said, could support either a revenue-neutral or a non-revenue-neutral bill. “We feel that the imperative to do something about climate change . . . must eclipse divisions over how carbon-fee revenue is spent.” 

“As I believe without carbon taxes there is no hope to sufficiently curtail emissions to make a difference, I am for almost any version of it,” said Don Matheson, a member of C.C.L.’s Long Island East chapter. “I very much hope that Governor Inslee’s effort, sight unseen, because of his vocal support, will do better than the previous effort.”

At last week’s East Hampton Village Board meeting, Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr. declared that the “handwriting is on the wall” regarding the likelihood of legislation to rein in the use of leaf blowers. The meeting, which drew a large au­­­­dience of landscapers, some of whom expressed their displeasure at the possibility of a leaf blower ban, was a skirmish in what could be a protracted battle between the village and a prominent sector of the East End business community.

The possibility of litigation against the village was raised at the meeting by Donald Mahoney, the president of Mahoney Associates landscaping company, who said that the trade association to which his company belongs — the Nassau Suffolk Landscape Ground Association (N.S.L.G.A.) — would be proactive in fighting any overly burdensome legislation.

H. Pat Voges, the government affairs liaison for the association, said this week that “the blower is a tool that we need to do our job right and to keep your villages beautiful.” Although Mr. Voges cited his past work with East Hampton Town and Southampton to come up with guidelines that strike a balance between unfettered use and over-restrictive regulations — such as limiting the time of day leaf blowers can be used — he drew the line at asking his members to give up leaf blowers altogether. 

Mr. Mahoney pointed out in a telephone conversation this week that the N.S.L.G.A. already offers a quick and easy way to reduce leaf blower usage: by providing instruction to landscapers on the proper use of the devices. “Our association has a training course,” said Mr. Mahoney. “Knowing how to operate leaf blowers correctly can reduce the amount of time they’re in use.” 

On the subject of the noise leaf blowers create, Arthur Graham, the village board member who has taken the lead on this debate, referred to the “earmuffs” landscape workers often wear while using leaf blowers. “To the extent that your equipment is so noisy that you need hearing protection, that kind of raises a little bit of a red flag to us,” he said. 

Mr. Mahoney took issue with Mr. Graham’s statement — drawing a distinction between a company taking steps to protect the health of its workers who are in close proximity to the machines all day long and the noise level residents may be exposed to for, say, 20 minutes from a distance away. “I’m not an audiologist but I can’t imagine what damage that could do to an eardrum,” said Mr. Mahoney.

At the Jan. 9 board meeting, Mr. Graham announced that the board would be mainly looking at limiting the use of leaf blowers between Memorial Day and Labor Day, citing that as a stretch of time when the machines aren’t generally necessary. “In the summertime, you’re really better off leaving the [grass] clippings on the lawn,” he said. But Mr. Mahoney countered that, saying that in his experience “people don’t want to track grass into their homes and their pools.”

Although Mr. Mahoney said that he and the landscapers association would wait to see what legislation the village crafted before deciding what their next move would be, Mr. Voges was far less circumspect. “Would we go to litigation? Yes. Do we have attorneys? Yes.” But, he added, “we can work out an amicable agreement, that’s the best thing for everybody.”

A federal district court judge has ruled that a lawsuit by environmentalists over the government’s handling of the potential sale of Plum Island can go forward.

Judge Denis Hurley of the Eastern District of New York ruled on Thursday that the Connecticut Fund for the Environment/Save the Sound and six other organizations have standing to sue the Department of Homeland Security and the General Services Administration over their plan to auction the island to the highest bidder.

The federal government has owned Plum Island since 1899. It has been used as a research laboratory since World War II, and a variety of infectious animal-borne diseases has been studied there since 1954.

The Department of Homeland Security announced in 2005 that the facility’s activities would be moved to the new Bio-and-Agro Defense Facility in Kansas. The cost of relocating to Kansas was to be offset by the sale of the island. Elected officials including Representative Lee Zeldin and his predecessor, Tim Bishop, have opposed the plan.

Mr. Zeldin, in fact, introduced a Plum Island Preservation Act in the House of Representatives, which has been passed twice with bipartisan support but awaits Senate consideration. It seeks to commission the Government Accountability Office, in consultation with Homeland Security, to develop a comprehensive plan for the island’s future. The legislation requires that the plan focus on conservation, education, and research, and include alternative uses for the island, including a transfer of ownership to another federal agency, to the state or local municipality, a nonprofit organization, or a combination thereof.

“The current law, which mandates the sale of the island to the highest bidder, is the wrong path forward,” Mr. Zeldin said in a statement, “because it does not provide for public access and permanent preservation of the island, or the continued use of the research infrastructure. The state-of-the-art research facility at Plum Island must not go to waste, and preserving this island’s natural beauty while maintaining a research mission will continue to provide important economic and environmental benefits to Long Island.”

The environmental groups filed suit in 2016, arguing that the federal agencies violated provisions of the National Environmental Protection Act, Endangered Species Act, Coastal Zone Management Act, and other federal laws by failing to adequately consider the environmental impact of a sale.

Judge Hurley rejected the Homeland Security and General Services Administration’s February 2017 motion to dismiss, citing arguments in the complaint that the 840-acre island provides habitat for several federally endangered and threatened flora and fauna, including the roseate tern and piping plover. The waters surrounding the island are home to federally listed marine species such as Atlantic hawksbill sea turtles, Kemp’s ridley turtles, and Atlantic sturgeon.

“This is a very well-written decision that denies the government’s motion to dismiss in its entirety,” Roger Reynolds, chief legal officer for the organizations, said in a statement. “We’ll now have the opportunity to present our full case to the court and ask that the sale of the island be halted until the agencies complete a proper environmental review in accordance with federal law.”

The decision, said Bob DeLuca, president of Group for the East End, is “an early and important victory for everyone who believes Plum Island is a critical part of our nation’s natural heritage that should not be auctioned off like a piece of meat to the highest bidder. This ruling is also a victory for due process in supporting the rights of individual citizens and conservation organizations to challenge the actions of government bureaucrats when those actions fail to follow the specific requirements of environmental law.”

Deepwater Wind, the Rhode Island company that plans to construct the South Fork Wind Farm approximately 36 miles east of Montauk, has asked East Hampton Town for easements allowing it to land the offshore installation’s transmission cable at Beach Lane in Wainscott.

During a presentation before the town board on Tuesday, officials from the company, which built and operates the five-turbine Block Island Wind Farm, presented the most extensive survey data to date with respect to that offshore installation. It will deliver those data, and to-date analyses of the area of its proposed South Fork Wind Farm, to the East Hampton Town Trustees’ harbor management committee tomorrow at 6 p.m. at Town Hall. 

Tuesday’s presentation was “a precursor to work that will all become public,” Clint Plummer, Deepwater Wind’s vice president of development, told the board. The company plans to submit applications to multiple federal and state permitting agencies by the end of March in order to meet a timeline to begin operations by the end of 2022. The process requires the company to demonstrate that it has obtained easements over municipally owned land, which the landing at Beach Lane, and the cable’s path to the Buell Lane, East Hampton, substation would necessitate. “We can’t submit applications if we’re going to use town-owned land unless we have consent from this board,” he said. 

Councilman Jeffrey Bragman questioned the premise of Mr. Plummer’s statement. “It seems to me, in my experience in environmental review, there’s usually a formal process in which your data is presented and analyzed by the reviewing entity,” he said. “I’m hoping that this kind of presentation is not what the project sponsors consider to be an environmental review that would be sufficient for the Town of East Hampton.” 

There will be multiple levels of review, Mr. Plummer said, and the town will participate in all of them, but “We need the town’s consent to begin that process. . . . What we’re asking for is a conditioned decision” granting rights conditioned upon receipt of all the other required approvals.

“We have alternatives,” Mr. Plummer said, referring to state-owned land in Hither Hills, by which Deepwater Wind could bypass town board and trustee approval. “Our preference is to work closely with the town, and have conditioned approval so we can start a process using a town-owned location.” 

That, Mr. Bragman said, “sounds a little like a slight arm-twist, saying you can’t work with the town” if the board opts to conduct an environmental quality review. “Intermittent presentations,” he said, are not “a cohesive way to evaluate the science you’re talking about.” 

But “we’re not reviewing the entire project or its impacts,” Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc told Mr. Bragman. “We’re talking about a landing site and easements over land to Buell Lane. So any review we would undertake would be specifically looking at potential impacts within those areas. Beyond that, all that review still has to take place as part of the myriad other permits and process.” 

Mr. Bragman was unmoved. “I’m not that crazy about handing off review to a federal agency that starts that review knowing they have our consent to land that cable when we haven’t looked at the issues,” he said. If town approval is required, an environmental analysis should precede the town’s consent, he said. 

Deepwater Wind seeks “a real estate right, not a permit, conditioned upon receipt of all the other approvals,” Mr. Plummer repeated, “subject to additional state and federal approval.” 

“I think we support the concept,” Mr. Bragman answered, but “I want to make sure the town doesn’t wave you through without taking a good look at it. This kind of presentation makes me a little uneasy,” if it is to serve as the basis of the board’s decision, he said.  

The exchange followed summaries of Deepwater Wind’s pre and post-construction surveys of the Block Island Wind Farm. “We learned a lot” from that project, said Aileen Kenny of Deepwater Wind, the majority of which is transferable to the South Fork Wind Farm. “Stakeholder engagement, early and often,” was one lesson, she said, and pointed to the Jan. 10 forum the company held in Montauk. 

The most important takeaway from studies of the Block Island Wind Farm “is how much science has been done there,” said Drew Carey, a consulting scientist for Deepwater Wind, calling a six-year survey spanning pre to post-construction unprecedented. 

Regular data collection demonstrates no difference, in terms of marine life or habitat, between the area where the Block Island Wind Farm’s five turbines are situated and nearby survey areas, Mr. Carey said. 

An examination of the condition and stomach contents of fish including winter flounder, summer flounder, silver hake, red hake, spotted hake, and Atlantic cod show no impact from construction or operation, he said, nor was prey availability affected. A lobster trap survey designed in conjunction with commercial fishermen is also showing no adverse impact, he said. 

Mr. Carey told the board that the electromagnetic field emanating from the South Fork Wind Farm’s transmission cable would not pose a danger to human or marine life. Modeling, he said, does not take into account that the cable will be buried. 

A study addressing the topic will be submitted to the town in the coming weeks, Mr. Plummer said. But, he emphasized, “This isn’t new. Submarine cables have been landed on Long Island for a long time.” Existing cables carry much higher voltage, “all without impact to humans and fish, for at minimum a decade,” he said.

A particular focus, Ms. Kenny said, is the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale, which suffered “a difficult year” in 2017 with multiple mortalities in the North Atlantic. “We commit to volunteer time restrictions on pile driving,” she said. “Not that pile driving would physically harm” the animals, but it could cause a mother and calf to go farther offshore, making them more vulnerable to predation. 

“Protected species observers” will call for construction to be halted if marine mammals are sited within a certain distance of the South Fork Wind Farm site, she said. The company works with groups including the National Wildlife Foundation, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Conservation Law Foundation, the New England Aquarium, and the Mystic Aquarium “to come up with ways we can take extra measures” to protect marine mammals, she said. Avian and bat surveys indicate that the Block Island Wind Farm has not proven hazardous to winged species, she added.

Most commercial fishermen on the South Fork remain opposed to the project, and the East Hampton Town Trustees will continue to demand that Deepwater Wind demonstrate that their concerns about disruption or destruction of their livelihood are unfounded. 

Fishermen have been invited to attend tomorrow’s meeting of the harbor management committee at Town Hall, said Rick Drew, a deputy clerk of the trustees and member of the committee. “The trustees have supported and protected East Hampton’s fishing interests for 350 years,” he said this week, “and we will continue to protect and support fishing interests, both commercial and recreational . . . going forward into a new era of offshore wind energy.”