When The Star reported, in October, that members of the Devon Yacht Club in Amagansett and residents who live along Gardiner’s Bay were unhappy about the appearance on the horizon of 10-acre offshore oyster farms, Suffolk County’s director of sustainability noted that the yacht club had “expressed concern.” 

Action has followed that expression of concern.

On Wednesday, an attorney for the yacht club, founded in 1908 and incorporated in 1916, filed a lawsuit in State Supreme Court seeking to bar the holders of leases for bottomland near the club from undertaking or continuing any action related to oyster farming at lease sites granted by the county’s aquaculture lease board in July, or engaging in any other activity that would interfere with sailing on Gardiner’s Bay. 

Along with the aquaculture lease board, the lawsuit names the county’s Planning Department and its director, the Amagansett Oyster Company, individual leaseholders, the Town of East Hampton, and the State Department of Environmental Conservation. 

After many years of planning, the county is implementing its Shellfish Aquaculture Lease Program in Peconic Bay and Gardiner’s Bay. The parcels are leased for private, commercial shellfish cultivation under a program established after New York State ceded title to approximately 100,000 acres of bottomland to Suffolk County, in 2004, and authorized the county to offer the acreage up for aquaculture. 

There are two active leases in proximity to the club, Dorian Dale, the county’s director of sustainability, who sits on the aquaculture lease program’s board, said in October. But, he said, they did not appear to be impeding club members’ ingress and egress. One of the leases, he added, has been active for four years. “It wasn’t until a more recent lease activated this summer in closer proximity, and the leaseholder informed the club as a courtesy, that they took notice,” he said last fall. 

Linda Margolin, representing the yacht club, corroborated Mr. Dale’s timeline, saying on Tuesday that the club was “totally unaware of this until one of the lessees, awarded last year, told them that they were going to be building out a lease site 1,000 feet from the end of Devon’s pier. That didn’t happen until August. At that point, they started investigating.”

Ms. Margolin disagreed with respect to navigability. “Our complaint, if you will, is that the lease sites approved by the county aquaculture lease board in July are a concentrated, mostly contiguous set of 20-acre parcels — 10 acres plus a 10-acre buffer — which make off limits roughly a couple hundred acres of water.” Roughly 120 acres, she said, “are in the heart of the area used for Devon’s members and the kids it teaches at sailing camp.” The club has 326 member families.

Written concerns were conveyed from the club to the county in August, Mr. Dale said in October. “We have assured them that we are giving the matter prompt attention, and it is being considered by our law department,” he said at the time. 

On Tuesday, Mr. Dale said that, given the lawsuit, he could no longer comment. “At the initial meeting we had, they expressed interest in maintaining a dialogue,” he said of the club. “Pursuant legal actions precluded that continuing conversation.” 

The club cites vested property rights, historical access, and navigability, among other issues. “Our principal thrust here is that the county pledged to operate this program in conformity with the environmental review they’d already done, and such other further review that would be necessary,” Ms. Margolin said. “When you look at the environmental reviews that are done under the State Environmental Quality Review Act, you consider things . . . more than just water quality or air quality: things like interference with recreational resources. The effect of what the county has done here, unfortunately, is interfere with a very significant and heavily used recreational resource. Devon is a principal user, but certainly not the only user.” 

The county issues leases within a delineated shellfish cultivation zone. The zone includes State Department of Environmental Conservation-issued Temporary Marine Area Use Assignment locations; historical, private oyster grants, and other contiguous areas where any impacts or conflicts arising from aquaculture activity have been deemed minimal, according to the program’s overview. 

Lease applicants must obtain permits from government agencies for conducting aquaculture on their sites, including a shellfish culture permit from the D.E.C. once a lease has been issued. Leases are open to those planning to develop a commercial shellfish aquaculture operation. The program requires an initial $100 application fee and an annual lease fee of $200 plus $5 per acre, and $200 for private oyster grants. 

Public meetings were held on June 30 and July 26 in Hauppauge to review and consider lease applications for 55 sites submitted under the 2017 application cycle. Applicants in 2016 included Promised Land Mariculture Co., Empire State Shellfish Co., SeaJay Oyster Farming, and Winter Harbor Oyster Co., as well as individuals. 

The program is expected to grow. New shellfish aquaculture leases will be limited to a total of 60 additional acres per year, for a total of 600 acres by the tenth year of the program’s implementation. The program also provides municipalities, researchers, and not-for-profit groups with noncommercial shellfish cultivation leases for experimental, educational, and shellfish resource restoration purposes.

Bivalves such as oysters, hard clams, and scallops filter the water as they feed, which helps to mitigate an overabundance of nutrients that promote algal blooms such as brown tide, which can kill shellfish and finfish. According to the county, dense shellfish populations on farm sites would also augment the spawning potential of native populations. 

The aquaculture lease program “holds great promise in terms of improved water quality and revival of a shellfish industry that once provided considerable economic benefits, not to mention very tasty appetizers,” Mr. Dale said last fall. 

But not everyone believes commercial shellfish mariculture of this type — which favors some species above others — is always an unmitigated plus for the environment. In California, the National Park Service, concerned that oyster waste would damage eelgrass, among other things, tried to limit the activities of the Drakes Bay Oyster Company; the National Audubon Society took another oyster company to court over concerns about its impact on the habitat of birds, plants, and invertebrates. And various studies have explored the positives and negatives of off-bottom cultivation of shellfish (the sort approved for Gardiner’s Bay), which throws shade on the bottomland and seagrasses below.

The program’s overview states that the shellfish farms will increase private investment in shellfish aquaculture businesses, and will not present conflicts with commercial fishermen and other user groups.

But, the club complains, the aquaculture lease board did not consider its user group, the recreational boaters of Devon, before it granted leases in July.

An early Tuesday morning fire that was sparked and fed by a corroded pipe carrying propane has left East Hampton Indoor Tennis without power and heat. The club, which is on Daniel's Hole Road, aims to reopen by the weekend, according to its managing partner, Scott Rubenstein.

Tom Baker, an East Hampton fire marshal and a volunteer firefighter with the Springs Fire Department, was on the scene both during the blaze and after it was extinguished. The Springs department had been called to East Hampton to back up that department's firefighters. Also on hand was the Sag Harbor Fire Department. Mr. Baker said that Sag Harbor frequently sends a rapid intervention team to fires to aid firefighters in distress.

The corroded pipe leaked gas into the wooden building, Mr. Baker said, and it appeared that when the heater went on, it ignited the gas. While there was not enough to cause an explosion, the gas acted like a fuse, licking fire up the side of the building.

Mr. Rubenstein said he received a call reporting the fire at about 1:35 in the morning, and rushed to the scene. It was 33 degrees, he said. When he arrived, there were a couple dozen firefighters on the roof of the building, pouring water into the structure through several holes they had opened in the roof.

Surveying the scene in the light of day, Mr. Rubenstein pointed out extensive damage to the structure. However, none of the other buildings, including a new bowling alley and sports bar being built on the property, were damaged.

The problem for the club, at least for the next few days, is that all the electrical power for the buildings behind the clubhouse, including the indoor tennis courts, runs through the clubhouse's electrical room. "It doesn't look like much water got into the electrical panels," Mr. Rubenstein said. A portable generator has been brought in to power heat blowers to dry out the room.

Mr. Baker's concern is the possibility that wiring has been damaged by the fire, making it unsafe to use.

On the bright side, Mr. Rubenstein pointed out that the weather forecast called for above-average temperatures this weekend.

He praised the firefighters' work in combating the blaze. "Seeing about 30 guys I have grown up with on top of my building; I was 100 feet away and that was too close. These guys have to go to work in the morning. They are amazing. It was the most amazing thing."

Having mentioned a paucity of winter birds in last week’s “Nature Notes,” I then received some confirmations and negations. Karen Rubinstein, who coordinates the annual Montauk Christmas bird count held on Dec. 16, said the preliminary total came to 122 species, a bit low as Montauk counts go. Joan Laufer of Northwest Woods sent me pictures of a red-breasted woodpecker and a chickadee, two of the many birds visiting her feeder. A Ms. Hamilton, a lover of all things wild, on Shore Road in Lazy Point called to tell me she had several species, a probable pine warbler among them. They like her two heated birdbaths, which she picked up at Wildbird Crossing in the Bridgehampton Commons.

I had asked where the blue jays had gone, and Matthew Galcik of Greenwich Street in Montauk emailed me a picture of some of the 20 or so that come to feed on his lawn every morning. You may remember Matthew as the one who raised and released into nature a slew of monarch butterflies last summer. Lastly, Jean Held of Sag Harbor sent me photos of a hermit thrush and fox sparrow, two of the several different winter birds at her feeder and birdbath during the post-Christmas week.

Those feeders and birdbaths took on a special significance in the last few days of 2017 when the temperature outside plummeted and never rose above the freezing mark — and there is little sign of its letting up as we look into the first few weeks of January. Brrrr, it is very cold out there! Almost all of our freshwater bodies, including the larger ones like Fort Pond in Montauk, are frozen solid. Interestingly, Lake Montauk used to freeze over nearly every winter before it was opened to Block Island Sound and became marine in the mid-1920s. Now it rarely freezes over.

It has been so cold, however, that saline Noyac Bay is half frozen over, a lovely sight by the light of the full moon on Monday evening. Noyac Bay is one of the first saltwater bodies on Long Island to freeze come a very cold December, January, or February, and in fact, served as venue for many local iceboat racers in 1980, our first winter as Noyac residents, and during several winters thereafter. The Great South Bay, which has served iceboaters over the years since the early 1900s, froze over in February 1979 and remained frozen until the end of the first week of March.

Everyone knows that marine waters freeze much less frequently than fresh waters because of their high salt content. The larger the saltwater body along our temperate Atlantic Coast the less likely it is likely to freeze solid. Every time a local bay freezes over it reminds us of an old story: how the red fox got to Gardiner’s Island, which was surrounded by marine waters long before the red fox arrived on Long Island from the west. The story goes that one or more were seen moving over the ice from the South Fork mainland toward the island during a very cold winter in the 1800s, when the Peconics froze over solid.

At our latitude the Atlantic never freezes solid, but the next largest water body in our area, the Long Island Sound, has become ice-locked. In 1917 the Sound froze to the extent that motor vehicles were able to cross from Port Jefferson to Stamford, Conn., so one Connecticut paper wrote. In 1925 another brutally cold winter froze the salt waters around Manhattan to 18 inches thick, thus no ships could land or leave. Perhaps the greatest freeze occurred in January of 1780, when almost all of the waters along the North Atlantic coast were frozen and impassable by boat.

According to a principle first elucidated by the Greek mathemetician Archimedes, when ice forms on a body of water it does not change the elevation of the sea level. Put an ice cube in a glass of water to demonstrate that rule of physics. However, glacial ice breaking off from a mainland surface does raise sea level accordingly. In the present millennium, glacial meltwater input and warming global temperatures have been causing sea level to rise about 2.8 millimeters, or .2 inches per year. That’s about an inch every five years. At today’s rate of temperature increase, in 60 years sea level would rise a foot. However, the rate of rise is increasing as the rate of glacial melting, or calving, increases, and the anticipated sea level rise by the beginning of the next millennium is actually about one meter, or a little more than three feet.

On some northern and southern coasts near large glaciers, actual sea level rise will be lower, because the land will rise as the weight of the glacier pressing down on it is reduced. Hence, the relative sea level rise will be moderated. 

During the height of the last global glaciation some 15,000 or so years ago, sea level was much, much lower than it is now, as so much of the ocean’s water was sequestered in the global ice masses. It will be a long, long time, if ever, before that happens again. If all of the world’s glaciers melt and the waters warm and expand, perhaps sometime in the very distant future most of Long Island, including the two forks, would be underwater.

When it’s as cold as it has been thus far in the new year, it’s hard to think of global warming because it’s hard to stay warm. We’ll just have to wait and see, but in the meantime, no harm can be done by turning off the lights when they are not in use and maximizing solar and wind-power output. Many Long Island schools are solarizing their roofs. The Bridgehampton School is going one step further, using the subsurface heat of the earth to help heat the school in winter and cool it in the warm months. A big “Yay” for the Killer Bees!

Larry Penny can be reached via email at [email protected].

Shoppers across Suffolk County may have noticed a few extra cents on their receipts this week. As of Monday, most stores in the county are required to charge a 5-cent fee for paper and plastic bags.

The fee, approved in 2016, is intended to encourage consumers to take their own reusable bags when they go shopping, with an eye to reducing waste and pollution. In the law instituting the fee, the County Legislature noted that “most plastic bags do not biodegrade” but rather “break down into smaller, more toxic petro-polymers, which eventually contaminate soils and waterways.” The bags wash up on the shore, birds become entangled in them, and marine animals can mistake them for food. In addition, the Legislature said, because plastic bags are made from oil, using fewer of them “will decrease our dependence on fossil fuels.” 

Paper bags are an environmental problem as well. “Fourteen million trees are cut down yearly for the manufacturing of paper,” the Legislature pointed out, adding that “paper production requires large amounts of water, energy, and chemicals and can emit toxic and hazardous chemicals into the air and water.”

The county’s new fee requirement for single-use bags follows a similar one enacted in New York City. Should the new fee fail to “reduce the use of plastic bags by at least 75 percent in three years, the idea of an outright ban can be revisited at a later date,” the law notes.

According to Steve Levy, a former county executive for Suffolk who is now the director of the Center for Cost Effective Government in Bayport, state legislation is needed to mandate that any increases in property taxes, whether due to capital improvements or standard operational costs, must be presented to the voter at one time in May, during the annual school budget vote.

The issue takes on particular significance as the Springs School District is seeking taxpayer approval of the bonds necessary for its $16.9-million expansion plan. The bond referendum is set for March 6, a time when many South Fork taxpayers are still away in sunnier climes.

“Of course, many bonds are legitimate and needed,” Mr. Levy said by phone. “But too many are also being used as a backdoor way around the tax cap.”

Many schools, he said, add operational costs, such as annual maintenance, into bond votes, allowing such items to circumvent New York’s 2-percent tax cap, implemented in 2011 as a measure to force local governments to prioritize their expenditures. Interest paid on bond votes is exempt from the tax cap calculation. Furthermore, Mr. Levy said, holding the vote in the winter means that “many folks are traveling and not engaged.”

A bill sponsored by Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. that is before the State Legislature seeks to mandate that school districts present taxpayers with one vote on one day. 

“You should absolutely know in May what your total tax will be for the upcoming year,” Mr. Levy said. “Not be told six months later that on top of that figure, there will be an additional increase.”

Debra Winter, the Springs School’s superintendent, said that March 6 was chosen for its expansion vote in order to stick to a timeline. 

“The bond referendum was originally slated for an early December vote,” she said in an email. “However, due to a delay with the [State Environmental Quality Review Act] report, the date of the potential vote needed to be pushed back. To stay on schedule with construction as well as the state approval process, we have been advised by our architects, bond counsel, and fiscal adviser that March was the preferred month for a vote. A May vote could potentially result in a significant delay for the start of construction, which, upon voter approval in March, we anticipate would begin in summer 2019.”

If Mr. Thiele’s legislation becomes law, however, schools in the future may no longer have that choice.

Site plans with histories of some controversy will be considered by the East Hampton Town Planning Board at a hearing scheduled for Wednesday evening at 7. 

One of the site plans represents the final hurdle in a saga of negotiations that has played out between the town and the owners of the Surf Lodge on Fort Pond, Montauk, over the course of several years. 

The town and the ownership group got off to a rough start when the now iconic nightspot on Edgemere Street first opened for business in 2008. At one point, the ownership group paid a $100,000 fine to settle more than 500 citations from the town’s Code Enforcement Department. However, after Michael Walrath, a venture capitalist who owns several Montauk properties, joined the partnership with Jayma Cardoso, impresario of the popular party and concert venue, the group’s attorney, Andy Hammer, began prolonged negotiations with Michael Sendlenski, the town’s chief attorney, to bring the business and its many structures into compliance with the town code. 

Compliance was sought in different ways: Some offending structures would be modified or removed; for others, variances from the zoning board of appeals would be sought. Many of the variances were for setbacks from Fort Pond. At one point, Mr. Hammer described the property — which was developed before zoning — as “in Fort Pond.” Variances were obtained for most of the structures, but the zoning board denied others for three structures on the northeastern part of the nearly one-acre property: a fire pit, a movie screen, and a flagpole. 

Eventually, in 2017 — following an exhaustive examination of the property by the town’s fire marshals and its Planning and Building Departments — the town attorney’s office signed an agreement with the ownership group, Montauk Properties, a limited liability company. Caps were placed on the number of  people who would be allowed on the property (395, with another 50 allowed in a queuing area); live music would be restricted to five days a week, with no outdoor music permitted after 8 p.m., and a modern septic system, to protect Fort Pond, would replace the old one. 

With the zoning process over, the ball was thrown back to the planning board. On Wednesday at Town Hall, the public will have the chance to chime in on the final site plan that has resulted from this epic real estate saga.

Meanwhile, a neighbor is displeased with a site plan submitted by the Peconic Land Trust, which has asked the planning board to approve an existing 5,888-square-foot barn on farmland off Town Lane and Abraham’s Path in Amagansett. The land trust wants to house agricultural equipment, used by farmers who lease land from the trust, in the barn.

The owner of a residence that abuts the farmland, Fouad Chartouni, a real estate investor and developer, has sued the Suffolk County Farmland Committee, which approved construction of the barn. The planning board was instructed by its attorney, John Jilnicki, that it could go forward with Wednesday’s hearing despite the litigation.

The site plan applications and all the attendant paperwork for these and other public hearings are available for inspection at the town planning board’s office at 159 Pantigo Road during normal business hours.

“There’s certainly nostalgia and reminiscences . . . a certain amount of sadness, and a certain amount of euphoria,” said Larry Cantwell, sitting in his office at Town Hall on one of his final days as East Hampton Town supervisor. Mr. Cantwell’s successor, Peter Van Scoyoc, will be sworn in on Tuesday.

“For me, it’s not just leaving the supervisor’s office; it’s, really, leaving 42 years of public service. I’m just looking forward to making my own schedule for a while,” Mr. Cantwell said, reflecting on the upcoming transition.

He said he had been approached about several possible future endeavors, including a run for Congress, “but for the moment I want a break. I want to start out with zero . . . my own interests, and family . . . to travel, to get the basement cleaned out and organized, fish, play golf, go to more grandchildren’s baseball games.”

Although he and his wife, Anne, a retired bookkeeper, will travel to visit friends and family in Florida this winter, he said, “I’m looking forward to just being here in East Hampton.”

Mr. Cantwell, the son of an Amagansett commercial fisherman, became the town’s youngest elected official at age 25 when he became East Hampton’s bay constable in 1975. He went on to serve as a town councilman from 1976 to  ’82, and then as the East Hampton Village administrator through 2013, when he won in his first run for town supervisor. 

He became involved in civics in college in the late ’60s and early ’70s, when “the world was upside-down  and  the country was being torn apart” over civil rights, Vietnam, and the assassinations of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy. East Hampton “was just being discovered” by those who came to rent share houses and such, and though “the media hadn’t even created the word ‘Hamptons,’ I actually felt East Hampton was being overrun,”  Mr. Cantwell said. 

At his final town board meeting last Thursday, after receiving proclamations from the board and from the East Hampton Food Pantry, and on the verge of choking up, Mr. Cantwell spoke of how “the people of this community” launched him on his lifelong career. “Over these many years,” he said, “you, the people who live in this community, have given me your encouragement and your support. You’ve given me more than I could ever return . . . your respect, even when disagreeing with me. And a public official cannot ask for more than that.”

During the discussion in his office, Mr. Cantwell again pointed to the civility that he feels marked his time in office. “When people can walk away and shake hands,” he said, “that’s good government.”

The board, he feels, was successful during his administration in “representing the community and doing the things the community wanted us to do.”

“I have a lot of respect for the four other board members I had the pleasure to work with,” said Mr. Cantwell. “We had a really good level of cooperation, and we tried to work together as a team.” 

“We disagreed more than people realized,” he said, but “truthfully respected each other’s opinion.” Key, he said, is communication, and “not letting egos get in the way.” 

The supervisor, he said, “has got to be willing to let a board member take the lead on an issue . . . got to be willing to defer. You’ve got to recognize you’re one-fifth of the board.”

“It’s about ‘Can we accomplish a goal?’  The advantage I had in becoming supervisor — I brought 38 years of experience to the position.”

There were, of course, some difficult moments. “It’s the way it is in a small town,”  Mr. Cantwell said. Decisions have to be made, and some of them “are gut-wrenching. You struggle to find what the right choice is.” 

“We held some of the largest public hearings in the history of the town,” Mr. Cantwell said, including a heavily attended one on the East Hampton Airport and its traffic,  a matter that has long been contentious,  as well as several on the unpopular U.S. Army Corps of Engineers  downtown Montauk beach project. 

“I think the fact that we established a tone in Town Hall . . . the community gave that back to us,” said the outgoing supervisor, whose administration was preceded by that of former supervisor Bill Wilkinson, whose years in office are widely remembered as volatile and whose board was criticized for incivility. 

There was success on the financial front, as well, Mr. Cantwell said. Under his leadership, the town achieved its highest-yet credit rating, an A.A.A. from Moody’s Investors Service, by reducing its overall indebtedness and increasing surplus margins. “The balance sheet is in pretty good shape,” Mr. Cantwell said. 

And, he said, “I think we took on the issue of water quality as a priority.” 

During his tenure, the board adopted a comprehensive wastewater-management plan, and voters approved spending up to 20 percent of community preservation fund money on clean-water projects. New standards were adopted requiring the use of low-nitrogen-emissions septic systems, as well, and a rebate program established to help property owners pay to put in the more environmentally friendly systems. “I feel good that we’ve led on that issue,” Mr. Cantwell said. 

In addition, he said, “We’ve taken the issue of climate change seriously, because we know it’s affecting our community.” A coastal resiliency plan is in the works.

Tied to the environmental future is the town’s pledge to use only renewable energy in the future, and Mr. Cantwell pointed to the board’s support of offshore wind turbines to achieve that goal. “While there’s a lot more to do, I know we’ve led on that issue.” 

In addition, he said, “I’m proud of our aggressive purchase of open space. The town’s efforts to preserve open space had ground to a halt, almost, when I first became supervisor.” 

Acquisition of parcels surrounding various water bodies was a priority, “to stop new development from occurring and protect the environment,” he said, “but also to provide access for the public.”

“I think we dealt with some challenges, too,” Mr. Cantwell said.

“The behavior and disregard for the law during the summers in Montauk —  I think we inherited a laissez-faire approach . . . that had led to disrespect for the law and community. It took some time to rein that back in.” A combination of increased enforcement and some legislative efforts was successful, he said, in calming an out-of-control party scene.

When asked what areas were less than successful, or were still works in progress, he had a ready answer: “I’m disappointed we didn’t make more progress in affordable housing,” the supervisor said. 

While housing projects often take years to come to fruition, and the town broke ground this year on a 12-unit manor-house project on Accabonac Road in East Hampton, “it requires more attention, more focus on that as an issue,” said Mr. Cantwell. “I just think the town needs to be more aggressive and more focused. You’ve got to just push the issue.” 

The outgoing supervisor said he believes Mr. Van Scoyoc, a fellow Democrat, will be a good fit for the job. “Peter is thoughtful, and has the kind of common sense you need to have. . . . You have to know there are going to be hard choices to make,” but also not let that “distract you from the good you want to do.” 

His advice for the new supervisor? Remain “true to what you believe in, and always understand the sense of the community. If you can represent the sense of the community, then you’re going to be in the right spot,” Mr. Cantwell said. 

He said that he has a feeling  of “gratitude that the people of this community started me on a career when I was 25 years old, and supported me all along.”

“When you add it all up, it’s been 42 years. And I’ve seen a lot of change,” he said. “Without question,” he said, “I would not trade my last 42 years as a public official in this town for any [other] career.”

“I’m leaving office overwhelmed with gratitude. I love this community as much as I ever have.”

During a 48-hour period in June, roughly 22 people suffered opioid overdoses in Suffolk County, a figure that gives proof to a recent statement by Legislator Sarah Anker, a member of the county’s opiate advisory panel, who said, “Suffolk County is struggling with an overwhelming opiate epidemic of unprecedented proportions.” 

And according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, among the youngest group of users, those from 15 to 24, drug poisoning deaths involving heroin across the nation increased while all other age groups held steady or declined.

Which means that school districts on the South Fork are either on high alert, or will be, in stepping up efforts to deal with the crisis during 2018.

Schools between Southampton and Montauk have recently hosted several presentations for parents and middle and high school students by local police officers and organizations such as the Long Island Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence. As reported here recently, it is not only heroin and painkillers that middle schoolers are apparently arently outsmarting their teachers with, but electronic devices such as vape pens, Juuls, and e-cigarettes, often laced with fentanyl, a synthetic drug far more powerful than heroin, and one that Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone sees as the possible public enemy number one.

To prepare for the worst, principals in all schools here reported that staff members have received training in administering naloxone, or Narcan, which counteracts opiates, whether from heroin or prescription painkillers, by blocking and even reversing its deadly effects. 

In-school classes and a group such as Sources of Strength, an initiative at East Hampton High School, have taken on major significance as they train students to identify and help peers who seem to be at risk or already in the grip of drug abuse.

Nevertheless, a largely outdated drug-abstinence campaign is still used in schools around the East End. Called Drug Abuse Resistance Education, or DARE, it was developed in the 1980s by police and educators in Los Angeles, and called for officers to warn students about the consequences of alcohol and drug use. It has been shown to be ineffective and sometimes counterproductive, however, with published studies reporting that teens who participated in DARE or similar programs actually had a higher likelihood of drinking or smoking than students who had not undergone the educational initiative.

Such reports bring to mind the 1980s campaign launched by the then-first lady, Nancy Reagan, who walked into the crack-cocaine scourge with a message: “Just Say No.” At the time, educators had few tools to fight what quickly turned into an epidemic, and her refrain became a mantra in support of drug-abuse prevention. Researchers, however, found the program largely ineffective. 

According to Scientific American magazine, “Purely educational programs that involve minimal or no direct social interaction with other students are usually ineffective. Merely telling participants to ‘just say no’ to drugs is unlikely to produce lasting effects because many may lack the needed interpersonal skills. Programs led exclusively by adults, with little or no involvement of students as peer leaders — another common feature of DARE — seem relatively unsuccessful, again probably because students get little practice saying no to other kids.”

Debra Winter, the superintendent of the Springs School, vows to teach students resiliency and conflict resolution. “One program I want to bring back is called Facing History, even just for seventh and eighth graders,” she said. “It teaches kids how bills are passed in government and how important it is to have a voice in order to enact change. There’s a lack of hope among kids today and we need to bring it back.”

Ms. Winter believes young people must learn their value in society if they are to turn away from substance abuse. Lessons on self-worth are as important as English and mathematics, she said, “but most educators are too afraid to touch the subject.”

Around Suffolk County, an increasing number of communities are forming coalitions to address the opioid epidemic. Long Island church congregations, associations, and neighborhoods together with the Long Island Recovery Association have created the Opioid Action Team and already organized an annual meeting of eight school districts, which included East Hampton. In addition, the one-day “student summit” exposed students and their parents to guest speakers, role-playing exercises, and training in the use of Narcan. 

It is clear that schools and communities are looking beyond outdated campaigns, which spread fear and ignorance instead of information and vital tools.

In September, in Sayville,  for example, political leaders, elected officials, residents, and drug counselors commemorated International Overdose Awareness Day. A Fed Up and Maxed Out Rally for a Federal Response to the Opioid Epidemic, which they sponsored, featured impassioned speeches, poetry readings, and live music with the goal of raising awareness to the pain and death caused by the epidemic, while discussing and generating realistic, lasting solutions.

The Sachem School District has piloted a peer-to-peer youth program in which high school students offer substance prevention lessons to their middle school counterparts. 

President Trump might be promising a “massive advertising campaign” as part of his administration’s response to the prevalent drug crisis, but school districts here are nevertheless taking their own steps to do more in 2018 to help curb the toxic haze hanging over society.

The Town of East Hampton has agreed to extend the current scheduling of its police force.

The town and the Police Benevolent Association had been at loggerheads, with the P.B.A. rejecting the town's plan to have officers alternate between 12-hour day shifts and 12-hour night shifts every four months. A Jan. 1 deadline was looming over the dispute.

The current schedule, which has officers working exclusively either day or night 12-hour shifts all year, was instituted at the beginning of 2017 for a yearlong test.

The experimental schedule replaced one that had been in place for many years in which officers rotated through three shifts, 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., 3 p.m. to 11 p.m., and 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. It was extremely unpopular with the rank and file.

Anthony Bosco, president of the P.B.A., pointed to several facts earlier this week that he said demonstrated the superiority for both the department and the officers in maintaining a set 12-hour schedule throughout the year. They included decreases in both overtime paid out by the town and sick days taken by officers, a 16-percent increase in arrests, and a sharp increase in citations issued. In addition, the old eight-hour schedule required the department to divide officers into five squads. The schedule now in place divides the same number of officers into four squads, meaning more boots on the ground.

The two sides began negotiating the 2018 schedule at the end of November. The latest proposal from the town was to keep the present schedule for four months, to allow further negotiations. That was rejected by the P.B.A. in what Mr. Bosco described as an overwhelming majority at the end of a meeting at Ashawagh Hall in Springs earlier this week.

Instead, the P.B.A. countered with an either/or proposition: either extend the current scheduling formula for another year, or revert back to the unpopular, less productive rotation system. Jan. 1 was the deadline.

Deputy Town Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc sat down with Mr. Bosco at Town Hall on Dec. 29, and the two men signed a stipulation that will extend the current experimental schedule for another year. Mr. Van Scoyoc will be sworn in as town supervisor on Jan. 2.

Mr. Bosco said he anticipates that the town board will ratify the agreement at the Jan. 4 board meeting. The P.B.A. will hold a special meeting over the coming days to allow them to ratify it, as well.

"I'm pleased that we are moving forward in a positive way and am looking forward to resolving any remaining issues," Mr. Van Scoyoc said.

Mr. Bosco believes the one-year extension will give his members and the police chief ample time to work out any improvements that need to be made to the schedule. "We are more than willing to work with the chief," he said.

"There are still factors and issues which the fixed tours create that we will need more time to evaluate before making a final agreement on the terms of managing the schedule," Chief Michael Sarlo said by email. "There are numerous issues which we will continue to discuss and evaluate during this extension in hopes of coming up with agreeable terms that will still give our officers a healthy work chart while also meeting overall department needs."

Included in the new stipulation is language that if the two sides do not come to an agreement on a permanent scheduling process by Dec. 31, 2018, the schedule will revert to the eight-hour rotational shifts, a prospect neither side seems anxious to see. They have 367 days to work it out.

There is one group of P.B.A. members not covered by the current plan: the dispatchers. The department now employs 10 dispatchers, one of whom is on sick leave. They work on the old eight-hour rotating shift schedule. The town would need to increase the total number of dispatchers to 12 before they could switch to the set 12-hour shift schedule.

“Deadly Cure”

Lawrence Goldstone

Pegasus Books, $25.95

“Deadly Cure,” a new novel by Lawrence Goldstone, the author of several previous novels as well as a number of nonfiction historical works, takes place in New York City at the dawning of the 20th century. It is September of 1899, and the brand-new age of electricity. “Reading was so much more pleasant by incandescent light. These rooms were his first that did not use gas or oil.”

The novel commences with Dr. Noah Whitestone, a young physician in private practice in Brooklyn, summoned to the wealthy home of Mildred and Aldridge Anschutz. Aldridge is a colonel in the Army, serving in the Philippines, and Mildred is “neighborhood nobility, niece to Brooklyn’s last mayor, Frederick Wurster.” Noah has been called to treat Willard, “her youngest, a rambunctious, perpetually cheerful five-year-old.” 

“Mrs. Anschutz had made little secret that she considered Noah too young, too inexperienced, too . . . unacceptable . . . to treat her or her five children. She, like most of the wealthy and the prominent, preferred Arnold Frias, he of the white mane and booming baritone, on the board of directors of four hospitals. . . .” Dr. Frias is rich and powerful and drives a new International Benz automobile, “the first of its kind in Brooklyn.”

When Noah examines Willard, he sees gooseflesh and a runny nose. The child is perspiring heavily, yet he complains of feeling cold and is in agony from stomach discomfort. His eyes are watery and his pupils are dilated. “Noah was stunned. The symptoms seemed classic. But in this house? With a boy of five?” 

When the boy runs to the “water closet” Noah tries to follow, but Mrs. Anschutz will not permit it. Noah tells her that he must examine the “product” (to check for blood or mucus), but she says, “You may not! How dare you? Dr. Frias would never think to violate a patient’s privacy so heinously.” 

Noah gently inquires if there might be any “morphia” in the house. 

“Certainly not! We are not Chinamen or dope fiends in my home.” 

Eventually the young physician gives the boy two drops of laudanum (a tincture of opium) in order to help him sleep, and then has to rush off to another house call about a dying man.

When Noah returns a couple of hours later, Willard is barely breathing and subsequently dies in Noah’s arms. Noah is distraught and full of self-doubt about whether he might have somehow missed something regarding the boy’s condition. Should he not have given him the (tiny) dose of laudanum? He takes one of the blue pills that Dr. Frias has prescribed in order to experimentally determine exactly what the boy has been taking. It is clear he suspects morphine. At the time, “each drug company fabricated its own wares,” and it would be impossible to know without testing what this drug contained. 

Noah finds out that there is a new (and perfectly legal) drug being tested on children. It is being marketed by the German company Bayer, and is being test-prescribed for children’s coughs. The drug is called Heroin and “is to be marketed throughout the nation in elixirs, tablets, pastilles, and powders. It will be prescribed for asthma, dysentery, nervous disorders, respiratory disease, and, most ironically, as a treatment for morphine addiction. Its most widespread application, however, will be as a cough suppressant, particularly for children.” 

Let me repeat this so we are clear: Bayer, the company we all know for its brand of aspirin, brought heroin to the United States in pill form, and marketed it, just as it did its other drugs. This is true! 

“This year Bayer will produce a ton of Heroin. They will send the product around the world, but fully half of the production will come to the United States. America has restrictive patents, but almost no safety standards for pharmaceuticals. That combination means that nowhere in the world will Heroin be more profitable.”

The discovery of this fact, and the unearthing of a conspiracy that involves Dr. Frias (paid by Bayer to perform tests on the heroin), crooked cops, and a cast of other nefarious characters who will not hesitate to use violence, kidnapping, and worse to prevent knowledge of the perilous nature of this new drug and the fact that it has already apparently killed several children of the poor (Bayer’s U.S. experimental subjects), takes up the remainder of “Deadly Cure.” It is part historical novel, part medical detective story, part thriller, and part political page-turner and polemic on the lack of oversight for patent medicines.

“There was rarely a newspaper page lacking an advertisement, often with testimonials, extolling some supposed miracle cure. Ayer’s Cherry Pectoral, Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup, Darby’s Carminative, Godfrey’s Cordial, Dover’s Powder — the list was endless. The hundreds who died each year and thousands more who developed addictions were never mentioned.” 

For all of its historical accuracy and interest (and the material is wonderful and captivating), this novel might just as well have been written about the current opioid crisis. With the current political administration rushing to defang nearly every federal agency, including the Food and Drug Administration, and to deregulate business in general, most of what takes place in the novel in 1900 is also occurring today. Except that instead of heroin, we are in the midst of a raging opioid addiction epidemic. 

Opioids legally sold by pharmaceutical companies in the form of hydrocodone, oxycodone, and fentanyl are being marketed for outrageous profits and are not being properly regulated. According to a recent study by the National Center for Health Statistics, an arm of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2016 there were more than 63,600 drug overdose deaths in the United States as a direct result of opioid use. 

Scott Gottlieb, the current head of the F.D.A., spent much of his career working for giant pharmaceutical companies like Vertex Pharmaceuticals, Bristol-Myers Squibb, New Enterprise, GSK, MedAvante, and Glytec. These are the very companies he is supposed to be regulating. Fox, meet henhouse. The parallels with the fictional Dr. Frias and good old-fashioned heroin are unmistakable. The Sacklers, the family that owns Purdue Pharma, have become one of the wealthiest families in the country. Their net worth is around $14 billion, largely based on profits from the sales of OxyContin.

I am giving short shrift to the plot of “Deadly Cure” because I think Mr. Goldstone is making a very direct reference to the issues of today. If this were July, I would say that this novel is a terrific beach read, but since it is winter, let’s just say that if you are looking to curl up by the fire with a fast-paced, interesting historical novel, with lots of plot twists and some relevance to today, this one is a good bet. 

Michael Z. Jody, a regular book reviewer for The Star, is a psychoanalyst and couples counselor with offices in Amagansett and New York City. 

Lawrence Goldstone lives in Sagaponack.