Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone announced an online petition yesterday that is intended to galvanize opposition to the federal tax-policy legislation that he said would result in significantly higher taxes for Long Island residents and businesses. 

Mr. Bellone joined Legislator Bridget Fleming, Suffolk Presiding Officer DuWayne Gregory, Matt Cohen, vice president of the Long Island Association, Laureen Harris, president of the Association for a Better Long Island, Gina Coletti, co-chairwoman of the Suffolk County Alliance of Chambers, and small-business owners in Hauppauge yesterday to announce his opposition to the plan, which took an important step toward passage on Tuesday when the Senate Budget Committee voted along party lines to approve it. Several protesters were removed from the committee’s meeting and arrested.

Also on Tuesday, Representative Lee Zeldin of New York’s First Congressional District, along with Peter King and Tom Suozzi, who represent the Second and Third Districts, respectively, joined state and local officials at a press conference in Hauppauge to voice objection to the House of Representatives’ present version of the tax plan. 

In a release issued by his communications director, Mr. Zeldin said that while he likes many aspects of the plan, “too many Long Islanders would not see the tax relief they desperately need and deserve.”

The full Senate is expected to consider the proposal, which would have to be reconciled with the House version of it, as early as today. 

Among the objections to the plan cited by its opponents is a limitation or elimination of the deduction for state and local taxes.

In a letter to President Trump on Tuesday, Mr. Bellone wrote “with a profound sense of urgency to ask for your help to stop legislation currently under consideration by Congress that could result in significantly higher taxes for middle class families. Specifically, I am urging you to veto any legislation that limits or eliminates the deduction for state and local taxes that has been part of the federal tax code since its inception in 1913.” 

The president is lobbying Congress to pass the legislation. Republicans, in control of Congress and the White House, are under intense pressure to pass significant legislation before year’s end, having repeatedly failed to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act or develop a plan to rebuild infrastructure. Top donors to the party and its candidates are reportedly angry about its failures and pledging to withhold contributions until it notches a significant legislative victory. 

Loss of the deduction for state and local taxes would have a disproportionate impact on Long Islanders, Mr. Bellone wrote, citing a Long Island Association analysis concluding that it could result in an annual cumulative tax increase of $4.4 billion on Long Island. “Given that Long Islanders already send significantly more tax dollars to Washington than they ever get in return — approximately $23 billion a year — this additional tax burden would add insult to injury, and could devastate the local economy.”  

Long Island taxpayers at virtually every income level could face a tax increase greater than $1,000 per year, Mr. Bellone wrote. “The average annual increase for households with an income level between $25,000 to $200,000 would range from $1,356 to $3,980 and the overall average impact across all income levels could be a staggering $7,794,” he wrote, citing the Long Island Association’s report.

East Hampton residents are familiar with how the community rallies when someone here is in need, but this fall, thanks to a growing network, efforts to help people in Texas and in Puerto Rico hit by two devastating hurricanes have gotten a boost thanks to some of our neighbors.

East End Cares, an informal networking group formed to help residents of western Long Island after Hurricane Sandy, is once again a nexus. At the height of the refugee crisis in Europe two years ago, East End Cares sent a group of volunteers to Greece and now several of them are once again stepping up to lend a hand. 

Earlier this fall Maureen Rutkowski, a Montauk resident, went to Texas to join Team Rubicon, a veterans’ group doing relief work, after East End Cares began fund-raising for the group. And both Denise Schoen, an attorney and a volunteer critical care emergency medical technician in Sag Harbor, who volunteered in Greece, and her husband, Jon Schoen, have made work trips with Team Rubicon to Texas and Puerto Rico. 

Over eight days in Puerto Rico last month, Doug Kuntz, a photojournalist and veteran aid worker, worked with a team organized by Alison Thompson of Third Wave Volunteers and took food, water, water filters, and solar lights to residents in remote locations that had gone without since the hurricane. Five years ago, working in the Rockaways after Hurricane Sandy, he had met Ms. Thompson, who was also helping out. The two also did aid work together in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake there, and on the shores of Lesvos in Greece, helping Iraqi, Syrian, and Afghan refugees arriving by sea. 

Traveling from San Juan toward Aguadilla and south toward Mayaguez, their team drove more than 600 miles, circumnavigating an island that is only about 100 miles long and a fraction of that wide, and trekking into its interior to encounter areas cut off by mudslides, cities and villages with no water, and decimated areas where no one was helping the residents. 

The island’s electrical grid, as has been widely reported, was in bad shape, Mr. Kuntz said. And, while strides had been made to assure access to water, he said shortly after his return, “What do they say, 70 percent of the island has water now? They might, but it’s not drinkable.” 

Driving to the end of a dirt road in a little coastal town with the village mayor, he said, they encountered four men with rifles. They were shooting iguanas to eat. “It’s a really impoverished place,” said Mr. Kuntz, and the conditions, post-hurricane, only made things harder. “It’s a mess down there,” said Mr. Kuntz of the island’s southeast coast, where the hurricane made landfall.

It was a month or so after the hurricane when Mr. Kuntz was there, but heading up into the mountains accompanied by police using Humvees they encountered “people who hadn’t seen a soul” come to help since the hurricane, he said. “Every place we went to, we were the only people” there to help that residents had seen, he said. “They kept asking, ‘Are you FEMA?’ ” said Mr. Kuntz. While the hard-hit residents assumed that the United States Federal Emergency Management Agency would arrive to assist, it was, again, the private volunteer groups on the ground meeting immediate needs. “We never saw FEMA once,” Mr. Kuntz said. 

“It’s the same thing that I’ve seen all over the world. It’s independent people that just care, that get things done.” 

Team Rubicon, whose motto is to “get shit done,” was founded by retired military personnel after the Haiti earthquake, putting the skills of veterans and first responders to use in quickly deploying emergency response teams.

In a stadium in the town of Arecibo, west of San Juan, sharing the space with FEMA and other groups. Ms. Schoen’s Team Rubicon group set up a clinic, where they saw up to 100 patients a day. They slept on cots and ate military M.R.E.s, or meals ready to eat. “We saw lots of people who did not have medication for their diabetes, for their hypertension,” she said this week. The team had provided enough medicine to get patients back on track, and Ms. Schoen spent part of the time organizing their pharmacy. 

There was no running water for part of the time, and, without air-conditioning, no relief from the heat.

During her time on the island, Ms. Schoen said, half of Team Rubicon’s Puerto Rico volunteers provided medical care while the other half was assigned as a tree-sawing team, cutting and clearing fallen logs or precariously leaning trees damaged by the hurricane and posing a danger. “The island is just decimated; it looks like a war took place there,” Ms. Schoen said in a phone interview this week.

“The storm damage and continued suffering here is astonishing after more than two full months of recovery time,” she wrote in a Nov. 16 report from Puerto Rico.

Three Team Rubicon “strike teams” took to the field daily, she said, negotiating washed-out bridges and other challenges to reach remote mountain locations where, the volunteers had been told, people needed medical care. Each medical team had two paramedics, a doctor and nurse, and two interpreters.

“Every time we were out in the field, we would get a tip,” about villages in need. When the medical team got on site, she said, residents would come out of their houses to greet them. “It was amazing how communities stuck together and were able to guide us to people who really, really needed our help,” Ms. Schoen said. 

Her group met a pastor who urged them to help his parishioners. In three hours after church, the medical professionals saw 43 patients, several of whom were diagnosed with serious medical conditions. 

For all of the aid workers, the experience was not only challenging but transformative. “Everybody there was wonderful; they all worked together as a team,” said Ms. Schoen, who made it home to Sag Harbor just in time to share Thanksgiving with her family. As in Greece, she said, “in a week’s time I made friends for a lifetime. Those people are so outstanding.”

“They truly pull together in times of crisis to care for and look out for one another,” and to get things done “for the people who need it the most,” she wrote in a post on Facebook upon her return. “They made me appreciate my life in a more determined way.”

Ms. Schoen said she and her family have long been involved in helping others, from raising guide dogs to hosting a child through the Fresh Air Fund, to her work as an ambulance volunteer. Ever since her move back to the East End, after leaving a large law firm in New York City, she said, she has felt a “compelling urge to give back, because I feel really fortunate for what I have.” 

Two years ago, when she saw Mr. Kuntz’s photos from Greece “I knew I could be helpful over there.” 

“I was scared,” she said, but nonetheless she joined the East End Cares team. Since then, she’s been back to Greece twice — once to work with a medical group, the Health Point Foundation, at the Moria refugee camp on Lesvos, and once to work at two other camps and to help with a benefit concert organized by Marcus Lovett, a Broadway actor who got involved to support East End Cares. She plans another trip soon. 

Refugees are still flowing into Greece, and, with borders to other European countries closed, conditions for them there have only worsened. Lisa Campbell, a Virginia resident whose organization, Do Your Part, partnered with East End Cares for the 2015 volunteer trip, has been in Greece just about ever since, establishing and running the Oinofyta refugee camp. In a blow to both its residents and volunteers, it was just closed by the Greek Ministry of Migration. 

But, after a brief Thanksgiving visit with her family back in the States, Ms. Campbell has returned to Greece, ready to set up a new camp and continue to help refugees at a community center. Ms. Schoen, who had been set, before the Oinofyta camp’s closing date was moved up from the end of this year, to go again to Greece this week to help Ms. Campbell dismantle it, will be there soon to help. 

“I want it to be part of my life forever, when these situations arise,” she said of her relief work. “I want to be connected to an organization where I can pick up and go.” 

But not, perhaps, as quickly as she had to for her Puerto Rico trip. Because of regulations regarding Puerto Rico licensure for critical care emergency medical technicians versus paramedics, a higher level of certification, she was not sure she could be deployed to the island for Team Rubicon. But on the evening of Nov. 13 she was notified she was scheduled to go, and had to leave at 6 a.m. the next day. “I hadn’t even packed; I was in a full-on panic,” Ms. Schoen said. Nonetheless, she is ready to do it again.

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation has identified the East Hampton Airport as a potential inactive hazardous waste disposal site, according to a letter to the town, and will lead an investigation into the source of the chemical contamination in nearby wells. 

The detection of perfluorinated compounds, known as PFCs, in wells near the airport “may be attributable to current or past operations on your property,” the D.E.C. wrote in a Nov. 10 letter, as the compounds, listed as hazardous substances by the state, are components of firefighting foams. 

“This information leads us to suspect,” said the D.E.C. “that hazardous waste may have been disposed of” at the airport.

The state agency has asked that the town provide any relevant information, including “the locations of firefighting foam storage, use, and training activities.” 

Water contamination by firefighting foam has been tied to fire training facilities elsewhere on Long Island. A firefighters’ training facility run by the regional Fire Training Association operates on an industrial park lot at the airport, but Dan Shields of the Amagansett Fire Department, chairman of the association board, said earlier this fall that firefighting foam is not used there. 

Whether or not the foam has been used to fight fires in the area is a question; some recall a minor plane crash at the airport that led to a fire that was put out using the foam. 

The two perfluorinated chemicals of concern, known as PFOS and PFOA, are not regulated but are the subject of a federal health advisory designed “to provide information on contaminants that can cause human health effects and are known or anticipated to occur in drinking water.”

Research on the potential health effects of exposure to them is ongoing by agencies including the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the National Toxicology Program, but they are believed to be linked to effects on the liver and immune system, and to kidney and other cancers.

Last Thursday, the town board approved a resolution designating the D.E.C. as “the lead investigatory agency into possible PFC contamination at the East Hampton Airport.” The town has been working with both the State Health Department and Suffolk County Health Department in efforts to have private wells tested within a designated area near the airport. The town is providing residents within the affected area, which includes some 400 properties, with bottled water upon request.

Officials have been urging owners of the more than 250 properties where the Health Department would like to sample water to authorize the test. As of mid-November, with about 50 tests concluded, PFCs had been found in 28 wells, though only one had levels higher than the 70 parts per trillion level set by the Environmental Protection Agency as a maximum safe level in water. 

The Wainscott Citizens Advisory Committee is to discuss the water contamination at its meeting on Saturday, among other items on its agenda. The committee has been pressing for more information, including specifics on test results; the location of wells where the chemicals were detected, particularly in relation to the airport, the former sand mine, Georgica and Wainscott Ponds, and the Wainscott School; potential sourcesss; the efficacy of filtration systems that can eliminate the chemicals, and whether or not public water mains will be installed, and at whose cost.

Parents, if you haven’t heard of Juuls, read on, because even children as young as 12 are being lured by these sleek e-cigarettes, or vaping devices, small enough to be concealed and often mistaken for an innocuous flash drive. They come with disposable cartridges in kid-friendly flavors like peach, blueberry, creme brulée, and cotton candy. Yet each pod offers a dose of nicotine equivalent to that of a pack of cigarettes. What’s more, due to the inconspicuous appearance of this device — which can be plugged into a laptop to charge, and has commercial names like Cloud 2.0 and microG — it’s all happening right under the noses of unsuspecting parents and teachers. 

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 4 of every 100 middle school students reported in 2016 that they had used some form of electronic cigarettes within the previous 30 days, while the United States Food and Drug Administration reported that e-cigarette use among high school students increased by 900 percent between 2011 and 2016. Last year, the Surgeon General reported, “E-Cigarette use among U.S. youth and young adults is now a major public health concern.”

Electronic cigarettes, which include Juuls, are small vaporizers that heat water, along with a flavor, nicotine, and other chemicals, to a boiling point so that the vapor can be inhaled. Psychologists and researchers believe that teens are attracted to vaping not just because it is a novelty and therefore has an inherent element of fun, but because it is considered more socially acceptable than smoking cigarettes or using other traditional tobacco products.

Today, “Juuling in the bathroom” is a problem so widespread in schools around the country that it prompted middle and high school administrators on the East End to send out emails warning parents about the dangers of e-cigarettes, e-hookahs, vape pens, and other discreet forms of inhalation. Many  schools have reported incidents of students being caught covertly using, or in possession of, these devices while at school; all of the apprehended students faced serious disciplinary consequences.

In an email from the East Hampton School District, Adam Fine, the high school principal, reiterated the district’s code of conduct, which forbids the “possession, use, or sale” of e-cigarettes on school property.

The Ross School sent home a similar email restating the school’s conduct policy, which prohibits the use, possession, or distribution of any e-cigarette or vaporizer paraphernalia, and reminding students and parents that “the school reserves the right to expel a student on a first violation of this policy.” 

Administrators are also urging parents and guardians to play a greater role in shaping teens’ attitudes about drugs and alcohol. “We all play a critical role in prevention efforts and setting clear and consistent values and rules,” wrote Jeanette Tyndall and Bill O’Hearn, the respective heads of Ross’s middle and high schools. “As such, it is vitally important that we remain informed and current with information about substances commonly used and abused by adolescents, and are aware of their legal and health implications.”

For many parents, the foremost concern is that vaping devices, including vape pens and e-hookahs, can be used to consume marijuana, cocaine, T.H.C. liquids, and other drugs, making substance abuse easier and less detectable. Vaping paraphernalia is also inexpensive and easily available online. On the Juul website, for example, a starter kit costs $49.99, and it appears the customer need only check a box to confirm he or she is 18.

Educators say that until the F.D.A. issues clear, updated guidelines and health warnings on e-cigarettes, it is primarily up to parents to educate themselves and their children. School administrators and psychologists, for example, suggest that parents let their children know that a vape pen, or a Juul, is just another name for an e-cigarette. (One Massachusetts high school sent out emails with the header “Here is a Juul device disguised as a Sharpie pen.”) Whatever the devices are called, parents are advised to inform their children that they deliver powerful hits of a very addictive drug: nicotine.

On Tuesday, Charles Soriano, the East Hampton Middle School principal, followed an earlier email urging parents to talk to their children with one that alerted the school community to the news that Ken Alversa and Chris Jack, police officers, will be joining the school’s educational support team to conduct “fireside chats” with each grade on Monday morning.

Dr. Soriano concluded his email by saying, “I have heard grapevine tales of some parents who are suggesting that [e-cigarettes] are harmless: Just vapor or just nicotine. This could not be farther from the truth. . . . Unfortunately, this sort of thing is enticing to youngsters, and the commercial marketing around them doesn’t help: It’s like the Marlboro man all over again, only now he’s become tech savvy.”

The photograph accompanying this article was taken by Lindsay Fox, the editor of EcigaretteReviewed.com

On Nov. 29, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo made history for the second time when he vetoed a bill coauthored by our two local state representatives, Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. and Senator Kenneth P. LaValle, that would have given official status to the Montaukett Indians. I write “the second time” because of the governor’s previous veto of similar legislation authored by Thiele and LaValle and passed by the Legislature four years ago.

Governor Cuomo’s veto is not so different from President Trump’s use of the word “Pocahontas” in reference to the female senator from Massachusetts.

It has been more than 400 years since European Caucasians invaded North America and some of us still haven’t learned. Amerindians were here first, as long as 13,000 years ago. We took their lands for a few dollars and a bagful of trinkets, or, just took their lands for our own for nothing.

Not only did we take their lands, we gave them our Old World diseases — smallpox and consumption, for example — not to mention the many lives we took by more barbarous means.

For the last 150 years we’ve been trying to make nice, at least many of us in many of the United States have. The Shinnecocks gained tribal recognition in 1971, the Corchaugs never formally, but­ they were recognized in other positive ways, and the Poospatucks on their Mastic reservation in southeastern Brookhaven Town.

Governor Cuomo slighted our New York State Native Americans in yet another way recently, he had the Tappan Zee bridge renamed after his father. “Tappan” is a word of Native American origin referring to that area’s local tribe of Lenape origin, while “zie” is Dutch for “sea,” after another group of Old Worlders who arrived here at about the same time as the British.

What Indian place names will fall by the wayside next? Aquebogue? Mattitituck? Peconic? Amagansett? Tuckahoe? Sebonac? I live in Noyac, which means “point of land” in Algonkian. Will it too one day be renamed after a politician or other notable?

Southold was once known as “Yennicott,” hardly a word derived from a European language.

Long Island’s Native Americans taught us many survival skills. The fish trap, a line of impenetrable material leading to the trap, or box, at the end, was one of their inventions and is still in use by local fishermen today. There is one in Noyac Bay a few blocks away from my house. Its barrier and box are crafted from nylon mesh. The Montauketts, Shinnecocks, and Corchaugs didn’t have twine; they used reeds and sticks, which cost nothing and worked almost as well. One might even say that the native peoples not only invented the fish trap, but bay fishing in general. Their kitchen middens invariably contained oyster, clam, mussel, and scallop shells, as well as the bones of local fishes.

Do I dare use the term Bonacker in polite company? It derives from Accabonac, the Indian name for a small bay in the hamlet of Springs. Bonackers, as many locals call themselves, use the term proudly. In their backhanded way they’ve come to appreciate and miss the original locals.

Gardiner’s Island was “Manchonake,” then Isle of Wight after the English isle of the same name, and today, Gardiner’s Island, after Lion Gardiner, who bought it from the Montauketts for some “powder and shot, a black dog and some Dutch blankets.” It was also bequeathed to him by the then- British King Charles I. The paved road, Isle of Wight, that runs from Hog Creek Road north to Gardiner’s Bay in Springs, ended in a convenient viewing and launching spot to the island.

The plight of the Montauketts seeking official state recognition may go on for many a moon, at least until the time a new governor is elected. But all is not lost. They will probably never get their Montauk lands back, but they still have a chief, Robert Pharoah, and still maintain a small museum on the site of Third House County Park. One day, the two could serve as the restart for something much grander and more like the original. Let’s wish them well.

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

Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to. . . .

Land and water. The two most important things on the South Fork. In one sense, the water is on top, the land below. In another, the land is on top, the water below. Or it could be that both are on top or both below. It all depends upon your orientation. Without the benefit of X-ray vision we can see the land and the water. What we can’t see is the subsurface soil and the groundwater situated between the soil grains, extending hundreds of feet below the surface. For most of us living here, it is the most life-sustaining water of all.

Under almost all of our freshwater ponds here, except for a few in Montauk that we call “perched” ponds, there is no barrier between the groundwater, or aquifer, extending below. The eastern three-quarters of Long Island, Nassau and Suffolk Counties, utilize this groundwater for drinking, washing, irrigating, and the like. The western third gets most of its fresh water piped underground from reservoirs in the counties north of New York City. The water in the aquifer beneath Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, and the Bronx is no longer fit to drink.

Consequently, in the absence of daily consumptive draw-down, the surface of that aquifer is rising day in day out, creating problems for basements and other underground structures in low-lying areas. We have just the opposite problem on the East End. The top of our upper aquifer, the upper glacial aquifer, is slowly ebbing. Rainwater raises it, our everyday uses draws it down. In the famous drought of the 1960s, this aquifer shrank to the degree that small ponds such as Poxabogue Pond in Sagaponack almost dried up.

As the water needs of the swelling summer and year-round populations increase, along with their business and institutional needs, the top of the aquifer slowly recedes. Fortunately, in western East Hampton Town and throughout Southampton Town, a deeper aquifer, the Magothy, compensates for the losses. The North Fork is not so fortunate. It has no Magothy and most of its groundwater is not potable. Water has to be piped in from the west.

Montauk also has no freshwater Magothy aquifer, and Shelter Island has only the upper glacial aquifer, which is so thin that water has to be trucked in by ferry to fill swimming pools. Fishers Island, part of Southold Town but closer to Connecticut, is the only part of eastern Long Island that has a freshwater lake, a “reservoir,” to satisfy almost all of its freshwater needs.

Recently, several new toxins have been found in domestic private well waters in different parts of the South Fork, especially those recently discovered in Wainscott near the East Hampton Airport. They are not going to be easily dealt with. Their appearance may be just the tip of an iceberg spreading throughout the South Fork. For the time being, public water is the only saving grace.

Groundwater is one thing, surface water is another, but they are connected. In the last few years our surface waters have been taking a whipping. First it was the brown tides of the 1980s. Now our marine waters are visited annually by one or more different colored tides, the colors stemming from the dominant plankton of the day, almost all of which are not only colorful but toxic. Even looking at the satellite view of the South Fork using Google Maps, you don’t have to be a water quality expert to pick out the more polluted ponds from the cleaner ones. The latter are bluer, the former a dirty gray-brown. 

Our inland brackish and fresh waters are going down the drain as well. A recently posted sign at Poxabogue Pond is just another example of what’s happening. It’s posted because its waters are plagued with a huge bloom of blue-green algae or, more correctly, cyanobacteria. Don’t swim in it or drink it? Remember the dog that died a few years ago from drinking the water in Georgica Pond? Each year a new local pond is added to the list of those with cyanobacteria blooms. First it was Mill Pond in Water Mill and Lake Agawam in Southampton Village, then Old Town Pond in Southampton Village, Georgica Pond in Wainscott, Hook Pond in East Hampton Village, Wainscott and Wickapogue Ponds, Kellis Pond in Sagaponack, Sagaponack Pond, and now Poxabogue Pond.

By the same token, a sampling program undertaken by the Surfrider Foundation, which tests the marine waters along both coasts and here on the South Fork in conjunction with Concerned Citizens of Montauk, the Peconic Baykeeper, and other environmental organizations, is producing valuable but very scary data on the levels of a bacterium, enterococcus faecalis. The bacterium comes from the digestive tracts of mammals and other vertebrates and is present in our fresh and estuarine waters. In the past it has been difficult to trace the bacterium to a mammal or waterfowl species, but now the methodology for doing that has been worked out and is in play.

In fact, Cornell Cooperative Extension of Suffolk County is already doing it in Huntington waters. Don’t be surprised if in the near future we trace some of these bacteria to humans. Those new whiz-bang septic systems that remove nitrogen probably won’t remove entercoccus and fecal coliform bacteria, those bugs that for many years now the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation has been sampling routinely. When high fecal coliform counts are detected or expected, the D.E.C. closes a water body to shellfishing. 

It’s either one thing, or it’s another. Locally, it’s either a colorful plankton, a cyanobacterium, an enterocccus, or an E. coli. Take your pick. And we are just beginning to look. There may be many other toxic organisms around that we have yet to discover. 

What are we doing to combat all of this pollution? Well, there is that super septic for treating human waste and new catchment basins for catching the pollution in road runoff. There are also shellfishing restrictions and the like to protect us. Lately, filter-feeding oysters show a lot of promise. Clams and mussels also filter the water, but oysters are more tolerant of fresher waters, i.e., brackish waters such as that found in Georgica Pond. 

Oysters can filter-feed out some of the phytoplankton and bacteria, but it may be too little too late. The underground pollution loads from 100 years of septic effluent and the aboveground loads from almost that many years of road and impervious surface runoff will be almost impossible to scrub away, oysters or not. 

Yet we continue to develop willy-nilly, upgradient from coastal waters and freshwater ponds. Take the Hills plan in East Quogue, beside West Shinnecock Bay, which is already terribly polluted, or the spa plan in for Bridgehampton on the banks of Kellis Pond, for starters. These kinds of foolish overdevelopment plans are rife throughout Suffolk County, but the county executive seems to turn a blind eye to them. 

The Ronkonkoma Hub, planned a few hundred feet from Long Island’s largest freshwater lake, mind you, and the redevelopment of the former Pilgrim State Psychiatric Center on oak-brush plains also in the Town of Islip, which is to include 3,500 apartments, are just two of the big developments that come to mind.

While they build, build, build, we are wringing our hands and simultaneously tilting at windmills . . . oh, yes, I almost forgot . . . hundreds of these could be erected in the ocean from Montauk to Far Rockaway and westward to coastal New Jersey, and why not? All of these new developments are going to need a heap of new electrical power. 

As the late Pete Seeger used to lament so painfully in song, “When will we ever learn?” Perhaps never, Pete.

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

Deepwater Wind, the Rhode Island Company that plans to construct a 15-turbine wind farm approximately 30 miles east of Montauk, has opened an office at 524 Montauk Highway in Amagansett to support the proposed development, known as the South Fork Wind Farm.

The office will serve as a venue at which residents can meet with Deepwater Wind's Long Island team, led by Jennifer Garvey, development manager. Deepwater Wind will host a holiday open house at the office on Dec. 6 from 6 to 8 p.m.

The company's officials have met with residents of the Town of East Hampton at several events this year, including meetings of the East Hampton Town Trustees and its harbor management committee, to detail the project, which has been criticized by commercial fishermen and some environmentalists. At recent meeting with the Wainscott Citizens Advisory Committee, members of that committee voiced concerns about the latest proposed landfall location of the wind farm's transmission cable, at Beach Lane in that hamlet. The cable is to be buried under the beach and connect with the Long Island Power Authority's substation on Cove Hollow Road in East Hampton.

"We're proud to be the first offshore wind developer to establish an office in New York State," Jeff Grybowski, Deepwater Wind's chief executive officer, said in a statement issued on Tuesday. The new office "will be a great home for our Long Island team," he said. "While we've been active in East Hampton for many years, this new office will allow us to work even closer with local residents and become part of the South Fork's business community."

Deepwater Wind plans to submit more than 20 federal and state permit applications for the wind farm early next year. Should those approvals be granted, the wind farm could begin operation late in 2022. 

Amagansett

A Scrimshaw Lane resident woke up Sunday morning to find smashed champagne bottles in his driveway and his garage door dented. James Caldarone told police he had heard loud banging around 10 the night before. He estimated that repairs would cost about $300.

East Hampton Village

A Manhattan resident who is a member of SoulCycle began shouting at the manager of the Newtown Lane branch of the exercise studio on Friday afternoon after being told to wait in line. The man began filming the manager with his cellphone, and when told that that was against company policy, “he yelled that he is being racially profiled,” according to the police report. He was asked to leave, which he did.

A caller reporting dogs fighting in a car parked in front of White’s Pharmacy on Main Street triggered a visit from an officer around noon on Nov. 21. The owner of the car and the dogs told the officer that she works next door to White’s and that her dogs always bark when she leaves the car and enters her place of business. The animals did not seem to be in any distress, the officer reported, and no further action was taken.

An East Hampton High School student left his 10-speed bicycle unlocked in front of the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter on Gingerbread Lane on Nov. 21. When he exited the building a half-hour later, the bike, valued at $100, was gone. Police later found it on a bike rack at the high school.

Montauk

Police were called to Maple Street in Hither Hills on the morning of Nov. 20. A blue wooden gate on Evelyne Bize’s property had been knocked down during the night. She suspected that a vehicle might have been responsible. When an officer examined the gate, however, he discovered that it was rotted at the base, and suggested that it may have been knocked over by a strong wind the night before. It will cost Ms. Bize about $1,000 to replace, she told police. 

Police were summoned by an anonymous call to Otis Road on the afternoon of Nov. 22. Two Ditch Plain residents were found there, using a skateboard ramp on the property. The two, who live on Brisbane Road, said they had used the ramp several times, thinking that it was a public one. They were told that the ramp was on private property and were warned that if they continued to use it, they could face trespassing charges. They left without incident.

Northwest Woods

Twelve silver-colored, solar-powered driveway lights were stolen from outside an Alewife Brook Road residence early in the morning of Oct. 29. Susan Camus estimated the value of the stolen lights at $100.

Whether South Fork children who are on the autism spectrum are receiving optimal educational services depends on whom you ask. As reported here on Nov. 9, two parents spoke passionately at a town board meeting early this month, saying more specialized services were needed and welcomed the news that Gersh Academy, a private school for children on the spectrum, would like to take over the former Child Development Center of the Hamptons building on Stephen Hand’s Path in East Hampton.

“Many don’t realize that there’s a community of children here with autism,”  Genie Egerton-Warburton told the board. “We need a school here for children with autism.”

Not so, said the superintendents of the East Hampton, Springs, Montauk, and Bridgehampton School Districts at an East Hampton Town Board meeting last week, making it clear that they are “totally against” the proposal. 

They expressed the belief that the less restrictive, more integrated environment provided in the local schools for special needs students, including those with autism, better serves children with disabilities by giving them tools to eventually integrate into society in ways that a specialized school cannot.  

“The Gersh Academy wants to turn the clock back,” Debra Winter, the superintendent of the Springs School District, said. Mr. Gersh’s “philosophy is that the environment needs to change for special needs kids,” she said, arguing that by integrating special needs students within the general education population they learn to adapt to their environment.

Ms. Winter’s comments were echoed by Richard Burns, the East Hampton superintendent, who pointed out that prior to becoming a superintendent he was the head of pupil personnel services, a department that oversees special education.  “Educationally, it is all wrong,” he said of Gersh Academy.

The superintendents were also vocal about the fact that unlike C.D.C.H., a Gersh Academy here would be part of a private institution with several branches, and not chartered by the state. An annual student fee of $55,000 has been estimated, and Mr. Burns called the academy “a definite money drain.”

Federal law states that every child in need of individualized services is entitled to a free education. “If our district refuses to send a student to Gersh,” Mr. Burns warned, “We could then get sued, which is a very costly thing.” Ms. Winter also expressed concern about that, adding that she had firsthand experience of such litigation at the Longwood School District, where she was formerly employed. 

The Gersh Academy website states that it is a New York State-approved provider of teacher training for the needs of children with autism.

They expressed the belief that the less restrictive, more integrated environment provided in the local schools for special needs students better serves children with disabilities.

There are 56 students with autism now enrolled in schools between Southampton and Montauk, Ms. Winter said. Of those, approximately half are in general education classes, while the others attend the Suffolk County Board of Cooperative Educational Services learning center in Westhampton Beach. Placement is determined by district special education committees, and those students who attend the BOCES center are there with the goal of eventually joining the general education population. On the other hand, Mr. Burns said of Gersh Academy, “My feeling is that once a student goes there, they stay there.”

The East Hampton superintendent also explained that of the 13 autistic students in his district, only 5 have been identified as requiring the more specialized services provided at BOCES. There would not be enough students enrolling at Gersch Academy, should it come to pass, for it to be a viable business, he said. “Parents are very happy with the level of service and opportunities we provide their special needs children,” he said.

The building sought by the academy is on land leased from the town. While its owner, the former C.D.C.H., has reportedly come to an agreement with Gersh Academy, the town would have to reassign the lease. 

At the meeting, East Hampton Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell finally summarized the discussion. “So, you’re here to advise the board that the school districts oppose the transfer of the lease from C.D.C.H. to Gersh Academy, correct?”

“Absolutely,” Mr. Burns replied.

With reporting by Joanne Pilgrim

A time-honored tradition, the Springs School opera, is ready to take the stage for the 21st consecutive year. This year’s fourth-grade opera company — 79 Watch Us Shine, referencing the number of students in fourth grade at the start of the year — will present its original production, “The Case of the Missing Pollock,” on Wednesday at 7 p.m., the only performance open to the public. It is free of charge.

Not only is this a new date for the opera (it is usually held in January) but instead of Guild Hall, the venue has shifted to the East Hampton High School auditorium. But make no mistake, what remains the same is the level of creativity, professionalism, and enthusiasm generated by the school’s fourth-grade ensemble.

At a rehearsal on Tuesday, the pint-size performers appeared poised and prepared, listening intently to directions from Amanda Waleko, a second-grade teacher, and Meghan Lydon, a fourth-grade teacher by day and the coordinator of the opera event in her down time. There were no signs of stage fright.

“We’ve been practicing for so long that I don’t think any of us are nervous,” said Jocelynn Watson, who, while munching on Goldfish during a break, explained that her family relocated from Texas this year and she started at Springs in September. “No way did I expect this play to be so detailed. I’ve performed in many school plays and nothing has been anything like this,” she said. Jocelynn plays a central figure embroiled in the mystery of a missing Jackson Pollock painting.

Brynley Lys plays a British waitress at the Springs Tavern, who wears a uniform with a shell design on it, the young girl explained. “And I have to speak with an English accent,” she said.

The opera, as is the tradition, weaves together local history, original East End characters, storytelling, and music. This year, however, the group wanted to make it a mystery. The interest in this genre, explained Ms. Lydon, could have been sparked during the students’ third-grade literacy class, in which they read mysteries. In the fall, students began brainstorming names for this year’s production company as well as story ideas. During another annual tradition — the fourth-grade field trip to the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center in Springs — a lightbulb went off.

“I think they got especially excited,” said Ms. Lydon, “because of the possibility of really colorful sets and a range of interesting characters.”

Five student writers got working on the script and lyrics with the help of Angelina Molina, the musical directors, and Kyril Bromley, who wrote the original music. Every fourth grader, said Ms. Lydon, gets involved, performing, conceptualizing, costume making, helping with set design, basic choreography, and serving as stagehands and fund-raisers. “We even have our very own P.R. team,” she added.

This beloved tradition has such a lasting effect on students that Dana Chittavong, a 2011 Springs graduate and ex-opera performer, currently at college where she hopes to study theater education, was there at Tuesday’s rehearsal to lend a hand.

Colleen McKee, who plays Annie, one of the detectives on the trail of the missing painting, said she wasn’t at all nervous about next week’s performance. “I’ve done loads of dancing,” she said with the air of a seasoned professional, “so I’m totally used to this.”

Schoolday performances will be held for students from nearby schools but adults have just one chance to see the culmination of months of work by a group of talented theater apprentices.

“The Case of the Missing Pollock” will open for the general public on Wednesday at the East Hampton High School auditorium. Special school performances will be held next Thursday and Friday, Dec. 8.