A water purification project in Accabonac Harbor — the first in East Hampton Town to be funded by the portion of the community preservation fund that voters approved last year for water quality improvement — is moving ahead, Kim Shaw, the town’s natural resources director, told the town board this week.

The project will make use of bioextraction, a natural process through which something is taken up by another organism, to remove nitrogen from the water. An excess of nitrogen, which leaches from septic waste, among other sources, leads to algal blooms, which severely impact aquatic ecosystems and can be toxic for humans. 

Macro-algae seaweed, which thrives on nitrogen, will be grown on frames set in the harbor. The plants on the frames will be periodically harvested and tested to see how much nitrogen they are taking up. 

Ms. Shaw told the board on Tuesday that it had “already been demonstrated that we have a serious nitrogen problem in Accabonac Harbor, through intense monitoring with Cornell over the past three years.” After winning a state grant, the town has been working with representatives of Cornell Cooperative Extension, which will oversee the project. Stony Brook University professors will join them next week in East Hampton, Ms. Shaw said. 

High levels of nitrogen as well as ammonia from urine that has not begun to chemically break down, have been recorded at the mouth of Pussy’s Pond as its waters enter Accabonac Harbor. A failing septic system at the Springs School, which has had to be pumped out regularly for years, has been targeted as the cause. The school has been repairing the system, which falls below current Suffork Health Department standards, however. 

As required under the legislation allowing 20 percent of the preservation fund to go toward water quality projects, the Accabonac initiative has been vetted and approved by a technical advisory committee. 

A similar macro-algae water purification project in Southampton Town has proven successful, Ms. Shaw said. Should the Accabonac project also be successful, there are plans to create another in Lake Montauk. “This is just one step toward the ultimate goal of reducing nitrogen,” Ms. Shaw said. 

A report is also to be made to the board next month on two other ongoing efforts to reduce water pollution, which employ different strategies. 

Permeable reactive barriers, buried structures that can capture contaminants in groundwater, are showing an 85 percent uptake of nitrogen passing through them, Ms. Shaw said, explaining that some have been installed around Three Mile Harbor.

Cornell also has been working on habitat restoration along the shore of Pussy’s Pond, using native plants to curtail erosion and provide a natural buffer, and Michele Carlson, a designer of sustainable landscapes, has installed bioswales there with plants that will filter contaminants from water runoff before it enters the pond and harbor. 

Also on Tuesday, the natural resources director reported that her department had accepted nine applications so far for the rebates the town is providing for the installation of improved septic systems that treat wastewater for nitrogen. The rebate program began on Friday. 

Owners of commercial and residential properties could be eligible for up to $10,000 or $16,000 in rebates to cover the costs of the new systems, based on location in targeted areas and on income. 

“We can come at this from two different angles,” Town Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc said at the meeting on Tuesday — reducing the amount of nitrogen going into waters while also using various methods to clean and restore already polluted water.

Clarification: The work done by Cornell Cooperative Extension at Pussy’s Pond included the installation of a permeable reactive barrier, along with water testing. Michele Carlson of Carlson Design and Planning has done the habitat restoration and native plantings there in order to curtail erosion and provide a natural buffer.

A temporary no-swimming advisory was issued by Suffolk officials on Thursday for 64 beaches across the country. Of these, only one, at Havens Beach in Sag Harbor, was on the South Fork.

The advisory came after heavy rain swept the area on Wednesday. Based on past samples, the Suffolk Department of Health Services issues warnings based on the potential for bacterial contamination. Officials said that swimming and other contact with water at the affected sites should be avoided until at least two successive tide cycles had passed.

The current advisory will be lifted Friday morning. Up-to-the-minute listings of open and closed beaches can be obtained by phone at 631-852-5822 or the Department of Health Services beach monitoring web page.

Water Tests

In water samples taken by the Concerned Citizens of Montauk before Wednesday's rainfall, bacteria levels in many South Fork locations had declined from highs observed earlier in the season.

Kate Rossi-Snook, who manages the water testing for C.C.O.M., said that a full moon high tide might have helped keep bacteria levels relatively low.

Several traditionally problematic sites continued to show elevated "high" counts of enterococcus, including the shallow creek at Fresh Pond Park in Amagansett. Other sample sites with high readings were Pussy's Pond in Springs, and at the Nature Trail and the south end of Hook Pond in East Hampton Village.

East Hampton Town officials recently posted warnings at Fresh Pond about the possibility of bacterial contamination of swimmers there.

An East Hampton Town police investigation of a “suspicious person” knocking on doors of residences on Greentree Court in Amagansett, off La Foret Lane, led late Friday night to the arrest of Kai Jing Liu, 32.

Ms. Liu is wanted in Colorado on a felony charge of fraud, having allegedly run up a $4,600 bill at a Snowmass Village resort in early February. When it came time to pay, according to Snowmass police, Ms. Liu presented the Crestwood Condominiums with a series of bad credit cards, as reported by The Aspen Times.

As they questioned Ms. Liu near midnight Saturday, police here learned about the Colorado warrant and informed the woman she was under arrest. She reportedly refused to put her bags down to be handcuffed, and kicked an officer repeatedly as he tried to detain her. She was charged with resisting arrest, a misdemeanor, and harassment, a violation.

Taken to police headquarters, she refused again and again to be fingerprinted, demanding to talk to a lawyer and a judge. The standoff between Ms. Liu and police continued into Saturday afternoon. It was explained to her that if she allowed herself to be fingerprinted, she would be arraigned on Sunday morning, when she would have both a judge and a lawyer to talk to. She finally agreed.

Her conversation that morning with East Hampton Town Justice Lisa R. Rana did not go so well. With Carl Irace, her “weekend lawyer” under a county program for defendants who do not have their own attorney, standing by her side, she repeatedly interrupted the court. Justice Rana tried to determine where she was from. Ms. Liu gave a Flushing address, as well as an address in Woodbury, N.Y. She said she was a designer, in town for the Hampton Classic Horse Show.

Given the outstanding warrant, Justice Rana set bail at $20,500. “There is no way I can make that bail right now,” Ms. Liu said. She began talking about her interchanges with police during her arrest, though Justice Rana told her several times to address the court through Mr. Irace. “I was defending myself as a woman,” Ms. Liu said of her refusal to hand over her handbag. “I have an attorney here to represent you, to protect you and your rights,” Justice Rana interjected. “I was trying to defend myself,” Ms. Liu repeated.

She remained in county jail as of yesterday morning, and is due back in court today.

From the appearance of their worn leather covers, the pair of Bibles that had been passed down in a local family for decades may not look all that significant. However, written in careful script within them is an apparently unique record of births, marriages, and deaths among the Montaukett Tribe of Native Americans — one that may play a role in the tribe’s bid to regain its official status.

The Bibles and a rare set of photos of tribe members, which have been placed at the Montauk Library for safekeeping, were kept by the Butler family, beginning in the 1840s. 

Art Lucas, a Montauk resident who is related to the Montauketts by marriage, looked after them until they went to the library archive last week. He had received them from Lillian Ammon Ryan, an elderly relative who lives in Maryland, who, in turn, had received them from Madalyn Butler Ammon, who lived at Barnes Landing in Amagansett and died last year at 88.

“She wanted them to go the archives,” Mr. Lucas said. The Bibles, he said, show that the Montauketts remained in the area and maintained a sense of tribal identity into the present day. 

“The Bibles are a very, very rare thing,” Maura Feeney, the Montauk Library archivist, said. “This is an unusual record. The photographs are just priceless. When he showed them to me, I got heart palpitations.”

The tribal continuity that the entries represent span the period at the beginning of the last century, when a court declared the tribe extinct. The Bibles’ pages tell another story. 

Pages left deliberately blank when the Bibles were printed were filled over time with milestones. Between the Old and New Testaments in an 1844 Bible — the older of the two — are found the births of Hannah L. Cuffee on April 25, 1841, and Samuel L. Butler on June 21, 1845. Turning the page over, the deaths of Isaac B. Fowler and John A. Fowler on Dec. 11 in what appears to be the year 1851 are recorded; Mr. Lucas said that he believed they drowned in a fishing accident.  

While the chronology of life events contained in the Bibles is clear, their history is somewhat less so. 

The Montauketts have had a long and difficult relationship with the state, as well as with the mostly English colonists who began to arrive in the mid-1600s. Nearly 300 years later, a low point came when Arthur Benson, a millionaire industrialist, was able to displace the remaining tribal members from their ancestral land in Montauk toward the end of the 19th century. A court case dragged on for nearly 20 years, culminating in the 1910 decision that stripped the Montauketts of their legal status.

Another blow came in 1923 when a group of Montauketts led by Maria Pharaoh traveled to Washington in an unsuccessful bid to get help from the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

More recently, Robert Pharaoh, a descendant of Maria Pharaoh, and others have continued the fight to regain tribal recognition, and the Bibles could prove decisive. 

Mr. Pharaoh, who is the Montaukett Nation’s grand sachem and chief, titles handed down through his family, said he was looking forward to seeing the Bibles sometime after Labor Day. 

Tribal continuity is a critical component of the tribe’s attempt to regain its legal status with the State of New York. A bill passed this summer by the State Legislature would restore the tribe’s status. It awaits the signature of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo.

“This helps prove the case that we are attempting to make regarding the Montauketts and recognition,” said State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. “Regardless of what some state judge said in 1910, you can’t erase history.”

Mr. Thiele said that he and Mr. Pharaoh planned to meet with the governor’s representatives soon. He said that they were making an extra effort because of a 2013 veto of a similar bill that would have granted the tribe official status. “We want to give the governor all the reasons why he should sign the bill,” he said.

Recognition will not change the lives of the remaining tribal members, Mr. Thiele said. Initially, it could bring education and health care benefits, for example. Nor, he said, was it tied to plans for casino gambling or land claims, of the sort made by tribes elsewhere in the Northeast.

Ms. Feeney, the Montauk Library’s archivist, said that she was overjoyed that the Bibles, along with the small group of Butler family photos, have now been housed in the climate-controlled collection. 

“It is like a sacred trust, preserving the memory of Montauk, and that includes the Montaukett people,” she said. 

The three candidates vying for two seats on the East Hampton Town Board debated a number of issues Monday evening at the East Hampton Library, with a political newcomer who has the party’s backing repeatedly if gently attempting to draw a distinction between himself and the candidate who does not. 

Jeffrey Bragman, an attorney endorsed by the East Hampton Democratic Committee, discussed various topics with Zachary Cohen, a former candidate for supervisor and town trustee who did not receive the party’s endorsement but successfully petitioned to force a primary. Between them sat Kathee Burke-Gonzalez, who was elected to the town board in 2013 and is in her first re-election campaign. 

For the most part, however, the three candidates were in sync, and were received warmly by an overflow audience that included Supervisor Larry Cantwell, who is retiring this year, and Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc, who seeks to succeed him. The League of Women Voters of teh Hamptons and the East Hampton Group for Good Government sponsored the debate. 

The primary will be held on Sept. 12. The two candidates receiving the most votes will face the Republicans Jerry Larsen and Paul Giardina.

Asked about the long-range prognosis for downtown Montauk, where the Army Corps of Engineers’ effort to reinforce the shoreline dunes with buried sandbags has been widely criticized, Mr. Bragman said that Mr. Cohen, in an Oct. 10, 2013, letter to The Star, had endorsed the plan. While the letter did state that the bags “might give extra protection to the motel owners and frontline businesses,” Mr. Cohen argued that he had made that observation in the context of discussions with some of the hamlet’s leading business owners who were advocating “hard” solutions rather than a sand-only beach replenishment. 

Mr. Cohen’s letter agreed with expert testimony given that month, at a meeting of Concerned Citizens of Montauk, that a rock-cored dune was inadvisable. It said that sandbags “can be removed (or replaced) easily and with moderate expense if the Army Corps fails to perform its periodic sand replenishments.” 

In April 2014, the Army Corps offered geotextile bags as the only financially viable option. “Once the Army Corps did the bait-and-switch and dropped it down to only a small amount of sand, I wrote a letter that said ‘Now what is proposed is a steep hump with a sandbox in front of it, and we shouldn’t do it,’ ” Mr. Cohen told the crowd at the library.

To the question of whether the position of town manager should be created, Mr. Bragman was opposed. “I frankly think handling the purse strings and figuring out how your policies fit into those purse strings is something I want in the hands of somebody who’s accountable at election,” he said. “Sometimes I’ve heard, I think, from Mr. Cohen that he feels differently.”

“You need institutional knowledge which is often lost in change of administrations,” Mr. Cohen countered. “Having a manager gives you the opportunity to devote most of your time on the policy.”

Ms. Burke-Gonzalez observed that Mr. Cantwell’s assistant, Alex Walter, “had a great deal of managerial experience, so we were well suited to the changes we’ve made and the ways we’ve handled finances in the town.” Noting that Moody’s Investors Service Inc. had just upgraded the town to its highest bond rating ever, she said that “the next supervisor should make the decision” about a town manager. “If they move forward with the town manager, I would support that,” she added.

To a question about deer management, Mr. Bragman took a subtle jab at Mr. Cohen in the latter’s capacity as chairman of the town’s nature preserve committee. “I know there’s been criticism of the committee, that it’s stacked in favor of hunters, and I’ve heard from people who don’t favor hunting that they believe it’s not an objective, fair committee.” Whether a deer “problem” exists is uncertain, he said. “I want to move forward on all issues based on facts, not fear. I would also like to try to get us to stop shouting at each other a little bit. I think we make better progress when we talk to each other and listen to each other.” 

“The relationship between deer and tick-borne illnesses is much more complicated than to put it all on the deer,” Mr. Cohen said. While he has supported hunting as a means of managing the deer population, he pointed out that outreach to the State Department of Environmental Conservation with respect to nonlethal efforts such as immunocontraception has been ignored.

Ms. Burke-Gonzalez has likewise supported hunting, and said that tick-borne illness is an epidemic, but she opposed East Hampton Village’s recent effort to sterilize deer, calling it “a bit horrifying.” 

Ms. Burke-Gonzalez’s voice broke as she spoke of the town’s Latino population and undocumented immigrants’ fear of deportation. “When our new president . . . said that we could deputize our local police force to be immigration officers, folks were very fearful,” she said. “What we’re finding now is, the Latino Advisory Committee has not been meeting at Town Hall, because they’re not comfortable coming to our facility.” 

“The community is here to stay,” Mr. Cohen said, asserting that around 11 percent of the Democratic electorate is Latino. “They come to me and say, ‘We want to be part of the community.’ ”

“This is an issue that really matters here,” Mr. Bragman said, citing “good, hard-working neighbors who want only the same thing that anybody else wants, a chance to make a life and have a home and work hard.” Latino immigrants are “a tremendous asset to our town,” he said. “We have to be strong and say that East Hampton is not going along with crazy, biased policies and these horrible epithets that are used for these hardworking immigrants, just like my grandparents, just like your grandparents.” 

The candidates were united in their disappointment that an affordable housing complex planned for a town-owned parcel on Steven Hand’s Path in the Wainscott School District had met furious community opposition. The hamlet’s residents complained of an added burden to their school and their taxes, and said the complex would also add to the woes of the already degraded waters of Georgica Pond. “Everywhere I go people tell me the need for affordable housing,” Ms. Burke-Gonzalez said. “But unfortunately, when it gets proposed people really don’t want it in their neighborhood. . . . What I would ask is that we need to open our hearts and we need to move forward with more affordable housing for this community.” 

“One of the first things I would want to do is reopen the possibility of putting that there,” Mr. Cohen said of the Wainscott proposal. He cited a business owner who had shuttered her company, “not because she couldn’t find employees but that employees can’t find housing. . . . We’re losing our volunteer fire departments.” The town should review every available parcel, Mr. Cohen said, and create more affordable housing overlays, “and we need to keep working on the affordable accessory apartment law to make it work for more people.” 

“I never really bought the explanation about the school,” Mr. Bragman said. “I thought the pushback from the community was not credible . . . and I thought we should have pushed a bit harder on it, frankly.” 

The candidates offered qualified support for the proposed South Fork Wind Farm, a 15-turbine installation to be constructed about 30 miles off Montauk. The plan has drawn strong opposition from commercial fishermen, who fear its construction and transmission cable will disrupt or even destroy their livelihood. “It’s a legitimate concern that has to be examined through a careful, objective, transparent environmental review process,” Mr. Bragman said. He also advocated solar panel arrays in the town. “We have to have a multifaceted approach to the town’s energy needs.” 

“In general, it’s a wonderful idea,” Mr. Cohen said of offshore wind. “I do worry about several other things — I do not want to see solar displaced.” 

The three candidates were united in their desire for local control of the East Hampton Airport. The town board adopted curfews in 2015 in an effort to reduce noise, but an appeals court later struck down the restrictions. “Unfortunately, now we’re back to trying to get special legislation from our congressional delegation,” Ms. Burke-Gonzalez said, “and we’re exploring a Part 161 process,” an analysis that airports must perform when proposing noise or operational restrictions on aircraft. The town board will discuss the process with attorneys at its Sept. 19 work session, she said.

Residents of Montauk are concerned that restrictions enacted at the airport will push helicopter flights to the smaller airport there, Mr. Cohen said. “We now have complaints running all the way from Wainscott to Montauk. . . . You also have to look at the fact that we not only have noise, we have a large amount of pollution caused by the planes. . . . We have to attack this problem from many aspects. Negotiations are definitely going to be part of it.”

“Public opinion caught up with what the facts were, and people began to realize that airport noise was harming thousands of people,” Mr. Bragman said. Helicopters “have no business in our community,” he said, and while the airport is an asset to the town, “if we can’t control it we may find that what used to be an extreme position in the community” — closing it — “becomes a majority position.”

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Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly named the Suffolk County League of Women Voters as a co-sponsor of the Democratic primary debate. The debate was sponsored by the League of Women Voters of the Hamptons and the East Hampton Group for Good Government. 

The numbers for football were scant (resulting in the season’s being canceled), but for all of East Hampton High’s other fall sports they were bountiful, Joe Vas, the school district’s athletic director, said during a conversation this past week.

Eighty-four came out for boys soccer, necessitating cuts. The varsity, whose head coach is Don McGovern, and the junior varsity, which is being coached by Mike Vitulli, have divided 60 or so of these hopefuls.

While 84 was the highest turnout for boys soccer ever, “we’ve been attracting in the high 60s to the low 70s or so in recent years, and have always had to make cuts, so it’s not that far out of line,” McGovern said before last Thursday’s scrimmage here with Pierson, a scrimmage that the Bonackers, who scored before the first minute had passed, were to “win” handily.

Tougher tests, both nonleaguers, were on the immediate horizon — at Mattituck Saturday and versus Jericho, a perennial Nassau County power, in Syosset Monday.

Without doubt, boys soccer will be competitive, though it remains to be seen how deep into the fall the team, which seems to be well balanced, will go. 

The numbers for girls soccer are good too, with 21 on the varsity and 21 on the junior varsity, though the team’s been bumped up to a tougher league.

McGovern, Rich King’s varsity assistant in the recent past, is new to the head-coaching job, King having stepped down. Likewise, girls soccer, formerly coached by Vitulli, has a new coach, Cara Nelson (who later in the year is to run seven marathons in seven different countries in seven days). Vas said that Nelson, as is the case with McGovern, had “an extensive soccer background.”

The boys and girls volleyball teams are expected to be competitive also. The girls, coached by Kathy McGeehan, showed their stuff in a match here Friday with Miller Place, sweeping the Panthers 25-11, 25-16, 25-23, shrugging off an 8-1 deficit, and overcoming a number of service errors, self-inflicted wounds, in the third one.

McGeehan has eight juniors, two seniors, and three sophomores, one of whom, Mikela Junemann, pretty much led the way Friday, putting the ball on the floor frequently with her crushing outside hits and dominating with her hard serves.

Madyson Neff (serving and hitting), Elle Johnson (serving), Molly Mamay (defense), and Zoe Leach, the sophomore libero, made significant contributions as well. The play of the day was Leach’s skidding dig of what seemed like a certain kill that prolonged a point late in the third set that East Hampton was to go on to win.

The team was to have participated in a multi-team scrimmage at Bay Shore High School Saturday and was to have played at Sayville yesterday.

Boys volleyball, coached by Josh Brussell, who’s carrying 19 on the varsity — there are 17 with Andrew Rodriguez on the jayvee — was to have opened its season at home Tuesday with West Islip. 

The girls tennis team, coached by Katie Helfand, is predicted to finish second, behind William Floyd, in its league — despite the fact that there were seven graduation losses, six of them starters — though a presumably even tougher opponent, Half Hollow Hills East, was on hand for a mandatory nonleaguer here last Thursday.

Not surprisingly, Hills East, which won the county championship two years ago, was a semifinalist last year, and lost only two to graduation, won, dropping only one set, at first singles. 

Rebecca Kuperschmid, East Hampton’s junior number-one, a hard-hitter, gave Janelle Chen, who joined Hills East’s team this season after having solely played in U.S.T.A. tournaments, a good go, winning the first set 6-4, losing the second 7-6, and the decisive tiebreaker, 10-8.

Pamela Pillco, Bonac’s senior number-two, a solid player, lost 6-4, 6-3 to Ariana Malik; Caroline Micallef, a junior from Pierson, lost 6-2, 6-1 to Melissa Chen, and Eva Wojtusiak, a ninth grader, lost 6-0, 6-1 to Leah Wohl.

Hills East’s all-state doubles team, Alexis Huber and Lauren Cherkin, bageled East Hampton’s number-one pairing, Sammi Schurr and Katie Annicelli (also of Pierson), 6-0, 6-0; Julia Raziel and Maddie Fryer defeated the Mendelman sisters, Annelise and Kaylee, 6-2, 6-2, and Emily Metaxas and Lauren Kornfeld defeated Olivia Baris and Catherine LeFevre 6-0, 6-1.

Schurr is a junior, Annicelli is a sophomore, Annalise Mendelman is a junior, Kaylee Mendelman is a sophomore, Baris is a junior, and Lefevre is a ninth grader.

Helfand’s young team — Pillco is the sole senior — was to have played another mandatory nonleaguer yesterday, at Commack High School.

Mandatory nonleague matches came about, the Hills East coach said, “because too many schools were padding their nonleague records in order to get higher seedings in the county tournament.”

Concerning girls swimming, which, because the Y.M.C.A. RECenter’s youth swim team, the Hurricanes, feeds into it, is perennially strong, Vas said that an assistant for Craig Brierley, the head coach, is still being sought. 

Continuing, the A.D. said golf, coached by Claude Beudert, ought to be strong, that field hockey, coached by Robyn Mott, with Danielle Waleko as her assistant, had “good numbers and a strong core,” and that boys and girls cross-country, coached by Kevin Barry and Diane O’Donnell, would be “solid,” as would the dance team (relatively new to varsity status), headed up by Andrea Hernandez. There would be no fall cheerleading squad, he said, given football’s demise.

As for football, “It’s a shame, but it was simply because we lacked the numbers — Joey [McKee] is going to try to keep it going. He’ll oversee football workouts and drills this fall and will volunteer with the middle school team. Wrestling is in the same fix — we finished with only six last winter, the minimum. We’re talking with Southampton about combining with them.”

Homecoming is to be Oct. 14, the day beginning with a Hall of Fame breakfast and an induction ceremony, though other details would remain in limbo until Vas worked them out with the student council, he said.

Speaking of the Hall of Fame, the athletic director asked that anyone who might be able to provide biographical information having to do with the coach, Florence Boehme, and six of her players — Julia Jasuinas, Marian Hand, Anita Appleyard, Elizabeth Stelzer, Vivien Skinner, and Constance Greene — on the 1934-35 women’s basketball team that is to be inducted contact him through the district’s athletic office, whose phone number is 631-329-4143.

Daniel Bluman, who won Sunday’s Hampton Classic Grand Prix in a three-rider jump-off, was happy to learn at the press conference afterward that he was still welcome to stay at his host’s house, where he has been the past three weeks.

His host being McLain Ward, one of international show jumping’s top riders, a four-time Olympian with two gold medals, and the Classic’s recordholder with six Grand Prix wins.

Ward, the third-place finisher in the 31 horse-and-rider field, behind Brianne Goutal and Bluman, a native of Colombia who represented that country in the past two Olympic Games, but who rides for Israel now, was gracious in defeat, though he and his horse, HH Callas, did their best to put his houseguest’s back up against the wall in the jump-off, looping swiftly through the first six obstacles of the pared-down course before tipping over rails on the final two.

Bluman, the last to go, went clean on Ladriano Z — to his and the large crowd’s delight. The win capped a big week for him. He had, among other championships, won Friday’s Grand Prix Qualifier as well. It is rare for the qualifier’s winner to repeat in the Grand Prix. 

The only other one he knew of who had done so, Bluman said, was Ward, whose bonhomie had apparently been further tested when Alexa Schwitzer, of Muttontown, stepped in to buy Ladriano Z at a time within the past year when Ward had declared his interest in buying the 9-year-old bay gelding. 

For her part, Goutal, a Brown University alumna who finished the jump-off with one knockdown, said, with a smile, that she was getting tired of being a bridesmaid. She’s been the Grand Prix’s runner-up three times now.

Ward gave a particular nod of appreciation at the press conference to the Grand Prix course’s designer, Alan Wade, who, he said, was expert at building in to his courses subtleties that weren’t immediately apparent to the riders. 

Sunday was a case in point. Two of the jumps, the Jaguar gate and the square blue-and-white oxer that followed it some six strides later, caused a lot of grief. According to one count, there were 10 knockdowns at the gate, the 11th obstacle on the course, and, likewise, 10 at the square oxer that followed. 

Asked why later, Peter Leone, an Olympic silver medalist who does WVVH’s televised broadcasts, said he thought some of the horses tended to have their heads down as they, with a water jump to their left, approached the Jaguar gate from out of a blind turn. “All of a sudden — boom — there it was.”

Faulty timing on the riders’ parts, Leone thought, accounted for the oxer’s front rail going down so often.

“It was a six,” The Southampton Press’s Cailin Riley said, “but it was a tight six.”

Bluman won $82,500 for finishing in first place, Goutal $50,000, and Ward $37,500. Bluman won $28,380 for winning the Grand Prix Qualifier.

Still, it was Richie Moloney, the defending Grand Prix champion and a native of Kilkenny, Ireland, who won — for the fifth time — the $30,000 Longines Leading Rider Challenge, having garnered the most points (287) in competitions throughout the week. Ward was second, with 279, and Bluman third, with 250.

As far as local barns’ ribbons went, Swan Creek Farms of Bridgehampton was well represented. 

Phoebe Topping, 14, Mandy and Jagger Topping’s daughter, won the $2,500 Marshall & Sterling Children’s Hunter Classic’s 14-and-under division on Perfektionist, which is owned by her aunt, Tracey Topping, saying afterward that her horse was “so perfect and smart — he was a really good boy . . . I really like him.”

Isabel Culver, a Pierson High School junior who rides at Swan Creek, and Cabaret were, said Topping, reserve champions in the Children’s Hunter 15-to-17-year-old division; Miranda Green was the reserve champion in the younger children’s hunters on Insightful, and Sage Leyva and Secret’s Out were reserve champions in Large Children’s Hunter Pony. 

“All of our junior riders won a rainbow of ribbons in the Children’s Hunter divisions — Lucy Beeton of Sag Harbor on Clint One, Emma Diesing of Southampton on Talladega Nights, Amelia Magel on My Favorite Spot, and Emma Siskind on Chinou, just to name a few.”

“Our adult riders did well in the Adult Amateur Hunter and equitation classes,” Mandy Topping continued — “Kylie Tekulsky of East Hampton on Jagger’s horse, Obelix, Kate Whalen of Brooklyn on Eminence, and Yvetta Rechler-Newman of Southampton on Just Dandy.”

Another young rider who did well this past week, Sophia Pilla, the niece of Ryan Pilla, the Car Doctor, was on Betty Boop III the reserve champion in the $5,000 Children’s Jumper Classic.

When questioned by this writer, Mandy Topping said there was very little letup in the show circuit, that it was pretty much a year-round pursuit. As for riding, “You have to be patient, you have to be devoted and a hard worker — you have to have the right stuff.”

Her in-laws, Alvin and Patsy Topping, were “mostly retired now,” in South Carolina, “but they can’t quit — they’re still teaching young kids.”

Phoebe, she said, is to compete in the Zone 1 and 2 jumper championships in Princeton, N.J., at the end of this month, and at the end of March Swan Creek will have riders, she said, in a show in Atlanta on the Olympic showgrounds there.

When Phoebe was asked if she were aiming to jump in the Classic’s Grand Prix ring soon, her mother cautioned, “We’re not in the Grand Prix yet, Jack.”

A 1979 Citroën owned by Ronald Lauder, the billionaire chairman emeritus of the Estee Lauder cosmetics company, was destroyed when it inexplicably went up in flames while being driven to a storage facility Wednesday morning.

An employee behind the wheel heard a noise coming from under the hood, according to David Browne, the chief of the East Hampton Town fire marshal's office. The car was stopped at the traffic light at Wainscott Northwest Road, south of Montauk Highway and just west of the Wainscott Post Office. Smoke and flames soon followed. The driver got out before the car was engulfed. 

The Bridgehampton Fire Department responded at 10:53 a.m., an engine and a tanker truck arriving to douse the car with water. It was a total loss, the fire marshal said, but no one was hurt. 

The fire marshal's office has not yet determined the cause. Mr. Lauder, who has a house in Wainscott, was not at the scene. 

Eastbound traffic on the highway was diverted while firefighters worked for about an hour. Westbound traffic slowly moved through. Wainscott Northwest Road south of the highway was also closed to traffic. 

Just over a month after the merger that rebranded the South Fork’s only hospital Stony Brook Southampton Hospital, the doors opened for one of the most critical new services offered there. 

The cardiac catheterization laboratory, at Stony Brook Southampton’s Audrey and Martin Gruss Heart and Stroke Center — where patients with severely narrowed or blocked arteries of the heart are treated with stents to open passageways — was put to use for the first time on Tuesday. The procedures are considered lifesaving, some done on an emergency basis, others as elective treatments.

A blocked artery in a heart-attack patient should be opened within 90 minutes of contact with medical care, according to standards of care. Until Tuesday, the closest such lab had been at Stony Brook University Hospital, a 58-mile or one-hour ride from East Hampton Village. Patients in need of the diagnostic tools or the emergency lifesaving procedures available in a cath lab had to be either taken by ambulance or airlifted to Stony Brook, delaying that critical care. 

“Faster access to the highest standard of cardiac care means more immediate, lifesaving diagnosis and treatment for residents of the East End of Long Island,” said Dr. Travis Bench, the director of the cardiac catheterization lab at Stony Brook Southampton. 

Stony Brook University Hospital’s protocol for emergency catheterization has produced an average “door-to-perfusion” time of 56 minutes, almost 45 minutes below the New York State regulated treatment guidelines, according to Dr. Javed Butler, the chief of cardiology at Stony Brook University School of Medicine and co-director of the Stony Brook University Heart Institute. “This is the level of care we strive for at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital.” 

The new state-of-the-art facility in Southampton, staffed by cardiac specialists from the Stony Brook University Heart Institute, is the only facility of its kind on the East End. Doctors perform a non-surgical procedure in which a catheter is inserted through the skin to reach affected areas. Peconic Bay Medical Center in Riverhead plans to open a cardiac catheterization laboratory this fall.  

Depending on the patient’s situation, procedures at the Southampton lab can include a detailed assessment of the heart’s performance to locate blockages or narrowing of the arteries; angioplasty, a procedure that involves inserting a balloon-tipped catheter to clear blocked arteries; stenting, a procedure in which an expandable metal coil is placed in a narrowed artery to keep it open; intravascular ultrasound, which uses high-frequency sound waves to create images to help doctors determine the extent of disease, and Impella, a treatment for heart failure that implants a tiny device in the left ventricle of the heart to improve blood flow and stabilize the patient for transfer for further treatment. 

It is an exciting advancement in health care on the eastern end of Long Island and will be a benefit to people from Montauk to Hampton Bays, according to Philip Cammann, a longtime paramedic on the South Fork and a member of the East End Ambulance Coalition, which supported the hospital’s application for a cardiac catheterization lab. The new facility cuts down on the amount of time a patient has to wait before getting an emergency procedure done. While airlifting patients to Stony Brook has proven beneficial, having the procedure available in Southampton could shave off 45 to 50 minutes — even more on a day like yesterday, when torrential downpours in the morning would have meant the helicopter was grounded. When talking about dying heart muscle, time is critical. 

“We have the population,” Mr. Cammann said. “It not only gives the patient and the community better care and more prompt care, it also puts the resources of E.M.S. back in service a lot quicker. It’s a double benefit.” During a time when emergency call volume has increased — and membership in the mainly all-volunteer agencies has decreased — getting a patient to the hospital and freeing up the ambulance to answer additional calls has become even more important. 

The Suffolk Regional Emergency Medical Services Council announced the opening of the P.C.I. Center — that stands for percutaneous coronary intervention — to E.M.S. personnel on Friday. “Stony Brook Southampton Hospital may now be considered the ‘closest appropriate hospital’ for patients with acute coronary syndromes, in accordance with regional hospital transport policies,” the statement said. 

The New York State Department of Health approved the lab in March. The heart and stroke center, which was completed in 2015, was built with the future cardiac catheterization lab in mind. A single, 600-square-foot room is being utilized for the program. Start-up costs were estimated at nearly $1 million. The lab will be staffed around the clock, seven days a week. 

Robert Chaloner, the chief administrative officer at Stony Brook Southampton, said the move “truly signals the beginning of a new era of health care for our East End communities.” 

“The new cardiac program is the most dramatic example of exactly the sort of collaboration we hoped would happen when Southampton Hospital joined Stony Brook Medicine, as we bring the region’s top medical services closer to where people live,” he said.

The East Hampton Town Trustees and the Georgica Association, a 100-acre private enclave on the west bank of Georgica Pond, have reached a memorandum of understanding that will allow the trustees to traverse the association’s property in order to conduct dredging at the pond’s south end. 

At the trustees’ meeting on Monday, Francis Bock, the body’s presiding officer, announced a five-year agreement with the association under which, in exchange for the right to cross association land, the trustees will provide 3,000 cubic yards of beach-compatible sand, stockpiled for use in rebuilding the dune area in front of the association’s property. 

“Should additional sand, up to 1,000 cubic yards, be required, we will place that on the beach for their access at the cost of the bid price for sand plus $6 a yard to cover excavation and stockpile,” Mr. Bock said. 

In the second through fifth years of the agreement, the trustees will provide 1,500 cubic yards of sand plus, if needed, up to 1,000 additional cubic yards at the same cost. 

It is impossible to access the pond with dredging equipment without crossing the association’s property, Bill Taylor, one of the trustees’ deputy clerks, said yesterday. The agreement is also intended to resolve a conflict between the trustees and the association stemming from previous excavation efforts that have been followed by flooding of private property. 

“There had been considerable excavation beyond what was probably appropriate for the removal of the sand in the past,” Jim Grimes, a trustee, said at the meeting. “We’re going to try and remedy that, and basically reinforce the west side of that opening so that, hopefully, if the pond lets naturally, the pond lets on our land and doesn’t jeopardize the Georgica Association’s land” or other private property. “This is a move to improve the relationship with all of the neighbors here,” he said. 

The traditional spring letting of the pond to the Atlantic Ocean did not happen this year due to weather conditions and the earlier than expected arrival of federally protected shorebirds. The pond’s level was much higher than is typical in the spring, and property owners were concerned about flooding along with a recurrence of the toxic algal blooms that have fouled its waters during the last several summers. The Friends of Georgica Pond Foundation, a group of pondfront property owners that is working to restore its ecological health, made repeated requests to the trustees to open it to the ocean. 

Dredging at the south end, Mr. Taylor said, “is going to make draining the pond more productive. . . . We’re trying to get everything back to where it’s the best for the pond, best for the people around it, and best for the trustees.” 

Mr. Grimes asked John Hall, a member of the association who serves as its attorney, if the memorandum of understanding was acceptable to his group. Yes, was the answer. “We’re delighted that we’ve been able to reach an understanding with the trustees, and that a new day is dawning.” 

“We are deeply committed to the health of the pond, as is the association,” said Brian Byrnes, a trustee. “Having said that, I think this is very fair, and I’m pleased that we are working in conjunction with the folks around the pond to continue to see the pond get healthy and stay healthy.”