East Hampton Town police do not yet know the cause of death of a man found floating in Montauk Harbor Friday morning, but "there are no suspicious findings thus far," Capt. Chris Anderson said Tuesday.

A Coast Guard officer spotted the body of Julio Tubatan, 57, of Montauk, just off Star Island, near the Coast Guard station, on Friday just after 7 a.m. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

Mr. Tubatan's 2008 Lexus was found parked by Swallow East and the Clam and Chowder House at Salivar's Dock, across the water on the west side of the harbor, and was impounded for further investigation. "There is nothing to indicate foul play," Captain Anderson said Tuesday.

Captain Anderson said it might be some time before the Suffolk County medical examiner's office releases a final report on the cause of death.

Police have encouraged anyone with information regarding the investigation to contact them at 631-537-7575.

A crowd some 200 strong, mostly women and most wearing white, gathered under the shade of the elms on East Hampton’s Main Street last Thursday to recreate a march for women’s suffrage that took place here in 1913, four years before women gained the right to vote in New York State.

Organized by the League of Women Voters of the Hamptons, the march began at the house where May Groot Manson, a suffragist leader, lived in 1913. The marchers stopped at Clinton Academy, where they were welcomed by Arlene Hinkemeyer, vice president of the league, Jill Malusky, executive director of the East Hampton Historical Society, and David E. Rattray, the editor of The East Hampton Star. 

Mr. Rattray pointed to an editorial in The Star that day that called attention to the fact that even as New York celebrates the anniversary of women gaining the right to vote, “the struggle for equal access to the polls continues.”

It was a message echoed by many in the crowd, most of whom wore yellow ribbon sashes bearing the slogan “Votes for Women.” A handful of staffers from the Lady Parts Justice League, a reproductive rights organization, had handmade sashes that drew particular attention to “black suffragists seldom recognized by feminists and often omitted in the history of voting rights activism,” according to a release. Some said “Black Lives Matter,” and one bore Sojourner Tru th’s famous rallying cry, “Ain’t I a Woman?” 

Nicole Moore, the organization’s communications director, said some in the crowd seemed taken aback by the message, but, she said in a statement, “It’s imperative for feminists to look at how patriarchy has impacted the women’s movement and how, even in 2017, the voices of black women and women of color are being excluded.” 

After stopping at Clinton Academy, in a festive wave of white, the group made its way to the East Hampton Library. There, Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul talked about what women like Ms. Manson and her predecessors were up against when they began to publicly agitate for access to the ballot box so many decades before that historic local march.

“It was a crime at the time, and you could be arrested for having the audacity to vote for office,” Ms. Hochul said. She recalled “what women had to endure” to gain the right to vote, “how audacious they had to be . . . how bold” to stand up to their communities and even their families. Newspaper accounts and editorials in the wake of the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848 were largely unsupportive of the effort, she said. One wondered, for example, if women insisted on voting, “where, gentleman, will be our dinners . . . ?” And anti-suffrage pamphlets pointed out, “You do not need a ballot to clean out your sink spout.”

In 2017, “do we have the same courage, the same fortitude, the same fire to march on?” Ms. Hochul asked. Women’s equality remains elusive today, she pointed out, and then wondered, “What will they say we did” at the bicentennial of women’s right to vote in New York. “Are we doing enough every single day,” she asked, to call out intolerance and inequity?

Ms. Hochul, who is chairwoman of the New York State Women’s Suffrage 100th Anniversary Commemoration Commission, told the crowd, “I leave here with a heart full of joy that all of you cared enough about not just our history, but our future, as well.”

Also speaking at the library was Coline Jenkins, the great-granddaughter of Harriot Stanton Blatch, president of the Women’s Political Union and a speaker at the 1913 march in East Hampton. Ms. Jenkins is also the great-great-granddaughter of the 19th-century suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the president of the Elizabeth Cady Stanton Trust.

“This movement affected 51 percent of the population,” Ms. Jenkins said, and it was so important to women because “if you don’t have the right to vote, you can’t get the rest of your rights. . . . It starts with drops and drops and drops, and they flow into a stream, they flow into a river, they flow into an ocean.”

“We’re all standing on the shoulders of the women and men before us,” she said, and “our shoulders will be the ones that future generations stand on.”

“I’m here today with my mom to commemorate the occasion, but also to bring attention to the fact that voting rights are in danger,” Ms. Jenkins’s daughter, Elizabeth Jenkins-Sahlin, said earlier on the walk from the May Groot Manson house to the library.

Joe Vas, the East Hampton School District’s athletic director, announced this week that the school will again field no varsity or junior varsity football teams in the fall.

“The bottom line,” he said, “was the lack of numbers — we only had 14 show up for practices on a regular basis. To field a team you need a minimum of 16.”

Joe McKee, the varsity football coach, who has tried his best in the past two years to boost the program from the early grades on up, told the players of the administrative decision on Aug. 23.

Dawn Tuthill, whose son would have been the Bonackers’ quarterback, wrote in a Facebook post: “A sad day. As my son, Jacen, went up to have his picture taken for Newsday as one of the top 100 players on Long Island, it was announced that East Hampton’s football program is no longer. . . . There are a few of them who are passionate about the sport and are so upset that it has ended for them, and in their senior year. . . . So sad.”

This is the second time in the past four years that East Hampton, which began playing football in 1923, has had no varsity football team.

Vas, who said he had heard there would be no Police Athletic League teams this year, as well, said football will continue to be played at the middle school, with Nick Finazzo, Scott Abran, and Dave Fioriello as the coaches. “We’re hoping to rebuild, but I can’t give you any time frame. We used to have 48 to 50 on the middle school team — last year we had 20,” the A.D. said.

Don Reese, who heads up the youth football and basketball teams here, said East Hampton would continue to field a fifth-and-sixth-grade P.A.L. team, “the same as last year.”

“We’re not folding up,” he added.

The decision to pull the plug this week was made, Vas said, so that the players who were turning out for football practices could switch to other fall sports if they wished. Josh Brussell, who coaches the boys volleyball team, said the A.D. had asked coaches to accommodate any of the football players who wanted to sign on.

Don McGovern, who assists Rich King with East Hampton’s boys soccer program, said that 84 were trying out for varsity and jayvee soccer.

But the apparent falloff in the popularity of football here couldn’t solely be ascribed to changing demographics, McKee said during a telephone conversation Tuesday morning. When the student body was smaller, perhaps half what it is now, East Hampton fielded competitive football teams. There were probably a number of reasons why, the coach said, though he added that he was not giving up. 

“We’re going to have a weightlifting program and football drills at the high school for the kids who are pursuing the sport, and I’m going to volunteer my time with the junior high. We’re also going to continue the flag football program that I introduced last year, which was popular. It will be for kindergartners through sixth graders, boys and girls, at Herrick Park. The first night will be Sept. 11, at 5:30.”

He said he knew that there was a “Save Bonac Football” petition that was being circulated by parents on Facebook, but, while he agreed obviously that Bonac football should be saved, “it’s a little too late.” 

Last spring, McKee said in connection with moving up to Conference III from Conference IV — a move owing to a spike in enrollment — that he expected to have 16 seniors on the 2017 varsity, and about 26 to 27 in all. When it came time to begin preseason practice recently, however, half a dozen of those expected senior returnees were not there. 

“One of our top linemen, from Bridgehampton, decided to go over to Southampton, another top lineman went to another school, and a running back-defensive back was hurt in a lifeguarding accident. Several other seniors decided not to come out, and two kids who played jayvee last year and would have been juniors decided not to play also. I thought we’d have 25 at the preseason practices — 16 varsity and 9 junior varsity players, but at the 10 practices we held we had no more than 11 show up. . . . It’s not just us, though we’re the only program to throw in the towel. Babylon, which used to be a perennial power, has had no jayvee the last two years. Some guys did come out after the announcement was made. I know some have said more might have come out on the first day of school, but they would have missed four games because of the missed practice time.”

Ultimately, assuming the program here is revived, McKee would like there to be, as Vas has suggested, a new ability and geographically grouped Conference V. He’d even thought of suggesting that East Hampton — as is the case, he said, with Port Washington, and with other schools in Westchester County and in the Bronx — play as an independent.

“I tried to keep it going,” he continued. “I’ve been the varsity head coach for the past two years, this would have been my third, but I’ve got 20 years of coaching football here under my belt. I bring a lot of enthusiasm and energy to it. Of course I’m disappointed, I feel like I failed. Maybe next year. That’s my hope.”

Since the notion of reincarnation looms large in India, it might be safe to say that Debra McCall, the director of teacher certification and professional development at the Ross School in East Hampton, could have been Indian in another life. As a certified movement analyst and a multiple recipient of National Endowment for the Arts fellowships for choreography, it would be even safer to say that in her previous life she could have been a devadasi — a temple dancer who, over two millenniums ago, dedicated her life to the sacred movement of dance.

Ms. McCall was named recipient of the 2017-18 Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Award for a project that will entail the documentation of thousand-year-old frescoes and dance reliefs on the walls of the Thillai Nataraja temple, a major shrine of Lord Shiva worship, in Tamil Nadu, India’s southernmost state. She will head to the subcontinent on Oct. 1 to conduct her research, staying for six months near the famous temple.

India’s lure first struck Ms. McCall in 1994, when she met the late Indrani Rahman, who taught Bharatanatyam — an ancient and revered style of Indian dance — at the Juilliard School and Harvard University. Ms. Rahman was considered the foremost Indian classical dancer in the West and performed for dignitaries such as John F. Kennedy, Queen Elizabeth II, Emperor Haile Selassie, and Chairman Mao.

“It was near the end of her tenure at Juilliard that I invited her to teach a small group in my loft in the city,” said Ms. McCall. “We were honored and excited when she agreed. She taught us Shiva’s dance of creation, which I later taught to several groups of students at Ross.” 

It was during those lessons in her loft that Ms. McCall learned of the Thillai Nataraja temple, one of the first in India to worship the dancing form of Shiva, as depicted by the most widespread icon of Hinduism: the deity dancing in a ring of fire. Consequently, the temple is only one of two with reliefs detailing all 108 karanas, or postures. Often mistaken as mere architectural embellishments, they are, in fact, the defining lexicon of India’s classical Bharatanatyam dance.

“I always wanted to visit the temple,” said Ms. McCall. Instead, she arrived in East Hampton in 1995 to join the Ross School, where for 22 years she has helped write the school’s curriculum, served as the dean of cultural history, and taught world dance.

However, in 2015, Ms. McCall’s personal universe was shattered when her 25-year-old son died in an accident while in California. At first, she threw herself into her work to cope with her profound sorrow, but soon thereafter she knew she needed a sabbatical in order to make sense of it all.

In February 2016, she accompanied a group of Ross students on a trip to India for the first time. Her period of healing was to follow after her charges returned to the United States. She stayed behind to explore the vast country that had bewitched her for so long. Initially, she intended to visit the sacred temple in Tamil Nadu for three or four days. 

“I stayed for 10 days,” she said recently. “I walked into that temple and it was like a dream. There was a dance festival going on and the dance of creation was being performed.” She returned to the temple several times, including this February for Maha Shivaratri, the annual Hindu festival to honor Lord Shiva. Befriending the Tamil and Sanskrit-speaking caste of Deekshithar priests who preside over the temple, as well as local scholars and families, Ms. McCall delved deeper into the great history behind the relief carvings. 

Upon returning to East Hampton, she applied for the Fulbright-Nehru Fellowship, outlining her plan: to video, photograph, and chronicle all 108 karanas. She will also document the intangible culture of the temple, with its rituals, festivals, and the history of its priests, who showed her manuscripts written on palm leaves that are over 1,000 years old and housed in the temple. She hopes to translate these, too, for which she must learn some Sanskrit. 

Her goal is to compile a book, she said, to leave behind at the temple and to present to UNESCO, or another similar organization, to help the temple obtain status for the preservation of its unique cultural treasures. While there, Ms. McCall will be affiliated with the neighboring Annamalai University as a visiting scholar.

The Fulbright program, founded in 1946 by United States Senator J. William Fulbright, operates in over 160 countries around the world and grants merit-based educational exchange programs for students, scholars, teachers, and professionals who are competitively selected to study and conduct research abroad. This is Ms. McCall’s first Fulbright and her seventh fellowship, most of which have been awarded through the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities.

Conveying the Indian concept of the never-ending cycle of time, Ms. McCall feels that her son, Adrian, will be with her on this journey. “He knew how much I loved India,” she said. “He would always say that when he made enough money, he would buy me a small place in India because that’s where I belong.”

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.”

When East Hampton High School students return to classes on Wednesday, they will find an entirely revamped library. In Sag Harbor, students and parents alike will notice that the new grass athletic field is nearly ready for play, and in Springs, which starts the school year on Tuesday, students will officially welcome their new superintendent, Debra Winter, for her first full school year, although she had been a regular feature around the building long before her start date of July 1.

Across the South Fork, as students get their backpacks in order and find their fall shoes, schools are preparing to welcome them back.

The school year begins on Wednesday in all South Fork public schools but Springs. The Ross School will open its doors on both lower and upper campuses on Friday, Sept. 8. The first day of school is Sept. 13 at the Hayground School in Bridgehampton. 

In Sag Harbor, the new school year begins with a new start time: 7:50 a.m., giving Pierson Middle and High school students a welcome 15 minutes extra each morning. At the elementary school, the day will begin five minutes later at 8:50 a.m. As for that grass field? “The sod is down, the concrete areas and patio are complete, though we need to wait a little while for the field to be useable,” said the high school’s principal, Jeff Nichols.

At East Hampton High School, the library renovation, which took place over the summer, showcases a vast selection of new titles that span every genre from popular fiction to fantasy, nonfiction, and required reading. Also updated is the school’s e-book library, and there is a new configuration of work zones and computer nooks, turning the space into “a new, incredible learning environment,” according to Adam Fine, the high school principal. 

At the East Hampton Middle School, the theme for the upcoming school year is “perseverance,” according to the principal, Charles Soriano. All students are required to read the Langston Hughes poem “Harlem,” the iconic work of the great African-American poet, which contains that memorable line: “What happens to a dream deferred?”

Students will learn firsthand about perseverance in January when Cara Nelson, a social studies teacher, will participate in the World Marathon Challenge, competing in seven full marathons on all seven continents in seven days. 

“One of the greatest predictors of future success is the ability to deal with difficult and uncertain situations,” Dr. Soriano wrote in an email to parents. “I think the key is to practice perseverance — for weathering challenges and change when they occur. Middle school is the perfect place to cultivate this learnable trait.”

The Eleanor Whitmore Early Childhood Center in East Hampton will reopen with a meet-and-greet for parents and students on Wednesday from 10 to 10:30 a.m. Eighty new prekindergartners from the East Hampton, Wainscott, and Sagaponack School Districts will join the center this year. The building has undergone a facelift, with some rooms repurposed and reconfigured, and an additional classroom created. 

There will be half days for pre-K students, running from 8:30 to 11:30 a.m., next Thursday and Friday, Sept. 8. The first full day of school will be Sept. 11.

In Amagansett, the focus for the new school year, said the school’s superintendent, Eleanor Tritt, will be to continue providing high instructional standards while implementing the revamped New York State standardized tests, now known as Next Generation Learning Standards. Ms. Tritt also pointed to the school’s goal to create a more tech-savvy environment, utilizing the Google Classroom and personal Chromebooks for students to help prepare them for working in a “cloud-based” environment. 

In Springs, students will have the unusual opportunity to connect with the school’s science teacher, Lisa Seff, who is traveling through the Arctic studying the region’s food web aboard the 261-foot research vessel Sikuliaq. On Sept. 14, Ms. Seff will be conducting a live webinar with the entire school from her ship — “not an easy task!” she wrote by email this week. The webinar will offer students and the public the opportunity to ask researchers questions.   Students, staff, parents, and residents of Springs will also be pleased to know that repair work on the septic system is expected to be completed and that it should be functioning as normal before the start of school.

The Hayground School will hold its annual opening potluck picnic for families on Sunday, Sept. 10.

Students in need of backpacks may find them at St. Michael’s Lutheran Church on Montauk Highway in Amagansett, which will be giving them away on Sunday at 11 a.m.

The Harry Miller, a 50-foot vessel that recently conducted surveys of the sea floor both in Gardiner’s Bay and off the south shore of the Town of East Hampton, illustrates Deepwater Wind’s engagement with stakeholders as the Rhode Island company plans the construction of a 15-turbine, 90-megawatt wind farm approximately 30 miles off Montauk.

That was the message from Clint Plummer, Deepwater Wind’s vice president of development, who spoke with The Star hours before he and other company representatives met with members of the East Hampton Town Trustees and residents, including commercial fishermen, at the trustees’ harbor management committee meeting on Aug. 16.

Initial plans called for the wind farm’s transmission cable to make landfall at Gardiner’s Bay. Fishermen have loudly complained that plowing a trench in the sea bottom to lay the cable poses multiple, unacceptable risks to their livelihood. As a consequence, Mr. Plummer told the gathering at the trustees’ office in the Lamb Building in Amagansett, a southern route is under serious consideration.

Planning and construction of the South Fork Wind Farm, Mr. Plummer told the gathering, should parallel that of the Block Island Wind Farm, a five-turbine installation built by Deepwater Wind that has been operating since December. Placement of the turbines in that installation, the nation’s first offshore wind farm, were moved eastward from their initial location in response to concerns from fishermen, he said.

Meanwhile, a range of ongoing postconstruction surveys around the Block Island Wind Farm suggest no detrimental impact to commercial or recreational fishing, or to marine life itself, said Drew Carey of Inspire Environmental, a consulting group.

While data are still being collected, Mr. Carey said it was notable that, despite the degree of construction “and the fact that we were trawling literally past the foundations” as they were driven into the sea floor, “we were catching live fish, and we were catching basically the same number of fish that they caught at other times,” within the range of year-to-year variation.

Preliminary survey results also show no negative impact on lobster abundance in the vicinity of the wind farm, he said. “Oddly enough, the capture was actually higher during construction than prior to construction,” though that would parallel 2016 as a whole, which he said was a good year for Rhode Island’s lobstermen.

Deepwater Wind representatives including Aileen Kenney, its vice president of permitting and environmental affairs, emphasized the exhaustive studies the company is conducting, the comprehensive, multivolume applications it must submit to as many as 26 regulatory agencies beginning next year, and the community input they said is both welcome and essential to the project’s ultimate success.

If all goes according to plan, permits will be submitted beginning in the first quarter of 2018, permit approvals would happen in 2021, and construction would commence the same year. The wind farm would be operational late in 2022. Studies that began in 2011, Ms. Kenney said, would continue at least through 2024.

Commercial fishermen in attendance remained skeptical, however, disputing Deepwater Wind officials’ contention that there has been no evidence of fish kills resulting from driving the turbine foundations into the sea floor. They also criticized the National Marine Fisheries Service, which certified Deepwater Wind staffers tasked with observing protected species, calling the agency generally not credible.

Julia Prince, a Montauk resident who is serving as a liaison between Deepwater Wind and the fishing industry on the former’s behalf, pleaded with the latter group to conduct an open dialogue. “There are people out there saying, ‘Don’t speak to Julia,’ so I’ve had a lot of no phone calls back, no emails back. I’m trying to engage people.”

Rick Drew, a deputy clerk of the trustees who leads the harbor management committee, emphasized the importance of the proposed wind farm to the town. There are 53 commercially viable fish species in the area Deepwater Wind has leased from the federal government, he said. “We’re so blessed,” he said of “the community that’s fished here for 300 years,” calling the sea’s bounty “a very sacred component of who we are.” He implored Deepwater Wind officials to locate and build only on bottomland that will not disrupt marine habitat, nurseries, or foraging. “Do spots like that exist within the lease area?” he asked. “Can you guys identify those spots? Is that feasible?”

The goal, Mr. Carey said, is to map the sea floor in detail sufficient to find those areas “with absolute minimal impact on the habitat. How well we can balance that has yet to be determined. That’s the challenge right now.”

The Deepwater Wind representatives pledged to return in the fall with further data from postconstruction surveys of the Block Island Wind Farm and more mapping and analysis of the waters and sea floor where the South Fork Wind Farm is to be situated.

Mr. Drew reiterated the hope that a southern route for the transmission cable would be secured. “Please do whatever you can . . . and share your progress,” he said.

“We are evaluating all the options,” Mr. Plummer said. “This is something that we want to be part of the process” so that the wind farm’s final design is one “the entire community can feel was a consensus decision.”

At a special meeting Tuesday evening, the East Hampton School Board solicited applause from those in attendance when it unanimously agreed to buy a site for a bus depot on Springs-Fireplace Road from East Hampton Town for $2.3 million, pending voter approval. 

The almost-three-acre property, which once was the town’s scavenger waste facility, is slated to become a vocational training facility as well as a bus depot. The board had agreed to abandon an initial plan for a depot on school property near Cedar Street after an outcry from the area’s residents and others.

J.P. Foster, the school board president, said he was hopeful the town would expedite the process and put the final signature on the deal by the beginning of September, after which there would be a 45-day waiting period to allow environmental and safety studies.

The town used the facility for the treatment of septic waste from 1983 until 2012, when it was downscaled to a simple transfer station. The State Department of Environmental Conservation had charged the town  with environmental violations over the years, and it was permanently closed in 2014.

The town had an environmental study conducted in May by VHB, a Hauppauge engineering and environmental firm, “to determine evidence of recognized environmental conditions.” Despite its conclusion (available on the school district’s website) that the property possessed no significant environmental red flags, Mr. Foster has insisted that the district conduct a deeper (Phase II) study to include a “sub-surface, geo-physical survey” to uncover the possibility of any buried waste that might be harmful.

“We want to disclose everything we can and move forward with eyes wide open,” Mr. Foster said, adding that even though VHB did not believe further study was necessary, “we want to do it anyway.”

East Hampton Town has agreed to allow the district until the end of May 2018 to put the purchase on the ballot for the necessary taxpayer vote.

“Ideally, we would like to get a vote out by November or December, but if not, it will probably be around May 15, 2018,” Mr. Foster said, adding that decreased population in winter was a reason to postpone the vote if necessary.

“The environmental results should drive the timing of the vote,” said Jacqueline Lowey, a board member, who stressed the importance of a thorough study.

In response to several letters to The Star by Springs residents decrying the potential for a bus depot on the industrial stretch of Springs-Fireplace Road and arguing that the thoroughfare was already busy, John J. Ryan Sr., a board member, said, “We want to assure Springs that we will be a good neighbor. In fact, anyone who is characterizing us as doing harm, has got it backwards.” He and other board members pointed out that with school in session between September to June, bus traffic would not add any congestion during the busy summer months.

“Somebody has to be the figure to stand up and say this is right, this is wrong,” Howard Dean, the one-time presidential candidate and former Vermont governor, said this week in a discussion of President Donald Trump’s reaction to the violence in Charlottesville, Va., following a white supremacist rally there.

Echoing comments by other Democratic leaders, Mr. Dean said that the president lacked the moral compass necessary for a successful presidency and that he had led the way in a spasm of racist activity in recent weeks.

Governor Dean, who grew up in East Hampton and Manhattan and often returns to East Hampton Village, where his mother, Andree Dean, resides, was also critical of Republicans in Congress, saying too few of them have stood up to the white supremacists who organized the Charlottesville rally at which a woman was killed when a neo-Nazi intentionally drove his car into a crowd. The president, he said, “is leading the way in coddling them, telling them what nice people they are.”

On Aug. 12, the day of the rally, Mr. Trump blamed “many sides” for the confrontations between the roughly 500 marchers and many more counter-protesters. Two days later, he condemned neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan by name, but in a combative news conference the following day insisted that there were “very fine people” among the demonstrators. On Tuesday, at a campaign rally in Phoenix, he accused the news media, which he variously referred to as “damn dishonest,” “bad people,” “sick people,” and “the source of the division in our country,” of deliberately not reporting his remarks condemning white supremacist groups. Notably omitted was his prior contention that counter-protesters shared blame for the violence.

It was the latest controversy in an administration that has been marked by chaos through its first seven months, distracted by investigations into possible collusion with Russia’s attack on the 2016 election and the president’s business dealings, high-profile firings and resignations, and particularly hostile relations with political opponents and the news media. But none of this is surprising, said Mr. Dean, who is also a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee. “He thrives on chaos, and he has a terrible ability to pick people around him.” He pointed to Sebastian Gorka, a deputy assistant to the president, Stephen Miller, a senior adviser, and Stephen Bannon — “an avowed anti-Semite and racist” — who until his firing last week was the White House chief strategist.

President Trump, the governor said, “is a deeply disturbed man whose principal interest is making sure everybody knows who he is.” As a physician, Gov. Dean said that while he would not diagnose the president remotely, Mr. Trump “clearly has problems. . . . He’s clearly inconsistent; he frequently says things that are not true; he seems not to be concerned or interested about policy; he changes all the time. This is not the mark of a healthy man.”

Mr. Dean was the first Democrat to declare his intention to oppose President George W. Bush, filing paperwork to seek the presidency in 2002. He opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and criticized fellow Democrats who supported it. “I happen to like George W. Bush personally, though I think his presidency was not so great for the country,” he said. Mr. Bush “has a firm set of principles, which he was consistent with,” and he surrounded himself with experienced professionals. “You have to have a set of moral principles that will shine through at important moments,” he said, citing Mr. Bush’s supportive remarks to Muslims following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. “That’s moral principal, and every president has to have it. If they don’t, they’re a failure.”

In contrast to Charlottesville, both sides of the political aisle share blame for some of the conditions under which the president was elected, according to the former governor. Globalization and automation — and not international trade agreements — are responsible for the loss of manufacturing jobs, he said. “There are a lot of people in places like West Virginia and Kentucky where the well-paying jobs disappeared.”

But “the truth is, trade lifted over a billion people out of poverty, lifted people dramatically, which is what Trump discovered — getting rid of Nafta,” the North American Free Trade Agreement, “would cost millions of jobs. Both parties are guilty of demagoguery on trade, and the Democrats did that first. It has cost some people their jobs, but created millions in the United States. The notion to ‘get rid of free trade and jobs are coming back’ is not true, and both parties are guilty. People who are not highly skilled, not highly educated, are pushed to the margins of the economy, and they’re resentful about that.”

At the same time, “a lot of this is about trying to undo cultural changes that have happened over the last 40 years,” said Mr. Dean, who as governor signed the country’s first civil unions legislation into law. “Forty years ago, a black president, or two men marrying, was something nobody even thought about. It’s incredibly unsettling,” he said, to those unaccustomed to diverse, urban environments. Mr. Trump, who for some five years suggested that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States, “appealed to the worst in us. He very successfully and skillfully did that.”

Mr. Dean disagreed with the assertion on the right that race relations worsened under President Obama. “The polling says otherwise, but Obama’s presidency did a great deal for race relations in the long run,” he said. “First of all, these Nazi-Confederate rallies, the demonstrators on the right are always vastly outnumbered by demonstrators, mostly young people, who have different values and believe in American values. Two, I think one of the reasons we see agitation around race is that black Americans are no longer going to settle for second-class citizenship in any way. We just had a black president, so why should they be treated differently? In some ways we’re seeing a replay of the 1960s, without burning down the cities, for the most part.”

Democrats, who are a minority in the Senate, in the House of Representatives, and in two-thirds of state legislatures, can take heart, but only if they take action, said the former governor, who as chairman of the D.N.C. created the 50 State Strategy, a successful effort to make Democrats competitive in conservative states in 2006 and 2008.

Whether or not Charlottesville and its aftermath mark a turning point in Mr. Trump’s presidency, “the turning points I care about the most have to do with the new generation of Americans fully coming into politics,” he said. “Our strongest age group is that 18-to-35 demographic, and they vote overwhelmingly for Democrats. . . . The reason Republicans are engaged in voter suppression is because if everybody voted, we’d win every time. The state of the country is in this generation’s hands. If they vote, not just in the presidential but all down-ballot elections all the way to school board, they’ll have the kind of country they want. But if they don’t, the people in power will be ones like Trump and alt-right people.”

Mr. Dean will not seek elected office again, he said. Today, he teaches at the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs at Yale University and at the Peter S. Kalikow Center for the Study of the American Presidency at Hofstra University. He is also a consultant at Dentons, the world’s largest law firm.

The next president “should be under 50, or certainly under 55,” said Mr. Dean, who is 68. “It’s time for a new generation to get involved and actually start running things, and for mine to step back and coach.”

Mr. Trump’s election, he said, was a repudiation of the values held by most Americans under 35. “That was a terrible shock to them. Charlottesville is the confirmation. If you want to fight it off — the values of Trump — and want your own country back, you’d better do something about it.”

Lake Montauk’s enterococcus bacteria levels have risen, despite last week’s higher than normal tides, which normally would have led to lower levels, according to a news release from the Concerned Citizens of Montauk.

Bacteria counts are measured by the number of colony forming units, or viable cells, per 100 milliliters of water. Anything over 104 cells surpasses the federal health standard and is rated "high" in the tests.

Little Reed Pond creek and East Creek, both of which drain into Lake Montauk, had high bacteria levels in samples taken on Wednesday. A west side creek sample site in the lake had a "medium" level. The presence of any enterococcus indicates a chance of disease-causing feces in the water.

Both the Route 27 "kayak launch" and the Cove Hollow Road access at Georgica Pond in East Hampton tested far above the health standard this week, at 616 and 2,755 cells, respectively. The ocean beach cut at Georgica Pond is closed, which has likely caused increased enterococcus counts because water cannot flush well, the concerned citizens said.

The Nature Trail in East Hampton Village, tested at David's Lane, measured 6,867 cells, likely from the large flocks of ducks and other waterfowl there. A test site in the south end of Hook Pond measured high for the first time in recent months, with 498. Pussy’s Pond in Springs' count was 876 cells.

Fresh Pond creek in Amagansett tested lower than other samples taken this summer, at 63 cells.

Ditch Plain in Montauk had a medium enterococcus level of 52 cells yesterday. The beach at Surfside Place in downtown Montauk had a count of 31.