The Southampton Town Board said Tuesday that it had heard the community’s concerns about a proposed project across Montauk Highway from the Bridgehampton Commons and decided to adjourn a hearing on it so that town planners can work to reduce its scale.

The board has been tasked with deciding whether to consider a zone change for 13.3 acres on Montauk Highway that would allow for a mixed-use complex, known as the gateway project, that would have 90,000 square feet of commercial space, including a fitness center and restaurant, and 30 residential units, mainly second-floor apartments. A dozen residents spoke out against the Gateway Planned Development District at a public hearing Tuesday night, citing environmental concerns for neighboring Kellis Pond and traffic concerns on an already busy stretch of Montauk Highway, just west of downtown Bridgehampton. 

Under town code, a planned development district must have a community benefit. After three public hearings on the matter, the town board could have moved forward with the planning process, town planners said.

“I feel like electing to consider it would send the wrong message, that this plan in its current form is acceptable enough to move forward. That is not what I’m hearing from the community,” Supervisor Jay Schneiderman said to a round of applause from the audience. 

Mr. Schneiderman, who took office in January long after the project was first proposed, said it is different from most other planned development districts in that it was the town, not the developer, that initiated it. The town set out to come up with a mutually agreed upon project that would give the community a place to come together and also provide affordable housing, while maintaining some of the area’s rural character. “What I’m hearing is that people feel like the town didn’t do that, we didn’t achieve that,” he said. “We need to take a closer look at this.” 

The supervisor asked the developer, Greg Konner, if he would be willing to meet with the town to discuss “other possibilities that a community might be more willing to embrace.” 

“We can talk,” said Mr. Konner, from the audience. He had not said anything during the hearing otherwise. 

“We are thrilled that the board seems to realize the community of the East End is truly upset with the gateway proposal,” said Bonnie Verbitsky, who led a group opposed to the project called Bridgehampton Action Now. She handed in a petition with nearly 800 signatures. “Our BAN Committee is working hard to get more supporters. This is far from over.”

The proposal envelopes nine separate, but contiguous, lots that were highlighted in a Bridgehampton Hamlet Center strategy plan, adopted in 2003, as having the potential for mixed-use development. The town hired a consultant in 2004 to come up with a more detailed plan for the site. The process stalled in 2008, but came back to the forefront in 2014, in the midst of development pressures on Main Street in Bridgehampton. The town suggested the gateway property as an alternative location for a CVS pharmacy being planned at the intersection of Montauk Highway and the Bridgehampton-Sag Harbor Turnpike. 

A new concept emerged for 90,000 square feet of first-floor retail space, ranging from 15,000 square feet to 3,600 square feet. The 30 residential units would include 25 one-bedroom apartments and 5 two-bedroom apartments, all designated as affordable housing, and 8 condominiums that would be sold at fair market value. The plan calls for 235 parking spaces, in spaces like those that are found on Main Street, instead of in a parking field like at the Commons. The complex would have a state-of-the-art sewage treatment plant. A 1.5-acre field in front would be left as open space. 

By comparison, the Bridgehampton Commons has over 200,000 square feet of retail space with about double the parking on over 20 acres of land. 

Environmentalists and residents, mainly those in the Kellis Pond Association, which abuts the property, have raised concerns about how the project will affect the health of the pond. Added noise, lights from cars, and concerns over “transient” residents were also raised. Still others were concerned the complex would exacerbate the already existing bottleneck at the light. 

“We don’t need another shopping center across from the Commons,” Ms. Verbitsky told the board. “Why would we want to bring in more high-end stores that would be putting local business owners at risk? Why in a charming, quaint town would we want to create more pollution, waste, and an urban-like center?” she asked. “Please do not allow the beauty of Bridgehampton to be killed off by overdevelopment.” 

“This is not a gateway plan, this is a giveaway plan,” said Jeffrey Bragman,an East Hampton attorney who represents BAN. 

Peter Sughrue, a year-round resident of Bridgehampton, said the area would be akin to the Tanger Mall on Route 58 in Riverhead. “I dread the day that happens,” he said. 

Only one person spoke in favor of the plan, Simon Harrison, a real estate agent from Sag Harbor, who said the town and residents should work with the developer on the concept, including “critically needed year-round housing stock,” before they get stuck with commercial space the developer can build as of right. “As such it might not be the best chance to save Kellis Pond, but the only chance,” he said.

The incredible story of a lost cat that was reunited on Thursday with its Iraqi refugee family has made its way around the world through news sites and social media after Doug Kuntz, an East Hampton resident, delivered the white feline, in a Burberry plaid carrier, to its family, a widow with five children, at their new home in Norway four months after it was lost.

Mr. Kuntz, a photojournalist, has been covering the refugee crisis in Europe on trips to Lesbos, Greece, and other locations since the fall. “The odds of finding that family – they were a million to one,” Mr. Kuntz said by phone from Norway on Friday.

Fleeing ISIS-controlled Mosul, the Iraqi widow and her children found it impossible to abandon their cat, which they called Kunkush. On a 10-day journey, largely on foot, they carried it in a lidded basket from Iraq to Turkey and in a rubber dinghy across the Aegean Sea to Greece. To bring the cat along, the family had to pay smugglers an additional 1,000 euro fare.

Landing on the shore in Skala Sikaminea, a shorefront village on Lesbos, where Mr. Kuntz had become part of a community of international volunteers providing services for refugees, the male cat got frightened, jumped out of its basket, and ran away.

The heartbroken family searched for it with the help of volunteers but finally was forced to move on to a refugee camp without their beloved pet. They were devastated.

The little hamlet of Skala is colonized by feral cats, a roving group of animals that prowl the harbor full of fishing boats and meow and wind their way among the café tables set on cobblestones near the shore. One day, about three days after the Iraqi family had left, a matted, bedraggled white cat was spotted sitting on its own a distance from the group. It was Kunkush.

Amy Shrodes, an American volunteer from Michigan, took the cat home and, not knowing its name, dubbed it Dias, a translation of the Greek god Zeus.

After vet care and some T.L.C., including lots of attention from a Greek landlord, Dias regained its vigor. Ms. Shrodes and Ashley Anderson, another volunteer, set their will on achieving an unlikely success – finding the cat’s owners and reuniting them with their cat.

A Facebook page, Reunite Dias, went up; posters were printed in Arabic, Farsi, and English and distributed. In the voice of the cat they read, in part: “I am sure my family is in Europe and with your help I can be reunited with them again. My family sacrificed a lot for me to escape with them so I know they love me a lot! We need to stick together, we have been through enough and I really miss them.”

The page got 2,000 likes, and information was disseminated there as well as through Twitter, using the hashtag #refugeecat. A rescue group in Athens sent Dias a sweater and treats.

As efforts continued to find the cat’s family, Ms. Shrodes found a foster mother to place it with in Berlin. As most refugees continue their journey from Greece north to other European countries, often ending up in Germany, that seemed like a good next step for Dias.

After obtaining a pet passport for Dias, Ms. Shrodes flew with it to Germany on Jan. 4.

In Berlin, Dias continued a transformation from a scruffy, grayish waif into a healthy looking, pampered pet. It finished a course of medicine and was photographed, white and fluffy, on a pillow looking out a window onto a snowy scene, and perched on an embroidered blue cushion, playing with a ball of yarn with his paw. The foster mom pledged to keep it while the search continued, and to adopt it permanently if it was unsuccessful.

Social media continued to spread the word about the lost white cat with yellow eyes, and on Feb. 12, the Iraqi family was found. Viewing photos sent by email, they confirmed he was their pet, and revealed the cat’s real name, Kunkush.

On Feb. 15, through Skype, the cat and its family once again came (virtually) face to face. “Kunkush was looking behind the computer, trying to find the people” whose voices it was hearing, his caretakers wrote on his Facebook page.

Mr. Kuntz, once again in Greece, was enlisted to bring Dias to Norway.

Scheduled to take a direct flight from Berlin to a local Norway airport, Mr. Kuntz learned upon check-in that the airline would not allow Kunkush, even in a carrier, to fly in the cabin of the plane. Unwilling to relinquish the cat to the cargo hold, he forfeited that ticket and booked a flight to Oslo on another airline. From there, he would have to take a second flight, rent a car,  and drive to the family’s town.

Check-in for that flight was a bit bumpy too, Mr. Kuntz said. Airline personnel were at first unconvinced that Kunkush’s carrier met a minimum size criteria. A conversation with the airline clerk attracted attention and support from fellow passengers, and after Kunkush demonstrated the carrier was large enough for him to turn around in, the clerk relented.

Arriving with Kunkush at the family’s house, with a videographer from Britain’s The Guardian in tow, was “probably one of the most emotional moments of my life,” Mr. Kuntz said. “Everyone was crying.”

“It was more than a cat; it was this woman and her family, “ he said, “a smaller part of the bigger picture.” With the media coverage and widespread sharing of Kunkush’s story, he said, “maybe this is what we need for people to pay attention to this. “

“In a global situation – the components of which are misery, pain, drowning, and war, the whole thing is very sad,” he said. “This was the one bright spot, and it was very bright. This story is about a cat,” he said, “but it’s a big chance to look at this in a more human way, what’s happening to these people.”

The successful reunion has clearly touched the hearts of many, judging by the social media comments and sharing of the story.

“In a small way, his journey represents the plight of all who are seeking a better life,” its rescuers wrote on the cat's Facebook page. “We need each other.”

“He didn't go unnoticed, and will not be forgotten about,” they went on. “In the words of Rick Yancey , ‘One, even the smallest, weakest, most insignificant one, matters.’ We can make a difference, one being at a time.” 

Ralph Carpentier of Springs, a well-known painter of local landscapes and the founder and director for 14 years of the East Hampton Town Marine Museum, died on Friday. He was 87.

A graveside service will be held at Green River Cemetery in Springs on Wednesday at 1:30 p.m. A reception for family and friends will follow, at 3 p.m., at Ashawagh Hall in Springs. Yardley and Pino Funeral Home in East Hampton is handling the arrangements. 

Mr. Carpentier, whose artwork is represented in museums and private collections throughout the country, worked many years ago as a commercial fisherman and went on to serve as an East Hampton Town Trustee. He was an interim director of the East Hampton Historical Society as well, serving for two years. 

His was appointed to a committee advising the town on Amagansett historic landmarks and to the East Hampton Town Architectural Review Board, and was a founding member of the East Hampton Artist Alliance.

A full obituary will appear in a future edition of The East Hampton Star. 

The East Hampton Library dodged a disaster on Feb. 16, when a custodian discovered water cascading down an exterior stairwell, flooding the basement. Cleanup began almost immediately, but as of Monday the basement level was still closed to the public and heaters and fans were still at work drying out the space.

The water had risen to about four feet deep at the bottom of the exterior stairwell. It seeped under the exterior door, formed a stream about six inches deep across the floor of the adult nonfiction area in the older section of the library, and stopped just feet from the door to the Long Island Collection's lower-level archive area. "We were incredibly lucky," Dennis Fabiszak, director of the library, said Friday.

It was just one of numerous incidents throughout the town after a record cold Valentine's Day followed two days later by an almost 60-degree rise in temperature. The warmer weather produced a veritable deluge of calls to the police reporting burst water pipes in houses and businesses.

In the case of the library, timing was everything. An exterior check valve on the water main burst at about 8 a.m. Tuesday morning. The library had been closed the previous 36 hours for President's Day. The waterfall down the stairs continued for about an hour until it was spotted and the main was shut off.

If the flood had continued unabated, it would have continued under the next door it met, leading to the historical section. Even if it didn't come in contact with irreplaceable documents, maps, and other paper items, the mere presence of moisture in that room from such a flood could have caused devastating damage, Mr. Fabiszak said.

As it was, only a couple of boxes of books that had been stored in a closet were damaged.

Had the pipe had burst the night before, as many others did from Wainscott to Montauk, the results would have been much worse.

Mr. Fabiszak saw the incident as a blessing in disguise. The basement was quickly pumped out and the exterior pipe has since been replaced and configured in such a way that if it ever is to burst again the water will be directed towards the street. In addition, cameras are being installed to monitor the area.

According to East Hampton Town Police Sgt. Chelsea Tierney, calls to the police concerning burst pipes from Feb. 14 to Feb. 16 came from three sources: neighbors of the afflicted buildings, professional house watchers, and fire chiefs investigating calls from automatic alarm systems.

In the 48-hour period from Feb. 14 through Feb. 15, there were 28 such calls on the police activity log, with many more coming in during the early morning of Feb. 16. The weekend before saw only nine.

A fire gutted a house in Springs on Tuesday morning, though firefighters, who were already out with a nearby pole fire, quickly doused the flames. 

Passersby on Three Mile Harbor-Hog Creek Road reported seeing flames across from the head of the harbor and an East Hampton Town police officer confirmed a house was on fire, according to Darrin Downs, the second assistant chief of the Springs Fire Department. The house was unoccupied. Police checked with neighbors, who said the homeowners are only here on weekends, the chief said.

The East Hampton Fire Department was already at the ready with a large crew and an engine after responding to a pole fire on the corner of Miller Lane and Miller Lane West at about 5:40 a.m., and to a carbon monoxide call on Gordon Street. Chief Richard Osterberg Jr. offered an engine and crew to Chief Downs, who accepted the help. East Hampton firefighters, who arrived to find "heavy fire" inside the house, made a quick interior attack, according to Gerry Turza, East Hampton's second assistant chief, who also responded to Springs. 

The Springs firefighters began by pouring water on the house from the outside, and then went inside, Chief Downs said. "The fire was contained and under control in 20 to 30 minutes," he said. Amagansett Fire Department's rapid intervention team stood by in case the firefighters on the inside needed to be rescued. 

What was more difficult to find was the source of the blaze. The older house had an addition and two roofs, making it difficult to get to all the hidden pockets, Chief Downs said. About 30 firefighters from East Hampton and 30 from Springs remained on scene for about an hour. No injuries were reported.

Chief Downs said that the inside of the house was gutted by the flames, though he was not sure how long it was burning before passersby called 911. "It definitely had a head start on us," he said. 

The East Hampton Town fire marshal's office is investigating the cause of the fire. The fire marshal's office was not immediately available for comment. 

March is a stone’s throw away. Let’s hope the stone doesn’t fall on a sheet of ice. The female of the bald eagle pair at Wertheim in Shirley is already incubating eggs. Great-horned owls chicks have probably hatched. If March is a good spirit, we can count on the following to show up: grackles, red-winged blackbirds, robins, crocuses, wild onions, alewives, spring peepers, ospreys, and piping plovers, in roughly that order. 

But then comes April and the ticks, gypsy moths, and other scourges that can put a cold blanket on spring. One of them, an army waiting to attack the South Fork with a fury that will make the gypsy moths pale by comparison, is poised for action on the west side of the Shinnecock Canal. 

The southern pine borer that has been devastating pitch pine trees in the Central Pine Barrens including in Westhampton and Hampton Bays, leaving pitch pines mere skeletons from Long Island Sound to the Great South Bay next to the ocean. Unless the South Fork pine trees receive miracle relief from on high, they will go from green to brown, needled to needle-less in a few short months.

Perhaps, this pine borer is just another invader from the south following the tracks of the lone star tick as we warm up and become subtropical in nature over time. Ticks can only walk or hop rides on birds or vehicles to get here; the adult pine borers can fly. Oddly, not only is this marauder spreading north, it has also been moving southerly into Central America all the way to Panama and wreaking havoc with the pines there. Keep in mind that monarch butterflies overwinter in Mexican pines, so now there’s another danger that could further deplete their numbers.

On Monday I visited the large Hubbard Creek County Park on both sides of Red Creek Road, which twists through the Good Ground part of Hampton Bays west of the canal. About 10 acres of pitch pines there, the “eastern front,” as it were, were felled and piled along side of the road. They were cut down fairly recently as some of the needles on the less diseased ones were still green. The largest trunks were 50 to 60 feet long and 18 inches in diameter.

The rings on some of the stumps could be easily counted and I aged some 10 stumps that ranged from 50 to more than 90 years old. Interestingly, each of the older stumps had six to eight annuli crowded closely together, and when I counted back from this year to reach them, it turned out that those tightly congested rings were from the 1960s, a time when Long Island was undergoing a record number of extremely droughty years.

To get to Red Creek Road from the east, one takes the Sunrise Highway to Hampton Bays and the exit to Route 24, which runs north through Flanders and connects to Riverhead. One can see on both sides of the connector road a large number of tall pitch pines without needles and with last year’s pinecones that clearly have given up the ghost. The only ones with green needles are the ones on the shoulder that are less than 10 feet tall, that is, sapling pitch pines, less than 10 years old.

I hurried back to the best stands of pines east of the canal, which range through the moraine from North Sea to Three Mile Harbor. I drove up and down every road to check the status of the pitch pine and white pine forest, which in some areas provides as much as 75 percent of the tree cover, much more than the next most populous trees, the oaks. There are two roads that run along the top of the moraine in Southampton Town from North Sea to Sag Harbor — Great Hill Road and Middle Line Highway. The pines there were as tall as 70 feet and all had green needles. I didn’t spy a single dead pine through the windshield.

Then I covered just about every road in Northwest Woods in East Hampton Town, beginning at Sagg Road, then Swamp Road all the way to Old Northwest Road, from the bay on the north to Stephen Hand’s Path and the farm fields on the south. Some of the white pines in this area, say on either side of Bull Path, are close to 100 feet tall. Some of the pitch pines more than 75 feet tall. All had needles in abundance and all the needles were green.

However, my assurances that our South Fork pines were healthy and in good stead were solely based on my drive-by observations. What I couldn’t see by that method of observation were whether or not some of the trees that looked fine were already infested. It takes a full growing season to turn an infected, healthy-looking pine into a gray ghost.

Unfortunately, we will not be able to tell until it is already too late. And there is no quick efficient antidote to save such pines once they are infested by the beetle. The adult beetles lay eggs under the bark and the larvae work their way up and down and around the boles, feeding on the sap with the nutrients that flow up and down through the xylem and phloem layers.

Ironically, a great number of these good-looking trees are probably infested with our native pine borer, but this large beetle has worked out a peace with its host trees; it feeds and burrows but to a much lesser degree and very rarely kills a host tree. In a sense, it is more a symbiotic relationship than a parasitic one that has been worked out between beetle and tree over the course of thousands of years.

Our annual invasion from New York City and points west is a good four months away; the invasion by gypsy moths and the southern pine borer is right around the corner! 

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

The family of the late Lilia Esperanza Aucapina will meet with South­ampton Town Supervisor Jay Schneiderman on March 18 to review a report from Town Police Chief Robert Pearce on his department’s handling of the woman’s disappearance and subsequent death last year.

“Right now, it is almost like torture,” Foster Maer of LatinoJustice, a civil rights organization, said yesterday, referring to Ms. Aucapina’s relatives. “What they know is, they don’t know what is going on.”

“I want the family to be able to ask what questions they have,” Mr. Schneiderman said yesterday.

The report is scheduled to be studied tomorrow by the supervisor, the police chief, and Detective Sgt. Lisa Costa. It will be, the supervisor said, “a summary of the investigation. How the man hours were dedicated. How they conducted the investigation.” After thorough vetting, he said he would decide whether the police finding of suicide is correct or if a new investigation is called for.

Ms. Aucapina’s estranged husband, Carlos R. Aucapina, 50, is still facing possible prosecution in East Hampton for allegedly violating an order of protection for her. The order stemmed from an incident on Oct. 10 in the parking lot of the Meeting House Lane Medical Practice on Montauk Highway in Wainscott. It was the last time she was seen alive. 

The order of protection had been issued by Justice Martha L. Luft in Family Court in Riverside just days before. Ms. Aucapina presented an affidavit on Sept. 4 accusing her husband of sexual harassment, sexual abuse, stalking, forcible touching, and harassment. She described the prior two months, in which she said Mr. Aucapina obsessed about her fidelity, followed her when she went shopping, went through her social media accounts, and questioned friends about her activities. 

She told the court that despite the fact she had moved into another bedroom in their house at 517 Toppings Path, Sagaponack, he still sought sex from her. The alleged final straw, she said, occurred on Sept. 1.

“I awoke at about 5 a.m. to find Mr. Aucapina kneeling next to my bed. I was surprised to find him there, because I had locked my bedroom door,” she wrote. “I asked him what he was doing, and he said he was praying because he had a bad dream about me.” She then got up and got ready to go to work, she said.

After the order of protection was issued, Mr. Aucapina moved in with a neighbor. For that reason Colin Astarita, Mr. Aucapina’s lawyer, said a similar charge he is facing in Southampton will be dismissed “in the interest of justice.” 

The East Hampton incident occurred on  Oct. 10 when Mr. Aucapina and Angel Tejada, who was accompanying Ms. Aucapina, confronted each other. Police said Mr. Tejada and Ms. Aucapina were walking toward her car, which she had parked there overnight, after spending the night with him. When Mr. Aucapina saw them together, Mr. Tejada said, he called Ms. Aucapina’s brother, Carlos Parra, who quickly arrived. Mr. Tejada dialed 911, but hung up before talking to an operator. Mr. Aucapina and Mr. Parra then left. An officer sent to investigate the call found Mr. Tejada and Ms. Aucapina still there. Mr. Aucapina was eventually charged after an investigation.

“Coming into contact with someone in a public place is not, in and of itself, a violation of that order unless there is continued engaged contact,” Mr. Astarita said. He also pointed out that the police had stated that Mr. Aucapina never directly confronted his wife.

At 11 that morning, Ms. Aucapina was scheduled to pick up her daughter in Sag Harbor, where she had been playing field hockey. She never showed up. At 9:30 that night, the couple’s 21-year-old son, Ronald Aucapina, called police to report his mother missing.

An intensive search by police of the woods behind the house, using Suffolk County K-9 units, helicopters, and all-terrain vehicles, was unsuccessful. Her body was eventually found in a densely wooded area by a hunter on the morning of Nov. 21. It appeared to police that she had hung herself from the branch of a tree. 

“We had not only multiple searches, but multi-agency searches,” Lt. Susan Ralph of the Southampton Town Police Department said at the time. Between the “heavy foliage and thicket and the ground cover, we missed her.”

Ms. Aucapina’s siblings and extended family have refused to accept the determination that she committed suicide, believing it was hastily made. LatinoJustice became involved, organizing a vigil in Ms. Aucapina’s memory on the steps of Southampton Town Hall, then presenting letters to the outgoing town supervisor, Anna Throne-Holst, as well as Mr. Schneiderman, requesting a review of the investigation. 

Mr. Astarita, who worked for four years in the Suffolk County Major Crimes Unit, pointed out that the Southampton Town police originally acted in the belief that a crime may have been committed.

“They had potential suspects, Angel Tejada, Carlos Aucapina, but with any homicide, the issue is habeas corpus, where is the body?” he said. They had potential suspects, and they were treating it, at that time, as a potential homicide. Once they found the body, they were able to tell, and these are professionals, they were able to determine that it was a suicide. And they still did not immediately close the case.”

Something police found, he said, pointed directly to suicide as the cause of death. “It could have been as simple as the position of the body. Everything for her stopped that day. That combined with forensic analysis of the body, they were able to determine the time of death, the cause of death and who caused it. It could have been as simple as, they only saw one set of footprints go into the area, and none come back. We are speculating.”

It is that sense of speculation that troubles the family. “Finding the body that many weeks later, I don’t know what evidence it produces,” Mr. Maer said yesterday. “Why did it take that long?” The family has “legitimate questions,” he said, adding that they would be able to accept the police determination if they were presented with convincing evidence. “Right now, there is nothing,” he said.

Steven A. Cohen, the well-known hedge fund manager and owner of two estate properties here, established a successor fund to his SAC Capital Advisors in 2014 after SAC was fined $1.8 billion for insider trading, and set up offices for the new fund, Point72 Asset Management, in Stamford, Conn.; New York City, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Singapore, London — and now East Hampton.

Mr. Cohen, whose old firm was under legal scrutiny for many years by both the United States Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission, is now taking on another governmental agency: the East Hampton Town Planning Board. He has built a gated fence in front of his new branch office, at 203 Pantigo Road in East Hampton, the former Wei Fun restaurant, that has raised the eyebrows of several planning board members.

The offending structure is a six-foot-tall chain link fence with a cedar facade. It was built without site plan approval.

“Character is very important to this town,” Nancy Keeshan told her fellow board members, and Alexander Baranovich, an architect who is representing Mr. Cohen, on Feb. 9. The gate, she said, “is not friendly” to the rural character of Pantigo Road.

“The town has always avoided having gated communities. Generally speaking, we like to keep things open,” Job Potter said. “I think it is pretty unusual to have a commercial site with a gated parking lot. The question is why?”

Mr. Baranovich, who never identified his client by name, answered by focusing mainly on parking. In the summer, overflow traffic from neighboring restaurants and delicatessens like Goldberg’s Famous Bagels was “a little bit out of control,” he said.

Mr. Cohen, whom Forbes magazine called “one of the most successful hedge fund managers ever,” paid $3.3 million for the slightly less than half-acre site on Jan. 20, 2015. According to a memorandum by Eric Schantz of the Planning Department, the property is zoned for neighborhood business and was most recently occupied by a restaurant. It has since been converted into an office for Mr. Cohen, which is allowed under the zoning code.

Besides the appearance of the gate, Marguerite Wolffsohn, who heads the Planning Department, faulted the size of its opening. “Every access driveway on nonresidential properties shall have a minimum unobstructed width of 20 feet,” she read from the zoning code. That regulation, Ms. Wolffsohn said, cannot be waived.

The gate’s opening is only 14 feet. Mr. Baranovich acknowledged that it would have to be reconstructed.

In addition, it was clear that the fence had been built right over a handicapped parking access space. Patti Leber, a member of the board, had gone to the site and taken some photos.

While Mr. Baranovich stressed that the use of the site was low intensity, Ms. Wolffson was more concerned with its future. She asked board members that whatever they determine will stay with the building in perpetuity, no matter who may come to own it.

Mr. Baranovich touched on two topics besides parking that likely are important to his client. The interior of the office building, following its conversion from the restaurant use, includes an office for a representative of the S.E.C., in accordance with a final agreement reached last month between Mr. Cohen and the regulatory agency.

Mr. Cohen, while not admitting guilt, was barred from trading with other people’s money for two years, and SAC Capital is in the process of closing down. Point72 Assets Management proclaims that it is “a family office managing the assets of its founder, Steven A. Cohen, and eligible employees.” Mr. Baranovich suggested that Mr. Cohen may be a bit “paranoid” at this point about outsiders.

Planning board members agreed that a public hearing should be held before the proposed site plan can be approved. A hearing will be scheduled after Mr. Baranovich submits a revised plan.

Georgica Pond will only be brought back to health through new approaches to waste management, landscaping practices, and road runoff.

That was the consensus of a meeting Friday at Town Hall that included officials of East Hampton Town and Village, the town trustees, the Nature Conservancy, a coastal ecology researcher, and a property owners’ association, all of whom pledged cooperation in the effort. The pond has experienced dense, harmful algal blooms in the past two summers.

“We know that we have a growing problem that is the result of many years of human activity, mostly,” Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell told the group, referring to other local waterways that have suffered similar algal blooms. The algae suppress oxygen, killing fish and posing health hazards to humans. “In focusing on Georgica Pond, there’s a unique opportunity here, because we have a group of people coming together to try to deal with this,” Mr. Cantwell said. 

A monitoring buoy placed in the pond last year revealed the extent of its ill health, said Christopher Gobler, a professor of marine biology at Stony Brook University who monitors trustee-managed waterways here. Dr. Gobler, who was recently engaged by the Friends of Georgica Pond Foundation, the property owners’ group, said that at night during the summer, “the pond goes not hypoxic but anoxic” — fully depleted of oxygen — “and there were fish kills and other ills associated with it. Serious ecological and human health issues are in play.”

Friday’s discussion focused on nitrogen emanating from septic systems, which has been identified as a key culprit in the excess nutrients that cause algal blooms. “We have, primarily, an individual on-site septic system problem that sewers are not going to be the answer to, for the most part,” Mr. Cantwell said. The town board, he said, is assembling a water quality improvement plan that it hopes would be funded with money from the community preservation fund. Reauthorization of the C.P.F., with a provision allowing a portion of it to be allocated to water quality improvement projects, will be subject to a townwide referendum in November.

“We have all these legacy septic systems,” Mr. Cantwell continued. The question, he said, is when and how to encourage, or require, homeowners to replace them. Discussions have been held with the Suffolk County Health Department about identifying “trigger points” that would require their replacement, possibly targeting areas with known water-quality problems. Making replacement mandatory could be tied to a property’s change in ownership, or renovations. “There may be outright time frames in certain critical environments,” the supervisor said. “That’s where a possible rebate program or some use of C.P.F. funds could come into play. But that has to be thought out.”

One positive development, said Nancy Kelley of the Nature Conservancy, is that new septic systems tested in a geographically similar area — Cape Cod — have demonstrated 90-percent nitrogen removal, at a cost comparable to a typical existing system. “If we’re able to work with industry, government, and science to effectuate a plan that allows systems at affordable rates . . . as early as 2016, we can really get this job done,” perhaps sooner than anticipated, she said.

That timeframe is realistic, Dr. Gobler said. Peter Scully, the deputy county executive and formerly the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation’s Long Island regional director, “is taking this very seriously,” he said. County approval of new septic systems, while not necessarily those tested on Cape Cod, can happen by year’s end, he agreed.

Sara Davison, the Friends of Georgica Pond group’s executive director, said that macro-algae would be harvested from the pond this summer. “We will learn if that is an effective mechanism of removing nitrogen,” she said. She also suggested installation of a permeable reactive barrier, a device comprising trench boxes filled with ground-up woodchips that intercepts groundwater as it seeps into a lake or pond. Such a barrier was tested at Pussy’s Pond in Springs, said Kim Shaw, the town’s director of natural resources, with results indicating an 85-percent reduction in nitrogen seepage. The town plans to install more of the devices at Three Mile and Accabonac Harbors, she said.

An initial analysis of groundwater at Ronald Perelman’s 57-acre Creeks estate bordering Georgica Pond “shows there are very high levels of nitrate there, seeping up through the sands,” Dr. Gobler said. That could dictate design and placement of a permeable reactive barrier, he added.

A more low-tech solution, said the marine biologist, would be placing barley straw in the pond in an enclosed container. “Scientists don’t know entirely why, but barley straw can mitigate blue-green algae blooms,” or cyanobacteria, the algae that afflicted the pond in 2014 and ’15. “I’m not saying that this is the long-term solution; however, I think it’s worth piloting on a small scale while we get other issues under control.”

The tidal flushing that occurs when the pond is let open to the Atlantic Ocean, which the trustees traditionally do in the spring and fall, allows more saltwater in, eliminating algal blooms. In addition to the openings, the town and trustees are pursuing renewal of a D.E.C. permit to dredge the pond, Mr. Cantwell said. By dredging, coupled with the twice-yearly letting to the ocean, “we’re going to maintain higher salinity levels for greater periods of time, which is the best enemy we have of the algal blooms,” he said.

In October, the town engaged GEI Consultants, a Connecticut firm, to assist in the permitting process, Ms. Shaw said, and a permit application will be ready in a few weeks. “The window we’re looking at,” Mr. Cantwell said, “is to make that application and obtain that permit in time for a dredging in the fall.”

In the past, the D.E.C. permit has been in the town’s name, as the trustees did not recognize the state agency’s authority. “It doesn’t matter to me,” Mr. Cantwell said. “I’m pragmatic about this.”

“We’d like to take that,” Francis Bock, who was elected the trustees’ presiding officer in January, replied. “The trustees are completely on board with this. We’re excited to be part of it.” 

A sand-management plan must be developed, Ms. Shaw said, and the town will seek an annual limit of 25,000 cubic yards of excavated sand, up from the 16,000 cubic yards allowed by the previous permit.

A spirit of optimism pervaded the meeting, with the group, which plans to convene quarterly, confident of achieving measurable results. But progress will be slow, Dr. Gobler warned. “Groundwater travel time can take awhile,” he said. “The watershed is large. To address all these nutrient issues is not going to happen overnight.”

A spike in drug-related incidents at East Hampton High School this year has spurred officials to organize two forums on the dangers of drugs and addiction — a Spanish-language presentation at 7 p.m. next Thursday and an English presentation on March 23 at 6 p.m. The forums are intended for the community at large. Parents, students, families, and educators in surrounding school districts have also been invited.

Adam Fine, the high school principal, Robert Tymann, an assistant superintendent, Kenny Alversa, the school resource officer, and Teresita Winter, a bilingual social worker, are coordinating the program.

“We’re seeing an uptick in drug-type incidents at the high school, and we think, and I truly believe, it’s a community issue that needs to be addressed,” Mr. Fine said this week. “We need to bring everybody together.”

Representaives of the Long Island Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependency, the East Hampton Town Police Department, Suffolk County Emergency Medical Services, and other entities will take part. Training will be offered in the use of Narcan, an anti-opiate overdose treatment, and kits will be given to those who participate.

Mr. Tymann said the district was not sure what was causing the increase. It could be an actual jump in numbers or, he said, the result of heightened awareness on the part of parents who may be more comfortable sharing information with the school district than in the past.

“People are giving us tons of information we have to address, which never happened before at this level,” Mr. Fine said. He would not provide a number on how many incidents had occurred so far this year, but said it surpassed last year’s total.

According to data sent annually by the school district to New York State, East Hampton reported nine drug-related and two alcohol-related incidents last year, four drug-related and six alcohol-related occurrences in the 2013-14 school year, and seven drug-related and four alcohol-related the previous year.

Ms. Winter explained that a committee of parents whose primary language is Spanish recently urged the school to plan such an event. “They wanted to know what can we do, how can we prevent it, what are the red flags? They said, ‘You provide all this information to the students, but some of the things are happening in the home, and we need to be more aware of it.’”

Three years ago, the district began bringing in police dogs to sniff out drugs at the high school. This is occurring multiple times a year and is not announced. Mr. Fine said the practice had helped discourage drug use at the school. He added that the problem spans all ethnicities among the student body and one extends past adolescence.

Mr. Alversa agreed. “There is no way that one organization or entity can combat this. It has to be a community issue, a school issue, a police department issue, a county issue, because it’s not just isolated to East Hampton,” he said. “It’s a nationwide epidemic that has to be taken on from many fronts to have any effect on it. We’re all committed to bringing in whatever resources are necessary to start that fight.”