An experienced ocean lifeguard who has helped plenty of people in trouble in the water needed help herself on Monday while attempting her second recertification at Indian Wells Beach in Amagansett.

Melanie Mackin was one of many taking the tests for ocean rescue certification. Some were first-timers, but experienced swimmers, others were veteran lifeguards taking the test for recertification, which is required every three years.

At about 10 a.m., cries of “Call 911” could be heard down the beach as lifeguards tried to radio for an ambulance. Ms. Mackin was struggling to swim or stand in the shallow water during the individual rescue test.

For this portion of the certification, rescuers were required to swim 150 yards out to their “victims,” who had just completed the individual rescue themselves, and carry them back to shore and out of the water on their backs.

Ms. Mackin’s victim became her rescuer when, after jumping from her back, he caught her as she fell in the knee-deep water. “I felt dizzy and nauseous and started to black out,” Ms. Mackin wrote yesterday. “Once I got my victim on my back, I took about two steps and collapsed. I don’t remember anything after that.”

He held her upper body above the waves as the other swimmers, all of whom had completed the test, ran to the shoreline and lifted her onto the beach.

She was carried to the ambulance on a stretcher in the back of an all-terrain vehicle. Several of Ms. Mackin’s fellow lifeguards walked behind the A.T.V. to help keep the stretcher in place.

“It was so great that she had, like, a hundred lifeguards there to help her,” said Peter Gideon of the East Hampton Volunteer Ocean Rescue Squad.

John Ryan Sr., a member of the East Hampton Town’s Volunteer Ocean Rescue Squad who has been training lifeguards for almost 50 years, said that this is the first incident of this kind that he can remember. “We give a test in mid-June when the water is below 60. Swimmers get hypothermic, and there you will see guys struggling.” Those kinds of problems are not typical in August, he said.

“I know that I shouldn’t have tried to take the test,” Ms. Mackin said yesterday. “I hadn’t slept in over 24 hours, I was anxious about a lot that had happened that morning, severely dehydrated, and had low blood sugar levels, which I found . . . out once tests were run at Southampton Hospital.”

The strenuous certification continued without incident after her rescue. She received the very help that rescuers were there to prove they could provide, even in the most unexpected circumstances.

“Funny thing was, I wasn’t scared at all,” Ms. Mackin said. “Everything that I have learned from the time that I was 9 years old as a junior lifeguard, to now as a lieutenant at Kirk Park Beach, allowed me to never be afraid because I knew how well trained every other guard was. I know that every lifeguard at that test knew exactly what to do and they were able to get me into an ambulance safely and efficiently — something that I am extremely grateful for.”

She praised her fellow lifeguards, not just for what they did to help her but for what they do every day to keep all five protected town ocean beaches and three bay beaches safe. “It’s thanks to our chiefs — John Ryan Jr., John McGeehan, and Jeff Thompson — who put countless hours into this job to ensure that we are trained to our best ability. After Monday morning, I am overwhelmingly thankful for that.”

“The lifeguard program is just excellent and awesome,” her father, Barry Mackin, said yesterday.

The Goat on a Boat Puppet Theatre, which has occupied the lower level of the Christ Episcopal Church parish house in Sag Harbor since 2001, will move to Bay Street Theater this fall.

“We’re growing up a little bit,” said the Goat’s founder, Liz Joyce. The not-for-profit puppet theater has become a mainstay for parents of young children who had few options for fun and entertainment when it first opened 14 years ago. Now Ms. Joyce not only performs at the theater but also takes her puppets on the road to venues across the South Fork and beyond, while also hosting visiting puppet troupes and performers from around the Northeast.

Joining forces with Bay Street “frees me to be more creative,” Ms. Joyce said over the phone Tuesday from the National Puppetry Festival in Connecticut. At Bay Street, Goat on a Boat can mount a variety of shows it could not accommodate before. Case in point: The introductory show, “Everybody Loves Pirates,” which Frogtown Mountain Puppeteers of Bar Harbor, Me., will present at Bay Street next Thursday at 11 a.m.

“I always wanted to have them at Goat on a Boat, but they couldn’t fit,” Ms. Joyce said. Bay Street’s larger stage can easily accommodate the show, which includes an eight-foot papier-mâché pirate ship.

She will have the flexibility at Bay Street to do shows that fill the big stage, smaller ones in which the audience can sit onstage with the performers, and some that take place in the lobby.

The partnership feels “symbiotic,” Ms. Joyce said. “We bring our not-for-profit to their not-for-profit and help them cover an audience they’re not reaching” — 3 to 8-year-olds. In the process, Ms. Joyce gets to focus more on the performances, puppets, and talent than on things like bookings and insurance and changing lightbulbs. “It’s very exciting because it just frees the Goat on a Boat up from all the admin,” she said.

After the Bay Street show next Thursday, productions will continue at the Goat’s old theater on Thursdays through Saturdays through Aug. 29. The official move to Bay Street will take place during Sag Harbor’s Harborfest on Sept. 12.

“We’ll have a moving party and a puppet yard sale,” Ms. Joyce said, and Minkie the Monkey, one of her puppet creations, “will do a show about growing up and changing, and then we’ll have a musical stroll down to Bay Street.” Off-season shows will be on Saturdays at 11 a.m. on holiday weekends and every Saturday in March.

Those who appreciate the art of puppetry know that it’s not just for kids, and Ms. Joyce hopes programming will include a puppet slam for adult audiences sometime in the winter.

Ms. Joyce will take the Goat’s Puppet Club for 5 to 8-year-olds to Bay Street but will leave behind Tot Art and other programs for preschoolers. “I’ve outgrown that a little bit,” she said, and now there are so many more offerings for that age group than there were when she started the theater. When she opened, the Children’s Museum of the East End had not yet been built, for example.

To prepare for the big move, Ms. Joyce has ramped up the programming at Goat on a Boat this summer, bringing in a different visiting troupe almost every weekend. Tomorrow and Saturday at 11, Theatre Deux Mains from Montreal will perform “Le Cygne,” or “The Swan,” a wordless ugly-duckling tale. The Puppet Company will visit from New York on Aug. 21 and 22 to present “Al E Gator and Friends,” a marionette show, and from Aug. 27 through 29 Bonnie Duncan will present “Lollipops for Breakfast.”

Tickets to shows at the Goat cost $12, $8 for children 3 and under and additional siblings, and $10 for grandparents.

Tickets for the show next Thursday cost $10 for children, $12 for adults, and can be purchased through Bay Street.

As part of a fund-raising effort this year for the village’s flower baskets, Christmas wreaths, and other projects, the Ladies Village Improvement Society of Sag Harbor has created a contest inspired by last summer’s A.L.S. Ice Bucket Challenge, in which a person would pour a pail of icy water over his or her head to raise money and awareness for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease, and then tag a friend to do the same. That challenge went viral.

In the L.V.I.S. video, Bethany Deyermond, who came up with the campaign, calling it Flower Power, asks residents to upload photos of their gardens, or videos of people sprinkling water on them, and donate those photos or videos to the organization. When she finishes her speech, another L.V.I.S. member, Esther Ricker, then waters her and Diane Lewis, also a member, as if they were her own flowers.

Ms. Deyermond posted the video to Facebook and GoFundMe, a platform to give money online. The women have been raising money for flower baskets for about 10 years and usually rely on mass mailings to residents. This year, they hope the challenge and added GoFundMe website will boost donations. Participants have been encouraged to send $25 by mail or through the website.

Ms. Deyermond set a goal of $5,000 but hopes to receive more. “I’d love to raise close to 10 [thousand], but who knows,” she said. So far, six people have given money through GoFundMe, donating as much as $150 and totaling $600.

Several residents have uploaded videos, among them Frank D’Angelo, the owner of Emporium Hardware on Main Street. He contributed money in honor of his mother, who was a member of the L.V.I.S. In his video, he requests that other residents donate and help the organization “beautify” the village.

The L.V.I.S. will be taking donations through the end of the month or until the group reaches its goal.

Five years after her arrival on the South Fork, the Rev. Dr. Katrina Foster, pastor of St. Michael’s Lutheran Church in Amagansett and Incarnation Lutheran Church in Bridgehampton, has heeded a call to take on a new charge.

Ms. Foster, enormously popular among her flocks and credited with revitalizing the churches she leads, has accepted a post at St. John’s Lutheran Church in the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn. She will begin her new post at the beginning of September.

In her five years on the South Fork, which followed 16 years at the Fordham Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Bronx, Ms. Foster was instrumental in seeing through construction of the senior citizens housing complex on the grounds of St. Michael’s. A lover of rock ’n’ roll, the services she leads are punctuated by joyous music, and she has tirelessly ministered to any and all residents in need.

“What’s important to me and to my family is that we follow wherever God is calling us,” she said on Monday. “We felt called out here to be a force to help rebuild the membership at Incarnation and get it on a more solid foundation, and, especially, to come and build the housing at St. Michael’s.”

She described St. John’s as “a very small congregation in a building that’s very big.” Like many urban churches, “their buildings are kind of an albatross,” she said. “We’ll decide what to do with the building — redevelop it, fix it, at very least paint the interior — and grow the congregation. I think Jesus has a future for that place, just as Jesus has a future for the church. My job is to go there and help them figure out what that future is, but I have no doubt that we’re going to go there and have fun, and have really good services, and be an open, inviting community for people who are looking for community and for a connection with God.”

With her departure, Ms. Foster’s two congregations on the South Fork will begin the search for a successor. That process consists of a self-study conducted in conjunction with the Rev. Dr. Richard Hill, conference dean of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America’s Peconic region. A call committee will be selected to create a ministry site profile, which will be given to the Rev. Robert Rimbo, bishop of the Metropolitan New York Synod. He and his staff will then match the most appropriate candidate with the congregations.

Until a successor is chosen, Mr. Hill will serve as an on-call pastor. “There will be pastors who come out and preach and preside,” Ms. Foster said, “and on those Sundays when they can’t find someone to come out — we are the last Lutherans before London, it’s not always easy to get someone — there are some very capable lay people in both churches who could certainly give a homily.”

She is leaving behind two strong and capable congregations, Ms. Foster said. “There are amazing lay leaders in both places, there are wonderful members, a great sense of hospitality, a great sense of being of service in this community, and the buildings are not falling down,” she said. “If they could call a pastor who has a family, who likes to surf, hunt, and go to the beach, that pastor would be as happy as a pig in slop, and the congregations would be well served.”

Members of the two churches were saddened but understanding of the pastor’s impending move. “She will be greatly missed by members of the congregation and the community,” said Marge Harvey, a member of St. Michael’s who lives in Montauk. “She was a strong, inspirational leader and very much loved by all.” But, Ms. Harvey said, “We feel strongly that, religiously and vocationally, she’s being called by the Holy Spirit to serve in another place.”

“When it becomes clear that God is pulling you into a new possibility, you can’t fight that; it’s unwise,” Ms. Foster said. “This is an opportunity to go and help a congregation figure out their future, to become stronger, to become a force for good, and to be a place where the good news of Jesus is shared. That’s what’s important to us.”

The top guns of East Hampton Town government appeared Monday before the Montauk Citizens Advisory Committee and a large group of residents to let them know what they are doing to combat the rowdiness that has taken over the hamlet since the Fourth of July weekend.

Speaking to the crowd was Police Chief Mike Sarlo, Supervisor Larry Cantwell, Councilwoman Sylvia Overby, and Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc, the town board’s liaison to the committee.

Mr. Sarlo said that all levels of the town’s law enforcement departments were collaborating in the effort. Officers are working overtime, he said, with the East End D.W.I. Task Force and the State Liquor Authority. “We’re using every extent of the law that we can,” the chief said, including adding extra foot patrols.

In addition, he said, the town is actively using social media to let people know that Montauk is not a party town. Some residents have complained on Facebook and elsewhere about the police crackdown for overcrowding at the Harbor Bar, formerly the Dancing Crab, he said, but the time is now to stop it in its tracks. “If every place was handled this way when they first started we wouldn’t be in this situation to begin with,” said the chief.

There will be a public hearing at Town Hall next Thursday on a proposed law that would require restaurants, bars, and taverns to install on-site electronic counting devices to keep occupancy in check.

Many out-of-town visitors, said the chief, believe it is legal to drink on public property. They leave the beach with red Solo cups in hand, he said, and are surprised to be handed a summons.

Parking on the west side of South Edgemere Road, the county-owned road near Surf Lodge, often tangles traffic and slows emergency response time, and the town board has proposed a parking ban there between the club and the northwest section of South Elwell Street. A public hearing on the proposed law will be held at Town Hall tonight. The county banned parking on the east side several years ago, and has agreed to the newer regulation.

Mr. Cantwell told the group that Montauk residents have to act now to preserve the future of their hamlet. Motel owners are calling him, he said, to complain that longtime customers are canceling their reservations because of the party atmosphere, and they say they are losing thousands of dollars.

The new parking ban, he said, was a safety issue, per the request of police officers and emergency personnel. “We’re not looking to put Surf Lodge out of business,” he said, which prompted calls of “Why not?”

Members of the committee were uneasy about where the club’s patrons will park instead. One member said it might push parking onto Industrial Road, near the environmentally sensitive Fort Pond.

In the last three weeks, Mr. Cantwell said, Surf Lodge has installed a marked area for taxis to pick up and drop off, and its security also makes sure vehicles aren’t left idling. Other businesses are complying with parking laws as well, he said.

Another hearing tonight at Town Hall will take note of fires on the beach. New proposed guidelines for beach fires would mean they must be confined to metal containers, which must be removed from the beach at the end of the evening.

  The committee learned that a design for a red and white striped canopy proposed by the former Empire gas station has been forwarded by town planners to the architectural review board. The canopy would be 16 feet high and 42 feet long and would cover all six pumps. Members were asked to contact Richard Myers, the chairman of the A.R.B., who was at Monday’s meeting, with any comments.

State lawmakers have approved a bill that would extend the life of the Peconic Bay Region Community Preservation Fund and would allow the five East End towns to seek approval from voters to use a portion of it for water quality improvement projects. The preservation fund has provided more than $1 billion for land preservation on the North and South Forks since it was established in 1999.

The bill, passed unanimously in both houses of the legislature, has not yet reached the governor’s desk; once it does, he will have 10 days to act on it.

The revised law, if adopted by individual towns and okayed by their voters through a mandatory referendum, would extend the program’s expiration date by 20 years, through 2050, and authorize the towns to use up to 20 percent of the fund to pay for projects such as wastewater treatment systems, both traditional and alternative; pollution prevention and abatement, including stormwater collection systems and vessel sewage holding tank pump-out stations; and aquatic habitat restoration.

Up to 10 percent of the funding allocated to water quality improvement could be used to support the Peconic Estuary Program, as a match for federal, state, county, or other funding.

The projects, according to the legislation, must be designed to improve existing water quality, to meet specific water quality standards, and not to “permit or accommodate new growth” or development.

Money for the preservation fund, which may be used for open space, farmland, or recreational land preservation, as well as historic preservation, comes from a 2-percent tax on most real estate transfers.

The new legislation states that “the East End, surrounded entirely by water, is a community whose history, economy, and character is dependent upon clean water for recreation, tourism, and shellfishing. Maintaining the ecological health of local bays is just as crucial to protecting the character of the community as preserving open space has been.”

New York State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr., a sponsor of the recently passed legislation along with Senator Kenneth P. LaValle, said last year in a discussion of the preservation fund law amendment that “water quality is the issue of this decade,” and that increasing pollution of bays, freshwater ponds, and aquifers “would certainly undermine not only the environment, but the economy.”

Projects like those being discussed in East Hampton — such as the neighborhood wastewater treatment systems that have been proposed by the town’s wastewater management consultant as a solution to septic system pollution of waterways — are costly, and with federal grants unlikely and limited state money available, they are “certainly beyond” the means of local governments alone, Mr. Thiele said.

This summer, pollution levels have reached critically high levels in a number of East Hampton water bodies, including Northwest Creek, Fort Pond, Lake Montauk, and Georgica Pond, East Hampton Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell said on Tuesday.

“Those are early signs,” he said, of serious water quality degradation. “And if we are going to stop it, we’re going to need some funding to do it.” The extension of the preservation fund program and expansion of its mission is a “really important funding opportunity . . . a valuable tool,” he said, in trying to achieve the water quality improvement and protection goals that have been laid out in a draft town comprehensive wastewater management plan.

“I do think the town, and the people that live here, should decide if a portion of [the fund] should be used in trying to achieve these goals,” Mr. Cantwell said.

The preservation fund has been used to protect over 10,000 acres on the East End so far.

In the first six months of 2015, $48 million flowed into the fund from the five participating towns, up more than 5 percent from the same period last year. Revenues in 2014 were the highest since the program was established.

In East Hampton, real estate transactions subject to the 2-percent tax resulted in $14.7 million in revenues for the preservation fund from January through June.

Mr. Thiele projected that revenue into East Hampton Town’s preservation fund during its additional 20 years through 2050 could reach $415 million; that could provide up to $83 million for water quality projects.

Among supporters of the changes to the C.P.F. law is Dick Amper, the executive director of the Long Island Pine Barrens Society, an environmental education and advocacy organization. Mr. Amper has suggested that half of the amount authorized for water quality improvement projects should be set aside for regional water cleanup, regardless of where the funds are generated.

While the fund is regional, each town — Riverhead, Southold, Southampton, Shelter Island, and East Hampton — is allocated the proceeds raised from the 2-percent tax within its boundaries. But, Mr. Amper has pointed out, pollutants of ground and surface waters know no boundaries, warranting a regional effort. The North Fork towns consistently raise far less preservation fund money than East Hampton and Southampton.

What do you do when you’re selling your Hamptons house and downsizing? Have a yard sale, of course.

Even Betsey Johnson, the well-known fashion designer, went the yard sale route to unload some of her possessions as she put her East Hampton house on the market. About 10,000 articles of clothing that she has collected over her more than 50 years in the fashion industry went up for grabs at bargain prices last weekend in a yard sale on her front lawn at 25 Grape Arbor Lane, and it will continue this weekend. “I accumulated a ton,” Ms. Johnson said Tuesday from her new house in Malibu, Calif. “I’m a hoarder. I should have been on that show.”

Hoarding may be harsh, but she certainly has amassed quite a collection of vintage clothing — some of which is an unofficial archive of her work — in addition to keeping original designs and leftover stock, all the feminine and whimsical designs for which she is best known. “There are a couple of pieces from Paraphernalia, some from Alley Cat, my ’70s junior line . . . and there’s the punk period of the late-’70s-early-’80s and right up to the time we closed two years ago,” she said. “Nobody would be crazy enough to make any of that stuff anymore. I think my true blue customer really appreciates it more than ever because she knows she can’t get anything — close, yes — but she can’t get that real me anymore.”

She is also selling shoes, bags, accessories, and even furniture, but “the clothing is the star,” said Mark Vitulano, a longtime friend of Ms. Johnson’s who has organized the yard sale for her. “We sold so much and it doesn’t look like we sold anything,” he said of the first weekend of the sale.

“If I lived 1,000 years I couldn’t wear everything,” Ms. Johnson said.

The designer is know for finishing her runway shows with a cartwheel, and many of the items on offer are off those runways, but there is also a lot of “real stuff, wearable stuff,” she said. When she closed up stores, like the one she had in the Reutershan parking lot in East Hampton over a decade ago, she often kept the leftover inventory. There are some production samples with pins still in them. “It’s a shame that an archivist can’t get a hold of it,” Mr. Vitulano said.

He convinced her to “let it go,” as she could not possibly take it all with her to California, where she moved to be closer to her daughter, Lulu, and her two grandchildren, 7 and 9 years old. She’s living in a “grandma’s cottage” on her daughter’s property, she said. “I took the right amount with me out here because I knew I would just have to put it in storage again. It is time for me to face up to realizing I have no room for everything,” she said.

Then there’s the East Hampton house — also for sale. The 2,900-square-foot, 4-bedroom, 3.5-bath farmhouse on 1.65 acres is listed with Sotheby’s International Realty for just under $2 million. “I decided to get that house when I knew I was free from my breast cancer in 2000,” after renting about a mile and half away the summer before. It was the first of 10 houses a real estate agent showed her in a single day, and while she had to do a complete gut job, she knew it was for her. “I fell in love with the house, and then I went on a decorating spree out there. It was total happiness.”

The house became “a little hideaway escape,” a great balance for her work life back in Manhattan, she said. She spent time “antiquing and junk-storing,” and being creative in a way that she said is different than creating her whimsical designs. “As much as work is creative, there’s nothing like your own house.”

Perhaps nothing better exemplifies her creativity than the walls. She wallpapered the entire house in “hugely expensive English cabbage rose 27-silkscreen fabric” that she had to have specially backed with paper. “I could have bought a big fancy car for what I did,” she said. “I just hope that it goes to a buyer who doesn’t rip the wallpaper down.”

 “I love the property. I love the location. I love East Hampton as the town. I loved my time out there, but I lived the East Hampton life. Fifteen years ago, I went to the clubs,” she said. Ms. Johnson, who turns 73 on Monday, shows no signs of slowing down. She will retain her apartment in Manhattan and live the bi-coastal life. She remains the creative director of her brands, owned by Steve Madden since 2010, and will be back in New York later this month and in September to prepare for her fashion shows, which celebrate the half a century her name has appeared on a label. “It’s the big bang year for me in terms of, whoa, 50 years,” she said. So her move, and her purge, are “what I needed. I needed a new step, a new change.”

The yard sale will continue Friday through Sunday, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and if there is anything left over, it may continue again on Labor Day weekend.

In May, when the East Hampton Village Board held a public hearing on zoning code amendments that would add graduated formulas for allowable square footage of residences and coverage of lots larger than one acre, Joseph P. Rose, who owns multiple properties in the village, said adoption “would almost certainly” lead to a legal challenge. In June, the board adopted the amendments, which had been recommended by the village’s planning and zoning committee, and in July, Mr. Rose’s prediction came true.

Last week, he and Rajesh Alva, a Hedges Lane neighbor who had sharply criticized the amendments at the hearing, filed suit in State Supreme Court against the village, the village board, Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr., and the planning and zoning committee. They are asking the court to invalidate the amendments and declare them unenforceable. 

The board has exceeded its authority, their complaint states, relying on a “biased, cherry-picked, and incomplete survey” of properties by a “rogue committee” that worked “without public notice, input, or oversight.”

The board’s actions followed an April presentation by Robert Hefner, the village’s director of historic services, in which he called a survey of 173 properties “a wake-up call” to the prospect of irrevocable harm to the village’s character.

The amendments include separate formulas to calculate floor area and lot coverage for parcels between 40,000 and 80,000 square feet and those that are larger. Previously, one set of standards applied to all residential properties.

Central to the planning and zoning committee’s recommendation was a statement in the village’s 2002 comprehensive plan that “new development and redevelopment should be compatible in terms of size and scale with each existing residential neighborhood and should reinforce their integrity as they have developed over 350 years.”

Like many other property owners who spoke against the amendments at the May hearing, Mr. Rose and Mr. Alva complained of a rush to judgment and legislation based on what they charged was flawed analysis, inadequate public notice, and no consideration of the impact of the changes.

The new formulas, they said, “drastically limit the flexibility of owners of larger lots in building homes and accessory structures, based on little more than rank speculation” that existing regulations allow construction and reconstruction that is out of proportion to their surroundings. While many speakers at the May hearing acknowledged that such a phenomenon is occurring in neighborhoods with smaller streets with smaller lots, they saw no such problem on larger parcels.

“Incredibly,” Mr. Rose and Mr. Alva’s complaint states, “the board purported to justify these amendments by making the sweeping assertion, for the first time in more than a dozen years since its passage, that the comprehensive plan should somehow now be considered tohave inadequately maintained the special character of the Village.”

Mr. Rose owns a vacant lot at 23 Apaquogue Road, adjacent to his Hedges Lane property. Adoption of the amendments, his complaint states, “substantially reduced” his development options.

Mr. Alva, who owns property at 40 Cooper Lane in addition to Hedges Lane, had long planned to demolish the Hedges Lane house and build a new one of approximately 6,200 square feet. He was granted building permits about one week before the amendments were adopted, but they were revoked and a stop-work order issued because the structure would have exceeded the new square footage limit.

In a June letter to the board, Mr. Rose, a former chairman of the New York City Planning Commission and director of city planning in former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s administration, repeated an offer to partner with village officials in discussion of appropriate land use. He said on Friday that his offer stands.

“We appreciate the village’s respect for and desire to protect the special character of our neighborhood and we welcome the motivation behind the regulatory changes,” he wrote. However, “we are deeply concerned” that the amendments “may well prove detrimental to the character of the neighborhood, burdensome to its residents, and contrary to the overall interests” of the village.

Asked to respond, Mr. Rickenbach offered no comment. Becky Molinaro, the village administrator, would say only that “the case is being reviewed and handled by village counsel.” Mr. Hef­ner did not respond to two emails seeking comment.

Along the shores of Weesuck Creek in East Quoque, a lone cedar tree hovers above the sand, barely supported by a few scraggly, rotting roots. The ground beneath it has washed away, exposing its subterranean system. Its once robust trunk has diminished to a prickly stump and many of its wooden peg legs now poke out of the ground like headstones in a graveyard.

Carl LoBue, a senior marine scientist with the Nature Conservancy, snapped a photo of it this spring at low tide. The haunting image has made its rounds among Long Island scientists, generating some stunned reactions. 

“Wow. That’s quite a photo,” said Stuart Lowrie, a botanist with the Nature Conservancy, upon seeing it.

In addition to sea-level rise, the cedar also succumbed to coastal erosion, a natural occurrence sometimes exacerbated by human activity. This combination caused the soil compacted around the dead roots to wash away, leaving them exposed to open air. They typically linger beneath the water’s surface.

The cedar reflects a phenomenon seen not just on Long Island, but also around the world. As the climate changes, the salt from rising sea levels is killing vegetation that grows near the coast, particularly trees with low tolerance of saline conditions; cedars actually have a higher saline tolerance than other trees.

Seas have been rising for centuries. Ice masses are melting and warmer water is expanding, spilling farther onto land. Mr. LoBue estimates that this particular tree has been dead for several years, but around the Island, physical repercussions of sea-level rise such as this are being seen more frequently.

“It’s really pretty common,” he said. “You can go almost anyplace on Long Island and see tree trunks underwater.”

Christopher Gobler, a professor and researcher at Stony Brook University’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, said that one can see treetops sticking out of the water in areas such as East Quogue and the Peconic Estuary. Not too long ago there was a small island in the northwest corner of Montauk’s Fort Pond with a stand of dead trees that would occasionally be underwater. Now all that can be seen are the tops of those trees.

Other plants and ecosystems have been affected from sea-level rise as well. Dr. Gobler said 90 percent of Long Island’s sea grass has disappeared. The salt marshes that protect the land from surging storms are sinking and becoming muddied.

“Sea-level rise is a big issue,” he said.

Oceans, sounds, bays, rivers, and estuaries surround Long Island, making it especially vulnerable to rising sea-levels, one of the largest immediate threats seen as a result of climate change. Scientists note that this is a slow, incremental process, occurring since the glacial ages. Tangible clues like these disintegrating terrestrial trees in Pine Neck reveal the reality of a changing landscape.

“If you’re an observant person, you have clearly recognized it. It’s not hiding from anybody,” said Mr. LoBue of the vanishing cedars.

MaryLaura Lamont, a ranger at Fire Island National Seashore and the educational chairwoman of the Long Island Botanical Society, once worked and hiked at Orient State Park, but said she now cannot see the trails because the water has soaked the paths almost to the point of obliteration. The abundant maritime cedars there are disappearing as well.

“That forest is falling into the sea,” she said. “Sea level is rising faster than the land can keep up with it.”

According to Mr. LoBue, the water has been rising about an inch every decade, and that trend is expected to accelerate. According to a 2014 report by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, the waters around the city and Long Island are projected to rise two to five inches in the next decade, and one to two feet by the 2080s.

More frequent, turbulent storms could hasten the salt’s effects as well. The NYSERDA study also said that a large portion of Long Island’s South Fork is less than 10 feet above average sea level, something made clear as Hurricane Sandy hit. The fierce flooding that plagued the area following the storm fueled the salt’s lingering presence in trees, said Mr. LoBue. It saturated the trunks and roots and soaked in long enough to kill them.

“This clearly impacts our low-lying communities,” he said, pointing in particular to Mastic Beach. He recently gave a talk about such shallow-built populations in Asian Pacific countries, like Papua New Guinea, whose inhabitants were forced to flee their homes after ocean flooding destroyed food sources and other necessities. Mr. LoBue took the photo of the tree at Weesuck to illustrate Long Island’s possible future in comparison to these other islands.

On the East End, as well as other lowlands, a chain reaction takes place after water seeps into neighborhoods, said Mr. LoBue. The salt renders septic systems defective, which can lead to bacteria influxes in places residents swim.

“All of these problems we see on Long Island, there’s a connection to rising sea levels,” he said.

Dr. Gobler explained that 90 percent of East End houses are equipped with cesspools, which drain household waste into the ground. As the ocean rises, these will eventually align with the water table, and nitrogen waste will begin to leak excessively into the groundwater. It will flow into the bays and cause algae blooms and fish kills. Toxins will penetrate the seafood and eradicate their sea grass habitat. Ms. Lamont told of a salt marsh wedged between the two forks that is “completely disappearing.”

“The less salt marsh you have, the less land mass will be protected,” she said.

Mr. LoBue recently revisited Flax Pond, an old stomping ground he frequented as a student over 20 years ago. It was the first time since those earlier years that he had come during daylight. He was astonished to find that near the marsh, a cluster of trees he once knew to be alive and thriving were dead.

“It’s the reality we live in now,” he said later.

Local food pantries and nonprofit organizations are working hard to meet the needs of the hundreds of children on the South Fork who receive free or reduced-price lunches at school but whose nutritional needs may not be met when school is out for the summer.

While some pantries report a slight dip in the number of families they serve over the summer — which their administrators say happens because parents on the East End are often working longer hours at seasonal jobs and cannot get to the pantries during normal hours — they also say there’s a gap in both availability and geography for that part of the local population.

“We know the need is very high just based on our numbers,” said Gabrielle Scarpaci, director of the East Hampton Food Pantry. “There are students affected who aren’t receiving meals at school [in the summer]. This is a problem nationally.”

Indeed, CNN reported in June that only about 18 percent of the 21.7 million children who are enrolled in the free and reduced-price lunch program are able to receive government-sponsoredfood assistance over the summer.

In the East Hampton School District, during the 2014-15 school year, about 32 percent of the district’s students — just under 600 kids — were signed up for the program.

One mother of three in East Hampton, whose eldest child will be a second-grader at the John M. Marshall Elementary School and receives free lunches during the school year, said the East Hampton Food Pantry’s offerings are critical in helping her feed her family during the summer.

“Feeding your kids is totally different once school is out,” said the mother, who asked that her name not be printed. “It’s so frustrating when your kid asks for something healthy, like a glass of milk before bed, but you have to save the milk for your other kid’s bottle. I can’t afford to go out and spend $5 on a gallon of milk. It’s not even like they’re asking for junk.”

In Bridgehampton during the last school year, 55 percent of the students were participating, totaling 89 kids in the same year. In Sag Harbor, during the 2013-14 school year, 66 kids, or 7 percent, were enrolled in the free and reduced-price lunch program.

But in districts that do not serve lunches in a school-operated cafeteria — such as Springs and Montauk — the exact numbers of kids in need might be hard to gauge. Pamela Bicket, who is currently running the Springs Food Pantry, said it serves anywhere from 35 to 80 families per week over the course of a year. Some of those families may have as many as eight children, she said.

“I think there’s a lot of hidden poverty,” she said. “There are a lot of working poor people and they are largely invisible to the public.”

In Montauk, about 125 families or households per week take advantage of the pantry, according to Alice Houseknecht, who is currently running the Montauk Food Pantry. But that food pantry only operates between November and April.

“Being that in the summer everybody seems to have jobs — there’s landscaping and fishing and carpenters and waiters — we realized there was a need for help six months out of the year,” Ms. Houseknecht said. “In the winter, a lot of them have to go to unemployment or don’t qualify for unemployment.”

“There is always emergency food available,” she added. Information can be found at St. Therese of Lisieux Catholic Church.

It is a long drive from Montauk to Flanders, where the nearest Island Harvest open feeding site is set up at the David Crohan Center at 655 Flanders Road. Island Harvest is one of the largest food assistance organizations on Long Island, and it operates two types of food programs: closed sites, such as the summer feeding program at the Bridgehampton Child Care and Recreational Center, which are for children who are registered for specific programs, and open sites, where anyone can come to receive free, nutritious food.

“The area out east is more rural and there are fewer resources available to people who live on the East End,” said Randi Shubin Dresner, executive director of Island Harvest. “If you were in another community like Brentwood or Amityville, it’s more condensed and there happen to be more resources. The further east you go, the more spread out the resources become. It’s definitely an issue.”

Schools are required to post information on free summer meals for kids, but according to a service map published by Hunger Solutions of New York, the Crohan Center in Flanders is the easternmost site on Long Island.

Compounding the problem of geography is the fact that many food assistance programs — even including Island Harvest — see a drop in donations over the summer.

“Historically, the summer is not a time that people are thinking about giving back to the community and making donations,” Ms. Dresner said. “That’s typically during the holiday season, November and December, when people are thinking about that. Hunger is 12 months of the year. If you’re hungry in November, you’re hungry in June and July.”

Ms. Scarpaci said the same is true at the East Hampton Food Pantry. “The times we see the most donations are around Thanksgiving and Christmas,” she said. “That’s when it’s in the forefront of people’s minds.”

But the community often responds in the summer in a different way. Ms. Dresner said farms contribute extra produce to both Island Harvest and local food pantries, and even some individual gardeners — like Barbara Thomas of East Hampton — see there’s a need to help.

“All the lettuce comes at the same time. Every plant does that, and suddenly you have hundreds of tomatoes or tens of pounds of lettuce. What do you do with it?” Ms. Thomas asked. “The idea of wasting it was terrible, so I just harvested a huge amount and called the food pantry in East Hampton. It really led me to thinking that this is true not just of my garden, but of so many gardens all over the place, and how that can be used to augment the food pantries and food programs of all kinds.”

Childhood hunger is just one reason why a partnership was created between several East End towns, known as the East End Partners for Youth. According to Nancy Lynott, its coordinator and Southampton town’s youth bureau director, the group’s mission is to connect families with the resources they need, identify exactly where there are holes in services, and then find ways to eliminate those gaps.

“For kids who receive free and reduced meals during the school year, there are very, very limited programs that provide that same service over the summer, and there are really only a few kids who take advantage of that during the summer,” Ms. Lynott said. “There’s lots of potential for kids who need the service, but most of them can’t get there.”

The East End Partners for Youth is planning a meeting on Aug. 12 in which representatives from several East End towns will pool their information to create a map of youth services. It doesn’t stop at food resources for kids.

“There are lots of gaps,” Ms.  Lynott said, “and even with the services that exist, kids have trouble accessing them, either because of transportation, finances, or family isolation, meaning families that are not hooked into the resources that are around them.”