As he had indicated last week, Suffolk County Legislator Jay Schneiderman, a former East Hampton Town supervisor, announced his intention to run for Southampton Town supervisor on Friday.

Mr. Schneiderman, who is unable to seek re-election to the County Legislature because of term limits, will seek the Democratic, Independence, and Working Families Party endorsements in his bid for supervisor. A registered Independence Party member, he hopes to succeed Anna Throne-Holst, who will not seek re-election. Ms. Throne-Holst plans to challenge Representative Lee Zeldin, a Republican who was elected to represent New York's First Congressional District last year.

"The role of supervisor is important to every town," Mr. Schneiderman said in a statement issued on Friday. "The supervisor is both chief fiscal officer and chief operating officer. It is important that such an individual be familiar with all aspects of the community and municipal government."

He cited accomplishments as East Hampton's supervisor, including four consecutive years of tax-rate reductions, along with his tenure in the Legislature, as demonstrative of a "16-year record of fighting to protect our environment, our drinking water, and our quality of life" on the East End.

Mr. Schneiderman also pointed to the creation of an additional lane on County Road 39, the elimination of trailers housing homeless sex offenders, and the effort to prevent the closure of the Air National Guard Base in Westhampton Beach among his accomplishments.

"I look forward to a spirited campaign filled with ideas about how to move Southampton forward, and I hope the residents of this extraordinary town will give me the opportunity to serve them in this new capacity as their town supervisor," he said.

A longtime resident of Montauk, Mr. Schneiderman has been a part-time resident of Southampton for several years and is building a house on the property he owns on David White's Lane. His two children attend school in the Southampton School District.

Southampton Town Councilwoman Bridget Fleming, who has served on the town board since 2010, is the Democratic Party's candidate for Mr. Schneiderman's seat.

Amos Goodman, a financial consultant who lives in Springs, is also looking to take Mr. Schneiderman's seat. He has received the East Hampton and Southampton Town G.O.P.'s backing, with the nominee to be chosen at the party's convention on Monday.

During Monday's Memorial Day parade, the East Hampton High School marching band provided all the patriotic sounds needed to lift spirits and honor those who have perished while serving in the United States armed forces. The student-musicians joined veterans, police departments, volunteers from local fire departments and ambulance companies, and other local youth in their march down Main Street.

For Olivia Chapman, the pink persists.

Last August, nearing the end of a long summer day and partly out of boredom, the four Chapman children assembled in their kitchen and promptly started dying portions of their hair bright pink.

Though the color has since washed out (or grown out) of her siblings’ hair, Olivia, 5, the youngest, still has two pink streaks running through her wavy, white-blonde hair.

The family of six, who identifies as solidly middle class, lives in a four-bedroom house in East Hampton. Olivia’s mother, Abby Chapman, 33, works as a secretary. Her father, Adam Chapman, 37, is an electrician. Aurora is 12, Alyse is 10, and Joshua is 8. Aurora attends East Hampton Middle School. The three youngest siblings all attend the John M. Marshall Elementary School.

On both sides of the family ties to East Hampton stretch back several generations, or “since the dirt was laid down,” according to Ms. Chapman. Similarly, East Hampton graduates — and a love of all things Bonacker and maroon and gray — date back to the early 1900s, if not earlier.

In less than a generation, East Hampton’s year-round population has undergone a huge transformation. As such, the East Hampton High School that Ms. Chapman graduated from in 1999 comprised a far different demographic than the one her four children will attend.

In the 1998-99 school year, according to East Hampton High School’s New York State Report Card, 1.5 percent of students qualified for either a free or reduced-price lunch. By 2013-14, that figure had jumped to 26 percent. Over the same time period, the high school’s student population also underwent considerable change, going from 75 percent white in 1998-99 to 52 percent white in the last school year. By the 2013-14 school year high school enrollment was 41 percent Latino, 5 percent black, and 2 percent Asian.

Olivia is one of 18 children in Kristen Tulp’s kindergarten class at John Marshall.

As the youngest of four children, Ms. Chapman describes Olivia as a “spitfire” and sees in her daughter a fierce determination. “Overall, she’s a pretty good kid, though she can be a bit stubborn and opinionated,” said Ms. Chapman, who hopes to instill in each of her children the ability to distinguish right from wrong. “I just want them to be happy and be good human beings.”

One of three siblings, Ms. Chapman was born in Maine and moved to East Hampton at the age of 5, enrolling atJohn Marshall. Her mother worked as a police officer and later as an East Hampton Village dispatcher. When her parents divorced, her father moved back to Maine, helping to run a family-owned gas station and mini-mart.

Mr. Chapman, one of two siblings, grew up in Springs, first attending Springs School and later East Hampton High School, where he enrolled in a Board of Cooperative Educational Services trade school. Shortly after graduating, he started work as an electrician. Growing up, his father worked for East Hampton Village’s Highway Department and his mother cleaned houses and worked as a baby sitter.

At 16 and 20, the couple met through mutual friends. They started dating the following year and married in 2003 at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in East Hampton. All along, Ms. Chapman knew that she wanted to be a mother. “It was always a joke between us, that we would have two or four children, but that we weren’t going to have three,” she said.

Though housing prices continue to increase, the Chapman family has no plans to leave East Hampton — at least not anytime soon. “It’s nice to know the people and know the area,” said Ms. Chapman. Grandparents and cousins are a regular presence. “Better than picking up and starting over where you’re all by yourself. Especially when they’re little.”

In February, to celebrate the first 100 days of kindergarten, Ms. Tulp instructed each student to compile a poster of 100 different things. Olivia chose 100 heart-shaped stamps and stickers of various colors.

Outspoken and friendly, Olivia’s favorite part of the school day is when her teacher reads books aloud on the shared carpet. She wants to be a teacher when she grows up. Macaroni and cheese is her favorite thing to eat and Lilliana is still her best friend. Though she had previously been enrolled in karate, ballet, and tap, earlier this year, Olivia was taking a break, gearing up for T-ball practice this spring. All four children buy hot lunches at school each day.

At home, Olivia goes by Liv, or one of half a dozen other nicknames. She and Aurora, the eldest, share a bedroom. According to Ms. Chapman, both girls are strong-willed and possess strikingly similar temperaments.

In late January, Olivia’s grandmother, Faye Maxey, a retired East Hampton Village dispatcher, died at Southampton Hospital. She was 66.

Though her older siblings had already experienced death, having previously lost their great-grandfather, Ms. Maxey was the first significant loss that Olivia can remember.

The idea that someone isn’t coming back is a lot to wrap your head around, especially when you’re 5. Still, the permanence of her absence is slowly sinking in, with Olivia missing their sleepovers and shared love of arts and crafts around the kitchen table.

During February’s weeklong recess, the family escaped the snow and the ice by taking a trip to North Carolina. They toured the NASCAR Hall of Fame in Charlotte before returning home.

In her 5-year-old mind, Olivia sees weeklong breaks from school as “way too long.” After break one day, when Ms. Chapman picked her up from Project Most, the after-school program that runs until 6 p.m., Olivia was happy to be immersed again in her usual routines. “I finally saw all of my friends,” Olivia said to her mother, beaming. “I’m so happy to be back at school.”

A group of property owners around East Hampton’s Georgica Pond has raised $359,000 for a research project intended to identify the causes of the pond’s recent degradation and toxic algal blooms and develop a remediation plan. The project has the support of Stony Brook University, the East Hampton Town Trustees, and the Nature Conservancy.

Christopher Gobler, a professor at Stony Brook’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, will lead the effort, assisted by two graduate students, Ryan Wallace and Jennifer Jankowiak. Dr. Gobler has been monitoring water quality at several sites for the town trustees, who manage many of the town’s beaches, waterways, and bottomlands on behalf of the public, since 2013.

Last summer, the trustees banned shellfishing at the pond, citing cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae, which can be harmful to humans and animals.

“Last year, the pond had a lot of different problems: macro algae blooms, toxic blue-green algae blooms, very low oxygen conditions, fish kills, even a report that a deer or two had died on the pond,” Dr. Gobler said last week. “There was a lot of concern — all this happening at once.”

Annie Gilchrist Hall, who with her husband, John Hall, lives near the pond, said last week that she and her neighbors were sufficiently concerned about the pond’s health to raise the money for the research effort. In 2012, the couple’s dog died after exposure to the pond’s water. “She went into toxic shock,” Ms. Hall said. “All she did was lick her paws. I had her stomach tissues sent to Cornell, and that’s when it came up that she had cyanobacteria.”

High nutrient levels, particularly nitrogen and phosphorous, are behind the algal blooms, which suppress oxygen and can harm marine life, Dr. Gobler said. “So the first part of the project is to quantify the rate of nutrient delivery to the pond and what the sources of nutrients are, specifically where in the general pond area they are coming from.”

A telemetry device will be installed in the pond, allowing continuous water-quality monitoring. It will record and send data to a web address. “If things change rapidly, like if the oxygen levels suddenly drop, or an algal bloom suddenly pops up, we’ll know immediately,” Dr. Gobler said. Researchers will also sample the groundwater in the area and the water in the pond’s tributaries.

A focus, Dr. Gobler said, will be clearer identification of the types of algae present. Georgica Pond, he said, is a rare ecosystem. While the trustees typically open it to the ocean on a biannual basis, which allows tidal flushing and helps regulate the water level, the opening usually closes naturally within a few weeks.

This year, however, it has remained open, which raises the prospect of better water quality than last year, Dr. Gobler said. “Thus, the opening of the pond could also be a management scheme for keeping the pond as healthy as possible.”

“There isn’t another water body in New York State that’s like Georgica Pond in that the salinity gets low enough to support these blue-green algae,” he said. “If we know what the sources of nutrients are, the precise algae that are growing there, and what’s making them grow, that will provide the basis for a management plan to improve the pond.”

Because the pond was “under real duress” last summer, Ms. Hall said her neighbors had gotten together to discuss it in August. The group then met with East Hampton Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell and agreed to fund Dr. Gobler’s research. Ms. Hall credited Nancy Kelley, executive director of the Nature Conservancy, for working on the cooperative effort. “She is incredibly knowledgeable,” Ms. Hall said. “She’s been a real leader on this. People care about Georgica Pond. We’re encouraged.”

Americans donated $335 billion to charitable causes last year, and according to GuideStar, an organization that tracks the nonprofit world, there are 1.8 million organizations in this country that rely on donations, grants, and fund-raising events for the good work they do.

 In East Hampton, one company has found a way to localize those numbers. It is GoodCircle, and it was launched a little over a year ago by Fred Doss and Joan Overlock, who are friends and business associates. Its model is part “cause marketing,” a term that refers to cooperation between for-profit businesses and nonprofit organizations, and part crowdfunding, which, thanks to websites like Kickstarter.com, GoFundMe. com, and IndieGogo.com, is now a part of everyday language. Its goal is to connect businesses, nonprofit organizations, and the community at large to accomplish beneficial projects.

Most recently, GoodCircle partnered with Hampton Racquet, Smart Sports Surfacing, and the Eleanor Whitmore Early Childhood Center to raise money for a $17,000 new sports and play area and equipment at the center. Groundwas broken last week. Businesses like the Hampton Jitney and Main Beach Surf and Sport have jumped on board, pledging in-kind services or matching donations from individuals.

“What we are is a tool for businesses. We maximize businesses’ charitable donations,” Ms. Overlock said in an interview Tuesday. “We do that in a way that gives them a very tangible and measurable outcome. . . . They know how they’re affecting change.”

Ms. Overlock and Mr. Doss have dubbed their company GoodCircle because what comes in ultimately winds up going out to a nonprofit. Most campaigns have been local so far, such as one for the David E. Rogers M.D. Center at Southampton Hospital, which helps patients with H.I.V. and AIDS, and another to restore the front porch of the Sag Harbor Whaling and Historical Museum.

“The donors win,” Ms. Overlock said. “They’re demanding transparency. Their donations are going farther.”

Having met through a mutual friend in 2010, Mr. Doss and Ms. Overlock decided almost immediately that they could create something big by combining her background in advertising and marketing and his in business management and nonprofit work. They began brainstorming in the summer of 2013.

“We started here intentionally. We know the community, and . . . the East End has embraced us,” said Mr. Doss, who is also a co-founder of the local organization Paddlers for Humanity, which supports mental health services for children.

Lars Svanberg, the owner of Main Beach Surf and Sport in Wainscott, who is about to launch his fourth project with GoodCircle, said working with Mr. Doss and Ms. Overlock has “enabled me to do certain projects that I wanted to raise money for in a seamless way” while still devoting most of his time to business.

 “I didn’t have the background in marketing and platform building that it takes to be successful in fund-raising,” he said. “We all have these different friends, and friends of friends, and GoodCircle can get the word out. It goes out like a big net, and they catch everyone who’s interested in donating to your cause. They’ve been really good to work with.”

GoodCircle’s latest effort is for I-Tri, which encourages self-esteem, proper nutrition, and leadership in preteen girls and trains them to compete in the Hamptons Youth Triathlon. It hopes to raise $27,535 by June 8, with Paddlers for Humanity pledging up to $7,268 as a dollar-for-dollar match of other donations and the Hampton Jitney providing the rest to support 72 sixth, seventh, and eighth-grade girls from Montauk, Springs, Sag Harbor, and Southampton in the triathlon.

Among other costs, the donations will fund professional trainers’ fees for the triathlon, which GoodCircle calls ­“critical to the girls’ reaching the starting line for a life-changing ex­perience.” Prospective donors can visit goodcircle.org/projects/i-tri to learn more.

 Theresa Roden, the founder and executive director of I-Tri, said, “With GoodCircle, we hope to continue and build on this in the coming years. They have been so wonderful to work with. . . . Everything that they promised they have delivered on, and we feel so fortunate.”

GoodCircle’s local work is only part of the picture. Mr. Doss and Ms. Overlock have set their sights on a national presence. They said they don’t see Kickstarter as a competitor, and believe GoodCircle is on a different level than GoFundMe, which doesn’t always benefit nonprofits. While GoodCircle builds a small fee into project goals to support its work, it does not yet have a full-time staff or an official office, although they are expected to be possible soon. 

Mr. Doss said he and Ms. Overlock have found their work very satisfying. “We come back and say how did we get so lucky? We just meet incredible people on both sides of the equation. We meet phenomenal business owners and great people doing great work at the nonprofits.”

The East Hampton Town Trustees were on the receiving end this week of strong words about trash left on East Hampton Village beaches, and in turn resolved to take the matter up with the village.

Dell Cullum, a photographer and wildlife-removal specialist, displayed a large plastic bag containing debris he had collected, before Tuesday’s meeting began, between Egypt and Wiborg’s Beaches in the village. Mr. Cullum, who organized an ocean beach cleanup in April, thanked the trustees for their participation in the cleanup but added, “I think it’s safe to say I begged you to keep the friggin’ garbage cans off the beach.”

The trustees manage the beaches and bottomlands in the village, as well as others in the town except for Montauk, on behalf of the public.

Bill Taylor, a trustee, observed that receptacles had been removed from town beaches several years ago “because they were a big mess.” The situation improved as a result, he said.

Mr. Cullum contends that garbage receptacles placed directly on the sand only encourage litter. Village employees cannot keep up with the volume of trash left in and around them, he said, and animals and strong winds then compound the problem. “I work very, very hard to clean your beaches,” he told the trustees. “I think in return, there should be some respect as far as helping me not make it so easy for garbage to get on the beaches.”

People do not use the receptacles, he said, and if they do, they are filled and overflow. Left overnight, the trash “gets picked at by the raccoons, knocked over by the elements,” and “in the morning, the seagulls tear it to shreds. I don’t think that’s necessary or a proper way to deal with this trash issue that’s really a crisis.”

Mr. Cullum is in favor of receptacles at the road end, but not on the beach itself. If village staff cannot manage them at the road ends, he asked, why place them halfway to the water’s edge? “I’m trying to solve the problem, and you’re trying to make it worse,” he told the trustees. “It’s not your fault, but it is because of what you’re allowing them to do,” he said, referring to village officials.

While the trustees had been unaware that the village allows receptacles on its beaches, Diane McNally, the trustees’ presiding officer, told Mr. Cullum, she took exception to his characterization of the trustees’ and village’s management. The receptacles are emptied twice daily, she said. “From my perspective, the town and village are using all the resources they’ve got to try and stay on this garbage issue.”

“We don’t have a bay constable,” said Nat Miller, a trustee. “We need enforcement.”

Deborah Klughers, a trustee who, like Mr. Cullum, is a member of the town’s litter committee, said that she agreed with Ms. McNally but also with Mr. Cullum, in that receptacles should not be on the beaches, and suggested that the trustees ask that the village remove them. “This could be undone,” she said of a change in policy. “I don’t know what the bad thing could be to try this.”

Ms. Klughers also complained that a memo to the town board proposing that fines for littering on beaches be increased had gone unanswered. She later attended a town board meeting, she said, and asked for a public hearing on the proposal. “I don’t know what else to do,” she said. “I don’t understand what the problem is.”

The problem, Mr. Miller answered, “is they’re afraid to give tourists tickets.”

Ms. McNally disagreed with her colleagues. “By removing the cans, I don’t think you’re going to solve the problem,” she said.

Over her dissenting vote, however, the trustees voted to ask that the receptacles be removed from the village beaches and that enforcement be increased. “You have to send a message,” Mr. Miller said.

The trustees will ask that penalties in the section of town code pertaining to beaches be amended to match those in the section pertaining to littering in public places. In the former, the penalty for a first offense is a fine of between $100 and $250, imprisonment for up to 15 days, or both. The latter assesses a fine of between $250 and $1,000, imprisonment for no more than six months, or both. “You’ve got to set a minimum that’s really high,” said John Courtney, the trustees’ attorney. “Everybody plea-bargains.”

In other news from the meeting, Ms. McNally announced that the trustees’ next meeting would be televised. LTV will provide cameras to film the board members and anyone addressing them, the latter now required to stand at a podium. The furnishings in the small room at the Donald Lamb Building in Amagansett where the trustees meet have been reconfigured to accommodate the new arrangement.

Ms. McNally also told her colleagues that the trustee-owned pumpout boats, which are stationed in Three Mile Harbor in East Hampton and in Lake Montauk, had provided an invaluable service to the waterways in 2014. Like all open waters of the Peconic Estuary, both are no-discharge zones.

Last year, free of charge, the boats pumped 52,400 gallons of sewage from boats in Lake Montauk and 22,205 gallons in Three Mile Harbor.

As swimming season gets under way and East Hampton sees an influx of visitors eager to enjoy the beaches, one website to bookmark and click on often might be the one run by OCEARCH, a nonprofit research group that focuses on great white sharks and other species of top ocean predators. 

Its online global shark tracker reports in real time the whereabouts of more than 100 sharks in waters all over the globe, including Mary Lee, a great white that was off the south shore of Long Island earlier in May, and several other sharks tagged last summer during the Shark’s Eye Tournament, a catch-and-release tournament in Montauk.

Scientists work with the group, which captures sharks from its boat and maneuvers them onto a lift to sample and tag them to amass data on their movements, biology, and health. The animals are kept in captivity for all of 15 minutes and then released, with no apparent negative effect, the researchers say.

Bonac, a blue shark weighing 216 pounds, was captured by Joe Gaviola and the crew of the Free Nicky and named by the kids at the Amagansett School. A mature male, 9 feet, 8 inches long, he has traveled 2,746 miles since last summer, as of early in the week. Bonac has kept a relatively local track, spending time in the offshore waters south and east of Montauk and never venturing farther south than around Virginia.

Chris Nic, an immature, six-foot-long female mako shark also tagged in Montauk last July after being caught by Mr. Gaviola and crew, has zigzagged 622 miles since then.

Her name comes from those of Mr. Gaviola’s two daughters, Christine and Nicole. According to her satellite path, she’s something of a New York-New Jersey girl, swimming back and forth from just off Montauk to off Atlantic City, and east and west along that track.

Up-to-the-minute information on both, along with Mary Lee and the other sharks, can be found at OCEARCH.org. Shark watchers can also follow Twitter at @MaryLeeShark, an unofficial account set up by a fan.

When a great white ate and spat out a midnight skinny-dipper off the fictional Amity Island in the 1975 movie “Jaws,” just before the Fourth of July holiday, the town’s mayor tried to keep the incident under wraps, not wanting to scare tourists away.

This week, though no particular shark is in sight, East HamptonTown Supervisor Larry Cantwell was nevertheless unconcerned.

“There are sharks off Long Island,” he said. “Of various types. So many different sharks in our waters here.”

Mary Lee, he said, “could easily be off our coast. The truth is, we have sharks in our waters frequently. I don’t think that you can overreact to the fact that there are sharks in the ocean. It shouldn’t be a surprise to anybody.”

“We have lifeguards. They’re trained. They’re always vigilant,” he said, and from their vantage point on lifeguard chairs above the beach, would be able to spot fins among the swimmers.

“If you’re concerned about sharks, then swim in a protected area,” Mr. Cantwell said. A lifelong resident here, he said he could not recall a shark attack incident in East Hampton waters.

At 16 feet and 3,456 pounds when she was tagged almost three years ago, Mary Lee is a pussycat compared to the 25-foot, three-ton monster that reared its toothy mouth in “Jaws,” terrorizing swimmers during Amity Island’s holiday weekend.

Still, the idea of a great white shark lurking in East End waters might put a crimp in some weekenders’ beach plans.

When the satellite tracker placed Mary Lee off the western Long Island coast several weeks ago — at one point she cruised as far east as Suffolk’s Robert Moses State Park, though offshore — media outlets questioned whether there was a system in place to warn municipal officials if the shark came near.

Not really, Ed Michels, East Hampton Town’s chief Marine Patrol officer, said Tuesday. But, he pointed out, unlike in the movies, where shark hunters set out in a too-small boat to dispatch Amity Harbor’s hungry great white, “we can’t do anything,” Mr. Michels said. The great white and numerous other sharks are deemed endangered and protected species.

In his 23 years in East Hampton, Mr. Michels said, “we’ve had no attacks; we’ve had no close encounters.”

And yet, like Mr. Cantwell he recognized that “they’re out there all the time.” Most times, he said, reports of a shark fin in the water turn out to be a glimpse of the similar-looking, but much more wobbly, dorsal fin of the harmless mola mola, or ocean sunfish, which feeds on jellyfish.

However, Mr. Michels said, if a shark is sighted, the protocol is simple: “Stay out of the water.” Sightings should be reported to a lifeguard, he said, who would call the Marine Patrol. “We’ll monitor the area; we’ll call the Coast Guard. But there’s not much more we can do than that.”

Last summer, Mr. Michels said, numerous sharks, including great whites, were spotted by fishermen in waters as close as a mile or so off Montauk. A three or four-foot-long great white washed up dead on Indian Wells Beach in Amagansett; Mr. Michels handed it over to scientists at Stony Brook Southampton.

Mike Bottini, a longtime lifeguard, swimmer, surfer, and naturalist who leads the Surfrider Foundation’s Eastern Long Island chapter, also said this week that it’s not that sharks don’t share our waters — it’s just that we are unaware they’re there.

Researchers studying gray seals on Canada’s Sable Island, Mr. Bottini said, have found a correlation between the presence of great white sharks and the number of seal pups — especially when the pups are being weaned, taking their first, vulnerable dips.

With seals being  key prey for sharks, and “a guy in a wetsuit, or on a board” similar in shape to them when seen from the water below, “my intriguing thing is,” Mr. Bottini said, “why aren’t there more shark attacks?” In fact, the number of seals seen here has been increasing in recent years.

He theorized that the predators’ keen sense of smell might help them tell the difference between a human and a seal.

Should the OCEARCH trackers note a dangerous shark in inshore waters, they are likely to alert local officials. That’s what happened, Mr. Bottini said, when Mary Lee was pinpointed only 200 yards off the beach in Jacksonville, Fla. Lifeguards got a call to keep people away.

According to recent research cited on the OCEARCH site, white sharks can live more than 70 years in the North Atlantic.

Mary Lee was tagged off Cape Cod in September 2012. Since then, she has traveled more than 20,000 miles. The OCEARCH website shows her track veering as far north as Massachusetts, where she crossed the edge of the Continental Shelf in the deep sea, out to Bermuda, and south to Florida, where she was tracked both far off the coast and inshore.

At 2:09 p.m. on Tuesday, she was southeast of Chincoteague Island in Virginia, not nearly as far out into the Atlantic as she has been, but far enough offshore not to be inciting a chorus of the menacing notes from the theme of “Jaws.”

Owners of large properties in East Hampton Village, many of them communicating through attorneys, gave no quarter in their collective denunciation of the graduated formulas the village has proposed for limiting the square footage of houses and accessory structures according to the size of the lots they sit on. 

At Friday’s public hearing on the village board’s proposed code amendments, speakers, armed with reports, illustrations, statistics, and warnings of fiscal catastrophe, took turns criticizing a study and subsequent recommendations from the village’s planning and zoning committee. Among other things, the legislation was called misguided, draconian, discriminatory, and a solution in search of a problem. The village board was told that it would be taken to court if the legislation was adopted and also that affected property owners would take matters in their own hands by registering to vote here.

Last month, Robert Hefner, the village’s director of historic services, told the board that the present practice of applying only one set of size and  coverage standards for all residential lots might irreparably harm the character of the village that has developed over 350 years. With the village’s 2002 comprehensive plan in mind — that residential development and redevelopment be compatible in size and scale with the surroundings — the committee recommended new formulas for lots larger than 40,000 square feet. The formulas, Mr. Hefner said, would still allow large houses, multiple accessory structures, and generous lot coverage. With one exception, however, speakers saw it differently, most ignoring Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr.’s request to limit comments to three minutes. Elbert Edwards, the village trustee who chaired the committee, did not speak.

Chick Voorhis of Nelson Pope and Voorhis, a consulting firm based in Melville, who represented several property owners, criticized the “flawed methodology” of the committee’s study. “The data does not support the findings as expressed in the legislative intent,” he said. That 173 properties, or less than 20 percent of potentially affected lots, had been sampled was insufficient and unrepresentative, he said. “The study has not defined what is compatible or incompatible. Large homes on large lots don’t necessarily have an impact.”

Joseph P. Rose, who recently wonsubstantial variances from the appeals board for his Hedges Lane property, warned the board of legal challenges if the legislation was enacted and said they “would be successful.” Mr. Rose, a former chairman of the New York City Planning Commission and director of the Department of City Planning, predicted a “long, expensive, turbulent process that would create ill will that doesn’t need to be created.”

Richard Whalen, an attorney whose firm, Land Marks, often represents property owners before local boards, was among those who warned of other dire consequences. The sale of village properties that are larger than an acre is responsible for a disproportionate share of the town’s community preservation fund, he said, calling the fund “the number-one methodology in East Hampton Town to preserve open space, historic sites, and structures.” Laws that reduce the building potential of large lots would impact their sale value, reducing the C.P.F. revenue, he said.

Bringing history into the debate, Pat Trunzo, a contractor, said, “Grand estate houses have been built in East Hampton since at least 1880 and they have richly contributed to the character, the economy, the community, and the special sense of place that we all prize and cherish.” Mr. Trunzo also said there would be “certain harm to the second-home economy, to local builders like me and my family,” and to the tax base of the village and town.

Raj Alva, a homeowner, was more dramatic. I “almost spit my breakfast up,” he said, when he read about the proposals in the April 9 issue of The East Hampton Star. He took the warnings into the political realm. Having spent “hundreds of thousands” on architectural plans and an application before the zoning board of appeals, he and his wife, he said, will change their voter registration from New York City to East Hampton. “I suspect a lot of my neighbors will as well,” he said.

After hearing 16 speakers, who were unanimous in opposition, the board finally heard an encouraging word. Ann Roberts of Egypt Close, speaking on behalf of the Ladies Village Improvement Society, said the organization supported the 2002 comprehensive plan. “Periodically, adjustments need to be made in order to maintain our beautiful surroundings. . . . Proportional laws help sustain the character of our village for the future,” she said.

Although no one mentioned the recent astronomical sales of large properties on Further Lane — one for $62.5 million and another, of three contiguous lots totaling 16 acres, for $147 million — the knowledge of what has been happening in village real estate affected the atmosphere of the proceedings.

After almost two tense hours, Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr. said the board would keep the hearing open and allow written comment through June 15. “We’ve listened and hopefully will gather some more information by way of email or written communication,” he said. “We’re only as good as the input we get from the public we serve.”

  The existing formula for the size of “principal” structures — 10 percent of the lot’s area plus 1,000 square feet — would remain in place for lots up to 40,000 square feet, or just under an acre. On lots of 40,000 to 80,000 square feet, a principal structure could be no larger than 7 percent of the lot area plus 2,200 square feet. For lots greater than 80,000 square feet, the proposed formula is 3 percent of the lot plus 5,400 square feet. A house on an 80,000-square-foot lot would be limited to 7,800 square feet.

While the present maximum size of accessory buildings, 2 percent of the lot plus 200 square feet, would remain in place for lots under 40,000 square feet, the committee recommended 1 percent of the lot plus 600 square feet for lots from 40,000 to just under 80,000 square feet, and one-half percent of the lot plus 1,000 square feet for those 80,000 square feet or larger. On an 80,000-square-foot lot, the maximum for all accessory structures would be 1,400 square feet.

  Maximum coverage, including all structures, which is now 20 percent plus 500 square feet across the board, would be reduced to 15 percent plus 2,500 square feet for lots 40,000 to just under 80,000 square feet, and 10 percent plus 6,500 square feet for those that are larger. Coverage on an 80,000-square-foot lot would be limited to 14,500 square feet. In addition, both the village and town have laws limiting residences to 20,000 square feet regardless of the size of their lots.

Some of the speakers returned after a short break to oppose other proposed code amendments intended to counteract the village trend toward oversized basements. One amendment would add a definition of the word “story,” and another would prohibit a cellar from extending beyond the exterior wall of the first story of the building it is under. Linda Margolin, an attorney, opposed the former amendment, saying it was “clearly a back-door effort to include basements” in floor area calculations.

A clerical error precluded action on the latter amendment after Ms. Margolin pointed out that the original public notice for the hearing had used the wrong date. The second notice had been corrected, June Lester, the village board secretary, said, but it was unknown if it had been published at least three days prior to the hearing, as required. The board decided to republish the notice.

The New York Department of Environmental Conservation reopened approximately 3,600 acres of shellfish lands in the Town of Southampton on Friday, two weeks after closing the area following the detection of saxitoxin, a marine biotoxin that causes paralytic shellfish poisoning. A prohibition on taking carnivorous gastropods — conch, whelk, and other marine snails — remains in effect.

All of Shinnecock Bay west of the southbound lanes of the Ponquogue Bridge, and all bottomlands east of the western side of the Post Lane Bridge in Quogue, were reopened on Friday. Approximately 315 acres in a cove outside the mouth of Weesuck Creek in East Quogue will closed to shellfish harvesting.

The D.E.C.'s reopening of the waterway followed extensive testing of shellfish samples from western Shinnecock Bay. The D.E.C.'s microbiology laboratory tested more than 85 shellfish samples for biotoxin since late March, with 20 of those collected from Shinnecock Bay.

Separately, the D.E.C. identified an outbreak of cyanobacteria blooms, more commonly known as blue-green algae, in Mill Pond in Water Mill, Lake Agawam in Southampton, and Lake Ronkonkoma. Health officials have asked residents not to swim or wade in the affected waters and to keep pets and children away from the area. Cyanobacteria can be harmful to humans and animals.

Blue-green algae are naturally present in lakes and streams. Warm water temperatures, and a lack of tidal flushing, can contribute to an abundance of the algae, however, which can lead to blooms in shades of green, blue-green, yellow, brown or red. Blooms may also produce floating scums on the water's surface or may cause water to take on paint-like appearance.

Exposure to cyanobacteria can cause vomiting or diarrhea; skin, eye or throat irritation; nausea, or allergic reactions or breathing difficulties. Those affected should seek medical attention.

Last summer, the East Hampton Town Trustees, who manage many of the town's beaches, waterways, and bottomlands on behalf of the public, closed Georgica Pond in East Hampton to the harvesting of shellfish, citing the appearance of cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae, which can be harmful to humans and animals. The closure remained in effect for several months.

Saxitoxin, which was found in Shinnecock Bay, affects the nervous system and paralyzes muscles. High levels of paralytic shellfish poisoning can be fatal. Carnivorous gastropods feed on shellfish and can accumulate biotoxins at levels that are hazardous to human health.

One day after the May 7 closure in Southampton, the D.E.C. took the same action in the Town of Riverhead. There, all underwater lands in Meetinghouse and Terry Creeks, covering approximately 100 acres, were closed to the harvesting of carnivorous gastropods until further notice after shellfish collected in Meetinghouse Creek tested positive for saxitoxin. The harvesting of shellfish is prohibited on a year-round basis there.

The D.E.C.'s emergency shellfish closure information line, 631-444-0480, offers a recorded message advising of the status of temporarily closed shellfish areas. The message is updated during closures. Maps of affected areas are at the agency's website, dec.ny.gov.

Update, 2:34 p.m.: World Pie will be among the few East End restaurants not experiencing the Memorial Day weekend rush, after a fire badly damaged the restaurant Saturday morning.

A fire broke out in the basement of the eatery at 2402 Montauk Highway, in the heart of Bridgehampton, around 9:25 a.m. Though the flames were quickly extinguished, there was an extraordinary amount of heat, and firefighters discovered more fire behind walls, in the ceiling of the basement, according to Bridgehampton Fire Chief Gary Horsburgh. They had to cut holes in the first floor in the dining areas to vent the fire in the basement. "The floor by the bar started to give way, so we had to cut that to vent it."

"It's pretty bad," Chief Horsburgh said of the fire and smoke damage. "It's going to be a while before he's up and running. I felt sorry for him — it's Memorial Day weekend. It was sad, really, cutting the guy's place up, but we had to do it."

Montauk Highway, between Butter Lane and the Bridgehampton-Sag Harbor Turnpike was shut down for about two and a half hours while firefighters were at work. Hoses stretched across the highway. 

When vehicle and pedestrian traffic was allowed back on that portion of Main Street, visitors found the mainstay closed. "From the outside, he's got the one door open and it looks like he's open for business," Chief Horsburgh said. The Southampton Town fire marshal's office is investigating the cause. 

No one was hurt, and the restaurant hadn't yet opened for the day when the fire broke out.

World Pie is not the only local restaurant recently damaged by a fire. On April 24, Rowdy Hall in East Hampton was damaged when an outdoor refrigeration unit malfunctioned. While the building next door, which housed J. Crew clothing store and a few offices, suffered most of the damage, Rowdy Hall had to close for repairs. Just two weeks later, it managed to reopen, with a thank-you party for the emergency workers who responded.

Originally, 9:38 a.m.: A blaze of unknown origin broke out at World Pie, a restaurant on Main Street in Bridgehampton, on Saturday morning, at the start of the busy Memorial Day weekend. 

The Bridgehampton Fire Department was called to the restaurant at 2402 Montauk Highway at 9:24 a.m. Police and firefighters confirmed there was a fire in the restaurant's newer section. Montauk Highway was shut down between School Street and the Bridgehampton-Sag Harbor Turnpike to accommodate the engines. 

Meanwhile, in an unrelated incident, a medevac helicopter landed on the ballfield next to the firehouse on School Street to transport a stroke patient to the hospital.

The fire was initially extinguished, but at about 9:50 a.m., firefighters reported seeing flames in the basement and coming from the exterior. Chiefs then requested the Southampton Fire Department to assist and asked for an engine from the Sag Harbor Fire Department to stand by at Bridgehampton's headquarters. A rapid intervention team from the East Hampton Fire Department was called in as well. 

The Southampton Town fire marshal's office and PSEG-Long Island were asked to respond.

Breakfast was being still served at the Candy Kitchen across Montauk Highway, according to a person who answered the phone there. She said that the fire appeared to have been brought under control by about 10:20 a.m.