A reported mulch fire burning at the Shelter Island Town dump Saturday night could be seen from Long Beach in Noyac and other areas around North Haven and Sag Harbor on the South Fork.

The Sag Harbor Fire Department responded with one engine and manpower, taking the South Ferry to stand by at Shelter Island's headquarters in case the Shelter Island Fire Department needed assistance. Sag Harbor firefighters were called at 7:55 p.m.

The fire on Shelter Island began around 7:20 p.m.

It was unclear if other departments from the North Fork were called to assist. 

Check back for more information as it becomes available.

A small electrical fire broke out in a house on Culloden Point in Montauk on Sunday evening. The Montauk Fire Department called for back up, but quickly extinguished the fire.

The fire was reported at 14 Beach Plum Road in Culloden Shores at 5:33 p.m. The Amagansett Rapid Intervention Team, a specially-trained group of firefighters who can rescue firefighters if necessary, were called to Montauk, but were not needed. 

It was not immediately clear how bad the damage was to the house. The East Hampton Town Fire Marshal's office is investigating the cause. 

Sunday evening proved to be a busy day on the South Fork. The Sag Harbor Volunteer Ambulance Corps called for the medevac helicopter to transport a person who fell down stairs behind 36 Main Street in Sag Harbor Village on Sunday at about 6:15 p.m. The Sag Harbor Fire Department's rescue squad assisted E.M.S., and an engine stood by at Havens Beach for the medevac to land. 

The driver of a minivan was taken to Southampton Hospital after she hit a tree on Route 114 in East Hampton on Monday morning. 

A passerby called 911 after the accident occurred near Hardscrabble Court at about 11:10 a.m., but the caller wasn't sure if anyone was injured. When an East Hampton Town police officer arrived, he asked the East Hampton Village Volunteer Ambulance Association to respond for a woman with a possibly broken wrist. The ambulance was dispatched at 11:15 a.m. 

The minivan had some front-end damage. 

No further information was immediately available. 

Yet another truck hit the Long Island Rail Road overpass on North Main Street in East Hampton Village Monday morning.

A Sid Wainer & Son box truck delivering specialty produce and foods from Brooklyn got stuck as it tried to go underneath the train trestle at about 10:25 a.m.

East Hampton Village Police Chief Gerard Larsen said the road was shut down for a couple of hours, while the truck, which had significant damage, was towed.

The driver, whose name was not immediately available, was issued a summons. "We always issue a summons for disregarding the warning signs," Chief Larsen said. No one was injured.

Inspections of the track and bridge turned up no damage, according to Salvatore Arena, a spokesman for the L.I.R.R.

The clearance under the bridge is 10 feet. It has been hit many times over the years, and several times this spring. After a garbage truck hit it in May, the bridge had to be repaired, shutting down train service east of Bridgehampton in the days before the busy Memorial Day weekend.

A fire broke out in the basement of a house on 11th Street in Springs Wednesday morning, causing smoke damage throughout the structure.

The Springs Fire Department was called to 22 11th Street at 7:40 a.m. David King, the first assistant chief, said three or four adults vacationing there were alerted by smoke detectors and got out of the house before firefighters arrived. No one was hurt.

Firefighters discovered that the furnace had malfunctioned. "Instead of being a puff back, it was a fire outside the furnace," Chief King said. "They knocked it down within 10 minutes. The rest was overhaul," he said, adding that volunteers remained on the scene for an hour and 10 minutes. About 30 to 35 firefighters responded.

The mechanical room in the basement was destroyed. "There was a lot of smoke damage in the rest of the house -- all the way to the second floor. It went up through the ducts," Chief King said.

"Thankfully it wasn't as bad as the other one," he said, referring to a fire that destroyed a 100-year-old house on Accabonac Road in Springs Saturday morning, displacing a family of four.

A man was airlifted to Stony Brook University Hospital after he fell at the Montauk Marine Basin on Wednesday afternoon. 

The Montauk Fire Department's ambulance company was called to 426 West Lake Drive for a man who had injuries from a fall just before 2 p.m. A medevac helicopter landed at the Montauk Firehouse. 

East Hampton Town police were not immediately available for comment. 

A judge has cleared the way for a trial in Suffolk Supreme Court on intertwined lawsuits from Napeague property owners seeking to ban all but emergency vehicles from the ocean beach in front of their residences and claiming private ownership of the beach.

The East Hampton Town Board and the town trustees had sought summary judgment in the suit, hoping the claims would be rejected and there would be no trial. While the decision left what town officials said was a ray of hope, the important question of whether summer four-wheeled visitors interfere with the property owners’ right to use and enjoy their own houses and grounds was not answered. No date for the trial has been set.

East Hampton Town Trustee Diane McNally, who is the trustees’ presiding officer, said she viewed the Sept. 3 decision by Justice Jerry Garguilo as positive.

“I’m very happy. It’s not over, but an inning,” she said.

But Stephen Angel, a lawyer who represented the various individuals and homeowners’ associations that brought the suits, said he was optimistic about the eventual outcome.

The litigation dates to 2009, when a number of homeowners’ associations and individuals, as well as the owners of the White Sands Motel, banded together to sue the town and the trustees, whose ownership of the beach on behalf of the public has been assumed for more than 300 years. Several other property owners were listed as additional defendants.

The lawsuit followed years of complaints about the use of portions of the shoreline by four-wheel-drive vehicles.

While the White Sands and several other plaintiffs on a part of beach east of Napeague State Park were mainly concerned with trucks and dogs passing in front of their properties, the group to the west of the park had other concerns.

Referred to in court papers collectively as Seaview at Amagansett, these western property owners objected to the growing use of the beach by people swimming, sunbathing, and picnicking.

As many as 200 trucks and other vehicles were parked on the sand at one time, they claimed, with as many as 600 trips a day being recorded on a nearby access at the end of Marine Boulevard in Beach Hampton.

According to the Seaview complaint, the holders of town-issued beach-vehicle permits congregate during the sum- mer months on a 4,000-foot-long section of beach. The plaintiffs allege that the visitors set up tents and grills, allow dogs to run free, and swim without lifeguard supervision. They say that speeding vehicles are a risk to residents, their employees, and guests, and that some trucks are illegally parked on beach grass, which could destabilize dunes. Also claimed is that bonfires and fireworks set off by beachgoers are a risk to upland properties.

In his decision, Justice Garguilo agreed with the White Sands plaintiffs that their properties extended to the high tide line, dismissing three points made by the trustees and town lawyers in motions seeking to have that suit thrown out.

However, the court found that the 1882 deed to roughly 1,000 acres in which the trustees sold the area to Arthur W. Benson, a 19th-century land speculator and founder of the Brooklyn Gas Light company, reserved certain rights to the townspeople as a whole that continue to the present. These assurances included landing fishing boats and the right to “spread the netts on the adjacent sands. . . .” The Benson agreement, Justice Garguilo wrote, remains binding to this day.

To be decided at trial is whether the easement described in the Benson deed has been expanded through the years to include non-fishing activities, such as swimming and bonfires. The Seaview at Amagansett group has contended that the trustees and town have “created a de facto parking lot and bathing beach on the subject property.” The plaintiffs’ lawyer, Mr. Angel of Esseks, Hefter and Angel of Riverhead, argued that the Benson deed did not cover these recreational uses. An affidavit included in the court papers from the late Milton Miller, a bayman who died in 2012 at 97, countered that people had sunbathed, swum, and picnicked there since at least the 1920s.

In the Seaview suit, Justice Garguilo upheld the trustees’ claim that they, not the plaintiffs, owned the beach in question.

Citing another recent decision in which Lloyd and Barbara Macklowe sued the trustees over a property at Georgica Beach, he wrote that the private parcels ended at a moving boundary formed by the seaward edge of the beach grass.

However, the deeds of a group of additional defendants named in that suit described their ownership as extending to the high tide line, Justice Garguilo determined.

Nonetheless, he wrote, as inheritors of the Benson easement, they did not necessarily gain the right to block recreational users from crossing their land.

Justice Garguilo also left for the trial the suits’ claims that modern use of the beach for drivers, picnickers, and others was a nuisance. He let stand as well the question of whether it discriminated against oceanfront property owners and represented a breach of duty by the trustees and town to protect the interest of landowners. Also to be decided later is the matter of the Marine Boulevard beach access.

The Seaview at Amagansett suit claims that summertime four-wheeldrive vehicle traffic over the narrow access path has expanded greatly from its former use by commercial fishing crews.

According to the suit, an easement concerning the access route through the dunes limits its use to what was taking place in 1981, when haul-seiners were “spreading their netts.” The agreement was filed with the Suffolk Clerk’s Office that year.

WITH REPORTING BY CHRISTOPHER WALSH

The owners of the former East Deck Motel in Montauk, who have proposed a private club there, asked on Friday to postpone a scheduled appearance before the East Hampton Town Planning Board on Wednesday to give the town the chance to negotiate a possible purchase of the property, according to a press release from the corporation’s public relations firm.

“We agree Ditch Plains is a special place and have requested an adjournment, . . .” Lars Svanberg and Scott Bradley, members of the ownership group, known as ED40, said in the release from Rubenstein Public Relations.

According to Jodi Walker, the planning board's secretary, the board received a formal letter on Friday from Richard A. Hammer, ED40's attorney, seeking the delay. Reed Jones, the board’s chairman, granted his request.

The proposal, which called for a two-story building, a restaurant, an Olympic-size pool, and below-grade parking, among other amenities, drew fervent opposition in Montauk, including a petition urging the planning board to require a detailed environmental impact study and a paddle-out over Labor Day weekend during which nearly 200 surfers took to the ocean off Ditch Plain Beach in protest.

In his letter, Mr. Hammer cited "significant public comments received" as being a major factor in the decision to ask for the delay.

"The applicant has offered the property for public acquisition to the Town of East Hampton," Mr. Hammer wrote.

"We will, however, revise our plans and improve our presentation for future consideration by the planning board while this consideration by the town board proceeds, and will be in touch with you for future consideration when we are ready for further consideration by the planning board on any revised plans," the letter said.

Previous: East Deck Plans to Get First Look

A lawn mower erupted in flames while it was being used on a Bridgehampton estate on Friday afternoon.

The Bridgehampton Fire Department responded to a reported tractor fire on a Mitchell Lane property known as Long Pond Farm at about 3 p.m. An engine and tanker truck responded, along with an ambulance crew who stood by.

Firefighters found what was believed to be a John Deere riding mower ablaze. A Southampton Town police officer tried to extinguish the fire with a hose before firefighters arrived. Chiefs used extinguishers, and firefighters then turned their hoses on it. They then dragged the charred and melted mower off the grass and away from some bushes onto the driveway, dousing it with more water.

The Southampton Town fire marshal's office was called to investigate.

The first step in what is expected to be a long process of site plan review of a controversial plan to convert the old East Deck Motel at Ditch Plain, Montauk, into a private club is scheduled to begin before the town planning board at East Hampton Town Hall at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday.

Because of widespread interest in the project, the board had considered holding the meeting at the LTV Studios in Wainscott, a much larger venue. However, John Jilnicki, the board’s attorney, explained that the session could not be moved because legal notices had already been posted for a public hearing on another matter, a Wainscott subdivision, to be held at the same meeting.

This week, as opposition continued to mount, Lars Svanberg and Scott Bradley, who have served as spokesmen for ED40, the limited liability corporation that now owns the property, spoke out through a public relations firm. In a joint statement, they said, “We believe this is the lowest density and most environmentally friendly use as permitted by town code. We are totally committed to the protection, preservation, and enhance?ment of the environment and character of the Montauk community.” 

In response to speculation that the club would be able to accommodate 539 people at a time, as indicated by the plans for the septic system in documents submitted to the planning board, the men argued that the system was designed to meet Suffolk County regulations and would have far less use, perhaps accommodating as few as 20 or 30 people a day rather than 539.

Meanwhile, an online petition against the proposal, at ditchplainsassociation. com, had gathered almost 5,000 signatures as of yesterday morning. As interest continued to mount, Eric Schantz, a planner for the town’s Planning Department, reported that a memo he was preparing on the application for the club, which is in a six-inch-thick file, would not be available seven days in advance of the first planning board meeting, as he had hoped. He promised board members that it will be ready before the weekend.

Also being scrutinized is the strategy being used to set up the club. Mr. Jilincki has given ED40 a green light to separate the operation of the club from the ownership of the land on which it sits in keeping with the requirements ofthe town code, which states that such clubs must be nonprofit, and that their activities “shall be limited to club members and their guests and shall not be extended to the general public.” It goes on to read, “The lease of land to a club by any person shall be deemed to constitute operation of a recreation facility on that lot for all purposes of this chapter.”

Of the application, Mr. Jilnicki said,  “Nothing has been received. No documentation. It is, at this point, a first look. We are, by no means, close to done. We have just begun the process.”

Plans for the facility include an Olympic-size swimming pool, a hot tub, a large outdoor jaccuzi, showers, a restaurant, game room, exercise room, spa, and several lounges, as well as storage areas. A large area of below-grade parking on the eastern edge of the property is planned at what is now a driveway onto the grounds. This area is to go to a depth of six feet and be covered with a trellis. It is also to serve as the entrance for trucks, which go to the end of the parking area, then turn right into the lower deck of a two-story pavilion, under which loading docks would be located.

Of Wednesday’s meeting, Reed Jones, the planning board chairman, said yesterday that the public should understand “this is not a public hearing. There will be an appropriate time and place for a public hearing.” Rather, he said, it was an opportunity for the board to begin the very extensive process of exploring a complex site plan.