A police detective’s gut feeling, combined with intelligence and a refusal to give up, resulted last year in the arrest of an East Hampton man who has been charged with 76 counts of sexual misconduct with children, including rape involving girls as young as 9 or 10.

    Now that detective, Tina Giles, a 27-year veteran of the East Hampton Town Police Department, has been named its Officer of the Year. She will be feted, along with other top cops from local jurisdictions, at a Kiwanis dinner on Jan. 25.

    On April 6, 2012, police arrested Fidel A. Castro-Brito, now 24, after a father came home from work and surprised the man in bed with his teenage daughter. As the father called police, Mr. Castro-Brito jumped out the bedroom window and fled. He was picked up soon after and charged with five counts of sexual misconduct with the girl, who was 15 or 16 at the time.

    Police initially thought that the contact between the two, which they said had come about through the Internet, was an isolated case. But Detective Giles had a feeling about it that she couldn’t let go of, arising in part from conversations with Mr. Castro-Brito.

    One of Ms. Giles’s skills is the ability to speak Spanish. “People may say I’m fluent,” she said on Tuesday. “I don’t use the word fluent. I use the word ‘proficient.’ ” Whichever it is, she is at ease with the language, having studied abroad, during college, in Mexico City.

    Understanding the nuances of a language allows one to read between the lines — to get a feeling from the way something is said as much as from the words themselves. Detective Giles had a feeling about Mr. Castro-Brito, and it was not a good one.

    “In essence, she was the arresting officer in the original matter,” said Detective Lt. Chris Anderson, the unofficial spokesman for the town police, on Tuesday. “Based on her findings in that case and the interviews she made with the defendant and others, her ‘detective sense’ took over, leading her to believe that there were more victims.”

    Because the putative victims were Latino, the detective’s language skills proved a major asset, putting the young people she interviewed at ease and helping them feel safe with her. In the end, the investigation went beyond East Hampton, possibly as far as New York City, though Detective Anderson would say only that “it was in the downstate area.” Speaking of the initial contact between Mr. Castro-Brito and his alleged victims, he said they were “all known to him, in one sense or another.”

    In November, after eight months of investigation, the Suffolk County District Attorney’s office announced it was bringing 71 new charges against Mr. Castro-Brito. What Detective Giles had unearthed was an apparent serial sexual offender.

    The felony charges against Mr. Castro-Brito include multiple counts of predatory sexual assault against a child, two charges of rape stemming from sexual intercourse with a girl under 11 years of age, multiple charges of sexual abuse many charges involving recordings of sexual encounters with children. It would appear from the charges that Mr. Castro-Brito made them himself.

    Detective Anderson is usually guarded in what he says to the press, rarely revealing emotion. Not so in this case.

    “There is no hesitation on my part in referring to this defendant as a predator,” he said forcefully. “This guy was a predator. If not for the efforts of Detective Giles, taking it a step further than she needed to, there might well have been more victims.”

    “She sacrificed a lot of her personal time and life for the job,” he added.        Detective Giles, who was born and grew up in East Hampton, joined the force in September 1986, after having spent four summers working as a traffic control officer. She had no children at the time. She is now married with two daughters, one in college and one in high school.

    She was the first woman here to be named to the rank of detective, in only her fifth year on the force. She found herself drawn to working with troubled youths, “investigating juveniles as victims and as perpetrators. I got more involved investigating juvenile crimes.”

    She has had many successes with troubled youngsters. “A lot of kids have poor choices,” she said. “They get themselves involved in drugs, maybe dropping out of high school. And now they are productive adults and parents.”

    The detective takes a holistic approach to law enforcement. “The juvenile justice system is there to rehabilitate a child more than to punish,” she said. “They do give a child a second chance. You want them to take responsibility for their actions.”

    She is troubled by what she sees as increasing violence among younger children. “It does seem that more serious crimes are being committed at a younger age. There’s a lack of parents’ involvement, a need for parents to spend more time.”

    One problem prevalent nationally has not surfaced in East Hampton, she said  — gangs. “Gangs? I say there are more wannabes. They wannabe gangsters,” she said, laughing.

    She called the honor soon to be bestowed on her “the highlight of my career.”

    Summing up Detective’s Giles’s importance to the force, Detective Anderson said she “bridges a gap between the police department and the Hispanic community. I can’t say enough about her. She is a consummate professional.”

    He paused for a moment, then added, “Think about the victim who is sitting there, whose life will be forever changed. She gave those victims a voice.”

    The inevitable change wrought by Mother Nature is spurring changes at Georgica Beach in East Hampton in light of the destruction caused by storms in 2011 and 2012.

    At an East Hampton Village Board meeting last Thursday, Drew Bennett, a consulting engineer working on behalf of the village, updated the board on repairs to be made to facilities at Georgica and Main Beaches.

    The road end at Georgica Beach, said Mr. Bennett, was undermined by the surging tide during Tropical Storm Irene in 2011 and again during Hurricane Sandy on Oct. 29. Mr. Bennett proposed repairs to the asphalt road, a split-rail fence, a curb, and the addition of 600 cubic yards of sand. The sand, he said, would “provide some degree of structural integrity and protection of the property. At a minimum, it’s basically what we did a year and a half ago.” A second phase, Mr. Bennett said, would add an additional 2,500 cubic yards of sand to rebuild the dune.

    Mr. Bennett said that he and Larry Cantwell, the village administrator, met with Federal Emergency Management Agency officials and are preparing a plan that would be consistent with the agency’s reimbursement policies. These policies aim to avoid repeated damage and promote economic recovery.

Repairs planned for Main Beach include straightening and stabilizing the pavilion’s deck, replacing the lattice skirt on its front and side, and replacing cedar shingles.

 Morgan McGivern

    Mr. Cantwell said he was encouraged by a Dec. 28 meeting with a FEMA representative, and that he felt that the agency “would seriously consider a larger beach replenishment project, both at Georgica Beach and at Main Beach.” The FEMA representative was “up in the food chain, so to speak, and had quite a bit of experience and was an engineer. He thought we should make a strong case under mitigation from recurring damage as well as for economic recovery, because we explained to him how important our public beaches are — as public facilities, the number of permits we issue, the importance to the culture and economic fabric of the community,” he said.

    At that point, the board’s Richard Lawler spoke up. “What about bulkheading the end of the road before we repair it, because that always gets undermined, and that’s what tears up the pavement, eventually. At Main Beach, that didn’t happen at the top of the road because there’s bulkheading there.” He asked Mr. Bennett if he knew the cost of such work and whether or not FEMA would pay for it. Mr. Bennett answered that FEMA may classify such work as mitigation, but that the board should also consider the aesthetic change a bulkhead would represent. “Certainly, if the board feels that that’s the way to go, we could include that in the plans. The cost of that is, in round numbers, probably $30,000,” he said.

    Such work would require a permit from the East Hampton Town Trustees as well as the State Department of Environmental Conservation, Mr. Bennett said.

    With Memorial Day weekend the crucial deadline to complete such work, Barbara Borsack, another board member, asked, “Would that set us back time-wise if we decided to do something like that?”

    “You’d know quickly,” Mr. Bennett replied.

    But Mr. Cantwell cautioned against a hasty decision that would have long-term implications on the character of Georgica Beach. “As the level of the beach changes, you would have a hard fixture there. That’s a lot different than what we’re accustomed to having there, aesthetically and otherwise, in previous years.”

    “People always object to change, but they do get used to it,” said Ms. Borsack. “It might be something that people don’t like at first but would probably adjust, in a few years, and forget that it was ever not there if we had to put a stair system in there. I think it’s worth looking into, especially two years in a row that we’ve had to do this.”

    Bruce Siska, another board member, agreed with Ms. Borsack. “I think we should go with trying to put bulkheading in, like at Main Beach. It would save the road, at least, from getting torn up so if sand goes down a little bit, we can put in stairways. That’s pretty easy to do.”

    The bulkheading at the Main Beach road end, said Mr. Bennett, held up through Hurricane Sandy, and resulting damage was minimal compared to that at Georgica Beach. “That was an investment made in the early ’80s, and it really held up great,” he said. 

    “That sand has maintained its level right up against that bulkheading,” Ed McDonald, the village’s beach manager, said of Main Beach. “It’s pretty impressive that it went through two monster storms and that one structure held up to everything. We should seriously think about putting one down at Georgica.”

    Only minor repairs are necessary at Main Beach, said Mr. Bennett. “The building itself actually did quite well. It’s built on piles, above a 100-year flood elevation. The decking is on simple posts that are in the sand, so there is some movement in the deck and some posts that have rolled a bit. The plan is to lift it up, adjust it, tweak it, lock it as best we can to try to straighten it out.” The lattice skirt in front of the deck, as well as the side, was lost and will be replaced, he said, and approximately 150 square feet of cedar shingles were lost. Adding approximately 2,000 cubic yards of sand to the beach would be advisable, he added.

    Some jagged edges at the road end will have to be repaired, Mr. Bennett said. The lifeguard shack, which was also damaged, had been in disrepair for some time and should be replaced regardless of Sandy’s impact on it, he added. The village would have to absorb that cost, Mr. Cantwell said.

    Eleven of the 12 Sea Spray cottages at Main Beach suffered roof damage between Hurricane Sandy and the northeaster that followed, said Mr. Bennett, and the village will have to consider re-roofing the cottages. FEMA, said Mr. Cantwell, would not cover that repair, but given the rental revenue the cottages generate, maintaining them is a justifiable expense.

    Ms. Borsack calculated approximately $400,000 in total costs for repairs to both beaches. Mr. Cantwell predicted that FEMA would cover approximately 75 percent of the total. “That’s an estimate, obviously, but we were successful a year ago in getting reimbursement,” he said. “It depends on how much they’re going to pay for mitigation. All this work qualifies, but they will reimburse the cost of putting back what was there originally, and no more, and we’re doing some more than that.”

    Geoffrey Lynch, president of Peconic Bay Water Jitney, attended Tuesday evening’s Sag Harbor Village Board meeting to announce that he does not “have any immediate plans to go forward with service in 2013.”

    Mr. Lynch recapped the jitney’s trial ferry service that ran between the village and Greenport for 85 days last summer, saying that from June 20 through Sept. 30 the boat had transported an average of 195 passengers per day. The gross income was $160,000, he said, and Hampton Jitney, which he co-owns with his brother, “spent a heck of a lot more than that.”

    Despite the “financial bust,” Mr. Lynch said he and his partner in the trial, Jim Ryan of Response Marine, do not want to give up on the idea of ferry service between the waterfront villages. He said ZIP codes on receipts indicated a predominantly local customer base and that there had been very little negative feedback from customers, municipalities, or boaters.

    Although passenger counts didn’t reach the hoped-for 250 a day, Mr. Lynch said that the “appetite from a local perspective is there . . . 195 shows potential.” He believes there is a broader market out there, as well, including tourists and day-trippers.

    Mr. Lynch chalked up the difficulties to “first-time operator teething issues,” from boat maintenance costs to exceeding budgeted fuel expenses. In the future, he hopes to receive money from the federal government to pay for the boats. He said one vessel is not enough to increase the frequency of service. “Two vessels would be ideal.”

    In answering a question from Mia Grosjean of Save Sag Harbor, Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr., the village attorney, said that if the Peconic Bay Water Jitney did receive funding, it would require a new approval process, what with the expiration of the temporary permit allowing the ferry service and the use of Long Wharf. “Basically they would have to start from scratch,” Mr. Thiele said.

    Mr. Lynch thanked the village board and the community for allowing the trial run, and Suffolk County Legislator Jay Schneiderman for his support.

    The project to rebuild a bridge at Pussy’s Pond in Springs is nearly complete, and a celebration of the years-long effort to replace the previous bridge has been scheduled for Jan. 27 at Ashawagh Hall.

    “This thing has been in progress for three, four years,” said Ray Hartjen, president of the East End Classic Boat Society, who, as special projects coordinator of the East Hampton Trails Preservation Society, has been deeply involved in the effort.

    That effort also involved the entire Springs School fifth-grade class attending a town board meeting, in 2009, to lobby for a new bridge to replace the one that had been deemed unsafe due to weather damage and vandalism.

    Two years ago, after Larry Penny, then the town’s natural resources director, and Zachary Cohen, chairman of the town’s nature preserve committee, submitted an application for permits to the East Hampton Town Trustees, Mr. Hartjen assumed management of the project, which also meant raising money for materials and construction. Tracey Frazier, a Springs School teacher, as well as the Accabonac Protection Committee and the East Hampton Trails Preservation Society, helped to raise the money, the latter establishing a bank account to accept tax-deductible contributions. Ground was broken in October, and the final touches will be applied to complete construction next week.

    Mark Mendelman of Seacoast Enterprises Associates in East Hampton drew up plans for the bridge, said Mr. Hartjen. “They were sent to D.E.C. for approval, and also for the trustees’,” he said. “Then, two years ago, Seth Allan of Chesterfield Associates in Westhampton Beach sent me a letter indicating they were willing to put in all the posts for the bridge at no charge, which is a fabulous contribution. We were raising money to buy the lumber for the bridge, and it had to be nontreated; it was going to be $21,000 or $22,000. We decided to use black locust.”

    Mr. Hartjen and his associates put in an application with the town board, which, he said, passed three resolutions allowing them to cut Robinia pseudoacacia — black locust trees — between School Street and Springs-Fireplace Road, near the pond; at the Grace Estate Preserve in Northwest Woods, and at the junction of Springs-Fireplace Road and Three Mile Harbor Road.

    “Michael Marder volunteered all his equipment and personnel for cutting trees, hauling them to the sawmill, and hauling the lumber back to the Pussy’s Pond Bridge area,” said Mr. Hartjen. “We’re very indebted to Marder’s, as we are to Tom Rosko [a Southampton-based contractor], who has also helped cut and haul logs to the sawmill.”

    Thomas Matthews, of Thomas Matthews Woodworking in Southampton, charged a minimal fee to cut the lumber at his sawmill. “This Saturday, he’s going to cut the last of the logs necessary to complete the bridge. We figure he’s milled over 150 logs to do this,” said Mr. Hartjen.

    Matthew Bobek, of M Bobek Construction of East Hampton, volunteered his time to construct the bridge, Mr. Hartjen said. “Also, behind the scenes is Zachary Cohen. He has helped move permits to the D.E.C. and the town trustees, and he’s also helped with the fund-raising.”

    “We’re very close to the end of the job,” Mr. Hartjen said on Monday. “We have a few more bits and pieces. The Springs Citizens Advisory Committee has signed up Ashawagh Hall for Jan. 27 at noon, and we’ll be having refreshments and inviting kids, parents, residents, and contributors to come and celebrate. Then we’ll all march over to the bridge and Zachary is going to dedicate it to the youth of Springs.”

    Heavy use of the swimming pools at the Y.M.CA. East Hampton RECenter is adversely affecting air quality there, necessitating an upgrade to the center’s ventilation, heating, and air-conditioning systems, according to its director.

    The RECenter’s lap and training pools are used by up to 300 people per day, said Juan Castro, the director. This includes both residents and swimming teams from the RECenter and East Hampton High School.

    “This pool and facility is heavily used, and at the level we’re experiencing now, we may have to add a secondary system to help with the air quality,” said Mr. Castro. The problem is worse in the winter, he said, when cold weather reduces ventilation. “It occurs with significant bather-load increases.”

    The pool’s water quality poses no health hazard, Mr. Castro insisted. The Suffolk County Department of Health has visited twice in the last month, he said, but it does not test the air quality. “They check water-quality procedures. They also responded to the fact that there may be some air-quality issues, but we meet the standards of the Health Department.” A consultant will test the air in the pool areas soon, he said, a process that will take two weeks.

    An engineer will also inspect the facility’s heating and ventilation system to determine if it should be modified. “Nobody is saying we can’t improve air quality. We may have to adapt our current system to meet the demands of increased participation,” said Mr. Castro.

    Xiaoyu Chen, the county’s assistant public health engineer, declined to talk about the RECenter except to say that “we didn’t find any public health hazard.” But reports from swimmers of breathing difficulties, diarrhea, coughing fits, and skin rashes have some people concerned.

    East Hampton Village leases the property on which the RECenter is situated to East Hampton Town, which in turn licenses the center to the Young Men’s Christian Association of Long Island. A five-year license renewal is set to take effect on Jan. 1. Under terms of the agreement, the town makes an annual payment of $590,000 to the Y.M.C.A. The town is also responsible for the cost of capital repairs, including “replacement of the roof, boilers, electrical lighting system, HVAC system, pool and pool pumps, etc.,” according to the agreement.

    The RECenter’s original design capacity will not support the present level of use, said Town Councilman Dominick Stanzione, who agreed with Mr. Castro that air quality worsens in the winter. “Once you get into the off-season and everything is buttoned up, that puts more pressure on the ventilation. But I have to go with Juan and say there’s some analysis that needs to be done on that. As far as requests to upgrade the chlorination system, I think it’s about $20,000 of requests for that. The balance of it probably has to be more, and they’re looking for professional analysis on that.”

    The town board will have to review the request, said Mr. Stanzione, but he expects the board to agree to capital improvements. “Those who say that’s a significant contribution by the taxpayers to the operations of that facility, you’d have to agree with that. But lease terms are lease terms, and we have to live by those. They’ve made a request that seems reasonable, and we’ll bring it to the board and act on it.” The board’s next work session is on Jan. 8.

    Steve Kenney, who owns SRK Pools, a Wainscott-based company that constructs, services, and maintains residential swimming pools, said the RECenter has long been operating in a negligent and even dangerous fashion. Mr. Kenney said in an interview that his children experienced severe coughing fits, stomach pain, and diarrhea after swimming there, and that other bathers, including RECenter swim instructors, have reported similar symptoms as well as skin irritation. These symptoms, he said, are indicative of waterborne pathogens that the RECenter is not controlling.

    Chlorine-based disinfectants have long been the most popular treatment to kill pathogens in swimming pools. But when chlorine bonds with ammonia that is excreted from the body via perspiration or other fluids, a byproduct, chloramine, is formed. Exposure to chloramine gas can contribute to respiratory problems.

    An extreme chloramine level at the RECenter, Mr. Kenney maintained, is responsible for the symptoms he described. “That’s going to make your eyes burn and your lungs tighten up, and it’s going to irritate your skin,” he said. The chlorine-ammonia bond, he said, has to be broken so that chlorine is free to fight bacteria. Oxidizing the bond is accomplished by adding more chlorine, a process known as shock chlorination, or through ozone or ultraviolet-based treatment systems.

    Poor air quality at the pools, said Mr. Kenney, is the result of poor water treatment. Compounding the problem, he said, is the swimming pool industry’s over-reliance on chlorine, from which some pathogens are now immune. Among these are cryptosporidium, which has sickened bathers at pools around the country and the world. Cryptosporidium infection, which can cause diarrhea, vomiting, fever, or abdominal cramps, is most dangerous to elderly and young bathers and those with compromised immune systems. Only an ozone or utraviolet-based treatment system, said Mr. Kenney, will kill cryptosporidium and other chlorine-resistant pathogens.

    Mr. Kenney said he had suggested treatment systems to RECenter officials several times, and acknowledged the appearance of a conflict of interest. But he insisted that he was motivated simply by the wish that all children be able to use the pools safely. He forwarded to The East Hampton Star an e-mail from an instructor at the center that attributed adverse health effects to the pools, mentioned a relative who complained of symptoms after swimming, and described frustration with a management that has ignored complaints.

    “Every instructor I’ve spoken to there — and I’ve spoken to about six over the past eight years — said, ‘You’ve got to do something, I can’t teach here anymore,’ ” said Mr. Kenney.

    The author of the e-mail declined to speak on the record. Neither Tom Cohill, aquatics director at the RECenter, nor Joseph Vasile-Cozzo, East Hampton High School’s athletic director, had responded to multiple calls as of Monday.

    Mr. Castro said Mr. Kenney’s accusations were misguided as well as inaccurate. “This is the first time we’ve had these kinds of claims,” he said. “You have individuals that want to sell us something, and what they’re selling is supposedly going to fix our problem. I have 300 people in there every day, and I’m not having a mass of people breaking out. To the Health Department, we manage it within acceptable limits.”

    The RECenter is in the midst of upgrading its water-treatment systems, said Mr. Castro, and its request to the town for capital improvements is part of that effort. “But before you jump to conclusions, you’ve got to do due diligence,” he said. “We should not make this more complicated than it is. Can we improve things? Absolutely. Are we operating an unsafe facility? No.”

    Countless residents here have been instrumental in supporting those affected by Hurricane Sandy in Breezy Point, a long, narrow, cooperative community at the far western end of the Rockaways. Days after the storm, with assistance from East Hampton Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson and Police Chief Edward Ecker, East Enders provided resources such as fuel, food, and clothing to help maintain people in Breezy Point for almost a week.

    There are still tremendous needs, however, according to Dennis O’Reilly of the Montauk Fire Department, who seeks to continue the effort of helping the area, where he was born and raised, in the wake of an event that did not just happen, but “is still happening.”

    “It is pretty dire,” said Mr. O’Reilly, a retired New York City firefighter. There’s “a lot of hardship,” he said — “kids out of their nest,” parents who lost their vehicles or who are paying mortgages on houses they cannot occupy. Whether there is running water depends on those who live on the block, he said. The Federal Emergency Management Agency “has not brought in trailers,” he said yesterday morning. There are still people living in tents and in firehouses. The state’s Office of Emergency Management and FEMA are simply not covering the needs, he said.

    Mr. O’Reilly is seeking assistance from all who wish to help, coordinating with a church community center in Breezy Point. He said that people across the East End had been phenomenal, citing as an example a Christmas party that Montaukers provided to Roxbury, a community in Breezy Point, with the help of many, including Karen Theiss, the Montauk School’s nurse. Montauk children wrote cards and wrapped presents for Breezy Point children. Accompanying the gifts was a check, the money having been raised in part by boy scouts.

    “More than half are without power and gas,” Mr. O’Reilly said. “Fire chiefs are overwhelmed and fried. Their own homes are destroyed.” People are lucky to get a hot water heater delivered and installed, he said. “FEMA’s jet lag is terrible,” he added. “Most people have not received their checks.” He said there were lessons the South Fork could learn from the disaster.

    “A state of shock,” was the reaction of First Assistant Chief Richard Osterberg Jr. of the East Hampton Fire Department upon seeing the “pure destruction” when taken to the site where hundreds of houses had burned to the ground. “It was such a reality check to actually look and see the destruction 100 miles away,” he said, “compared to what we had here.” He described houses knocked off their foundations, cars stuck in the sand, garbage all over the place.

    Taught to help a worthy cause when he could, he said he took the opportunity on Nov. 11, when he went to Breezy Point with Scott Fithian, East Hampton Village’s superintendent of public works, with two truckloads of donations for the Point Breeze Volunteer Fire Department. They took items that their departments were not using, such as a generator, a trash pump, and ready-to-eat meals.

    Mr. Osterberg surveyed the needs and organized a donation drive resulting in the collection a roof saw, shovels, pry bars, hand tools, and brooms. On Thanksgiving Day he took an additional truckload of supplies that included chain saws, wrecking bars, and a camping grill for cooking at the firehouse. “We’ll never forget you,” he said he was told.

    “They are so appreciative,” he said. He gave them an East Hampton Fire Department sticker, which went right on the wall. “It was so moving,” he said. “Something so small can make a difference.”

    “I would love to go back in there,” Mr. Osterberg said, but that’s made difficult by his full-time work as a mechanic for a fuel oil company. In the winter he has only one day off, and then there are his fire chief responsibilities.

    The Point Breeze, Breezy Point, and Roxbury Fire Departments on the peninsula are still in need of manpower and appliances, as are many homeowners. Mr. O’Reilly is planning a group effort for the end of January that he called a “tradesmen parade,” at which workers will stay in a heated tent for a weekend.

    Needed are architects, engineers, carpenters, electricians, and plumbers. Equipment and supplies requested to replace what fire departments lost include land and sea rescue vehicles, kitchen appliances, computers, fax machines, printers, furniture, tools, generators, gas and carbon monoxide detectors, water rescue gear, VHF radios, and cold-weather work clothing.

    Specific needs are essential when donating goods. For example, one Point Breeze Fire Department member said that one day the department needed bottled water, and the next day it had more than it knew what to do with. Over the holidays, people dropped off turkeys, but the department members had no use for them — no place to store them, no way to cook them.

    Mr. O’Reilly’s efforts now involve a Facebook page, called From Montauk to Breezy, where donations can be collected and distributed to those in need in Breezy Point. Even a $10 Target gift card is appreciated, he said, as are heaters, blankets, cleaning supplies, batteries, baby items, toiletries, and nonperishable food. Clothes are not needed. Mr. O’Reilly is accepting donations of money, gift cards, and requested items at the Montauk Firehouse.

    Though he was unable to attend, Dr. Jonathan Turetsky, of the Evelyn Alexander Wildlife Rescue Center of the Hamptons, was honored with the Veterinarian of the Year award at the New York State Wildlife Rehabilitation Council conference held in Lake George on Oct. 6.

    Popularly known as Wildlife Rescue, the center, which is in Hampton Bays, takes more than 10,000 calls per year in an around-the-clock, seven-days-per-week operation. Birds, deer, rabbits, turtles, squirrels — Dr. Turetsky has devoted his expertise and compassion to the East End’s wildlife for the past 25 years.

    In lieu of attending, Dr. Turetsky wrote an essay that was read at the conference by Virginia Frati, executive director of Wildlife Rescue. In accepting the award, Dr. Turetsky cited humanity’s failure to recognize its place within nature and decried an “unrelenting attack on the resources of the Earth for the sole benefit of humankind.”

    “I have come to understand that it is not our role to intervene in nature,” he wrote. “We have no business doing so. The relationships of animals to their environments and to each other have evolved over three billion years on this planet, and our human understanding of the complexity of this ecology is woefully inadequate. . . . All around us, fellow creatures are being destroyed by human activity.”

    Examples cited in the essay include aquatic birds strangled by fishing line and suffocated in oil, turtles run over by automobiles, deer hit by cars and trapped in fences, and pesticides and other toxins ingested and passed up the food chain.

    “We create a lot of havoc with the natural world, and I feel an obligation to try and do something to restore some of that,” Dr. Turetsky told The East Hampton Star during a rare free moment — in the late afternoon on New Year’s Eve — at his office on Goodfriend Drive in East Hampton. “It is something I think is giving back to the community because healthy natural-environment wildlife is an asset to the community, aside from its value in and of itself.”

    Bearing witness to that havoc can be very frustrating, said Penny Moser, a rescue transport volunteer and member of the center’s board of directors. “What we do in the field is very hard work. There’s a lot of death involved and a lot of joy, but it’s a real thing. We’re really in the trenches in terms of seeing human cruelty and the suffering of fellow creatures.”

    Dr. Turetsky, said Ms. Moser, is an inspiration to the entire staff and volunteers at Wildlife Rescue. “When you spend time with him, you feel that you can keep going because he’s just so pure and good and devoted. As a humanitarian, he’s the real deal — he includes all creatures in the ‘humanitarian’ aspect. He’s tireless, he’s very, very smart, has a wonderful sense of humor, and every person really admires him. He’s never discouraged, and that helps a lot,” she said.

    Dr. Turetsky and his associates will often remain at the center late into the evening, awaiting transport of a wounded animal. “They’ve had a long day already and some live quite far away,” Ms. Moser said. “They’ll have a deer that needs surgery and they’ll stay, just out of the goodness of their hearts. You don’t see as much of that as you would like to anymore.”

    Dr. Turetsky’s associates include Dr. Jennifer Katz and Dr. Darren Lippmann. “They work full time, and they do a lot of help with the wildlife also. Dr. Lippmann just fixed a bird’s broken wing,” Dr. Turetsky said.

    “It’s impossibly small inside those feathers and quite a delicate thing to mend a wing, and a bird has to be 100 percent or you’re sending it to a certain death,” said Ms. Moser. Dr. Turetsky, she said, “has done some incredibly complicated surgeries, on any species I can think of. And of course, his colleagues [have] too.”

    The conference, Dr. Turetsky said, was largely an educational meeting. “They have all sorts of programs for wildlife rehabilitators for caring about different types of species. It’s not a well-established science, there’s not a lot of research and money going into it. People have to learn from each other.”

    Wildlife Rescue is a full-time companion-animal hospital, Dr. Turetsky said. In addition to the dogs and cats its veterinarians care for, they also look after a small herd of dairy cows in Bridgehampton. Caring for wildlife, he said, is mostly pro bono work.

    He was a member of the first class of Tufts University’s School of Veterinary Medicine in 1983, after receiving his bachelor’s degree in agriculture and life sciences from Cornell University. He remained, for a time, in the Boston area, working at two animal hospitals and an emergency clinic, and also consulted for Boston’s Franklin Park Zoo before moving with his family to East Hampton.

    Illness and injury, alas, never take a holiday. Dr. Turetsky and his staff’s services are needed literally every day of the year, and he admitted to an ever-present danger of burnout and despair. But, he wrote in his essay, “commitment and compassion must prevail. It was written in the Talmud, almost two thousand years ago, ‘You are not required to complete the task, yet you are not free to withdraw from it.’ ”

    Alex Walter, chairman of the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals, used a steady hand in navigating stormy seas in 2012, but one controversial decision appeared to be underwater after last week’s northeaster.

    The thrice-considered revetment for property at the end of Mulford Lane near Lazy Point had generated much controversy on the usually even-keeled board.

    Joshua Young and Christine Lemieux purchased the property in 2010, when water was already lapping near their house’s front porch. Years ago, neighbors remember, Mulford Lane used to extend out at least another 150 feet. There were additional houses, and a parking lot for residents of the neighborhood. All that is gone, reclaimed by the encroaching bay.

    In September of 2011, the new owners went before the board, then chaired by Philip Gamble, for permission to build a stone revetment to protect their property. Town code prohibits stone revetments along the bay, so the couple needed a variance to build one.

    The board at the time denied the emergency application, as the Planning Department weighed in, warning that allowing the revetment, along with tearing down and rebuilding the house on the property, would be tempting fate.

    The couple returned to the board early last year, again requesting permission to build the stone revetment, but were again turned down. However, they did get variances to tear down the house and rebuild it farther from the water.

    Sharon McCobb, a Z.B.A. member whose current term ended with the New Year, believed that the couple should have seen what they were getting when they bought the house. Mr. Walter expressed deep concern, at the time, over the precedent of allowing such a structure to be built.

    “This would be the first in this area. There has been no granting of a hardened revetment,” he said at the time. “The neighbors on Bayview [an adjacent street] have a vested interest in this. They may want to come down here and ask for the same thing.”

    Mr. Young and Ms. Lemieux found a strong advocate on the board in Don Cirillo, lone dissenter in the 4-1 vote against granting the variance to build the revetment. He argued that the couple should be allowed to spend their own money to build the sea wall if they wanted to.

    The couple returned yet again in the fall with a revised plan for the 147-foot revetment, which, they said, was improved due to a new “U” shape that had it following the contours of the property.

    This time, the board voted 3-2 to approve the revetment, with Mr. Walter casting the deciding vote, joining Mr. Cirillo and Bryan Gosman.

    Before voting against permitting the revetment, Lee White warned that the board was setting a precedent, and argued that more natural solutions should be sought.

    Much of the debate in November was shaped by the results of Hurricane Sandy. Ms. McCobb warned that the wall was going to end up in the water, as had happened to the houses that once stood seaward of the property.

    Even though he voted to allow the structure to be built, Mr. Walter was clearly concerned by the pattern of damage from the storm. Water had flooded Mulford Lane, as well as the house, but that water had come in from the west, not directly from the bay to the north.

    Mr. Walter and Ms. McCobb’s words proved prescient last Thursday, as the northeaster moved away. The current house, located where the wall would be built, was surrounded by water. It looked more like a boat than a house. For the second time in two months, much of Mulford Lane was flooded by water moving in from the west. The Young and Lemieux property was underwater.

    Last year saw several other board decisions on controversial applications.

    One that could have major financial implications for the landowner is the 4-1 vote by the board, with Mr. Cirillo dissenting, to deny a special permit for a pair of what appeared to be retaining walls that the board determined had been built over dune land at 278 Further Lane. Shortly after acquiring the property, along with two other parcels, for a record $103 million, the owner, Ron Baron, had built the walls despite receiving early warning that they might violate town law.

    Mr. Baron has since received permission from the town’s planning board to combine the properties at 260 and 278 Further Lane into one lot, then redivide the land into six lots, with three of them having an ocean view. On those three ocean-view lots, Mr. Baron would be allowed to build multiple houses, up to six total across the three, creating what one prominent real-estate broker called “compounds.”

    The value of such unusual properties could skyrocket in the restricted East Hampton market.

    However, it is not clear whether Mr. Baron will be able to proceed with that plan, now that the retaining walls at the property in question have been found to violate town code.

    Several of the decisions by the board this year involved the town’s chief building inspector, Tom Preiato, with whom, by the end of the year, the board seemed to establish a working pattern.

    A key moment may have been when the board unanimously dismissed a request from Mr. Preiato to reverse a certificate of occupancy issued by his predecessor Don Sharkey, for two stone pillars and gates at 17 Beverly Road.

    “Normally, the building inspector issues a revocation, then brings it to us for confirmation or denial. That wasn’t done here,” Mr. Walter said on Oct. 9, adding that the board did not have standing to instruct the building inspector on what he should do.

    Another controversy that was coolly dispatched with was over the Surf Lodge, the Montauk nightclub sitting on Fort Pond that generated much community opposition in its first couple of years of existence. In 2012, a new management team, lead by the sole holdover from the old team, Jayma Cardoso, the club’s host, tried to put its ducks in a row for the waterfront restaurant by settling all outstanding issues with the town, the biggest of which was a lawsuit by the town over numerous citations for code enforcement violations.

    Many of these citations stemmed from a determination made by Mr. Preiato’s office that a dry bar on the property constituted an illegal expansion of use, prohibited by the town code.

    The board ruled 4-0 (Mr. Gosman had recused himself) against Mr. Preiato’s determination, holding that the bar was, in fact, a temporary structure, because it could be wheeled away, and the town soon settled its lawsuit with the club, for a record $100,000.

    In Wainscott, the board agreed to uphold Mr. Preiato’s ruling that a project on Montauk Highway known as Wainscott Wombles could include both a business and a residential space, contrary to town code. That board ruling is being challenged in court by David Eagan of Eagan and Matthews.

    Also, the board disagreed with Mr. Preiato when he determined that a barn in a residential zone on Abrahams Path in Amagansett was actually a business that pre-existed zoning, which would allow it to be used as such.

    “There’s not a scintilla of evidence” that the barn had been used as a business throughout the years,” Mr. Cirillo said when reviewing the matter, and the other board members agreed, voting 5-0 to reverse the inspector’s determination.

    Ms. McCobb’s term is the only one that has expired. New appointments or reappointments are to be made at the town board’s reorganizational meeting today at 10 a.m.

    The starting time for zoning board meetings in 2013 will be 6:30 p.m., an hour earlier than in 2012.

    Early 2013 looks to be a busy time for the board, with between four and six public hearings scheduled on most meeting nights, which are always on Tuesday.

    One hundred twenty-two miles from Times Square, about 1,000 people — mainly Koreans — gathered before dawn at Montauk Point Tuesday morning for a very different kind of New Year’s celebration — the joyful greeting of the first sunrise of the year.

    In Korean tradition, the greeting of the New Year’s sun should be done from the easternmost point of accessible land. For New Yorkers, that would be Montauk Point. When asked, most of those in attendance said that they’d driven from the city, primarily from Manhattan or Queens.

    Cars arrived in the dark, some with two passengers, others with whole families. The average age was 20-something, with a smattering of newborns and elderly in the mix.

    “It’s cultural,” Seonho Lee explained, as the dark eastern sky slowly began to glow. It was windy and cold. Many elected to stay in their cars in the upper parking lot. Others walked along the rocks towards the Point, or else climbed the hill to the eastern side of the Lighthouse, where Mr. Lee and his group were standing, pressed against a chain-link fence, gazing east at the still-dark horizon in the cold wind.

    Mr. Lee, an exchange student at Stony Brook University, had rendezvoused with his sister, Minju Lee, and three friends near Penn Station at about 3 a.m., and had driven to Montauk Point, parking in the upper lot, which was full as daybreak loomed. The cars had been streaming in since before 5 a.m. The lower parking lot was at least half full, and two big tour buses sat there idling, as well.

    According to Korean legend, if you make a wish when the sun rises on the first day of the year, it will come true, Mr. Lee said.

    In Korean mythology, he said, objects that Western culture sees as inanimate, such as the sun, the sea, or even a rock, are endowed with a spirit.

    “I’ve done this many times in Korea,” he said of greeting the first sunrise of the New Year. “This is my first time doing it here.”

    Listening to those around him speaking in his native tongue, he smiled. “I feel like I’m in Korea,” he said.

    He told the story, with his sister’s help, of the tiger and the bear. The tiger and the bear both prayed to the ancient Korean god that they might become human. The god told them that if they remained in a cave for 100 days, their wish would be granted.

    “They had only garlic to eat,” Ms. Lee added.

    The tiger left the cave before the 100 days were up, but the bear remained behind and was transformed into a woman, woman, later marrying the god and giving birth to Dangun, who became a great emperor of ancient Korea.

    The horizon was turning red as the siblings told the story, and the sea was a calm gray-blue in the predawn light. Waves rolled in from either side of the Point, breaking gently in a straight line towards the horizon.

    A couple who had driven from Port Washington had brought their young child, Lio, to see his first New Year’s sunrise. The mother held the small boy, who was bundled in baby-blue knitted wool, so he could see the sky slowly light up.

    Many in the crowd held up cameras and cellphones, taking photos of the brightening sky and of each other taking photos of the brightening sky. Smiling and laughing, young men and women held their fingers in the “Y” shape, for peace, as others snapped their pictures.

    The sunrise itself was hidden behind a wall of clouds on Tuesday. Men and women made their silent New Year’s wishes, then turned and walked back down the hill toward their warm cars and the long journey home.

    The familiar sight of Ford Crown Victoria police cars patrolling both the town and the village will soon be a memory. The venerable “Crown Vic” is being retired, to be replaced by the Ford Interceptor. East Hampton Town police may roll out the first one within the week.

    The Interceptor, a modified version of the Ford Taurus further customized by the crew at the police garage, offers many advantages over the old mainstay. For one, its drivetrain and engine parts are interchangeable with the Ford Explorer, the S.U.V. version of the Interceptor and the town force’s utility vehicle of choice. Also interchangeable  are the wheels, brakes, and tires, Jim Frazier, the shop foreman at the garage, said on Monday.

    All-wheel drive is another attractive feature of the new vehicles. “It’s going to be nice with the snow and wet weather. It will handle a lot better,” Mr. Frazier said.

    Richard Davis, a build coordinator at Ford’s research plant in Dearborn, Mich., sees new models three years in advance. He is particularly excited by this variant of the Taurus.

    The Crown Victoria, he said, was “a framed vehicle,” while the Taurus Interceptor has a “unibody construction” — rather than starting with a frame and building onto it, the body is welded together. This makes cars lighter, but also safer, because the design of the unibody allows the car to absorb more impact.

    Not only does it get better gas mileage than the Crown Victoria while moving just as fast, it also has backup sensors, handy because visibility out the rear window is slightly reduced.

    Another difference is its transverse engine, which is mounted perpendicular to the body as opposed to the parallel mounted engine of the Crown Vic.

    Mr. Frazier said it was the first vehicle with a sideways-mounted engine in the fleet, and has a better pickup.

    Town police could have gone for a more expensive twin-turbocharged  engine, which kicks the horsepower up to 365 and accelerates from zero to 60 in under 6 seconds, but instead chose the standard 3.5-litre engine, which rates 280 horsepower and can hit a top speed of 130 miles per hour, doing  zero to 60 at a bit over 8 seconds. That is more than fast enough in a town with no major highways.

    The old Crown Victorias have been around, off and on, since the early 1980s. Detective Lt. Chris Anderson, a 25-year veteran of the force, has fond memories of the ones he used to drive when he was an officer. “They were boxier, roomy,” he said Tuesday. “Very comfortable.”

    The new Interceptor has a surprising amount of head and leg room in front, although the front is a bit tighter than the cars being retired. The back seat, usually reserved for those in handcuffs, is a bit roomier than the Crown Vics. New cages are being installed in the backs for the prisoners.

    The newcomer to the fleet is in hiding in the garage, decals yet to be applied. “We’ve spent a lot of time with this new car trying to get it right,” said Mr. Frazier. “We bought all new gear. The console is new, the cage is new.” The cages had to be installed without interfering with the side airbags. The car is loaded with safety features.

    Tom Bono, a mechanic, has been working on the electrics, customizing the center console where all the electrical equipment sits, including computers, multiple radios, and, of course, the pinging radar system. “I just had to figure the car out,” he said. Calling the old Crown Victoria “a good, tough car,” he added, “We’ll see how this one does.”

    The town’s current police cars will not be headed for the junk heap, at least not for a while. Instead, they will be dispersed throughout various town agencies.

    “We’ll run them as traffic control cars until they stop working,”said Mr. Frazier.

    Rick Talmadge’s job as fleet manager is to keep the Vics rolling as long as safely possible. “We’ll have them around for a couple of years, no problem,” he said.