Faced with increasing concerns about collisions between cars and deer, diseases that can be transmitted by ticks that deer carry, and the toll that grazing deer take on farmers’ fields and home plantings, the East Hampton Town Board has been reviewing a draft deer management plan.

    Developed by a committee that included representatives from groups such as the State Department of Environmental Conservation, the Group for the East End, the East Hampton Group for Wildlife, the East Hampton Sportsmen’s Alliance, and the state and county parks departments, along with Councilman Dominick Stanzione, the plan, the first methodical approach to deer control by the municipality, discusses a number of options.

    They include an initial sharp reduction of the herd by culling to reduce the number of deer by half within five years, attaining “an ecologically and culturally sustainable level,” according to the report, followed by the implementation of non-lethal population-control techniques, such as contraception.

    Other recommendations include taking a multi-town, regional approach, opening more lands to hunters, including nonresidents, amending state and local laws to allow an increased take, establishing a nuisance deer hotline, and facilitating efforts by adjoining landowners to allow nuisance hunting on particular lots.

    The plan suggests that the town board might eventually consider revisions to local laws regarding deer fencing, with an eye to restricting it in order to preserve wildlife corridors and vistas as deer-management efforts begin to bear fruit.

    The committee, Mr. Stanzione has said in presentations to the board, tried to incorporate differing views, including those of hunting opponents who, he said, “in the past, may have had an impact on boards’ not acting” decisively on the deer problem.

    Any management plan, the committee report says, should address coordinating efforts among the various entities that own and manage open land in East Hampton. “Local preserved and native ecosystems have incurred some of the most significant environmental damage,” the report says. “The drastic negative environmental impacts to the forest understory and the ecology of non-forest habitats also damage populations of other wildlife. The absence of any coordination across land management constituencies has contributed to the damaging growth in the deer population.”

    The draft plan will be the subject of a hearing at Town Hall on Dec. 6, and could be revised before its final adoption.

    It is already agreed, however, that regardless of what further steps the town might eventually take, the first necessity is to get an accurate count of the size of the deer population here. Before adopting the 2013 budget last week, board members agreed to add $40,000 to get such a survey done.

    According to Marguerite Wolffsohn, the town planning director, an actual count of the herd is done using an aerial survey, with infrared photography, during the winter months, according to procedures developed by the wildlife services division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Each individual animal can be identified to get an actual number of deer, versus other survey methods, which develop an estimate based on observations and extrapolation.

    Afterward, should the town decide to bring in sharpshooters, for instance, for an organized hunt, ground surveys would also be done to determine the deer herd’s distribution and movements in order to better plan and ensure the effectiveness of the hunt.

    In recent weeks, the town’s budget and finance advisory committee had recommended the addition of $100,000 to $150,000 to the 2013 budget to cover not only the cost of the population survey, but also $20,000 to coordinate an effort to identify and enlist landowners in a culling program, and $50,000 to $100,000 to initiate the culling, using trained sharpshooters.

    According to a deer population estimate developed in 2006 by extrapolating numbers of deer observed along roadsides across the acreage of the town, there were about 3,293 deer in East Hampton then, or about 51 deer per square mile.

    The study was commissioned by the East Hampton Group for Wildlife, a local group that opposes hunting and has said it cannot support a deer management plan that calls for reduction of the herd by lethal means.

    In a presentation to the town board earlier this year, the group’s representatives said that the 2006 population numbers were “somewhat higher than wildlife managers generally prefer in the eastern United States, but not alarmingly high.”

    However, Ms. Wolffsohn told the town board during that meeting that those numbers should instead be 20 to 40 deer per square mile — and the deer population is assumed to have increased significantly over the last six years.

    In response to the draft deer management plan, the East Hampton Group for Wildlife sent the town board an alternative proposal titled “Deer: A Humane Plan.” The group believes, according to the plan, that “with some ingenuity, the town can address perceived problems through non-lethal means.” Researchers have documented a rebound effect, showing that deer give birth to more fawns after hunts, according to the report.

    The steps outlined include not just a new deer census but also one that would provide information about where deer most frequently cross highways, so that the town can focus efforts to reduce collisions between autos and deer.

    Other initiatives that the town should pursue, according to the Group for Wildlife plan, are a slow-driving campaign and an evaluation of the efficacy of roadside reflectors that are designed to discourage deer from crossing a road when there is an oncoming vehicle. After a trial conducted by the group in 2008 along Stephen Hand’s Path in East Hampton showed “very promising” results, more reflectors were installed last year, now covering a 1.2-mile stretch in total, and the results of a new analysis are anticipated by the end of this year.

    “If the reflectors prove effective, the town board should encourage private residents and groups to fund expanded installations,” according to the report.

    The alternative plan also suggests discouraging deer fencing on residential properties and promoting deer-resistant plantings. Wildlife sanctuaries should be considered, the group says, noting that hunting is allowed in many of the town’s designated nature preserves. Sanctuaries would “reduce the pressure to seek safety in the no-hunting residential areas” as well as the stress that might trigger increased births, the report says. The group supports conducting a pilot immunocontraception program, which it has been promoting for some years.

    The report also recommends an objective study of the extent of damage to the woodland understory and the extent to which deer are responsible. It suggests developing recommendations for ways to alleviate the problem.

    As for Lyme disease, the Group for Wildlife recommends that the town educate the public about how to avoid tick bites and stop the hunting of turkeys, which eat immature ticks. Because Lyme disease is initially spread by ticks that feed on the white-footed mouse, the report says, “it’s unlikely that any reduction of deer populations can alleviate the disease.” The group suggests that the town look into the use of “four-poster” stations or bait boxes that would distribute tick-killing chemicals on both deer and mice.

    “We do not wish to lose sight of the moral value of adopting non-lethal strategies,” the East Hampton Group for Wildlife report concludes. “It’s an approach that reflects compassion and respect for other living beings.”

    The shotgun-hunting season for deer begins at sunrise on Jan. 7 in Suffolk County and runs through sunset on Jan. 31, on weekdays only. Applications for a lottery for permits to hunt on town land will be available in the town clerk’s office beginning on Dec. 3, according to a resolution passed by the town board last Thursday. The lottery applications must be returned to the town clerk by 4 p.m. on Dec. 21 in order to be eligible for inclusion in the lottery drawings. Bow-hunting season for deer began Oct. 1 and extends through the end of December.

    More than a dozen large pre-cast concrete rings, commonly used for septic systems, were placed in a row on the downtown Montauk public beach last week in front of the Royal Atlantic and Ocean Beach motels just after Hurricane Sandy had come and gone, raising questions about whether town law is being followed as East Hampton Town property owners seek to address erosion on pummeled shores.

 Town Councilwoman Sylvia Overby said this week that Patrick Gunn, the head of the town Public Safety Division, had reported that four verbal permits had been issued by Tom Preiato, the senior building inspector, for emergency erosion-control work on town beaches, with written permits to be obtained as soon as possible.

    The permits authorized the addition of sand only, and were given to Keith Grimes, a contractor, for work on Soundview Drive in Montauk and to Harold McMahon for  Shore Road, Amagansett, as well as to the Royal Atlantic and Ocean Beach motels. The concrete rings in front of the motels were subsequently buried in sand. New stone armoring appeared this week in front of a Soundview Drive property.

    Steve Kalimnios, an owner of the Royal Atlantic, did not return a call for comment yesterday.  But, in response to a discussion of the concrete rings by the Montauk Citizens Advisory Committee on Monday, Carl Darenberg, a member, offered information he had received from Butch Payne, the contractor.

    Mr. Darenberg described the rings as a sort of “temporary bulkhead” to prevent ongoing damage while repairs are made to the building footings, which have been undermined. They are to be removed when that job is completed, Mr. Darenberg said.

    East Hampton’s coastal laws are contained in the town code, particularly in a Coastal Erosion Hazard Act, as well as in the town’s Local Waterfront Revitalization Program. Both spell out what can and cannot be done on certain shorelines, and include details about emergency procedures. On the ocean beach, for instance, “the construction, placement, or installation of new erosion control structures is prohibited.”

    The state Department of Environmental Conservation also apparently issued a permit for the addition of “beach-compatible” sand to the downtown Montauk beach area. Jeremy Samuelson, the executive director of Concerned Citizens of Montauk, said the state permit had been modified to allow the concrete rings to remain in place on a temporary basis, with no time period specified.

     On Saturday, Mr. Samuelson routed an inquiry about the rings to members of the town board, including Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson, as well as to the town attorney and officials in the Building, Public Safety, Planning, and Natural Resources Departments.

    John Jilnicki, the attorney, said in an e-mail on Tuesday that “code enforcement is investigating and appropriate action will be taken upon completion of the investigation if warranted.” Mr. Gunn confirmed that a case was opened on Monday, after his receipt of Mr. Samuelson’s e-mail on Saturday.        

    “I hope that the beaches are put back together appropriately,” Diane McNally, the clerk of the East Hampton Town Trustees, said at a meeting of the East Hampton Town Board last Thursday. “We don’t want to see a lot of rocks and hard structures,” she said, referring to the possibility of a “knee-jerk reaction.” She said the trustees want to see “that we follow the code, and our appropriate processes.”

    “Otherwise, what we’re going to have is a wall of private properties, with what — a boardwalk?” Ms. McNally said Monday.

    The adopted coastal laws and policies, Ms. McNally said earlier this week, were put in place “when everybody had calm heads,” rather than in the aftermath of a storm.  The crafting and adoption of the town’s L.W.R.P. and resulting laws took over a decade and included extensive research and public participation.

    The town laws are a customized version of state policies which would be in effect here had state officials not approved the provisions adopted by the town. They reflect a state-endorsed policy of retreat from eroding shorelines, rather than a constant battle against natural processes.

    Local law allows the town building inspector to issue emergency permits for “activities . . . which are immediately necessary to protect the public health, safety, or welfare, or to protect publicly or privately owned buildings and structures from major structural damage.”

    Those actions, however, are limited on the coastline to moving a building landward and repairing the structure, depositing sand fill seaward of a building, temporarily installing a sandbag or geotextile tube system, or, in certain coastal zones, repairing a legally pre-existing “coastal erosion structure” such as a bulkhead.

    In most cases, including severe erosion situations, shoring up shorelines and coastal structures requires a natural resources permit from the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals.

    An emergency provision was employed after a storm in 2010 when a Soundview Drive property owner in Montauk, alarmed by erosion, had up to five tons of boulders dropped in front of the property, in an area where, according to the town code, the installation of new hard erosion-control structures was to be reviewed by the Z.B.A.

    Supervisor Wilkinson said at the time that he had given the go-ahead, without review, and Mr. Preiato, the building inspector, said he had relied on the “unsafe buildings” emergency provision of the code to issue a permit. During a town board discussion afterward, Julia Prince, then a councilwoman, suggested that a review of the laws on erosion-control structures might be warranted. The board did not pursue the matter.

    “They’re issuing permits for one thing, and then allowing another thing with a wink and a nod,” Mr. Samuelson said on Monday. “Nobody’s unsympathetic to a property owner whose property is damaged by something like this,” he said. But he argued that by turning a blind eye, “we’re leaving it to a private property owner to work out a deal with his contractor about what they’re going to put on a public beach, with nobody even asking what the impact is on anyone around them, or even if this is a public danger.”

    In his Nov. 3 e-mail drawing officials’ attention to the matter, Mr. Samuelson wrote that “decisions and actions taken to protect one oceanfront property have real and dramatic effects on adjoining and surrounding properties and infrastructure, both public and private.”

    Earlier this week, he said, “If emergency measures are warranted because we’re living in precarious times, then the permits that are issued should reflect the work that’s going to take place,” so that the town, and the public, is aware of what’s been installed and can make sure that it is safe.

    Ms. McNally, the Town Trustees’ clerk, said that since Hurricane Sandy only a few people had approached the trustees to inquire about rebuilding damaged bulkheads or docks. Inquiries at the Building Department have been few, Mr. Gunn and Mr. Preiato, the senior building inspector, reported yesterday.

    A combination of foresight and execution made all the difference as the Amagansett Fire Department, aided by trucks and men from Montauk and East Hampton, put out a blazing fire at the Sea Crest motel complex on Napeague, just minutes before the high winds of the Nov. 7 northeaster hit the East End. Four units were damaged.

    “We pre-planned that exact building,” Amagansett Fire Chief P.J. Cantwell said yesterday.

    According to the chief, when mapping out potential danger spots for the department this past spring, Sea Crest became a primary focus, due to the long distance between the firehouse and the complex. The firefighters were familiar enough with the location to move right into action.

    The department received the first call about the fire at about 7:15 a.m. Two members of the company, Jack Emptage and Britton Bistrian, live across from the complex, and were alerted to the fire by their 2-year-old daughter, who was looking out the window. “Mommy! Daddy! Fire!” the child yelled.

    “It was going good,” the chief said, “but we had a good heads-up.” The first trucks that got there pulled the lines, made a quick attack, and did a good job in knocking down the flames, he said.

    The men were well aware of the oncoming storm, with high winds. “I’m very happy with the men,” said the chief. “We could have lost the whole building. Within 20 minutes of our getting on scene the winds picked up to 20 to 30 miles per hour.”

    In the end, up to 11 pieces of equipment were brought in. “Amagansett had two engines, a pumper truck, a tanker, a rescue truck, and two fire police units on the scene, the chief said, adding that the Montauk  department supplied an engine, a ladder truck, and a pumper, and East Hampton a ladder truck and a pumper.

    The ladder trucks were brought in from the other districts in anticipation of fire suppression from above. “As it turned out, the ladder trucks were not needed,” the chief said, thanks to the rapid response of the initial firefighters. The East Hampton truck was used for an overall wet-down.

    After dousing flames upstairs, firefighters needed to get to the source of the fire in the basement. “We had a lot of cutting to do” to get there, the chief said.

    According to Thomas Baker, a town fire marshal, who was at the scene with David Browne, the town’s chief fire marshal, the source of the fire appeared to be electrical in nature, starting in the basement.

    One Montauk firefighter experienced chest pains and was taken to Southampton Hospital, then transferred to Stony Brook Medical Center for treatment.

    The presidential candidates mostly ignored the topic of climate change in the recently concluded campaign, but elected officials in jurisdictions directly impacted by Hurricane Sandy spoke more freely in the storm’s wake.

    In his endorsement of President Obama, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg wrote, “Our climate is changing. And while the increase in extreme weather we have experienced in New York City and around the world may or may not be the result of it, the risk that it might be — given this week’s devastation — should compel all elected leaders to take immediate action.”

    Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo was more direct. The hurricane, he said, should herald “the recognition that climate change is a reality.”

    The statements marked a turning point of sorts: Until very recently, even the scientific community that has issued ever-more dire warnings about the perils of inaction was reluctant to tie a singular weather event to climate change. After Hurricane Sandy, that reluctance is fading.

    A causal connection between a specific event and climate change still cannot be conclusively demonstrated, said Gordian Raacke, executive director of Renewable Energy Long Island, a not-for-profit organization based in East Hampton that promotes sustainable energy use and generation for the Island. But that is the wrong question, he said. “The right question is whether such types of extreme weather events are caused in part by climate change. The answer is yes, we can point to a direct link. The scientific body of evidence has been building over time.”

    Mr. Raacke mentioned “Perception of Climate Change,” a peer-reviewed paper by James Hansen, a NASA physicist and climatologist, that was published earlier this year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In it, Mr. Raacke said, “he makes a very ironclad case that extreme weather events are caused in large part by climate change.”

    If a willingness to acknowledge causality between extreme weather and climate change is emerging, actions Mr. Raacke’s organization advocates — a drawdown of fossil-fuel consumption and the resulting CO2 emissions blamed for climate change in favor of widespread adoption of “green” energy generation — may also gain traction. He referred to the study “A Long Island Clean Electricity Vision,” produced for Renewable Energy Long Island by Synapse Energy Economics, a consulting firm in Cambridge, Mass. It concluded that 100 percent of Long Island’s residential electrical needs could be met with clean, renewable power sources by the end of this decade.

    To achieve this, a significant amount of infrastructure to capture wind, solar, and other renewable energy sources would be required. Under such a plan, utility rates would necessarily rise, Mr. Raacke acknowledged, but gradually fall, and would include the purchase of credits to offset some continued use of conventional energy sources.

    In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, Renewable Energy Long Island has seen a sizable uptick in inquiries about residential solar-panel installation, Mr. Raacke said. But the persistent downplaying or dismissal of climate change at the national level, he added, is worrisome. “When I listened to the second debate, when they talked about energy, it seemed like they’re both living on another planet,” he said. “It seemed ironic that given all the messages that Mother Nature is sending, they’re still not willing to address this. That was very disappointing, and that the moderator didn’t ask was very disappointing. I hope it’s not going to take a major disaster to wake us up.”

    Bill McKibben, an environmentalist and author, is the founder of 350.org, a group that advocates a reduction of CO2 in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million. That, according to climate scientists, is a safe level; the present level is 392 parts per million.

    On Nov. 7, Mr. McKibben embarked on his “Do the Math” tour, on which he seeks to build a movement able to “stand up to the fossil fuel industry.”

    Daniel Kessler, a media campaigner for 350.org, said on Tuesday that citizens, if not government, have connected the dots. “We know that climate change is causing more extreme weather and Sandy is an example of this,” he told The Star. “The Atlantic is 5 degrees warmer than average, and there’s sea level rise. When you put those together it makes what would be a horrible storm worse. And it fits what scientists have been saying for decades. This is no longer something abstract.”

    Montauk has been the target recently of night-time prowlers looking for unlocked cars. Ditch Plain and East Lake Drive saw a rash of incidents last weekend.

    On Friday night thieves hit driveway after driveway, rifling through glove boxes and consoles. East Lake Drive proved a gold mine for them. They struck from as far north as the airport and all the way south past the highway and into Ditch.

    Fischer’s Cottages on East Lake was victimized, leading to some acrimony between residents and management. Robert and Patricia Skypala told police their 2008 GM had been gone through, with nothing taken but, weirdly, something left behind. The Skypalas found a pair of Bushnell binoculars and a pair of sunglasses in the car that did not belong to them.

    At the same time, police investigating the thefts were speaking with Sally Sidoti, the manager of the property, who reported that her binoculars and sunglasses had been removed from her car. She suggested, according to the police report, that the Skypalas might have taken them, saying they were unhappy that their heat was off the night before. They had called the owner of the complex, Ms. Sidoti said, instead of calling her.

    When she learned that the couple had found her items in their car she reportedly began screaming at Mr. Skypala. Police told her it was unlikely that the Skypalas would have stolen her glasses and then left them in plain view in their own car, especially considering that their vehicle had been rifled.

    Outrigger’s parking lot was also hit. Robert Bishop reported Saturday morning that two Dell laptops were stolen from the cab of his 2003 Toyota Tundra, parked in the lot. 

    Martha Huanga reported a Sony laptop, a Hercules DJ system, and a iPod Nano  missing from her 2003 Escalade, parked at 71 East Lake Drive. The total value was put at over $1,000. Miguel Huanga of the same address reported losing an iPod touch and an iPod classic, together worth $600.

    In Ditch, Maria Sideroff of Caswell Road, a prominent archeologist, reported Saturday morning that someone had gone through her glove box but found nothing of value. Anita Vitucci, who was staying in a house near the airport, was similarly lucky; nothing was taken from her car.

    On Benson Drive, one block south of Montauk Highway in Ditch, there were two more reports of cars being targeted but nothing taken. Harold Foster Jr. reported that his 1997 GMC glove box and console had been gone through, and Chantal Adamcewicz discovered the same when she returned to her 2010 Toyota Saturday morning.

    Several more cars in Montauk were hit a few days earlier. On Election Day, Nov. 6, Helen Stubbmann told police that $40 cash had been stolen overnight from her 2010 BMW parked on South Greenfield Street. Also on South Greenfield, Sean Kinney and his wife, Kristin Mallinson, both had their vehicles entered that same night. The thieves took nothing but left behind a pack of Marlboros.

    On the weekend before Hurricane Sandy, Gainsboro Court and Greenwich Street were struck. Justin Fallon of Gainsboro Court reported on the morning of Oct. 28, a Sunday, that four New York Giants tickets were missing from his unlocked 2007 Jeep, as well as a couple of gift certificates, together valued at $700. A neighbor told police he had seen a man dressed in black on Gainsboro in the early morning hours.

    Jaclyn Roge of Greenwich Street discovered the morning before that $250 in cash had been removed from her 2009 Toyota Siena, along with a checkbook. Thomas Lavin, also of Greenwich Street, said his car had been gone through as well. It was not clear from the report whether anything was stolen.

    Some of the first reports of the Montauk thefts came on Oct. 5 in the Culloden area. Ann Raehse of Gannet Drive told police that day that someone had entered the two cars parked at her residence the night before, removing a wallet with a credit card, among other items.

    Kenneth Hejducek, also of Gannet Drive, had $35 in cash stolen from his car that night. At the same residence, Orla Reville lost a black engraved iPod, an iPhone charger, an earpiece and charger, and $40 in cash.

    A 2007 Chevy pickup belonging to Dennis O’Reilly, parked on Mulford Avenue, was targeted that night as well. Mr. O’Reilly found a Garman GPS device, an iPhone charger, and a portable DVD player gone.

    There was a similar series of thefts from unlocked vehicles in late July and early August in Springs. There have been no arrests in those cases to date.

    With the question of whether to reduce or even do away with the Sag Harbor Village Police Department on the agenda, Tuesday night’s meeting of the Sag Harbor Village Board brought out many residents, as well as the village police chief, Tom Fabiano, the local Police Benevolent Association’s president, Patrick Milazzo, and several police officers.    

    When Mayor Brian Gilbride opened the meeting to discussion, residents expressed concern for the safety of the village’s older residents, saying the department took special care of them, as attested by weekly police logs filled with assists to older people and checks on their welfare.    

    One woman asserted that “a huge portion” of Sag Harbor residents are elderly. She said she would worry about her mother if she had to depend on an officer coming from Southampton. A man said he wouldn’t mind his taxes going up a bit for the comfort of keeping a village police force in the community.

    Ethel Card, a longtime resident, said, “We call the ambulance, the police are there immediately, no matter what time of day or night . . . I would like to know how this will affect our service in Sag Harbor, and what it’s going to cost us.”

    Packets of information, including proposals from the Southampton Police Department, the East Hampton Town Police Department, and the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Office, as well as retirement system projections and financials for the current village police force, were made available to all in attendance.

    Chief Fabiano took the podium to speak of the recent hurricane and to give credit where it was due. “I saw many things,” he said, “and it boggles my mind that the village could think about reducing the force or bringing someone to take over after what we have been through.” The chief thanked the emergency management team and members of the fire department’s ladies auxiliary, who volunteered for 24 hours until the emergency shelter he had opened was cleared.

    He also thanked Peter Garypie, chief of the fire department, and department volunteers who “worked all night long going house-to-house evacuating people,” and the ambulance crew. Finally, he thanked his police officers, who he said worked around the clock, leaving their families who had no electricity. “They don’t all live in the village,” he said, “because they can’t afford it.”

    Of a proposal to reduce the size of the department, he said, “We already lost one great officer, Officer Gigante . . . we spent a lot of money training him, now we lost him. I truly don’t want to see anyone else going. . . . Taking one out really put a strain on the schedule . . . I have tried less, it doesn’t work.”

    There is sick time, vacation time, and so forth that must be taken into account during police scheduling, he explained, calling it “a safety issue.”

    “We have a budget for 2013, we passed it, everyone was happy with it,” said the chief. “I hope the board will re-evaluate it and come up with a better conclusion.”

    Chief Fabiano expressed serious doubt about the ability of either Southampton or the county to take on the additional coverage. Of Southampton, he said, “their chief just resigned, they’re having problems now, they can’t cover their own areas.”

    He said he couldn’t understand the proposal that the Sheriff’s Office police half the village. He said he and a sheriff had discussed it and neither could understand how scheduling would work or who would be in charge.

    Mr. Milazzo said it might be a legal issue, with regard to “exclusivity.” He added that the numbers in the proposals seemed unrealistically low, knowing that the other departments get “more medical, benefits, retirement, more everything.” For short-term cost savings, you will end up paying down the line,” he said.

    “The village is one-point-eight square miles, with a chief and 12 officers,” said Mayor Gilbride, with a 14-percent increase in medical expenses for village employees. “The Village of Sag Harbor doesn’t have the growth,” he said. He’d thought the village would have substantial income from the Bulova Watchcase Factory, but it turned out that condominiums use a different formula, and revenue will not be what had been expected. “It will drop 60 percent over a three-year period,” he said.

    Of Officer Gigante’s resignation, the mayor said, “I didn’t want to see Mike leave. It has to be.” He acknowledged that Southampton “has its issues,” but said there had been a “great discussion with the Town of East Hampton.”

    The mayor said the increase in retirement pay for village employees this year totaled $40,000 for the police department and roughly $60,000 for 30 to 40 others in non-police unions.

    “I don’t want to see the sheriffs come in and take over,” he said. “I don’t want to see [the department] abolished, because it would be difficult to get it back.” But, he said, “I don’t think we need two people” on some of the shifts.

    “One day you might not, but another day, you might,” replied Chief Fabiano. “You cannot reduce the size of the department and expect it to work.” For example, he said, an officer might arrest someone and bring them back to headquarters, leaving no one to cover. “Don’t reduce manpower,” the chief said. “It is most important.”

    “Economics are based on the ambience of the Village of Sag Harbor,” said Nada Barry, who has known Chief Fabiano since he was a child. “The police create a lot of that . . . it is not always about dollars and cents.”

    Pierce Hanse, a former village mayor, expressed concerns about the accuracy of the information disseminated, and accused the mayor of misleading the public.

    “Government does not function correctly without good police . . . diluting creates a loss on our end, and their end,” said Larry Darcy, who said he spent 30 years in law enforcement. He added that more people are attracted to Sag Harbor every year. “That makes Tom’s job tougher,” he said.

    Asked about time frame, the mayor said a resolution was expected by May or June.

    Tim Culver, a former trustee whose chair remains empty, gave the board credit for exploring options. Long-term, he said expenses must be considered. “It is a massive amount of information,” he said, “See it, read it, make decisions.”

    “Nobody wants to fire anyone, nobody wants the police department to go,” said Robby Stein, a trustee, but “something needs sacrificing.” The village is taking responsibility for Long Wharf from the county, and Mr. Stein said there were storm issues, infrastructure issues, and bulkheads needing repair. Ideally, he said, Sag Harbor would also have more parks, and “IT development,” all growing budget issues.

    “Police is 38 percent of our budget,” Mr. Stein said, “That’s a lot.” He added, speaking of his recent bicycle accident, that “my life was probably saved by one of the policemen two months ago . . . Another 10 minutes, I don’t know. Big village issues, small budget.”

    In other department reports, Mayor Gilbride said the village, using generator power, had to rid itself of 8 million gallons of water over three days, due to the flooding of West Water Street. Two hundred tons of sand were placed near the windmill on Long Wharf, he added, to protect it from the rising waters. He noted “major damage to transient docks and Long Wharf due to storm.”

    The volunteer ambulance corps was also on the agenda. The corps donated an ambulance to a Jamaica Bay Fire Department that lost its entire fleet to flooding. Ed Downes, the president of the ambulance corps, and Chief Fabiano brought it UpIsland, filled with food, warm clothing, blankets, bleach, cleaning supplies, and toiletries collected from local residents.

    The ambulance, which was recently retired from service, was signed over to the Broad Channel Fire Department along with donations of about $1,200. In order to pay for their new ambulance, the Sag Harbor volunteers collected money from the community over five years. Fire departments like to replace their ambulance every five years, Mr. Downes explained; a new one costs about $209,000. A week or so before the hurricane it had been decided to put the old ambulance out to bid; then came news of Broad Channel’s extreme loss.

    Trustee Edward Gregory thanked the community for its generous donations for the new ambulance. The audience applauded.

    Hundreds of elderly people in areas of Queens struck hard by Hurricane Sandy are stuck in high-rise apartments without food and water, according to Brian Lydon of East Hampton, who posted a report on East End Cares’ Facebook page Saturday morning. This is just the tip of an iceberg of hidden devastation. There has been a lack of information provided to the outside world and minimal communication reaching the thousands who are suffering in cold, dark conditions, Mr. Lydon said.

    Several Montauk residents quickly organized East End Cares to help victims after the Oct. 29 storm struck the Northeast. Both the Sag Harbor and Montauk Fire Departments sent teams to stricken areas on Saturday.

    “Imagine being on the 20th floor in pitch black and not knowing what’s going on,” said Melissa Berman, a writer and filmmaker from Montauk. With a recent estimate of six weeks until the electrical infrastructure is rebuilt in some areas, she said it was critical to get supply lists from on the ground, “as they are changing all the time.”

    No stranger to disaster relief, Ms. Berman spent time in Haiti following the 2010 earthquake. “It was just horrible,” she said.

    While in Haiti, Ms. Berman met Alison Thompson, who is running a major rescue and relief operation in the Rockaways and reporting on it via social media. The women became close friends, and Ms. Berman wound up supporting a women’s clinic that Ms. Thompson founded in Haiti.

    “Does the world know how bad it is here?” asked Ms. Thompson on Twitter over the weekend from Rockaway, Queens. Top needs include medication, she posted. The power won’t be on for at least a month, she said. “We need to get these people out.”

    “We served over 4,000 tired, freezing, local, distressed people today and are expecting around 6,000 to 8,000 tomorrow,” Ms. Thompson posted.

    Ms. Thompson described “a kind lady with six kids with no heat, food, water, power, or anywhere to go, who doesn’t want to take too much aid in case others need it.” She also posted about “a sick lady with diabetes and heart problems” who “cries in desperation about her daily struggle of climbing 16 floors of stairs a few times a day to find water and food in a freezing apartment with no power.”

    Ralph Perricelli, a Montauker who works as a New York City fireman, was able to help 1,200 firefighters made homeless by the storm by posting their needs on the East End Cares Facebook page.

    “Yesterday was the worst day yet,” said Dan Gualtieri of Amagansett, who is also involved with East End Cares. He said the only hot food Rockaway residents had was soup brought by Mark Smith and Joe Realmuto of a group that runs Nick and Toni’s and Rowdy Hall in East Hampton, among other restaurants. The two men, who help with a South Fork soup kitchen on most Wednesdays, could not do so because of power outages after Sandy, and, instead, took food to the Rockaways. Mr. Smith and Mr. Realmuto have offered Nick and Toni’s and Townline BBQ in Sagaponack as early drop-off locations for refrigeration of sandwiches and for food preparation.

    Mr. Lydon became involved when he learned that firefighters whom he knew from the World Trade Center area in Lower Manhattan (he used to live and own a restaurant in the neighborhood) had lost everything to Sandy’s storm surge. He took his truck and a generator, picked up Ms. Thompson at the airport, and has been there ever since. He slept in a command center without power in the St. Francis de Sales Parish in Belle Harbor, Queens, through the Nov. 7 northeaster. During the worst of it, he, Ms. Thompson, and others evacuated an 80-year-old man in what he called complete blackout conditions.

    “I’m living here for the last nine days,” Ms. Thompson said in an interview on Friday. “Freezing, no heat, no way to get information to people. . . . We need intel on the ground, it is crucial.” The government is trying, she said, and so are aid groups, but the challenge is tremendous. “Volunteers are needed, especially midweek,” she said. Ms. Thompson’s Twitter feed, @lightxxx, is her main way of communicating while on rescue efforts.

    “The media comes to staging areas,” she said, “but 10 blocks to the south, people have nothing. We run out of food and water daily.” She warned that the media should be very accurate in what it reports. “Specific regions and blocks need to be mentioned.” There is a lot of bad information out there, she said.

    Mr. Gualtieri said East End Cares can help “connect the dots with those on the ground.” There is a Facebook forum, and the group has organized trips for those who want to lend a hand. The plan is to have a public meeting or online forum for prospective volunteers.

    “Desperately needed” monetary donations, according to Ms. Berman, can be made online, and updates can be found on the Facebook page. Clothes are not needed right now, she said. Food is always needed, and baby supplies would be welcomed.

    “Everyone is needed,” said Ms. Thompson.

    “We can’t keep waiting for the government to act while people freeze,” Ms. Berman posted online Sunday morning. She has asked that people sign a petition to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo asking for warming stations with heaters and generators. There is no power, no gas to run generators, no communication except for volunteers spreading the word via Facebook and Twitter or on cellphones from a powerless command center, she wrote.

    Thanks to one woman’s donation, East End Cares quickly exceeded its $60,000 goal to purchase 100,000 “body warmers” of the kind used by the military and recommended as an immediate solution to keep people from freezing — or asphyxiating from warming themselves with gas stoves. These were to have arrived in the middle of this week, before it gets even colder. Also needed from the government, Ms. Berman said, is a sanitation system. For now, the group has raised enough money for approximately 200 portable toilets for one month.

    “This will prevent serious illness from raw sewage, particularly for children, a public health disaster,” Ms. Berman wrote on Sunday.

    “The flip side of the horror show on the ground is this incredible show of love,” said Ms. Thompson.

    Others on the South Fork are deploying countless measures to help those in need to the west, such as Operation Sandwich, started by Sally Richardson of Montauk. “The response has been amazing,” she said by e-mail on Monday. “I have had so many people dropping off hundreds of sandwiches. . . . I left coolers out on my drive and every time I went down to check they were packed full of sandwiches.” She said she was headed to the Rockaways on Tuesday to set up a sandwich table. A bakery in East Hampton Town made 80 loaves of bread for her to take with her, too.

    Andy Sabin of Springs told The Star he’d hired a driver to take a van packed with pet food to a veterinarian in the Rockaways who was feeding animals in need. He said he would provide a continuous supply of food as needed. Mr. Sabin also matched $17,000 in donations at a relief concert for various East End charities on Saturday night.

    Those who wish to make an online donation to support East End Cares’ on-the-ground efforts can click on a PayPal button on Paddlers for Humanity’s Web site, p4h.org. Checks can be made out to Paddlers for Humanity, P.O. Box 2555, East Hampton 11937, with “East End Cares” on the memo line. As East End Cares is a nonprofit organization, all donations are tax-deductible, and a letter or e-mail will be sent to donors who request one. There are cash collection buckets throughout Montauk, Amagansett, Springs, and East Hampton.

    In light of the desperate need for additional hotel and motel rooms for those unable to return to their homes for an extended period of time, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has invited participation in its Transitional Sheltering Assistance program, an initiative intended to provide short-term lodging for eligible disaster survivors who are in shelters. Lodging expenses are paid by FEMA directly to the lodging provider, with any incidental costs (phone charges, room service, parking, etc.) the responsibility of lodgers. Hotel and motel owners interested in taking part can register at ela.corplodging.com.

    “Everything you do is so meaningful,” said Ms. Berman. “People showing up says, ‘We care about you.’ . . . Even a hug, you’ve made a difference.”

    Serious beach erosion in Montauk following two recent severe storms, and the installation of concrete rings in the sand in front of the Royal Atlantic motel — an effort to protect the building until its foundation could be rebuilt, which is distinctly at odds with East Hampton Town’s coastal laws — prompted a vigorous discussion at a town board meeting on Tuesday about efforts the community should take to prepare for the next oceanic assault.

    “It is time for the town to take a stronger stand for those who have to protect their businesses and private property,” said Laraine Creegan of the Montauk Chamber of Commerce. “It is disingenuous to suggest that to retreat further inland is a viable alternative for existing hotels and motels. There is nowhere to go.”

    Alice Houseknecht, an owner of the East Deck Motel at Ditch Plain, said that storm flooding “totally engulfed my backyard . . . the ocean came storming in,” damaging her electrical system and other items.

    “It is contingent upon us who own along the beach to constantly replenish the dunes,” she said. But, she said, “The idea of simple sand replenishment and strategic retreat is not working.” Hard structures buried in sand are needed, she said. “Sand alone costs hundreds of thousands of dollars and it can get washed away in one night.”

    Buildings along the shore such as hers offer protection from flooding to others further inland, she said, adding that for individual property owners to bear the cost of shore replenishment is “really unfair.”

    “Please, could we work together?” Ms. Houseknecht asked.

    Robert DeLuca, the president of the Group for the East End, said that East Hampton Town’s comprehensive plan calls for the development of a “hurricane mitigation plan,” or a post-storm recovery strategy that would articulate in detail the steps to be taken following storm damage.

    He stressed the importance of having such a plan in place before a crisis hits. “If you do it that way, all of the issues that come to the fore after a storm like this have a place to go,” he said. “Unfortunately, elected officials are constantly faced, the day after a storm, with people wanting to make things whole.” In that situation, he said, it is difficult to make rational decisions, “because you don’t necessarily have something that says, okay, these are the first six things that you do.”

    With a specified plan, he said, the town would more easily qualify for post-emergency state or federal funds.

    “We did dodge a bullet. There is an opportunity here,” Mr. DeLuca said, to lay out an accepted course of action before another storm comes “and everybody’s back here trying to figure out, one piece at a time, what we do.” Other coastal communities have done so, he said, and their plans could serve as models.

    Rameshwar Das said that East Hampton’s Local Waterfront Revitalization Program plan, of which he was a principal author, “establishes the priorities, as far as emergency work, and what you can do.”

    The document calls for a hurricane recovery plan as well. The town began one, he said, under the McGintee administration, but when money ran out, instead adopted a more generic “hazard mitigation plan” prepared by Suffolk County.

    Grant money, up to $300 million, he said, is available to municipalities for storm recovery projects. Funds are also available for the preparation of a recovery plan.

    Mr. Das said that scientific information has evolved in the years since the town’s waterfront plan was written, and it could be due for an update. “I don’t think we’ve faced up to the realities of climate change and sea-level rise, and what that means for the coastline,” he said.

    “These people can’t retreat,” Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson said of waterfront motel owners. “So if the discussion were to boil down to, fortify or retreat . . . ‘Let it fall in,’ I’m  against it,” he said. “I personally understand that the downtown Montauk business district contributes $10 million a year to our taxes.”

    “We have a code, and the code actually mandates retreat,” Councilwoman Theresa Quigley said. “Our current code doesn’t have the ability to protect the structures. You can dump sand, but the sand just washes away in the storm. Is that appropriate? I don’t think that’s appropriate.”

    “The L.W.R.P. was adopted many years ago to protect our coastline and our beaches, which are public assets,” said Jay Levine, a member of the Surfrider Foundation. “[It] precludes revetments and other shore-hardening structures to protect individual properties,” he said, because such structures scour sand from other properties nearby.

    “The Royal Atlantic has installed a structure which seems to be in direct violation of the L.W.R.P.,” he said. “It’s the town board’s responsibility to enforce our laws, whether they like them or not.”

    “It’s being reviewed,” Mr. Wilkinson told him.

    Mr. Levine said that Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, in a recent briefing on Sandy, acknowledged that climate change is occurring and will continue to result in extreme storms, and that the public must decide what should be rebuilt, and what should not. That comment, Mr. Levine said, was “a watershed moment, politically.”

    Why, Mr. Wilkinson wondered, do the restrictions in the town’s L.W.R.P. differ from those imposed by the state Department of Environmental Conservation? That agency has issued permits for things not permitted by town law — the Royal Atlantic’s hard coastal structures, for instance. “The D.E.C. should be going by what we say,” Mr. Das said, complying with the town’s state-approved L.W.R.P.

    Keith Grimes, a Montauk contractor who is often called on to install stone coastline armoring and the like, said that the current town code forces a waterfront property owner facing severe erosion to either “stand by and watch a manageable situation turn into a personal disaster,” or to “go outlaw.”

    The town, he said, should allow hard structures, either permanently or temporarily, should begin a “sand recovery program” to build up the dunes, and should grant one official the power to assess an emergency situation and determine what a property owner should be allowed to do.

    “You can’t just protect one property, and screw up your neighbor’s property,” said Bill Akin, a member of Concerned Citizens of Montauk. “You have to look at the implications of these things.” This is a “defining moment” for the community, he said, when both immediate and long-term situations must be addressed. Creative thinking and consideration of all the options — raising up the motels and putting parking underneath, for example, creating new dunes, or arranging land transfers for “retreat” — is key, he said.

    “These are emotional issues; there’s no way around it. We’re talking about people’s livelihoods. We’re talking about their property,” said Jeremy Samuelson, the executive director of Concerned Citizens of Montauk, who had raised an alarm about the Royal Atlantic’s erosion-control efforts. “We need to begin a planning process that offers the community opportunity for input.”

    Among the questions to be asked, he said, are whether retreat is an option. The process should also consider whether to pursue underground electric lines, a downtown sewer district, the elevation of structures to comply with the latest FEMA guidelines for flood zones, or creating an engineered beach which, if necessary, could be rebuilt after a storm with federal money. And it should look at the economic and environmental impacts of any actions taken.

    Until that occurs, Mr. Samuelson said, in a fact-based process, “we’re just spitting in the wind. We’re continuing to react in an ad hoc, one-off manner to a situation that is not stabilizing, it is getting worse.”

    Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc urged a “careful approach” in order to preserve the beaches that draw tourists here.

    “This community’s got to wake up,” Steve Kalimnios, an owner of the Royal Atlantic, said at the meeting Tuesday. An interview with him appears separately in today’s Star. At the Tuesday meeting, he reiterated his belief that a downtown Montauk property owners’ tax district should be created to raise money for beach replenishment. “We’ve been hemorrhaging money to put sand on the downtown beaches. That’s what my family has been doing,” he said.

    The L.W.R.P. calls for establishing a Montauk erosion-control district, Mr. Das said. Mr. Wilkinson said that he had already met with Mr. Kalimnios, and spoken with New York State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr., about the district, but offered to make some calls to gauge support.

    In the short term, Councilwoman Sylvia Overby suggested, the board could work to clarify emergency procedures, perhaps modifying them to temporarily allow hard structures.

    “If you could protect your property without impacting your neighbor’s property, that would be great,” said Bob Stern, a member of C.C.O.M.’s board. “Let’s investigate scientific solutions, and let’s get together as a community, and not yell at each other. Let’s discuss this rationally,” he said, prompting applause.

    Thomas Muse of the Surfrider Foundation, another speaker, asked the board to form a coastal advisory committee, which is called for in the adopted L.W.R.P. That group could begin gathering information, he said.

    “I’m scared for my town,” said his wife, Nancy Atlas Muse, citing the recent destruction in other Long Island towns. “I want it to exist. Hard structures breed erosion. It’s all or none. We either have to have a wall in front of everything, or we have to have a plan. You can’t win with the ocean.”

    At 9 a.m. on Oct. 30, the morning after Hurricane Sandy knocked thousands of East End residents off the grid, Dennis Fabiszak, the director of the East Hampton Library, arrived at work to find dozens of people clustered outside, checking e-mail and talking urgently on their cellphones.

    “We had 171 people using Wi-Fi that day, even though they couldn’t get in the building,” which was closed, Mr. Fabiszak said, because staff were unable to get there. “We set up chairs in back and ran surge strips outside to make it easier. We had 30 strips, all around the library.”

    In stricken communities all over the metropolitan area, libraries became a refuge last week for people seeking warmth, information, and connection. On the South Fork, alone among the four libraries east of Bridgehampton, East Hampton never lost power, Internet, or wireless service, and word got around fast.

    Kathryn Reid of East Hampton, whose Internet was out until Monday, heard on Oct. 31, two days afte the storm, that the library had Wi-Fi. “I went over, and it was completely packed,” she said. “I went back on Friday and again yesterday [Monday] for three or four hours. That’s how I got through it.”

    “Once we saw the need, we opened early on Wednesday and Thursday, at 7 a.m., and stayed open till around 7 p.m.,” Mr. Fabiszak said. “On Wednesday, we had 1,400 people come in to the library.” Four hundred thirty-nine of them brought their own laptops and used Wi-Fi, he said, while hundreds of others went on the library’s computers, signing up in advance for precious time.

    Melissa Jaffe, who works at the library, said some people were a bit on edge that day as they waited to contact family members who’d been unable to reach them, “but the majority were understanding.” All 11 of the library’s adult computers were in constant use, she said, with a long waiting list and a time limit for use of 60 minutes. There were extra power strips in rooms normally used for meetings for those needing to charge their devices.

    “We realized what an important role we played,” the library director said. “We got people coffee from Starbucks. We have running water so we filled water bottles.”

    As power slowly returned, the sea of humanity receded a little.  “On Thursday, the day after Halloween, we had about 1,000,” Mr. Fabiszak said. “Those numbers are staggering for our building and our community. Everyone who came was coming to stay for a while. The staff was great, but the public was also wonderful. A lot of people brought in their extra Halloween candy. The sense of community kept snowballing.”

    Clare Scott of East Hampton was at the library on and off during the hurricane week and again on Monday. “It was a great help,” she said. “I really appreciate its being so well staffed and accommodating.”

    Cynthia Young, director of the Amagansett Library, found it dark on Oct. 31 and posted signs on the front and side doors of the building telling people that East Hampton had power and was the place to go for wireless. The next day, she said, “The power was on when we came in, but I didn’t turn on the computers. I was afraid of power surges.” With schools out, the library showed children’s movies a lot of the time, but there were “far fewer visitors than usual.”

    Amagansett did not get Internet or telephone service back until Monday. “That’s what people were most anxious about,” Ms. Young said.

    In Springs, Heather Anderson said, the library was open on Halloween but had no power. By Friday there was power but still no Wi-Fi or Internet. A few supplicants came by that day needing to connect for business or medical reasons and afraid to go to East Hampton because they were running low on gas.

    “I let them sit in my office and use my own computer,” Ms. Anderson said. “What are you going to do?” The small Springs Library was open on Monday, all systems go.

    Out at the Montauk Library, where power failed when Sandy hit but was restored on Halloween, it was pretty much the same story: heat and electricity, with people coming in to get warm and charge their cellphones, but no Wi-Fi or Internet until later in the week. Very few Montaukers, by all accounts, were among the crowds at the East Hampton Library, however. “Crossing Napeague was not an option for a lot of people,” Karen Rade, the library’s director, said.

    For those experts who have spent time studying and thinking about eastern Long Island’s resilience to storms like Hurricane Sandy, the consensus is that the time to stand and resist nature’s fury has passed.

    In interviews this week, Scott A. Mandia, a professor of physical sciences at Suffolk County Community College; Robert DeLuca, the director of the Group for the East End; Rameshwar Das, who helped write East Hampton Town’s Local Waterfront Revitalization Program plan, and Carl Safina, the director of the Blue Ocean Institute and a Lazy Point resident, offered slightly differing takes on what the lessons should be for policymakers, but all said that climate change and rising sea levels meant that storms like the one that struck the Northeast on Oct. 29 are becoming more frequent.

    Hurricane Sandy’s impact on the eastern Long Island shoreline, although it was certainly less severe than elsewhere, was still remarkable for two reasons: because its eye made landfall far to the south, on the Jersey Shore, and because it was only a Category 1 storm. National Weather Service records for Oct. 29 showed top gusts of 66 miles per hour in Montauk and about 70 miles per hour in Amagansett — a couple of miles per hour below hurricane strength.

    During Sandy, a tide station maintained by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration at Fort Pond Bay, Montauk, recorded a surge of about five feet above normal.

    The Hurricane of 1938, which crossed near Patchogue, had sustained winds that neared 130 miles per hour. Storm surges recorded were about 12 feet at Westhampton Beach and nearly 15 feet at Montauk.

    Hurricane Sandy was bad, leaving some 40,000 people without a place to sleep in New York City alone, but it spared eastern Long Island what could have been a far-worse blow. “This, believe it or not, was kind of a miss,” Mr. Mandia said. “We are going to get a Katrina-like storm at some point in the future.”

    For Mr. Mandia, the bottom line was, “elevate or retreat, don’t spend money on barriers.”

    The most important message, as far as he was concerned, is that sea levels are going to rise and they are going to rise faster. This means that even a relatively weak storm, like another Sandy, could be increasingly difficult for the region to absorb.

    If an elevate-and-retreat policy is not adopted at large across the region, Mr. Mandia said, sea walls or revetments and tidal gates would have to be continually extended higher. He compared rising seas to a basketball court: “The rim stays at 10 feet, but as the floor gets higher, eventually even ordinary players are going to be able to dunk.”

    Sandy, he said, rode into the metropolitan region on an existing sea-level rise of about a foot, making its impact worse than it would have been a century ago. Predictions for additional rise in the future are for another foot by the middle of the century and as much as three feet by 2100.

    “The take-home point is we have to do something. We can’t do nothing,” Mr. Mandia said. The debate over science is over now, he said, and lawmakers must now think about policy. Mr. Mandia is the author, with Hunt Janin, of "Rising Sea Levels: An Introduction to Cause and Impact," published last month.

    Mark Tercek, the president of the Nature Conservancy, wrote in an opinion piece that appeared in the Christian Science Monitor on Monday that communities must now take four basic steps: reduce carbon pollution, restore ecological storm buffers, seek ways to balance natural systems and man-made structures, and be more careful about how and where building is allowed.

    Locally, Nate Woiwode, a coastal-policy expert for the conservancy’s Long Island chapter, said that the story of Sandy was really that of 2011’s Hurricane Irene in the context of a changing climate. “Storms bring home that issue,” he said. “This is a new world. How do we invest in our natural resources in a way that we can ensure that human and natural resources are safer and more successful?”

    Mr. Woiwode, who was attending a conference in Rhode Island this week about climate change and the coasts, said that for every dollar of risk reduction, coastal communities would save about $5 later.

    As Mr. Woiwode and the others see it, the coast can be shored up by thoughtfully balancing manmade structures and natural systems, while acknowledging that Mother Nature is going to get the last word.

    Mr. Woiwode said the key to saving communities from storm devastation was to adapt coastal infrastructure so it is not as vulnerable. This could involve restoring wetlands that serve as natural surge buffers, and rebuilding dunes along the ocean. “There has to be an absolutely fundamental change in the way we look at this,” he said.

    The Town of East Hampton already has a master document, created under the Local Waterfront Revitalization Program and completed in 1999, that is supposed to guide projects along the shore. Its authors at the time acknowledged that the town was vulnerable to northeasters and hurricanes and wrote that “contemporary development has often failed to take into account coastal storms and the potential for damage from flooding and erosion.”

    The report, which was not adopted by the Town of East Hampton and New York State until 2007, said that a “strategic retreat” in the face of receding shorelines is the most realistic approach.

    Mr. Das, who was on a citizens committee that helped draft the town’s waterfront plan and then edited the final report, said that the moment had come for elected officials to look at the coast with clarity and foresight. “There has been a head-in-the-sand approach to it. Fortunately that is kind of changing from the top,” he said, citing statements from New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo, who said after Sandy that the way people and governments think about the coast had to shift.

    “The town board needs to re-engage in the long-term planning process,” Mr. Das said.

    At the local level the policy future might involve an overarching post-storm recovery strategy, Mr. DeLuca said. This might, he said, firmly outlaw rebuilding in certain areas — something already attempted in various town codes, but routinely overlooked as emergency permits are handed out. “Most elected officials say to property owners, ‘We will not stand in your way,’ ” he said.

    This “permit-by-permit” response, he believes, leaves the coast open to devastation with each new storm. A more-sharply defined plan would cost taxpayers less in infrastructure repairs and post-storm handouts to property owners.

    Universal restrictions that applied to everyone along an at-risk section of shoreline would have to be backed up by some kind of financial commitment from the state or Washington, D.C., and perhaps a public referendum, Mr. DeLuca said. A broad and rock-solid approach, he said, “would create some level of certainty, and over time, that looks more attractive” to real estate investors and insurers alike.

    Without it, he said, “at some point there will be an apocalypse of cost where even Lloyd’s of London says, ‘You know, we can’t do this.’ ”

    As New York and New Jersey stagger under the blow and pick up the pieces, he said, “This is an opportunity to have a discussion.”

    Mr. Safina expressed his opposition to the Federal Flood Insurance program, which he called “a counterproductive way for the rest of the country to subsidize people putting billions of dollars and millions of lives at continuous risk, encouraging wholly inappropriate development.” The program is an insurer of last resort, allowing property owners up to $350,000 in combined structural and possession coverage, and is generally required by banks issuing mortgages along the U.S. coasts.

     Mr. Safina said, “To help people rebuild in those places is to help put lives and investment at repeated risk. It’s foolish.”