Faced with the possibility that the Georgica Association will deny them access to Georgica Pond so they can periodically open the pond to the sea, the East Hampton Town Trustees are contemplating a license agreement with the association, and will discuss it at their meeting on Tuesday night.

    The trustees have not been comfortable diluting their authority in the past. The current standoff between the two groups — perhaps the oldest public/private-rights debate in town —  could be decided by Mother Nature.

    The beach between Beach Lane in Wainscott and the narrow isthmus that separates the coastal pond and the sea is one of the few beaches in East Hampton whose private ownership predates the formation, in 1686, of the town trustees. Their founding Dongan Patent declared beaches to be common land.

    Since that time, trustees have opened the pond in the spring and fall, as did their Native American predecessors, to allow spawning fish to enter and exit. More recently, high water levels have occasionally flooded pondfront properties, making the biannual openings, or lettings, popular among pondside homeowners. And, trustees have sold sand excavated from a sand flat at the pond’s mouth to property owners who wish to rebuild eroded beach and duneland. So by not allowing trustee access to the Georgica Pond gut, the association has presented some of its own members with a quandary.

    The presence of equipment used in the excavations, and the stockpiling of sand on Georgica Beach, as well as possible liabilities associated with the lettings, prompted the association’s access ban, according to Mark Graham, its president. Mr. Graham suggested that a license agreement would settle issues that the association’s legal team identified as “price, insurance, and indemnification,” during a phone interview last week.

    The trustees can attempt to access the pond from West End Road in East Hampton, across the public beach on the east side of the gut. Or, they can let the chips fall where they may by abiding by the association’s ban, in which case the pond could flood its banks. At their meeting last month, members said they would try to avoid the latter alternative in the interest of the pond’s health, but that the association may have tied their hands.

    On the other hand, it would seem the association has tied its own hands, because only the trustees can authorize the opening of Georgica Pond.

    John Courtney, the trustees’ attorney, said yesterday that this was not the first time the Georgica Association had asked the trustees to sign a license agreement involving the pond. The board had decided not to sign one in the past.

    Mr. Courtney would not discuss a possible legal remedy to the standoff, other than to point to the ongoing court proceding in a case brought against the trustees by beachfront property owners on the ocean side of Napeague. The case, now in the State Supreme Court, involves a challenge to the trustees’ claim of public access.

    The property owners’ request for summary judgment was denied earlier this year after Justice Melvyn Tannenbaum decided there were questions of fact that were not readily determined by law. One of the questions was whether the trustees had “proscriptive” rights to the beach, by virtue of its unobstructed public use for 10 years or more.

    Trustees have been traversing Georgica Beach to open the pond for many decades.

    The World War II veteran probably didn’t know it at the time, but his simple act of kindness sparked a lifelong obsession for Victor Kerpel, an East Hampton artist. As a boy, riding a bike around his Manhattan neighborhood, Mr. Kerpel would pretend to shoot down German and Japanese aircraft.

    “Hey kid,” the veteran asked him. “What are you doing?”

    “I’m shooting down enemy planes!”

    “Come over here, I’ve got something for you.”

    The gift was the veteran’s A-2 flight jacket from the Army Air Force, issued to pilots and crew. “This thing was huge on me, but I would not take it off,” Mr. Kerpel said last week. “That was the cat’s pajamas. It lived on me 24/7.”

    Manufactured for the Army by contractors such as Aero Leather Clothing Company, the Cable Raincoat Company, and Perry Sportswear, authentic A-2 jackets are currently valued between a few hundred and several thousand dollars, depending on condition, customization, and verification. For Mr. Kerpel, his neighbor’s gift led both to the aforementioned obsession and a “glorified hobby.”

    Using channels such as eBay, swap meets, and flea markets, Mr. Kerpel has been buying and selling authentic A-2 jackets for some 25 years. Though the available supply is dwindling, the Internet, flea markets, and word of mouth have brought him in contact with a global community of collectors.

    Most A-2 jackets were made of horsehide, Mr. Kerpel said, and some are goatskin. To the trained eye, it isn’t too difficult to separate the genuine article from a reproduction. “You see guys walking around in the mall with jackets that kind of look [authentic], but if you look closely, you’ll see that they’re big enough to cover their gut, or are weirdly patched all over the place. Remember, guys in 1940-45 generally weren’t ‘workout’ guys, and in order to squeeze into cockpits, even in the big planes, they were about 5 foot 6, 5 foot 8.”

    The jackets, he said, are “not exactly form-fitting, but they’re not loose, floppy garments. They’re very straightforward, no frills, purely utilitarian. They were designed to take some beating.”

    On a sun-filled deck at his house, Mr. Kerpel displayed several A-2 jackets, some with patches on the front, some sporting an airman’s name, and some customized on the back with the image that decorated a particular plane’s fuselage. “The Belle of the Brawl,” an illustration in the style of the era’s pin-up art — a voluptuous woman, bombs cascading down on either side of her — decorates one. “These were 18-year-old kids,” said the collector. “Sometimes there was somebody with real talent, and they painted beautiful stuff on them. Other times it was pretty crude or rough. You had a bomber group of 10 young men who became very close-knit, kind of a team. They wanted a team reference, thus they would name their plane, and create some kind of art depicting that.”

    Some of the patches adorning jackets were Army-sanctioned, he added, but others were unofficial. “Some were a bit risqué.”

    In the 1960s, while a student at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan, Mr. Kerpel had a studio at Bleecker Street and the Bowery. At the time, he recalled, when “the Bowery was the Bowery, full of winos and really a wreck,” many down-on-their-luck veterans sold their worldly possessions, including their A-2s, to secondhand stores. “They could be had for 10 or 15 dollars,” he said. “That ended.”

    Along with the dwindling supply, fervent collectors have bid prices stratospherically high in recent years. There are collectors in the United States, Britain, China, Greece, Italy, even the Middle East, but some of the most avid are Japanese. “They still have this idea of the bushido,” the code of honor of the Japanese warrior class.

    Though it has become more difficult to find authentic A-2 jackets, the recession spurred many people to sell unnecessary possessions, said Mr. Kerpel. “These things ebb and flow,” he said. “There are folks that have unlimited resources and can buy whatever they want whenever they want. For the rest of the world, in order to buy something to just have it . . . you have to consider that.”

    Most serious collectors know one another, if not personally, then by reputation, “and reputation counts a lot,” he said. “There are some rascals who try to sell garbage, and jazz up a jacket to look like something it’s not. Newbies are taken all the time.”

    A tentative budget for 2013 released this week by East Hampton Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson calls for a $3.3 million increase, with total spending of just over $69 million, up from this year’s $65.6 million budget.

    The draft budget not only includes money for union employee pay increases dictated by contracts but, for the first time in several years, calls for a 2 percent pay increase for elected and appointed officials, as well as town department heads.

    If adopted as proposed, the supervisor’s budget would result in a 4.6-percent tax rate increase for East Hampton Town residents not living in the incorporated villages, and a tax rate decrease of 1.7 percent for residents of East Hampton or Sag Harbor Villages.

    The budget exceeds the state-imposed tax increase cap of 2 percent, but stays well within the state-calculated cap for East Hampton Town. Because town taxes saw a 1.7-percent decrease last year, the state allowed a credit toward this year’s cap, allowing East Hampton a total increase of up to 4.1 percent. The tax levy that would result from adopting the tentative budget would be 3.1 percent higher than last year’s.

    Tax rates would be $27.86 per $100 of assessed value for properties in the town and $10.93 per hundred for properties in the villages.

    Town board members received copies of the budget early this week. On Tuesday, Mr. Wilkinson suggested scheduling a board discussion of the budget at an Oct. 16 work session, followed by a Nov. 1 public hearing and adoption of the budget by Nov. 20.

    Councilwoman Sylvia Overby suggested allowing time for two board discussions of the budget by including it on the agenda for a work session on Tuesday.

    It also contains money to add staff to the Justice Court office, and to increase the hours of its employees. That would allow the court office, which has been closed to the public one day a week so that a reduced staff could complete its tasks, to be open every weekday.

    The budget increases funding by 9 percent for the Harbors and Docks Department for water safety promotion, and includes a 180-percent increase for ocean rescue and marine public safety programs, according to the supervisor.

    It also continues funding for community organizations such as the East Hampton Day Care Center, the Family Service League, and Phoenix House, for a substance abuse counseling program.

    A contingency fund has been included in the budget, setting aside $559,000 for unanticipated expenses.

    In a message released with the tentative budget, Mr. Wilkinson pointed out that over $1 million, or almost 33 percent, of the $3.3 million increase over this year’s budget is attributable to expenses for the town airport and scavenger waste treatment plant. Included in the budget is money to repay funds advanced from the refuse and recycling fund to cover costs for the plant this year, as well as money to operate it as a transfer station for the first three months of 2013.

    Mr. Wilkinson did not include funds in this year’s budget, prepared and adopted last fall, to operate the waste plant beyond the first few months of the year. A board majority voted late last year to solicit proposals from private companies that would lease or buy the plant. Only one proposal was submitted, and a majority of the board, excluding the supervisor and Councilwoman Theresa Quigley, found it unacceptable.

    That decision, and others involving the waste plant, has been a bone of contention on the board ever since. In his budget message, Mr. Wilkinson attributes the need to levy property taxes for the scavenger waste fund to the board’s rejection of the private company’s offer.

    The tentative budget applies money from surplus funds to budget lines including the airport fund, eliminating the need to levy taxes for those lines; however, if surplus is exhausted, that may have to be done in the future for ongoing expenses.

    The supervisor also noted that even with the proposed increase, a drop in spending and tax rates since taking office in 2012 — when the budget adopted by the previous administration was $71.1 million — still holds. He credited that to restraint in capital borrowing, zero-based budgeting, staff reductions through attrition and voluntary termination programs, and “reorganization and streamlining staff structure.”

    An arrest on Cedar Drive in Springs last Thursday morning involving a stolen iPhone ended up triggering a mini-manhunt when the handcuffed suspect, Justin Cruz, 18, of East Hampton, escaped, outrunning police and disappearing into the woods.

    Suffolk County police dispatched a helicopter to aid in the search, and New York State troopers sent a German shepherd called O’Reilly from its K-9 unit, with his handler, Trooper Kevin Drew.

    Because they had no item of the suspect’s clothing to help the dog pick up his scent, it was sent into the woods to “pick up the freshest scent he finds,” Trooper Drew said about two hours after the manhunt began. The dog is trained to sniff the most recently disturbed ground cover in the woods, he explained. The area is dotted with forest cover, with residences scattered in.

    O’Reilly initially seemed to pick up a scent, but then lost it, doubling back to the house where the fugitive was initially taken into custody. The helicopter hovered low in the sky, patrolling back and forth. Police continued to comb the neighborhood, in cars and on foot, going house to house on many blocks, but did not find a trace of him.

    A little after midnight, Mr. Cruz, handcuffs gone, walked into the East Hampton Town Police headquarters in Wainscott and surrendered. He was at that point re-arrested, on the original charge of criminal possession of stolen property, plus an additional charge of escaping from custody. Both are Class A misdemeanors.

    It all began a little after 8 a.m., when two town officers, following up on a report of an Apple iPhone stolen the day before, pulled up to a Cedar Drive house. In the course of interviewing Mr. Cruz, who was visiting there, police activated the missing cellphone, which made a sound. According to the police report, it was found on Mr. Cruz’s person. An officer handcuffed him in the standard hands-behind-the-back position and placed him in the rear of the police car. The officer then went back inside to interview a resident of the house.

    Left alone in the rear of the car, Mr. Cruz, who is a wiry six feet tall, worked his hands down behind his back to his ankles, then under his feet. His shackled hands were now in front of him. He then, according to the police, climbed through the partition between the front and back seats and exited the squad car through an unlocked front door. The officers saw him sprinting away toward the woods.

    When an initial search proved fruitless, police called in the county.

    In court Saturday morning, Mr. Cruz, who had been arrested in April on a charge of trespassing, was arraigned before Justice Catherine Cahill. He told the court he had dropped out of school his junior year and was working part time, landscaping and building decks.

    “That’s what you dropped out for?” Justice Cahill asked.

    “I made a mistake,” he replied.

    She asked him about his living circumstances. He told her he was living with his uncle.

    “Where are your parents?”

    “My mother is incarcerated, and my father was deported.”

    He said he had lived in East Hampton for four years. “I said I was sorry to the officer I ran away from. I was scared,” he told the court.

    Justice Cahill asked him how he was doing with his previous commitment to the court stemming from the April arrest, to do 60 hours’ community service. He told her he’d done 20.

    “Are you kidding? The first time, it was 30 hours, and you blew it off, so it became 60 hours. Mr. Cruz, you’re going down the wrong road. You better get that community service done.”

    Justice Cahill set bail at $500. Mr. Cruz was taken away.

Phoenix House Incident

     In other police news, officers were called on Sept. 25 to the Phoenix House Academy juvenile drug treatment facility in Wainscott by the staff. According to the police report, an 18-year-old, whose name was redacted from the report, had, with another resident, blindfolded a 14-year-old boy as the younger boy asked for the cigarette he felt he was owed.

    The 18-year-old told the blindfolded 14-year-old to put out his hand for the cigarette and then spit in it. He then exposed himself, according to the report, and began sexually touching the younger boy, who pushed away and ran out of the room. The Phoenix staff notified their supervisor, who called the 14-year-old’s father as well as the police.

    Police  interviewed them, eventually placing the 18-year-old under arrest. He was charged with acting in a manner injurious to a child, as well as forcible touching, both Class A misdemeanors.

    Bail was set the next morning at $2,500.

    “Our first concern is the safety of the residents,” Traci Donnelly, the regional director for Phoenix House, said Tuesday. “We offer across-the-board help” for the victim, she said. “We assess the person’s needs. Do they want to stay in Phoenix? We work closely with the parents and spouses.”

    Phoenix House will try to find an outside treatment facility more appropriate for the accused as well, Ms. Donnelly said.

    In a closed-door session on Sept. 23, the Sag Harbor Village Board agreed to seek partial police patrols from the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department and to offer early retirement to eligible village police officers. The vote on an early retirement incentive was unanimous, but outsourcing police services was approved 3-to-1. Kevin Duchemin, an East Hampton Village Police sergeant who is the newest board member, cast the negative vote.

    Concerned about the future of the department, Sag Harbor Village Police Chief Tom Fabiano said on Tuesday that he had “no clue” how replacing the department’s 12 full-time officers with others from the Sheriff’s Office would work or “why that would be done.” He also said he was surprised that he has not been told the details of the early retirement offer. Village residents don’t know either, because the  board has been discussing, voting, and drafting legal documents in executive session.

    “The mayor has gotten some numbers for services from the county sheriff and East Hampton Town. The board has decided to move forward on this by having the village labor lawyer and myself research a retirement incentive . . . and an inter-municipal agreement for supplemental police services. No final decisions were made,” State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr., the village attorney who was at the Sept. 23 meeting, said. Via e-mail yesterday, Mr. Thiele said, “I do not know what public input the board will seek on this. It’s up to the board.”

    Village police have been working without a contract for over a year after months of negotiation, with the standoff having gone to arbitration.

     “It’s ridiculous” that the board has not asked for his opinion, Chief Fabiano said. He was told months ago, he said, that the only reason for the possible abolition or reduction of the police force was the increasing cost of retirement and medical expenses.

    A Sag Harbor native with 35 years on the job, one thing Chief Fabiano said he is sure of is that “they are not going to get the level of service” and that he will be “extremely concerned about the welfare of the village.” That the change apparently is based on costs, the chief asked, “Have complaints been filed? Are people’s taxes too high?”    

    “People should be involved in the process,” he said. “They might have moved here because it is a “nice, safe place to live.”

    According to Legislator Jay Schneiderman, the County Legislature would have to approve any agreement reached.

“It will be quite a debate,” he said yesterday. “It will not go flying through, if it goes through at all.”

      The village police log during a typical off-season week includes several pages of calls that officers have responded to, including those related to motor vehicles — accidents, speeding, unlicensed operators, intoxicated persons found driving — as well as fire alarms, harassment charges, cellphone violations, elderly falls, miscellaneous injuries and illnesses, domestic issues, streetlight outages, and loud music complaints.

    Other calls requiring police presence in a recent week included a student’s attempted suicide and another’s hospitalization for difficulty breathing, along with civil disputes, assistance with a locked bicycle, fear of identity theft due to a frozen computer, a homecoming parade detail, and a loose dog.

    An informal sampling on Tuesday of local business owners and residents found that they were wary of the change.

    Mike Reilly, a manager at the Corner Bar, said, “Let the people decide . . . the public pays the taxes that pay the salaries. I don’t know anyone who minds paying taxes for a good police force.” He added, “We just paid for the new headquarters. It doesn’t make sense.”  And he expressed fear of what might happen in a disaster. “Lives depend on these people,” he said.

    Erling Hope, a resident who was seen speaking with a village police officer on Main Street on Tuesday, said he didn’t think using sheriff personnel was a good idea. Those who patrol the village should be “in touch with the community,” he said. The officer he was speaking with, Hugh Caulfield, a Sag Harbor resident who was formerly a New York City police officer, praised the force, saying they are “dedicated people who give a lot.”

    “I’m against it,” said Peter D’Angelo, owner of the Emporium True Value hardware store, while Rick Kresberg, an owner of Provisions Natural Market, said he is “in favor of having our own Police Department. They know our community better.”

    At the Wharf Shop, a word of caution came from Nada Barry, a longtime resident. “I don’t know all of the facts and figures to form an opinion,” she said, but then added that she felt comfortable with the police, having known many of the officers since they were children. Although North Haven Village has contracted with the Southampton Town force for police services, she said the Sag Harbor department responds to calls first.

    As for the public’s involvement, Chief Fabiano said “a chicken coop gets more attention than the Police Department.” Mayor Brian Gilbride did not return phone calls.

    At 2 a.m. on Aug. 17, 1862, one mile east of Montauk Point, the S.S. Great Eastern, the largest ship in the world at the time, struck a rock that would forever bear its name.

    It was the ship’s third passage to New York Harbor, with 1,530 passengers. Their combined weight, when added to the ship’s 18,915 gross tons and its cargo, increased the draft of the ship to 30 feet. The rock she hit lies 24 feet below the surface. The Great Eastern, originally called Leviathan by the newspapers of the day, was 695 feet long with an 82-foot beam. 

    In August, Dick White and Brian Pope of the Montauk Lighthouse Museum traveled to Maine to offer the winning bid, $7,500, on an exact eight-foot-long steel model of the Great Eastern. The scale model is intricately fashioned with decks that can be lifted to reveal two working kerosene-fired steam engines.

    The prior owner bought it from an antiques shop in Greenwich, England. But who built it, and when? The Lighthouse Museum, which had been tipped off to the auction by George Nama, a Montauk resident, artist, and collector, is now engaged in a search for the name of the artisan.

    Meanwhile, the model will be put on display at the museum, very likely next to a window that looks out on the spot where the great ship ran aground during the Civil War 150 years ago. Today, Great Eastern Rock is a popular fishing spot.

    No one was hurt when the Great Eastern struck the tallest of a number of high points in the rocky offshore leavings of the last glacier. The ship, bound for Flushing Bay, had weathered a gale the day before, and Capt. James Walker decided to wait off Montauk before entering Long Island Sound. A pilot was brought aboard at 1:30 a.m. As the ship moved forward, a rumble was felt. A check for damage revealed a leak that resulted in a slight list to port, but the Great Eastern was freed from the rock with only the loss of an anchor, and made it to New York.

    The collision had opened an 83-foot-long gash in the hull, but Great Eastern was not in danger of sinking. She was actually two ships, one iron hull inside another, with a honeycomb of transverse bulkheads between them to prevent flooding. She was the first ship to have this now-standard design.

    Her designer was Isambard Kingdom Brunel, an engineer and bridge-builder who conceived of the Great Western Railway. Its tracks spanned Britain east to west, with transport continuing across the ocean via iron steamships of his design.

    Great Eastern’s business plan included competing with clipper ships, the fast, sail-powered freight carriers of the age. And, she was to take advantage of the growing popularity of trans-Atlantic travel, which included greater and greater numbers of European emigrants. To compete with the clippers, Great Eastern was powered by four coal-fired steam engines that drove 56-foot-diameter paddle wheels as well as a stern propeller over 20 feet across.

    The ship also carried six masts with both square-rigged and fore-and-aft rigged sails for a total sail area of 18,000 square feet. The sails did not work out, at least while the paddle wheels were turning. Hot exhaust from the ship’s five stacks tended to set the sails on fire. Nonetheless, Great Eastern could make 14 knots. 

    By August of 1862, the North and the South were nearly two years into the Civil War, which not only reduced the number of paying trans-Atlantic travelers but held up repairs to the Great Eastern. Back at sea, she made a number of round trips between the U.K. and America before being converted to a cable-laying vessel. The Great Eastern laid not the first trans-Atlantic cable, but the first one to last.

    In retrospect, except for her cable-laying, she seemed to have been born under a bad sign. A boiler explosion killed several hands on her maiden voyage in 1858, a contract to carry mail across the Atlantic fell through, and the Civil War destroyed her passenger trade. In the end she plied the Mersey River as a floating music hall and billboard for a department store.

    The Great Eastern was broken up in 1889. One of her masts survives, however, as a flagpole at the Anfield football stadium in Liverpool.

    Reached on Tuesday, Mr. Nama described how the model came to his attention. He admitted to being the type of artist who collects — “I’m a collector type of guy” — in this case, old illustrations, which included a number of intricate wood engravings that appeared in several publications around the time of the Great Eastern’s launching. “They include a lot of information,” Mr. Nama said. In fact, the prints offer photographic-like depictions of her great size, alongside sailing ships of the day.

    Mr. Nama said a friend he knew from The Old Print Shop on Lexington Avenue, a man who likes fishing with a father who lives on the North Fork, called and said, “‘You have a Great Eastern Rock out there. Do you know anyone who might be interested in a model of the ship?’”

    Mr. Nama said he informed Greg Donohue, a member of the Lighthouse Museum Committee, who passed on the details to Mr. Pope, the museum’s assistant site manager, and Mr. White, chairman of the committee.

    The model was previously owned by Friedrich von Huene of Phippsburg, Me., who bought it in England in the 1980s. Last May, Mr. von Huene’s daughter arranged for it to be auctioned at the Thomaston Place Auction Galleries in Maine.

    In a letter to the auction house, Mr. von Huene suggested that “the model is working and is ideal for a father with impressionable children.” Plenty of those visit the Montauk Point Lighthouse Museum each year. 

    The East Hampton Village Zoning Board of Appeals voted on Friday to require a full environmental study of the Maidstone Club’s proposed irrigation system overhaul, prompting a lengthy debate between the club’s attorney, David Eagan, and the board’s chairman, Andrew Goldstein, that became especially heated when Mr. Goldstein ordered Mr. Eagan to sit down.

    “Sit down, Mr. Eagan, or I’m going to call a security officer,” Mr. Goldstein said about 45 minutes into the discussion. He stood up at his seat and requested that Pam Bennett, the village’s deputy clerk, stop the audio recording.

    The audience booed loudly as Mr. Eagan walked away from the microphone.

    “You’re belittling your own process,” Mr. Eagan told the chairman.

    “Turn off the tape?” one person shouted.

    Ms. Bennett said she had not turned off the tape.

    Mr. Goldstein apologized to Mr. Eagan.

    Prior to Mr. Goldstein’s outburst, Mr. Eagan had been arguing against the need for a detailed environmental impact statement, saying it was highly unusual to require one and to then decide after passing a resolution requiring one, that the resolution should be amended to also require a “scoping session” to determine the various matters that should be addressed in the study.

    “Do you live in East Hampton,” asked Larry Hillel, a board member. “Do you care about this place?”

    Mr. Eagan said he did, and for 30 years, but that the question was offensive.

    “Enough!” yelled Mr. Goldstein.

    “No, I’m going to answer the question,” Mr. Eagan said.

    With the board’s vote at the beginning of the meeting to require the detailed study of the irrigation system’s impacts, Mr. Goldstein appeared to expect no further discussion, but relented when Mr. Eagan asked to read something into the record.

    “How long is it?” Mr. Goldstein asked. “You could submit a copy of the statement and it will still make it into the record.”

    “It’s not long,” Mr. Eagan said. “I’m obligated to make a record.” The attorney said he had not had a chance to read the board’s resolution, but that he felt their decision was unwarranted “based on the club’s record and the controlling law.” He took objection to the board’s procedure, particularly the lack of “opportunity to rebut the significance of the opposition’s expert testimony.”

    The Z.B.A. chairman and the Maidstone attorney grew farther apart during several minutes of contentious debate about what effect relevant case law should have on the club’s application.

    In legal speak, the board adopted a “positive declaration” or “pos dec,” on the application, an option provided to it by the State Environmental Quality Review Act when the board believes the proposed project has the potential for serious environmental impacts.

    “General and speculative comments alone are not substantial support for a positive declaration,” Mr. Eagan said. 

    “You’re right about the law, but wrong about the facts,” Mr. Goldstein said. “There have been several conversations and testimony that give us reason to pos dec this application.”

    “We have proffered nationally recognized experts who’ve given specific testimony that there will be no significant impact on Hook Pond or its plants and animals,” Mr. Eagan said. “It’s fair to say that some concerns have been expressed, but they are generalized,” Mr. Eagan said.

    “We haven’t just listend to the clamor of a mob,” Mr. Goldstein said, “we have heard specific . . . issues raised by the public.”

    “Your experts may be right, but it is the purpose of SEQRA to see if they are right,” Mr. Goldstein said.

    “You have nothing to lose. . . ,” Mr. Hillel said.

    “This is a big decision that could have possible adverse impacts for many generations to come,” said Frank Newbold, another board member. “Anyone who has walked the nature trail at Fithian and Huntting Lane would notice the stream bed is dry. We want to examine this application as closely as possible.”

    “This is the most significant application that this board has confronted in many years,” Mr. Goldstein said, and for Mr. Eagan to think the board would not require an environmental impact statement is “naive on your part,” he added.

    “Based on our record to date, and court precedent, we believe that there was no basis for a positive declaration,” Mr. Eagan said.

    “Well maybe you’ll make that point in another forum,” said Mr. Goldstein, who on numerous occasions asked if the Maidstone Club was planning to sue the board over its decision.

    “We were hoping not to,” Mr. Eagan said. “We are going to work within our full reservation of rights to satisfy the public’s concerns.”

    “Hook Pond is akin to a sick patient,” said Dr. Evelyn Lipper, who lives on the pond and hired a hydrologist who disagreed with findings of the club’s hydrologist. “The draft E.I.S. will give up-to-date information about the pond so that we may know the best way to proceed. . . . I am not opposed to the project; I look forward to everyone working together.”

    Telisport Putsavage, a Washington, D.C., attorney for Dr. Lipper, then asked the board to amend its resolution to require a scoping session “obligating the club to submit an outline of the topics it will cover in the draft E.I.S.,” because “it would give the process more efficiency, and ensure the E.I.S. does its job.”

    The board agreed and subsequently amended its resolution, despite the fact that Mr. Goldstein had said earlier that the environmental assessment form prepared by the village’s planning consultant “lays out a pretty specific outline as to what would be required of the E.I.S.”

    “You passed a resolution without discussion and now you’re changing it?” asked Mr. Eagan, as he made his way back to the lectern. “It’s highly unusual that this board is opening up a scoping session after it unanimously voted against it.”

    The Maidstone Club has had four hearings before the zoning board. Between the third and fourth, Mr. Putsavage petitioned the State Department of Environmental Conservation to suspend the well and freshwater wetland permits issued to the Maidstone, charging the club “has made inconsistent, incomplete, inaccurate, misleading, and potentially false statements” in the application process. The D.E.C. rejected the petition on Aug. 9 (and it also rejected the Z.B.A.’s July 31 lead agency request for the aforementioned D.E.C. permits).

    “The record needs to show the extraordinary attempt by this board to make the accusation that we made misrepresentations in our application to the D.E.C,” Mr. Eagan said.

    “How extraordinary?” Mr. Goldstein. “This much, or this much?” placing his hands one foot and then two feet apart.

    Ed Shaw, a resident of Middle Lane, was the last to speak on the issue. “I was under the impression that the club would present its experts to you today. What happened?”

    “After the E.I.S. is submitted, there will be plenty of opportunity for that,” Mr. Goldstein said.

    In a Sept. 6 letter to Mr. Goldstein, Linda James, who lives on Hook Pond and is a Maidstone Club member, said, “an EIS will provide the community and the Z.B.A. who represent us, with complete and consolidated records.” This was the first of the irrigation hearings she did not attend.

    The board decided that it would issue a positive declaration on or before Aug. 24, as a written determination of significance was drafted on that date. Mr. Eagan believes that a hearing should have been held on the findings of the village’s environmental assessment form, before the board decided to require full-blown environmental review. Linda Riley, the village attorney, disagrees.

    Ms. Riley stated that the document was circulated internally.

    The club may submit its scoping outline for the environmental impact statement at any time, according to Ms. Riley. After that, the board will have 60 days to hear comments and approve a final outline.

    “We are sensitive to the events that occurred at Friday’s hearing,” Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr., said yesterday. “We will review and discuss all available options.”

    “Maidstone is prepared to work in good faith towards completing the E.I.S. on a timely basis,” club officials said in a statement on Tuesday. “As the largest landowner on Hook Pond, the club has always focused on maintaining the health and beauty of the pond and will continue to do so for generations to come. Our science is unequivocal. Irrigation will not negatively impact the health of the pond and may well improve it.”

      Frank A. Hanna, 30, accused by the East Hampton Town police in the accidental shooting of a friend, Freddie Stephens, with a .44 caliber handgun on May 24, pled guilty in Suffolk County Court on Sep. 6 to one felony charge, reckless assault in the first degree.

     He was sentenced on Sept. 10 to a year in prison, with time already served counting towards the sentence. He will be eligible for parole in January, according to his attorney, Susan Menu.

     According to the police, Mr. Hanna had aimed the gun at Mr. Stephens and pulled the trigger, not realizing that the weapon was loaded. The bullet did severe damage to Mr. Stephens’s left arm. Mr. Stephens, who is now living out of the state, is still recovering from the wound, said his attorney, Stephen Grossman.

     A .44 caliber bullet is one of the largest made and causes potentially lethal injuries. The weapon used was not recovered.

    Signs limiting or excluding certain vehicles, and strict enforcement of traffic regulations, are imperative to reducing congestion on residential roadways around North Main Street in East Hampton, several residents insisted at an East Hampton Town Board hearing on possible changes to traffic rules in their neighborhoods.

    Speakers implored the board to ban through traffic and prohibit trucks over nine tons from accessing Cooper, Osborne, and Miller Lanes, Palma Terrace, and Sherrill Road from Cedar Street, Indian Hill Lane from Three Mile Harbor Road, and Miller Lane East and West from Oakview Highway. Trucks making local deliveries and personnel responding to an emergency would be exempt from these regulations.

    In addition, the amendments being considered would add stop signs at the intersections of Downey Lanes East and West with Miller Lanes East and West, and prohibit drivers from making a left turn from Indian Hill Road onto Three Mile Harbor Road.

    Chris Russo, a former East Hampton Town highway superintendent, spoke forcefully against the proposed amendments. Instead, he suggested, the board should meet with the operators of trucks, determine the routes they need, and then ban trucks from all other roads as part of a comprehensive, townwide policy.

    Erecting “no through traffic” signs, he said, “looks to me to be creating de facto private roads that are going to be publicly maintained.” He encountered this situation as superintendent, he said, explaining that, as in the neighborhood in question, motorists use streets including Town Lane, Further Lane, and Bluff Road to avoid busier roads and traffic lights. “If nobody can drive on [a street] except a resident or somebody that has business on this street, isn’t it a private road?” he asked. “I’m sure that’s what the people in this affected area want. They don’t want anybody on their street except them and their friends and the people working for them.”

    Mr. Russo suggested that residents who want to limit vehicular traffic in their neighborhood should petition the board to take the streets in question out of the highway system. “They can then do anything there. They can have a gate operated with a card, they can have guards, put speed bumps, have a 5-miles-per-hour speed limit. But it’s their road,” he said, and attendant expenses would become their responsibility.

    “The situation is now quite dangerous,” said Julia Mead of Miller Lane West, who delivered a petition that she said bore the signatures of 80 residents. “These are narrow roads, no sidewalks, no shoulders. The conditions there present a hazard to pedestrians and bicyclists,” she said. “Over the past decade, we’ve noted an alarming increase in truck traffic and speeding cars through our neighborhood.”

    The problem exists year round, Ms. Mead said. “Admittedly, it gets much worse in the summertime. But the real problem is during rush hour — in the mornings, late afternoons, and early evenings. People go to work all year round.”

    Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc predicted a gridlock situation if the town forces all traffic onto main arteries. “I’m extremely concerned about the safety issues, though, and the focus really should be on those,” he said.

    “My hope is that safety would trump convenience,” Ms. Mead said.

    “What if we do this,” asked Councilman Dominick Stanzione, “and it doesn’t work?”

    “If it doesn’t work we’re going to come back asking for sidewalks and a 20-miles-per-hour speed limit,” she answered.

    Supervisor Bill Wilkinson and other board members wondered aloud if a compromise, in which restrictions and exclusions are enacted during the morning and afternoon rush hours, would resolve the issue. Residents were skeptical. Mr. Russo, however, had earlier issued his own prediction. “You will be doing it 100 times next year if this happens,” he said. The board agreed to revisit the matter in a work session.

    After brief hearings, the board also approved the town’s acquisition of 5.9 acres of land at 41 Three Mile Harbor Road in Springs, at which it will establish a park, nature preserve, or recreation area, and a .44-acre parcel at 20 Gloucester Avenue and a .3-acre parcel at 117 North Greenwich Street, both in Montauk, to attenuate floodwaters, serve as a buffer against pollutants, and dissipate sediments in and around Lake Montauk.

    As a chowder judge it’s best to coat the stomach early in the morning with a basic, old-world foundation such as oatmeal with a bit of honey and milk that might have come from a cow in the backyard. Then it’s wise to fast until the tasting begins at the annual East Hampton Town Trustees Largest Clam contest and chowder competition. 

    Chowder has deep roots in the Northeast, especially here on Long Island. It should be taken seriously. Not only has the flesh of quahogs been a bountiful and ready source of food for hundreds of years, but, as though in homage to their innate value, beads made from the lustrous, white and purple lining of their shells were turned into wampum, coin of the Native American and early settlers’ realm.

    For centuries, clams have been raked from the bottom of bays and harbors in early fall, plump from a summer of filtering only the finest phytoplankton from our fresh tides. They have been steamed open, their meats chopped into pieces of a size to fit a chowder maker’s design. Clam liquor, the liquid essence of the quahog, is collected and put aside. (More about this fundamental ingredient to come.) And, from the garden or the I.G.A, fresh vegetables are picked, diced, and added. In this neck of the woods chowder is not chowder without a hunk or two of salt pork. Herbs and spices are sown into the soup according to the chowder maker’s palette.

    In New England white chowders rule. In New York and elsewhere, red, tomato-based, Manhattan chowders define the dish. East End chowder makers, as though caught between the two traditions, serve up a clear concoction, not white, not red, more of a thin chowder or fat soup stripped of tomatoey bells and milky whistles — a pure, tart, celebration of the quahog.

    Fred Overton’s house chowder, served by the vat each year at the Largest Clam contest, is such a creation. His is a Bonac chowder based on a tried and true, handed down recipe that can be found on the Food page of today’s Star. 

    It is against this backdrop and Mr. Overton’s extremely high standard that the chowder tasting began during Sunday’s competition on Bluff Road in Amagansett.

    Although fewer in number, this season’s chowder submissions were by and large bolder. There were five reds and four whites judged in five reds and four whites judged in separate categories by this reporter, his wife, Kyle Paseka, and East Hampton Town Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc. A fourth judge, Julie Stone, had to be brought in to break a tie in the red chowder taste-off.

    There are various schools of thought when it comes to deciding a good chowder. A common mistake is to over-stuff chowder, especially a red chowder, to fill it with a veritable garden of vegetables until it resembles a “Bloody Mary without the vodka,” as Mr. Van Scoyoc put it. Speaking of which — and this comes to the point — Peter Beard of Montauk favors Bloody Marys using only vodka and Clamato juice. Clam juice is the magic ingredient, and it’s one that, alas, some chowder makers submerge in vegetation. In many a New England chowder, the salty, tart essence of our embayments is buried in butter. For shame.

    In this judge’s opinion, two of the chowders entered in Sunday’s competition, one red, one white, committed the clam juice sacrilege. Most were very good, but in the end, Jim Sullivan’s two entries — one of them a juicy, slightly piquant, and not-overly-vegetated red, the other a classic and clammy New England — took top honors in each category. 

    As usual, trustees provided bushels of neck-size quahogs that were opened and served to the hundred or so who attended the event and washed the clams down with bowl upon bowl of Mr. Overton’s chowder. The town shellfish hatchery provided an educational exhibit on seed clams, and the Cornell Cooperative Extension had a setup demonstrating the importance of eelgrass to the area’s bivalves, while the biggest bivalves themselves waited patiently beside the scales and calipers to be judged.

    As usual, Napeague Harbor seemed to produce the biggest clams. Linda Calder was the overall winner with a monster two-pound-nine-ounce chowder clam dug from Napeague Harbor. In the adult competition, Henry Flohr scratched around Accabonac Harbor before coming up with the 1.15-pound winner.

    The first place Lake Montauk clam was a hefty 2.8-pounder dug by Nancy Peppard. Clifton Keyes won for Three Mile Harbor with a 1.1-pound clam.

    In the junior competition, Avery Charron found a 1.7-pound clam in Accabonac Harbor. Edward Hoff III dug a very large 2.54-pounder from Napeague to be that harbor’s top junior digger and the top overall junior clammer, and Joe Hawkins’s 1.67-pounder took top honors from Three Mile Harbor.