“On the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, there are more slaves today than any point in history,” E. Benjamin Skinner, a senior fellow at Brandeis University’s Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism, said at a cocktail party in Bridgehampton on Aug. 10.

    “It is not the most lighthearted way to start a weekend in the Hamptons, but it is relevant,” said Oliver Niedermaier, who hosted the party with his wife, Constanze, to draw attention to the issue of slavery in the modern world.

    Also that weekend, a six-minute ferry ride away on Shelter Island, Marie Eiffel, who designs and produces clothing for her boutiques in Sag Harbor and on Shelter Island, held a fund-raising event to raise awareness of the same topic, and money to help defeat it.

    “Six hundred miles from the United States, you can bargain a human being down to the price of the cab fare to J.F.K. airport,” Mr. Skinner wrote in his book, “A Crime So Monstrous: Face to Face With Modern Day Slavery.”

    While human trafficking and forced labor continue in the United States and around the world, there is also a modern-day abolition movement — dependent on people like the Niedermaiers and Ms. Eiffel — that works to help those who are “forced to work under threat of violence, with extraordinary consequences to them and their family,” Mr. Skinner said.

    “A Crime So Monstrous” details the journalist’s visits to 12 countries and his interviews with over 100 slaves, slave dealers, and survivors. Stories are told of slavery in New York City, where “hundreds of deaf and mute Mexicans were forced to peddle trinkets on the subway.” They were beaten or shocked with stun guns if they did not meet their daily quotas. The journalist also described children who are forced to work unpaid “from before dawn until deep night” and bore scars from beatings and burns inflicted by their captors.

    “These are the children who won’t look at you in the eyes,” he said.

    “Within 50 miles, or maybe within 5, there are people who continue to be enslaved,” said Luis CdeBaca, ambassador at large to the United States Department of State’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, who was also in attendance at the Niedermaiers’ party on Aug. 10.

    Acting on tips, Mr. Skinner and Mr. CdeBaca are inspired to continue their efforts by those they have been able to rescue, such as a 12-year-old girl in Miami, liberated from the suburban Miami house of Willy and Marie Pompee, who acquired her from Haiti and brought her to the U.S. to clean their house. She was fed garbage, forced to sleep on the floor, and treated as a “la-pou-sa-a,” or “there-for-that” sex toy.

    Despite the fact that it is illegal to hold slaves, 27 million people are enslaved worldwide, said Mr. CdeBaca. His department has been able to rescue some of them.

    Among them was a young woman in New Jersey. Her parents thought she was attending school, but instead she was forced for three years to work braiding hair, spending six to eight hours at a stretch on each client. Finally one of them asked if she was okay. Now, that young woman is receiving the education she was promised. Mr. CdeBaca called upon journalists, citizen activists, and business owners to assist in the fight to end human trafficking.

    According to the Department of State Web site, red flags that indicate someone may be working as forced labor include workers that live with their employer with multiple people in a cramped space and an inability to speak to others alone. If answers to questions appear to be scripted and rehearsed, this is another warning, as are signs of physical abuse or submissive or fearful behavior. The Web site also offers sample questions that might be posed to ascertain whether someone is being forced or coerced to work: “Can you leave your job if you want to?” “Where do you sleep and eat?” “Are you in debt to your employer?” and “Do you have your passport/identification?”

    Through her shops and events like the one she held at her house on Aug. 11, Ms. Eiffel raises money for the Katie Ford Foundation, started by the former C.E.O. of Ford Models to fight human trafficking. Ms. Ford, who attended the Aug. 10 and Aug. 11 events, has received an award from the United Nations for her efforts.

    In a telephone conversation last week, Ms. Eiffel said she had raised $42,000 so far for the foundation. The two women’s friendship began when Ms. Ford noticed a jewelry line at Ms. Eiffel’s shop whose profits supported anti-trafficking efforts. Now, the two are neighbors on Shelter Island.

    At her shops, Ms. Eiffel donates 50 percent of profits from shirts, tied in a knot, to the Katie Ford Foundation. Originally, the knotted shirt was designed simply to untie and wear without ironing, but now it represents slaves tied to their employers by the threat of violence. The shirt sells well, she said, and when people realize what it is supporting, they usually want to help.

    Ms. Eiffel also ensures that her own clothing is cruelty-free with regular trips to India, where she visits each factory where her designs are produced to be sure that workers are treated properly. “We’re not all lucky,” she said. “This can happen to any kid on the street, not only in India.”    

    “Change must take place,” Mr. Skinner said, and in some cases it has. After learning that some fishermen aboard foreign fishing boats had had their property seized and were being forced to work, often without pay, physically, verbally, and sexually abused, then hunted if they left, the prime minister of New Zealand banned foreign fishing vessels from his country’s waters.

    With help from the Schuster Institute, the fish were tracked to restaurants, wholesalers, and retailers around the world, including Walmart, Costco, Safeway, and Whole Foods, who stopped selling the fish after they were made aware of the situation.

    “It’s nice to have an effect on policy simply by revealing the truth,” Mr. Skinner said. The people who can make a difference, he said, are consumers, policy makers, and those who run businesses. Mr. Skinner said that he was partially inspired by President Bill Clinton, who “a week before the 2000 election, signed the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, “the first time an American president assumed global abolition as a national burden.”

    “President George W. Bush continued the fight to win foreign government support for emancipation,” he said, and now, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton champions the cause, with Mr. CdeBaca in the key role.

    “People need to know that this could be happening in their backyard,” Mr. Skinner said. “Putting light on the problem will help; thinking it doesn’t happen will not.” There is a 24-hour hotline for reporting suspected human trafficking or forced labor, 888-3737-888, and a tip form is available at state.gov/j/tip.

    Residents of the Three Mile Harbor Trailer Park in East Hampton are moving ahead with the installation of a custom-designed septic system at the property close to the head of the harbor, even as the East Hampton Town Board is having the site appraised for a possible purchase using the community preservation fund.

    On Tuesday, a large truck from the DiSunno excavating company was on site, and a retaining wall had been built.

    The trailer park residents have been beseeching the town for years to follow through on a promise to pay for and install a septic system to replace the existing one, which often fails, sending waves of sewage above ground throughout the park.

    The town once owned the park, but sold it to a residents’ cooperative. At the time of the sale, officials promised to correct the septic problem, a difficult task because of the shallow depth to groundwater and soil makeup at the site. A $600,000 system was designed, and the project was listed in the town’s capital budget.

    However, a recent push by Councilwoman Theresa Quigley to borrow money to get construction under way was stalled when three board members, Councilwoman Sylvia Overby and Councilmen Dominick Stanzione and Peter Van Scoyoc, voted instead to look into buying the residents out and returning the land to its natural state. A section of the trailer park property is adjacent to the town’s Soak Hides nature preserve, which contains a dreen leading to Three Mile Harbor.

    They expressed doubt about the potential for the proposed septic system to work effectively, and proposed that a better route would be to help the 16 low-income families at the park relocate. That way, they said, the potential for septic pollutants from the trailers to reach groundwater and the harbor headwaters would be eliminated. Ms. Quigley and Supervisor Bill Wilkinson disagreed, but the three-member majority proceeded to order an appraisal.

    Reached by phone on Tuesday, Mae Bushman, the head of the trailer park residents’ association, would not comment. She said there is “nothing happening” at the park, then added, “nothing being done with the town.”    

    “We don’t want any information going out at this time,” she said in answer to a question about how the residents were financing the project.

    Because of the residents’ financial hardship, and after requests by Ms. Bushman, the town has been waiving fees for dumping waste pumped out of the park’s septic system at the municipal scavenger waste transfer station, absorbing the cost of having that waste removed to a treatment facility.

    Tom Ruhle, the town’s director of housing and community development, who has been involved in seeking a solution for the park residents for years, said yesterday that he believed that the residents’ association had been able to obtain a loan for the septic project from the Leviticus Fund, a nonprofit group through which investors can provide capital for “socially responsible means to serve low-income neighborhoods,” according to the group’s Web site.

    The three town board members who voted to have the park site appraised have also supported the idea of developing a comprehensive town wastewater management plan, in which an examination of the septic issues at the trailer park could be included.

    They voted last Thursday to request proposals from engineering firms that could coordinate the development of such a plan. Ms. Quigley and Mr. Wilkinson voted against that move. “Statements of qualifications” from firms will be accepted through Oct. 18 by the town purchasing office, which can provide specifications as to what is being requested.

    At a meeting early this summer, Ms. Quigley expressed frustration with a possible delay in construction of the new trailer park septic system.

     “We should probably inspect every single septic system along Three Mile Harbor. Let’s do that, and let’s hire someone to help us. It’ll probably take about five years, and who knows what it will cost us — but let’s study it. And meanwhile, what will happen to the health and safety of those people?” she asked.

    Kim Shaw, the town’s director of natural resources, said that she had inspected the ongoing work at the trailer park, and that the proper County Health Department and State Department of Environmental Conservation permits had been obtained. A town building permit had been issued for the project about a month ago, she said.

    Ms. Overby and Mr. Van Scoyoc said early this week that they had heard about the septic system installation, but were unaware of the details. Ms. Quigley and Mr. Wilkinson did not respond to a request by e-mail for comment.  Mr. Stanzione, the board’s liaison to the community preservation fund committee, said that, in his view, the installation of a costly system would not necessarily preclude a future purchase of the land by the town.

   It’s Shark Week on television. The question is, how did the sharks get the word? Late Tuesday afternoon, a lifeguard at Gurney’s Inn in Montauk was knocked from his surfboard close to shore by a shark estimated to have been between five and six feet long. Christian Westergard, the guard, said he thought it was a small white shark.

    Mr. Westergard quickly paddled to shore, grabbed a rescue torpedo, and re-entered the water along with fellow guards, who had witnessed Mr. Westergard’s capsizing, to get the 30 or more swimmers out of the water. The Gurney’s guards immediately alerted their counterparts at Napeague State Park, and East Hampton Town lifeguards as well.

    Susan Yunker, the nurse at Gurney’s, said: “It came under him, knocked on his legs, then overturned him. He was fairly close to shore. That’s what bothered me. The guards were fantastic. There were people in the water and they got them out.”

    According to John McGeehan, East Hampton’s assisant head guard, the too-close encounter, which occurred at 4:30 p.m. on Tuesday, was the fifth near-shore sighting by guards this summer. Mr. McGeehan said the second scariest report came from a fisherman whose boat was within sight of Ditch Plain, Montauk. The man reportedly called his son on the beach to warn him that a large shark was circling his boat. The younger man passed the word to the lifeguards.

    On Tuesday morning, John Morley, a surfcaster on his weekly visit to the East End from New Jersey, landed a slightly smaller shark, estimated to be between four and a half and five feet long, from the beach on Napeague a few miles west of Gurney’s.

    A photo of that shark has been forwarded to the National Marine Fisheries Service shark laboratory in Narragansett, R.I., for identification.

    “I had a bird’s-eye view of the situation,” Kate Albrecht, the head lifeguard at Gurney’s, said yesterday. She said that Michael Morris, the guard on the stand, saw Mr. Westergard get tossed from his board, “and saw the shark’s shadow. I saw him run up the beach. He got out quickly. The remarkable thing is he ran and got a torp, and ran back into the water yelling at people to get out.”

    “We’ve now had probably four or five credible reports,” Mr. McGeehan said. “They’re in closer this year than in the past. There’s more squid inside, more bait.” The top guard recalled that early last summer, Bob Miller, a guard at Napeague State Park, witnessed what he thought was a large bull shark plow into the shorebreak in an effort to corner striped bass or other fishy prey.

    Ms. Albrecht reported Mr. Westergard’s description of the frightening experience: “He was sitting on his board with his legs dangling. He felt it hitting his legs, then it came back and knocked him off the board.”

    “Oh my goodness, he said the scariest part was going back into the water.”

    The future of East Hampton Town’s scavenger waste plant, a fractious issue since a three-member town board majority voted earlier this year to oppose the prior board’s decision to seek proposals from companies to lease or buy it, prompted an emotionally charged conversation at a board meeting on Tuesday. The future of the plant has aligned Councilman Dominick Stanzione, a Republican, with the two Democratic members of the board.

    The 2012 budget prepared by Supervisor Bill Wilkinson, based on the assumption that the plant would be immediately transferred, did not contain money to operate it beyond the first part of the year, nor did it include money to make needed repairs. With the sale stymied, the budget is now facing an estimated $400,000 shortfall this year.

    Councilwoman Theresa Quigley joined Mr. Wilkinson in pointing the finger at the three other members of the board, saying they were responsible for cost overruns. According to Arthur Malman, speaking on behalf of the town’s budget and finance advisory committee, the plant, which is now being operated only as a transfer station, is costing the town $30,000 a month. The committee has recommended that it be shut down “as quickly as possible — within 30 days,” albeit temporarily. It was noted that only one local septic waste carter has been depositing waste at the plant; others are trucking it out of town.

    Ms. Quigley and Mr. Wilkinson pointed out Tuesday, as they have before, that the prior board, before Councilwoman Sylvia Overby and Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc took office, had agreed in a unanimous, bipartisan vote to seek the requests for proposals from companies interested in taking the plant. Only one company responded.

    “You bear the burden of the budget being broken,” Ms. Quigley said to her colleagues. Ms. Quigley acknowledged that Mr. Stanzione and Ms. Overby, who organized a forum in April at which various experts addressed aspects of wastewater treatment plant, wanted to research all of the issues and options before setting a course for the future of the plant. But, Ms. Quigley said, “I am concerned that that decision to do more due diligence was made back in February, and it’s now August. I’m worried that as a town we are sort of in a state of non-action that’s going to continue.”

    Ms. Quigley, who has often said that, after doing her own due diligence, she had arrived at the choice of selling the plant, reiterated that, regardless of the failed vote to do so, she would not reconsider. “I’m not going to take a position on your . . . whatever it is,” she said Tuesday. “Because I’ve already made my decision. I made it a year ago.” Mr. Wilkinson has also refused to waver from his position that the plant should be sold.

    At one point, the discussion grew heated. “Theresa, you’re hysterical at one end of this, without listening to any possible solutions,” Ms. Overby said. “We need to have a discussion without the hysterics.”

    Mr. Wilkinson asked Ms. Overby repeatedly at the meeting to state how much the waste plant would cost the town this year — money that was not budgeted. “What is the forecast number against the operating budget?” he asked again and again. The $400,000 estimate was provided, Ms. Overby said, some weeks ago by Len Bernard, the town budget officer.

    “It just keeps taking money after money after money,” Ms. Quigley said of the plant. “We’re digging into surplus.”

    “There were costs that should have been anticipated, and weren’t budgeted for,” Mr. Van Scoyoc said. For instance, Ms. Overby said, pursuant to notices of environmental violations received in 2010 and 2011 from the State Department of Environmental Conservation, the town must enact a corrective action plan, which includes cleaning tanks at the plant at a cost of more than $200,000.

    “This is like a black hole; it just keeps taking money. Is there a big plan?” Ms. Quigley asked.

    “Yes, there is a big plan. That was sent to you many weeks ago,” Ms. Overby replied. After the April forum, she said, information provided by the participants, which included Kevin Phillips, a hydrologist from FPM Group Engineering and Environmental Science, and a representative of a septic system design firm, was compiled and distributed. “They all gave us recommendations,” Ms. Overby said, “and they need to be brought forward, and the town needs to look at them.”

    In addition, Ms. Overby said, about a month ago a draft “request for qualifications” — a precursor to issuing a request for proposals — was distributed to board members. It would be intended to identify consultants that could help the town prepare a comprehensive wastewater management plan.

    Mr. Stanzione has joined Ms. Overby and Mr. Van Scoyoc in saying that a big-picture look at all of the issues is needed in order to make an informed decision about the treatment plant.

     Mr. Van Scoyoc said the town has gained some insight by keeping the plant open as a transfer station over the summer. But Ms. Quigley suggested, based on something that she said “I happen to have heard from somebody who heard from somebody, that people are doing illegal things,” such as transferring waste from one truck to another, which is prohibited, or even dumping waste illegally. Ms. Overby asked for the specifics, but Ms. Quigley did not elaborate.

   Gregg Saunders, a 55-year-old real estate entrepreneur who lived in Sagaponack, was killed in a head-on collision on Montauk Highway in East Hampton shortly before noon last Thursday. The accident occurred just east of Green Hollow Road as Mr. Saunders was on his way to meet a friend at Nichol’s restaurant.

    East Hampton Village police said Mr. Saunders was driving a 2012 Prius in the eastbound lane when a westbound 2010 Audi station wagon driven by Benjamin Rechler, 19, of Brookville, swerved into his path. According to Gerard Larsen, the village police chief, Mr. Rechler had reached into the rear of the Audi to adjust a surfboard that had shifted.

    “He was on his way to see me,” Robert Schaeffer, an East Hampton Town Planning Board member, said yesterday. “We’d become good friends.” Mr. Saunders was less than a minute away from his destination when he was killed.

    Mr. Saunders had been lauded earlier this year by the planning board for his plan to create a 17,500-square-foot “hub” store not far away from the accident scene on the highway in Wainscott, where a Whole Foods market has operated this summer. The work was scheduled to begin in the fall.

    Firefighters from the East Hampton Fire Department’s heavy rescue team had to cut open Mr. Saunders’s car to allow medical workers to reach him. He was taken by an Amagansett Fire Department ambulance to Southampton Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Mr. Rechler and a passenger, Taylor Frank, 17, also of Brookville, suffered minor injuries. They were also taken in an East Hampton ambulance to South­ampton Hospital, where they were treated and released.

    Two other vehicles collided when their drivers tried to avoid the crash. A westbound van braked to avoid the collision and was struck from behind by another vehicle. The drivers and passengers of these vehicles were uninjured, police said. The highway was closed to traffic for about five hours after the collision.

    “A tremendous loss for the community,” Reed Jones, the planning board’s chairman, said of Mr. Saunders on Wednesday. “He had significant plans to redevelop Wainscott.”

    “It was an unfortunate accident,” Chief Larsen said last week. “The poice, the ambulance crews, and the Fire Department did everything they could to save him.” The chief stressed that there was no alcohol or drugs involved and that no criminal charges were filed. Mr. Rechler was issued summonses for crossing the double yellow line and failure to maintain his lane.

    A service was held for Mr. Saunders at the Star of David Chapel in Babylon. Burial followed at Mount Ararat Cemetery in Farmingdale.

    Mr. Saunders had purchased the Plitt Ford property in July 2010 at an auction for $3.9 million.

    “I never thought I’d develop where I live,” Mr. Saunders said in an interview in March after a hearing before the planning board. “I develop all over the country. But I live here. I shop here. I shop at the fish market, the bagel shop, Breadzilla. I thought, let me put something nice here.”

    His goal, he said at the time, was to build something on the site that the local people wanted.

    “I used to swim with Gregg at Gurney’s,” Bill Becker, of the Becker Home Center in Montauk, said yesterday. Mr. Becker said that when Mr. Saunders learned that the Animal Rescue Fund needed a temporary home for its thrift shop last spring while its own building was being renovated, the former Plitt Ford building, which he eventually leased to Whole Foods, was empty. “Gregg gave them the property. No rent, nothing. Just gave it to them.”

   Now that the Republican ticket is set, with Mitt Romney’s selection of Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, there is renewed focus on the vice presidency. On Friday, Aug. 24, Vice President Joe Biden will have the spotlight at an East End for Obama campaign fund-raiser. In addition to a chance to speak with Mr. Biden, guests can also engage Representative Tim Bishop, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, and New Jersey Senator Frank Lautenberg.

The event, at the Bridgehampton home of Ellen Chesler and Matthew Mallow, will be hosted by Nathan Lane, the stage and screen actor, and feature a performance by the singer-songwriter James Taylor.

Tickets start at $500 for “young professionals,” cost $1,000 for “guests,” and go up from there. For an additional $1,000 donation, attendees will receive a Mary Heilmann limited edition print, “Ocean Road.” Tickets and more information are available at mybarackobama.com/eastendforobama.

   Suzanne and David S. Reynolds, professors and longtime residents of Daniel’s Lane in Sagaponack, attended a meeting of the Sagaponack Village Board on Monday to voice concern about the “degeneration of quality of life from construction work” in the village. Ms. Reynolds said that the “excruciating noise from drilling has ruined our summer and the summer of many others.”

    Under current regulations, construction can go on seven days a week from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Sometimes, the Rey­noldses said, it continues even longer. They said noise has begun as early as 6 a.m. and gone on until as late as 9 p.m.

    A police officer had been assigned some time ago to monitor the speed of trucks and enforce the noise ordinance, but Mr. Reynolds complained that construction vehicles “barrel down the road” with no consideration for pedestrians or cars entering or exiting driveways. Ms. Reynolds said she has seen “90 workers a day on a site near us for months . . . it is intolerable . . . a round-the-clock situation.”

    Mr. Reynolds described “a constant flow of traffic in the area of Town Line Road and Daniel’s Lane, adding that he knows “several more tear-downs and big construction projects loom in the future.”

    “Can we at least get one day of peace or restrict some of those hours?” Ms. Reynolds asked the board.

    This was not the first time the board has heard these complaints, said Mayor Donald Louchheim. “We discussed it,” he said. “I am personally in favor of no construction on Sundays.” Lee Foster, the deputy mayor, agreed, provided that homeowners be allowed to use lawn equipment, etc., that day.

    A public hearing will be held after a resolution is drafted, most likely in mid-September.

    Monday afternoon’s meeting had 12 members of the public in attendance, which the mayor said is a “packed house for us.” Nearly all of them were there to listen to a discussion about revisions to the village code regarding lot coverage. East Hampton Town’s code was used as a reference for the revisions.

    Mayor Louchheim explained that the goal was to try to keep development from being spread out “so that it chews up the entire parcel . . . to give breathing space around properties,” and to bring regulations in line with other municipalities. The current draft is rough, he said, and public input is not yet appropriate until the board is closer to having a more complete version, at which time a public hearing will be scheduled.

    Another discussion involved the Old Stove Pub. A new owner plans to open it and file for a liquor license. John Woudsma, the village’s building inspector, advised the board of violations that must first be corrected, and Rhodi Cary Winchell, the village clerk, said she had told the new owner’s attorney about them. She added that the fire marshal also has issues of compliance.In other business, the board appropriated $5,000 for the tree fund for five “at risk” elm trees, in order to catch spring and fall beetles. Three bids will be requested.

    John Walsh, representing the Wolffer Trust, showed the board requested photographs of the property at 183 Sagg Road on which the trust has proposed a four-lot subdivision of the 12.3 acres. The board had asked for photos to determine how visible the development might be to cars and pedestrians. Mr. Walsh was asked to return with more information as to the height of the houses with regard to nearby trees, and with specifics about open space requirements.

    A site plan review of James and Jennifer Pike’s installation of an agricultural storage building, designated as “old business,” is off the agenda until at least September.

   About 80 people wearing red T-shirts emblazoned with the American flag and the slogan, “Tunited We Stand,” rallied in front of the Sloppy Tuna club in Montauk on Tuesday before arriving en masse at a town board meeting, ferried in 10 liveried black Escalades, to protest a court action by the town against the club, which has received numerous citations for overcrowding and noise violations.

    Later that day, a State Supreme Court judge in Central Islip denied the town’s request for a temporary restraining order enjoining the club from playing music without having a town music permit. According to John Jilnicki, the East Hampton town attorney, the town had also sought to have the court require the club to comply with the maximum occupancy limit of 99 people set by its certificate of occupancy.

    On a recent Saturday night, town fire marshals and police shut the club down for a time in order to empty it of a number of patrons.

    The nightclub supporters charged that the Tuna had been targeted by the town, a charge town officials denied. “I have been the best supporter in the Town of East Hampton of business, especially in the town of Montauk,” Supervisor Bill Wilkinson said.

    Before Drew Doscher, an owner of the club, purchased the former Nick’s and renovated it, “I sat with them, and said, we will do whatever we can to help you create that place,” Mr. Wilkinson said.

    Mr. Doscher acknowledged the meeting. “I thought we had an excellent relationship,” he told Mr. Wilkinson. “Something changed over the last year.”

    “We are a member of the community with 55 employees, 35 of whom are local residents. The owner has invested millions to upgrade the building for safety, installing handicap access, sidewalks. It’s been here as a club since 1976,” said Kieran J. Conlon, a lawyer for the Sloppy Tuna.

    “You have a responsibility . . . to apply the law equally and fairly,” Mr. Conlon said.

    Sloppy Tuna staffers argued with Mr. Wilkinson about whether he had taken pictures of the club and sent police officers there. The supervisor said he regularly drives around Montauk to check on conditions at all the clubs.

    “You can drive around and see any establishment in this town is overcrowded,” one man called out. “And we cite every one of them,” Mr. Wilkinson replied. “No you don’t,” members of the audience replied.

    Mr. Conlon said that before “millions of dollars” had been spent to renovate the club, it was “zoned” for 265 people, but the town had reduced the allowable occupancy to 99. To reduce the maximum occupancy “is in essence putting them out of business,” he said.

    The capacity was set at the issuance of a new certificate of occupancy, Mr. Jilnicki said Tuesday, and was agreed upon by both parties — town officials and the club’s owners.

    Also at question is whether or not the club, classified under zoning as both a restaurant and a nightclub, must have a music entertainment permit and whether a sprinkler system is required.

    Mr. Doscher said a sprinkler system was not initially required. But, he said, “I will comply; I will do whatever the law says.”

    However, he added,  “I feel it’s a personal vendetta against us. I’ll abide by the laws, but the laws keep changing.”

    “We had a meeting a month ago, and nothing’s been done,” Mr. Jilnicki said to him.

    Councilman Theresa Quigley criticized those who complained about the Sloppy Tuna. “What the neighbors of this institution in Montauk are doing is unfair, unneighborly, uncivil,” she said. In previous years, she said, there were no noise complaints. “I think it’s a purely political ploy,” she said, “. . . because it’s a Republican majority.”

    However, she told the club supporters, once town officials have been informed of a potential problem, they can’t ignore them. “And if the law as it’s written says there is a problem,” officials must respond, she said. “I didn’t write the code. I think it’s unreasonable,” she said.

    “We are a tourist community,” she said. “And yes, you have to put up with it for three months, unless you don’t want it to be a tourist community. That’s who we are. Put up with it.”

    “I’m glad to see you here,” she told the crowd. “Because it’s time that the business community comes out and says how difficult it is for them. But we’re told that there are violations at the Sloppy Tuna,” she added. “This isn’t a vendetta.”

    “The noise is really, really intrusive,” said a resident of Hopkins Avenue in Montauk, which he said is “seven and a half” blocks away. “I’ve gone there multiple times myself,” he said. “They’ve turned it down. By the time I get home 10 minutes later, they’ve turned it up again.”

    “If this institution existed since whenever. . . . Unfortunately, we can’t all live in silence,” Ms. Quigley said. “When you live in the hub of a community that’s vibrant — and Montauk is vibrant these days — there’s going to be noise.”

    John Behan, a former state assemblyman who came to the board meeting with the club supporters, said the first job he had after returning to Montauk from Vietnam was working the door at what was then the Pirate’s Den. The condos and motels now surrounding the downtown site were not yet built, he said. Neighbors now complaining about the noise are “like the guy who moves in next to a horse ranch and then complains he can’t stand the smell of horse shit,” he said to thunderous applause.

    Even with no music playing, a Sloppy Tuna employee said, the noise of patrons talking exceeds, at a recent measurement of 64 decibels, the 55-decibel level limit for nighttime noise prescribed in the town code.

    That’s the problem, said Chris Jones, the owner of another downtown establishment, the Montauk Beach House. “You have a town code that is so gray and so contradictory that it makes it almost impossible to interpret or enforce.” Even raindrops create sound that exceeds the nighttime noise decibel limit, he said. “It’s placing businesses in . . . an impossible position. We can’t win, whatever we do.”

    He suggested that those interested work together to address the issues, because, he said, “the way we’re operating as a community . . . it’s just going to end up in State Supreme Court.”

    Although board members said that they do not direct code enforcement efforts, Pat Lukzewska, a Montauk resident, said that the board influences enforcement through the budget, when allocating funds for staffing. And, she added, referring to Mr. Jones’s motel, “It’s embarrassing when a business opens without the proper permits, and they have town officials in attendance at the ribbon-cutting ceremony.” (The Beach House has recently been cited for violations as well.)

    Mr. Wilkinson, the town official in question, laughed. “And what is wrong with a town official opening up a business in support of the business community?” he asked before telling Ms. Lukzewska, “You haven’t told me a thing. Give me some metrics.”

    “Why can’t there be a ‘three strikes, you’re out’ policy — for the season — if you break blatant laws,” asked Frans Preidel, who, with a cottage “five feet from the Sloppy Tuna’s deck and walls,” between the club and the ocean, is “probably the most directly affected.”

    He said that in the past he had successfully communicated with the club owners, but that this year, “they decided that their bottom line was more important than being good citizens to the town and their neighbors.”

    “As much as I respect . . . the ability to do business, the community is none the better because of it,” he said.

With Reporting by Russell Drumm

    Although a traditional first Sunday in August boat party was effectively shut out of Sag Harbor Village waters last month, the party took place on its usual day, 1,600 feet outside the village’s jurisdiction, with over 100 boats gathered in New York State waters designated as a mooring field off Havens Beach. 

    The party, which was held off Barcelona Point in Northwest Harbor for years, had moved in recent years to Sag Harbor Cove. But last month, following shellfish closures in the cove and growing concern about the cove’s fragile environment, not to mention safety of the partygoers, the village board decided to require mass gathering permits for parties on the water, just as it does for parties on land. Bruce Tait, chairman of the village’s harbor committee, supported the decision.

    The fight for the boat party has gone on for almost 20 years, according to Joe Lauro, a musician, filmmaker, and organizer of the annual Shelter Island Beach Blast. Sean Scanlon, he said, was the original creator of the event around 1996, when the Lone Sharks and Nancy Atlas played on the bow of his boat, the Manana, near Barcelona Neck between Sag Harbor and East Hampton.

    “He was the man,” Mr. Lauro said yesterday of Mr. Scanlon, who stopped fighting for the party three or four years ago when the battle with the various governmental bodies, including East Hampton Town, New York State, and the Coast Guard, was no longer worth the fun, Mr. Lauro said. Now with no official organizer, the boat party goes on, but with fewer people helping out and a lot more chaos, he said.

    With no public promotion, news of the party has always spread by word of mouth. During the early afternoon at Havens Beach on Sunday, people departed from the shore in search of fun in the sun and offshore, the crowd gathered to listen to bands play on an enclosed stage on a barge. Among the performers were Stretch, a new “Grateful Dead-y jam band” created by Mr. Lauro, formerly of the Lone Sharks, and currently with the Who Dat Loungers. The Realm, the North Sea Band, and New Dawn also performed. “We live in an amazing place. It’s great that music and water create such a cool vibe,” John (Woody) Kneeland, lead singer, songwriter, guitar, and trumpeter of the Realm said yesterday.

    In the water, boats that were tied together fared well in the day’s 20-mile-per-hour winds, but navigation was tricky in the windy, open waters for single kayakers and people on inflatable rafts or floats and especially for swimmers.

    According to the Sag Harbor Village police log, one swimmer near the mooring field off Havens Beach suffered a “laceration from a Bay Constable boat.” The swimmer was aided and taken to Southampton Hospital by a Sag Harbor ambulance. Police did not return calls seeking additional information.

    “Three to four boats hit the rocks,” said Robert Bori, the Sag Harbor harbormaster. One of the boats, he said, had substantial damage. Otherwise, the party was “not too eventful,” he said. Village police also assisted a few who decided to swim out to the party, and then had trouble returning to shore in the choppy water. Police also received an anonymous call around 2 p.m. from someone concerned about a “group of under-age teens drinking while in possession of an inflatable doll” near Havens Beach. When police responded to search the area, no teens or dolls were found.

    At Havens Beach later in the afternoon, a tearful young woman roamed the sand and the shallow water calling the name “Joseph.” When people offered help, she described a boy in green shorts, but eventually it was determined that the missing “boy” was actually her 23-year old boyfriend.

    Near the beach’s restrooms, a young man was passed out on a bench, slumped across another young woman in tears. That sort of byproduct of the party is another thing that has concerned local authorities.

    Sag Harbor Mayor Brian Gilbride said last Thursday that he knew the show would go on because his grandson had heard about it and told him, but the mayor thought it would be held farther east of the breakwater. He added that he was not popular among his grandson’s friends when the board of trustees sought to oust the party from village waters.

    East Hampton Town officials, after sending a contractor to dig a drainage basin off Route 114 in East Hampton without first checking the ownership of the farmland, are now seeking a solution that will mollify the county, which owns  development rights there and is upset about the loss of agricultural soils. At the same time, the town would like to avoid having to ditch the project and forfeit some $135,000 spent so far.

    The easiest solution, Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc suggested at a town board meeting on Tuesday, would be a land swap, giving the county title to the development rights on a similar area of farmland in return for taking possession of the site where the unauthorized work was begun.

    The project was undertaken as a long-sought fix to severe flooding in adjacent neighborhoods from water running off the farm fields, which stretch between Route 114 and Long Lane.

    County officials, Mr. Van Scoyoc said, “feel this has been intrusive to the goal of preserving farmland,” with protected soils now disturbed by the excavation. A swap would resolve that issue, he said.

    Councilwoman Theresa Quigley, who organized the original project, said that she and Mr. Van Scoyoc had met with county representatives to discuss the situation. The county suggested a drainage basin of a different design, one which would be more expensive and, Ms. Quigley said, “more disruptive to farmers.”

    “My question about that is, who pays?” she said, pointing out that people whose houses were continually damaged by floods from the fields had sued and won, and were awarded damages. “The county didn’t pay,” Ms. Quigley said. “The town paid. The county is either a partner in this with us or not.”

    “While I recognize that we should have reached out to them, that’s a different issue,” she said.

    Another suggestion that had come up at the meeting, Mr. Van Scoyoc said, was to move the recharge basin to a town-owned property just to the west of the county’s lot. That soil, however, is fertile and is being farmed, he said, unlike the drainage-basin area, which is fallow because of the continual flooding.

    “The choice is to accept a swap, and the property becomes ours and we don’t have to deal with the county’s decision, or perception, about what is the proper drainage system there,” or to proceed with an application to the county for a special permit, Ms. Quigley said. Town attorneys and planners have been asked to begin preparing an application, she said.

    Keith Grimes, the contractor, has been paid $69,140 of a $293,000 contract for work already done. The town has also spent $35,000 on engineering fees. Stopping the project, returning the soils, and restarting the work would add an additional $25,000. “So clearly, trying to find a path forward would save us some money,” Mr. Van Scoyoc said.

    “One of the things the county has demanded is that we return the soil,” Ms. Quigley said. (The soils dug out were given to Mr. Grimes, pursuant to his contract with the town.) “We all know that I can get a bit irritated,” she added, and “I got irritated with that suggestion. Yes, it’s farm soil, but it’s not farmed,” she said, because the flooding stripped the soil.

    “It’s ironic, because, though the farm soils have been removed from the site, [the drainage project] will inevitably increase the farmable soils,” said Mr. Van Scoyoc.

    “They’re just frustrated that they purchased the development rights, and we took the soil away. I get that,” Ms. Quigley said.

    “So my suggestion would be that we swap a commensurate amount of land,” Mr. Van Scoyoc said. The area in question, he said, is about 300 by 300 square feet.

    “I never knew, personally, that the county was involved at all,” Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson said. “I don’t think any of us knew.”

    “We are at a standstill,” said the supervisor. “We have stopped work at this particular sump area. I am — to tell the public — pretty frustrated; to tell you the truth, pretty disappointed with the county. This town gives a lot of money to the county, and doesn’t get it back in services.” The county, he said, looked at the situation “purely as an exercise that the county had a right to that particular property, and we violated it.”