A 15-foot tall, pink, er, ah, well, what’s been dubbed a pink penis has sprouted from the edge of the cliff in the Montauk moorlands. Neighbors say they feel violated, aesthetically speaking.

    The few oceanfront homeowners in one of Montauk’s most exclusive neighborhoods say the work of art has ruined the dramatic panorama that stretches down the hoodoo-sculpted bluffs out onto the Atlantic Ocean to the horizon. To make matters worse, the pink piece is illuminated at night.

    The art is a work by the Austrian sculptor Franz West, who died on July 25 in Vienna. He was 65.

    The neighbors have politely suggested to Adam Lindenmann, an art collector and critic for The New York Observer, that if he must erect the thing he could kindly move it back from the cliff to a less exposed location. There has been no response, they say.

    Mr. Lindenmann caused a stir several years ago when he installed “Bear/Lamp,” a sculpture by Urs Fischer of a giant yellow teddy bear leaning against a reading lamp, on his Montauk moorland property. It was installed closer to Mr. Lindemann’s house, but the yellow bear raised Montauk eyebrows nonetheless. It continues to serve as a range marker for surfers and fishermen.

    Art is one thing, but the East Hampton Town Code would likely describe Mr. Lindemann’s new sculpture as a structure and as such, it would likely require a variance in order to be placed in its present location. The thing could also be in violation of the town’s lighting regulations. 





A tall, pink metal sculpture, at left, is visible from the ocean, as is a 35,000-pound yellow bear wearing what appears to be a lampshade near Adam Lindemann’s Montauk bluff-top house.                                                                                                                                              Hampton Pix

    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.”

    Only in the Hamptons might a work of abstract art, albeit a haphazard one, be used to gauge whether officials were on the right track in charging someone with a violation of law. Rian White, who had been in a five-year back-and-forth with the Town of East Hampton, which ended when a collection of what some of his neighbors considered junk was hauled away from his Springs property, is in hot water again.

    Mr. White had been cited repeatedly for not clearing his yard of car parts, tires, tools, a casement window — all manner of scrap. In 2009, the town hired an outside contractor to take it all away. (Town employees had refused to do so.) Mr. White wound up paying the hauler’s $14,000 fee through his property tax bills, but the town apparently wasn’t through with him.

    In March, the town sent him a summons along with a copy of a section of the town code that refers to the paint on one’s house. (The town complies with New York State property maintenance statutes.) The statute reads: “All exterior walls shall be free from holes, breaks, and loose or rotting materials; and maintained weatherproof and properly surface-coated where required to prevent deterioration.” 

    Mr. White saw it as a hint that the paint on his house, on Fanning Avenue, was peeling, and, in response, put up a sign in his front yard: “Help paint a starving artist’s house. Throw a pint.” 

    The sign did not say what color, or where to throw it. Mr. Rian now points to the front of his house as an Abstract Expressionist work in progress, with blue and yellow blotches on a light green background and one forceful yellow streak, a lightning bolt of sorts, across the glass panels of the front door.

    “The town told me I didn’t have enough paint on the house. None of my neighbors have paint. If you have cedar shake they don’t have to paint their houses. So, I put ladders up, had neighborhood kids over, and they threw paint at the house. I’m going to paint the sides like a regular color, but I like what happened to the front. I took 190 photos of different sections, five by six. They came out nuts,” Mr. Rian said on Tuesday.

    Mr. White reported that he had missed a June 9 court appearance. “I called them that morning and said I was busy painting and didn’t have a ride up there.” He said yesterday that he imagined the town had ordered him to appear in court on another date, but he hadn’t checked his mail box.

    He might have painted his house the traditional way, “but the town took all my paint, brushes, and took a brand-new Anderson casement window, put it in a truck and crushed it,” he said, referring to incident in 2009, which he videoed and titled “Trampled,” Parts One and Two.  

    Meanwhile, Lawrence Kelly, who is representing a number of local business owners who have run afoul of town enforcement, thinks Mr. White may be the canary in the Constitutional coal mine. A former federal prosecutor based in Garden City, he expects to file a class-action suit against the town within two weeks on the grounds that code enforcement here is unconstitutional.

    Although not representing Mr. White, Mr. Kelly said the case was important as an example of the town’s “reactive departments. They have become reactive to singular neighbors. Singular neighbors move the government.”

    Mr. Kelly is representing Tom Ferreira of Montauk, an auto mechanic who has filed a $55 million civil rights action against the town in federal court in May. Cars, car parts, and tools were removed from Mr. Ferreira’s Navy Road property, Mr. Kelly said, without a warrant, although he had a pre-existing, nonconforming right to operate a garage. He was charged $19,500 for two separate hauls by Trinity Transportation, the same contractor hired in the Rian White case, and because he has been unable to pay it, a tax lien has been placed on his property, making foreclosure a probability.

     Mr. Kelly faulted the concept of town board member liaisons. “For the past eight years you’ve had this split in management, so you end up with people like Ferreira, or simply because a neighbor doesn’t want to live next to Mexicans, they are raided.”

    The class action suit Mr. Kelly plans to bring is based on his contention that because the town did not exempt its own code from requirements of the state fire, building, and property maintenance codes in 2003, “summonses are void, unenforceable, and issued by guys who are not authorized. Everything in the same area is pre-empted, unenforceable, and void. But, they have been issuing them all this summer.”

    Mr. Kelly said that because the code enforcement employees were not authorized under state law, their actions are unconstitutional. “I’m going to have thousands of claimants.” He has warned the town that it is facing financial Armageddon in open town board meetings.

     “This Rian White thing is them testing the waters to see if anyone’s still looking,” Mr. Kelly said.

    Mr. White said: “The whole thing with  Tom [Ferreira] is giving me renewed knowledge that this is a bunch of crap. I’m a firm believer in the Constitution of the United States, and it’s getting walked all over in this town.”

    Asked about Mr. Kelly’s assertions regarding the legal authority of the town’s code enforcement office, Supervisor Bill Wilkinson said yesterday that he had questioned the attorney in response to the same claims he had made several times to the town board.

    “He suggested I set up some kind of mediation board, establish some sort of dispute resolution system and bring the parties together. I said, ‘Based on what? I have no proof we have done anything wrong.’ ” Mr. Wilkinson said he had asked that Mr. Kelly’s assertions be researched. “My subordinates are telling me we don’t have a problem,” he said.

    “It’s been a crazy year for ticks,” George Dempsey, M.D., said at his East Hampton office late last month. “Several new cases a week.” Dr. Dempsey is now participating in an international research study of Lyme disease. “I’m excited to start getting some results. I think after the summer we will have some preliminary information. The more info we get the better.”

    Working in the office formerly occupied by Dr. Joseph Burruscano, whom he called “the Holy Grail of Lyme disease,” Dr. Dempsey said, “We have 10 subjects . . . it would be nice to get 20.” In order to take part in the study, patients need to have a “brand-new case and a fresh new rash.” After a visit with Dr. Dempsey — with the tick, if possible — patients can be treated by whomever they wish, he said.

    Not only has the doctor noted an increase in Lyme cases this year compared to previous years, he has detected an increase in other tick-related infections. He has also noticed that those with the “bull’s-eye” rash are tourists more often than year-round residents. He guessed that “many of them probably go back to the city and don’t know what is going on. The population has increased out here,” he said, and many people “are not aware of prevention measures.”

    “I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t really hear,” said Marissa Fanelli, who lives on Shelter Island and has had Lyme disease and related infections since she was 15. Experiencing severe vertigo, fatigue, and pain because of nerve damage in her throat and ear in her 30s, she went to “doctor after doctor,” who suggested she had multiple sclerosis, lupus, and even a brain tumor before she was finally diagnosed with bartonella, a tick-borne disease, after meeting a facial-pain specialist while attending dental hygienist school in New Jersey.

    For years, tick-related illnesses have been misdiagnosed as other diseases with similar symptoms, such as loss of facial muscle tone, severe headaches, neck stiffness, and shooting pains.

    “If left untreated, it can result in severe debilitation and death,” warned Jesse A. Stoff, M.D., who spoke about Lyme to a little over 20 people at the Wild by Nature market in Hampton Bays last month. He has seen the complexities of the disease in the several new cases he encounters weekly at the East End Wellness Center in Riverhead. Dr. Stoff showed slides of bacteria in the spirochete family, explaining that they are hard to kill because of phased life cycles in which it lies dormant inside cells.

    Regarding other common tick-borne illnesses, like babesiosis, bartonella, and ehrlichiosis, Dr. Dempsey said, “If there are 100 with Lyme disease, 30 will have other diseases as well.”

    Charlie Mattson of Shelter Island, who has babesiosis, said in an e-mail message that the infection not only made him “feel like s*** for over a month,” but also had a strange, and increasingly common, life-changing effect: “I can no longer eat red meat,” he said. When he does, he vomits and sweats for three days. Some doctors think the symptom results from developing an allergy to animal protein. Mr. Mattson now has to “watch everything I eat, and most barbecues don’t have much in the way of chicken.”

    Because there are several strains of bacteria with different protein patterns, Dr. Stoff explained, all tests don’t cover all variations.

    “The lab tests are not precise,” Glenn Goodman, D.C., of Sag Harbor said. “Cutting-edge doctors will diagnose from symptoms, not lab tests.”

    Dr. Stoff believes that “the ultimate test is a culture,” but the culture is slow-growing, and it can take up to five weeks to obtain results.

    Bringing the tick along to the doctor’s office is helpful, Dr. Dempsey said. “If we know what we’re looking at, it saves a lot of grief. Many ticks are not a problem . . . just because they’re small doesn’t mean it’s a deer tick. It can be a baby tick.”

    “I haven’t heard of any Lyme cases that are fatal,” he said. But other tick diseases and co-infections can be. He said ehrlichiosis is the worst, but that babesiosis can be very severe as well. “They are so sick,” he said of people with ehrlichiosis, which “blood work doesn’t always pick up. . . . I’m tipped off just by seeing them, but it is treatable.”

The Cost, the Numbers

    Even with an IV for aggressive antibiotic treatment, Ms. Fanelli still suffers from constant nerve pain, fatigue, and brain fog (which she called “Lyme brain”). “The cost,” she said, “is ridiculous.” Last year, she spent more than $26,000 in medication alone, not including weekly blood tests and doctor visits. “Insurance companies don’t pay without a positive test,” she said. “We have to fight for better testing.” From her research and experience, she said, “most Lyme tests are negative.”

    Working to educate herself and help others, Ms. Fanelli attends conventions held by “Lyme-literate doctors” and has traveled to Washington, D.C. “It’s horrific,” she said of the long-term symptoms, which in her support group of “Lymies” range from eye problems and arthritic pain to immune system disorders and even permanent paralysis. “It’s a lot more serious than people think. This time last year, I didn’t think I was going to make it.”

    Ms. Fanelli found that she needed help from the Tick-Borne Disease Alliance, which supports initiatives to find cures and raises money for health practitioners who want to be educated about the latest research and co-infections.

    Dr. Dempsey suggested donations to TimeforLyme.org for research into chronic Lyme conditions. “We have some great technology,” he said. “We can distinguish DNA by means that we couldn’t before, to find the genetic sequence down to the exact nucleic acid. . . . Ticks carry numerous diseases,” he said, “I don’t make many assumptions.”

    The number of Lyme disease cases must be confirmed by a lab, Dr. Dempsey said, as it is a reportable disease, but only Suffolk County as a whole is tabulated: At a rate of 1,000 per two million people, the numbers don’t reveal the intensity of infections on the East End, particularly since in Suffolk “half a million never get near a tick.” He said it was essential to find better ways of diagnosing and identifying all diseases in ticks.

When a Tick Is Found

    Although many ticks are simply too small to be detected, if a tick is found on the body, “safe removal is important,” Dr. Stoff said. Some recommend using iodine or olive oil to help release the tick’s grip on the skin, he said, but removal should involve tweezers. “Grab it just below its rear enlarged part, as close to the head as possible. Pull it straight out in one piece with gentle traction” while trying to avoid squeezing the blood of the tick into your system.

    There are several schools of thought on treating Lyme disease, Dr. Stoff said. “If you live in a high-risk area, my recommendation is to take the antibiotics. . . . I’m not a huge fan of drugs in my practice, but I have not found any research indicating anything besides an antibiotic that can kill the bacteria.”

    “It’s critical to pile in tons of probiotics,” he added. However, “ongoing antibiotics will not work,” Dr. Stoff said, for what he called post-Lyme syndrome — symptoms virtually identical to the initial illness but that appear after Lyme is successfully treated. “There are tests for post-Lyme syndrome which look at inflammatory markers in the blood.”

    Dr. Stoff’s treatment plan, designed to “get the immune system back,” often includes progressive allergy desensitization to stimulate the balance of fighter T-cells. He also recommends supplements, including fish oil and vitamins C and D. He said there was a “huge difference between natural and synthetic stuff.” Diet, digestion, sleep, and avoiding stress are crucial.

    Dr. Goodman uses herbs that “have extensive historic application as anti-microbials, and we also use homeopathic remedies.” His goal is to use remedies that provoke “regenerative nutritive action” to re-establish the immune system. Dr. Goodman has a practice with his wife, Dr. Suzanne Kirby, that offers alternatives and complementary approaches.

    “I am not against the use of antibiotics,” he said. “However, there are instances where they are inadequate or ineffective.” He explained that in addition to killing bacteria, “the remedies help the cell to both eject the stored toxins and provide it with nutrients to increase the cell’s function.”

    In Dr. Dempsey’s office, if a patient has a rash, “call it Lyme and treat it.” He said that most doctors will follow standard infectious disease guidelines, with antibiotic treatment ranging from 10 to 21 days, depending on the size of the rash and the severity of the symptoms.

    Dr. Jerry Simon, who used to work with Dr. Burruscano, has a practice in that office as well, offering alternative treatments. “We are trying to treat it from all sides,” Dr. Dempsey said. “It is an art, leave it to us.”

    According to Dr. Burrascano’s Web site, “Despite antibiotic treatments, patients will not return to normal unless they exercise. . . . A properly executed exercise program becomes part of the treatment, as it can actually go beyond the antibiotics in helping to clear the symptoms and to maintain a remission.”

Prevention

    Prevention is something all residents could be better acquainted with, Dr. Dempsey said — wearing clothing treated with permethrin designed to withstand 60 wash cycles, for instance.

    “Stay out of the high grasses,” Dr. Goodman said, “and do the tick checks.”

    Dr. Stoff warned against “dogs and cats that go outside and then come inside and bring ticks. . . . You can get Lyme disease from your own bed.” He said those with pets should have them wear tick collars and treat them with tick dip. “Do not let them into your bedroom.”

    Dr. Dempsey’s long-term study is open to every age and gender, as long as participants have a rash, which he will biopsy. The organisms in the skin are analyzed for types and strains, and blood is drawn to be sent to a laboratory in California — “the only one in the world that does it,” he said. The research has been funded by a grant from the National Institutes of Health and sponsored through the State University of New York, the Rockefeller Institute, and the New Jersey School of Medicine. The study is being replicated near John Hopkins University in Baltimore and also in the Midwest.

    Another way to help, according to Dr. Dempsey, is to push for financing for the United States Department of Health and Human Services. “It does not have the funds,” he said. “Science, that’s what I am into. We still have a lot to sort out.”

    No matter where they turn, the East Hampton Town Trustees keep saying, regulations that protect the beaches and bottomlands, which they own and manage on behalf of the public, are not being enforced. Violations of beach-driving and shellfishing ordinances and illegal dock construction are on the top their list.

    During a July 24 work session, trustees agreed that Ed Michels, the chief harbormaster, was doing all he could. But, they said, more boots on the ground were needed. They suggested that deputy harbormasters be hired.

    Mr. Michels heads Marine Patrol, a division of the Town Police Department, which employs eight or nine part-time officers. Reached after the meeting, Mr. Michels said, “There is no such thing as deputization. You’re either a part-time police officer or a part-time peace officer.” They pointed out that they receive the same training as other police officers and carry firearms.

    Mr. Michels agreed that part-time officers were in order, but said he did not have an idea where the money to hire them would come from. The East Hampton Town Board controls the Police Department’s budget as well as the trustees’.

     Lynn Mendelman, a trustee, had suggested at the meeting that the trustees ask the town board to increase its mariculture budget to help pay for enforcement. Diane McNally, the group’s presiding officer, endorsed the idea yesterday. The budget line, which is used to assist the town hatchery and to pay baymen to relay oysters from Oyster Pond to other town waters, has remained at about $5,000 for years.

    Another trustee, Nat Miller, said it was not only people “from away” who were violating shellfish regulations, for instance, but locals, who knew where enforcement personnel were not looking.

    The health of Napeague Harbor was also on the agenda at the July 24 session.

    Ms. McNally reported on a recent meeting with other town officials on a study by William Bowman of Land Use Ecological Services, a Medford firm, which had been hired by the Peconic Estuary Program.

    Napeague Harbor has had two navigation channels historically, one on the east side of Hicks Island, the other on the west side, and sometimes both. The east channel has been closed for several years because of shoaling. According to Kim Shaw of the Town Natural Resources Department, what had started as a study of Napeague Harbor’s tidal circulation had become a “dredging feasibility” study because of budgetary constraints.    

    The trustees would like to see the east channel reopened, but Ms. Shaw said yesterday that was unlikely because the county would entertain the dredging of only one navigational channel, and the west channel was now functioning. Because the east channel is no longer navigable, Ms. Shaw said, reopening it would require it to be considered as a new project with ensuing bureaucratic hurdles. She also said that a hydrologist working with the Peconic Estuary Program as a consultant had said Napeague Harbor could not support two channels.

    The trustees did not seem deterred. In the interest of keeping the east side of the harbor flushed by tidal currents, they discussed the possibility of maintaining it with a culvert such as they have under Gerard Drive in Springs, which opens the north end of Accabonac Harbor to Gardiner’ Bay.

Local pilots are baffled by recent full-page ads offering the Montauk Airport as a parcel for sale. Collectively it appears they are against it, and some of them are considering pooling their resources to buy it. But not for the $18.5 million that it is listed for, an amount they said just doesn’t make sense.

Peter Lowenstein, the president of the Montauk Pilot’s Association, which has 25 members, said that he is involved with a group that might be willing to buy the airport so that the hamlet doesn’t lose its only airstrip.

“Every single pilot would be extremely unhappy if there is not an airport,” he said, adding that it is “reasonably used,” especially in summer.

Paul Brennan of Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate, who holds the listing, agrees with Mr. Lowenstein that it would be a shame for the hamlet to lose the airport. He said Monday that he has contacted several government officials to see if a partnership could be arranged between town, county, and state entities to buy it, possibly with community preservation fund money, but to no avail.

“Government doesn’t seem to want to be involved. Wilkinson doesn’t want another headache,” he said, referring to East Hampton Town’s supervisor. “What if there is a hurricane and Napeague gets washed out or an evacuation? I don’t think people are thinking down the road,” he said.

This is not the first time there has been talk of a public purchase of the airstrip. In 1961, negotiations were underway for the sale of the airport and its incorporation into a proposed Suffolk County Airport Authority. The Federal Aviation Administration even made $250,000 available to the county to buy the airport the following year, but neither the sale nor the county airport authority came to pass.

Mr. Brennan said this week that a buyer could subdivide the 37-acre airport into six lots (that would probably be reduced to four as it progressed) and put a housing development on the land.

The airport is owned by eight stockholders who have asked not to be named, Mr. Brennan said. “They really don’t want people asking them why they’re selling the airport.”

One of the shareholders is the Duryea family of Montauk, which has had a hand in the airport since its construction in the late 1950s. In 1957 Montauk Airstrip Incorporated, headed by Perry B. Duryea Jr., bought the airport tract off East Lake Drive from the Montauk Beach Company. Mr. Duryea, a pilot in World War II, was speaker of the New York State Assembly.

The airport first opened for light planes in February 1958 and opened fully that spring. At the time a “portel” was planned that would have included a structure with 15 motel-type apartments, a 30-slip marina, and a Hertz rental car service, none of which panned out.

Mr. Duryea’s son, Perry (Chip) Duryea III, did not return a call for comment this week.

Mr. Brennan has held the listing for a month now, and tried to work with government officials before making it public just last week. The airport is surrounded by 1,000 acres of county parkland, including the camping area at Gin Beach.

Suffolk County Legislator Jay Schneiderman, a Montauk resident, said on Tuesday that the Montauk Airport is still limited by the stipulations of a Federal Aviation Association grant that was issued for runway improvements in 1996, which prohibits any changes for another 10 years.

The county’s finances right now would not allow for purchase of the airport, but, he said, portions of the surrounding property could be bought with money from the town’s preservation fund, and other portions might eventually be purchased through the county’s land fund program.

He wondered if East Hampton Town would even want two airports. “It doesn’t seem that they like the airport they have,” he said. East Hampton Airport, which is owned by the town, has been the subject of ongoing litigation over one thing or another for years.

He, too, said that without an airstrip in the hamlet, future evacuations in case of natural disasters could be jeopardized. “I think it would be a terrible loss for Montauk. We have to consider the options. In Montauk people will fight losing the airport,” he said, later adding, “It would be bad. That would be something I’d really not like to see. What if medical supplies had to be delivered to Montauk? Without an airport it would be hard.”

State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele concurred, but said that the state would not get involved with a possible purchase. He said he has been approached by a group of users interested in buying the property. “People have expressed an interest. There are those who want to see an airport remain. They’re going to have to step up to the plate,” he said, crediting Mr. Brennan for working behind the scenes to find an alternative to residential development.

Mr. Brennan hopes the pilots do manage to see the airport remain. “I think it would be a shame for a Hilton to go in there,” he said.

With Research by Leah Steans-Gail

    The saga of the Montauk Beach House is headed to the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals following a determination by the town’s head building inspector, Tom Prieato, that it has expanded certain uses without approval. In a letter sent on Friday to one of the resort’s owners, Chris Jones, Mr. Prieato said the questioned uses should be shut down immediately. The Beach House has appealed.

    The Beach House, which renovated the old Ronjo Motel on Montauk’s South Elmwood Street, opened in late June amid much fanfare. It has 33 rooms, couches and lounges in the pool area and on an upper deck, a Jacuzzi, a women’s clothing shop, and a bar. It is Mr. Prieato’s opinion that the renovation plans did not indicate a shop and that the bar was intended for “guest services” not the general public.

    “The code is gray, at best,” Mr. Jones said this week. “It puts owners of a property in a position where there is no right or wrong, only shades of gray.”

    Mr. Prieato’s letter also noted the creation of the retail shop in what had been a shed without approval. “These are serious issues, and you are directed to cease the operation of the same, since it is in violation of the [town] code and to avoid further enforcement proceedings,” the letter states.

    “The code is far from perfect and this will give us a chance to clarify,” Richard A. Hammer of Biondo and Hammer, an attorney for the Beach House, said yesterday.

    “Has the bar exceeded accessory use and, if so, we need to know what are the ground rules, what does the code mean?”

    Mr. Hammer said that he submitted a Freedom of Information Law request to the town fire marshal’s office in an attempt to find out what that office’s inspections have shown operating there over the past 40 years.

    “What constitutes an accessory use?” Mr. Hammer asked. If an accessory bar is limited to the hotel’s customers, and a friend were on the premises, “can the  friend sit down for a drink?”

    “We can’t operate a resort without guest amenities. You can’t run a resort like that,” Mr. Jones said yesterday.

    Patrick Gunn, an attorney who is head of public safety for the town, said yesterday that he supports Mr. Prieato’s determination. The town attorney’s office will take the next few days to assess any future actions, he said.

    Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson congratulated the Beach House’s owners at its opening festivities, saying, “This baby has been delivered today.” The town board’s decision to sell a portion of a public alley that runs through the property to the Beach House for $35,000 without first having the land appraised had stirred political controversy. Mr. Wilkinson and others have hailed the resort for helping the Montauk economy.

    On Tuesday, Mr. Jones said, “We have partnerships with the surf shop, the bike shop, the Bake Shop, the T-shirt guys, all the local businesses. It’s sad that people aren’t talking about that.”

    Apparently it’s true. Piping plovers do taste like chicken, at least crows and foxes think so. Both predators have been on the increase for the past several years, foxes following an outbreak of mange that culled the population, and crows having recovered from the effects of the West Nile virus.

    During a meeting of the East Hampton Town Trustees on Tuesday night, Stephen Lester, a trustee, asked if changes in United States Fish and Wildlife Service policy regarding the birds, changes that permitted people to spread towels and amble through areas sectioned off by snow fencing, were playing a negative role.

    Lisa D’Andrea of the East Hampton Town Planning Department reported a dramatic drop in the number of the endangered and carefully protected shore bird hatchlings that lived long enough to fledge.

    At the ocean beach by Georgica Pond, 12 chicks were hatched from three nests. All were taken by foxes. “Crows and foxes are back. A couple of exclosures were dug out,” Ms. D’Andrea said, referring to the wire cages often placed over nests to keep predators from them. “There was a nest at Lily Pond. A fox tried to dig it out, but didn’t succeed. We’re hoping they will survive. At the first plover nest that hatched at Lily Pond, chicks were gone in a couple of days. A fox got them,” Ms. D’Andrea said on Tuesday.

    “Crows like the eggs and will go after young chicks. They are smart enough to know eggs are in the exclosures and if they keep watching, the hatchlings will eventually run out. We had a nest at Main Beach. We caught the crows sitting on the exclosure. The day they hatched, the crows were there. Parents saved two. It’s a learned behavior,” she said of the crows’ patience and cunning.

    Ms. D’Andrea, who oversees the town’s plover protection efforts on approximately 18 miles of East Hampton coastline, said exclosures were used on a case by case basis.

    “Sometimes exclosing them isn’t good. It announces they are there. Same with foxes. They see the structure. In some respects it’s like a bull’s-eye,” a target that counteracts the birds’ natural beach-colored, white, tan, and gray camouflage.

    The rebounding fox population had been devastating for the endangered least tern breeding season. “We can’t exclose them. They’re fliers. Their defense is not so much camo, but numbers, but dive-bombing a fox doesn’t work.”

    The town’s plover watcher said that after the mange devastated the fox population during the winter of 2000, plovers and least terns benefited from the predator’s absence. “There were a few of years of good plover activity. 

    In 2009, there were 46 plover pairs and 55 fledges. In 2006, one of the best seasons ever recorded, 56 plover pairs produced 94 fledges. In all, town managers watched over 31 pairs of plovers this season. As of Tuesday there were 24 fledges with a possible five more to come.

    Piping plovers and least terns are protected by both state and federal law, and all efforts by town and county park and conservation agencies must follow guidelines adopted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. There are nesting areas on state land at Hicks Island, Napeague State Park, Goff Point, and Hither Hills State Park. Plovers nest on county parkland at Gin Beach in Montauk, Northwest Harbor, and Cedar Point Park in the Northwest section of East Hampton.

    Mr. Lester’s question regarding any changes in Fish and Wildlife policy was answered yesterday during a phone interview with Steven Papa, a senior fish and wildlife biologist with the service. There have been no changes:

    “Snow fencing is meant to keep vehicles out, but does not preclude beachgoers. The symbolic fencing [rope or string with flags] is the protected area. Nobody is allowed in those areas,” Mr. Papa said. Mr. Papa said he had put out a call to state and county park bird watchers for their fledgling numbers. They will be available soon. 

    “Is this the right place?”

    She was holding a small piece of paper in her hand. On it was written a  time, 9:30, and the address of the building behind her, the East Hampton Town Justice Court.

    It was 7:30 on Sunday morning.

    Seven hours earlier, her husband had been arrested, charged with driving while intoxicated.

    The couple are here from Brazil on a one-month vacation, staying in a corporate apartment on West 51st Street in Manhattan.

    They rented a car and drove out to Montauk on a whim, spending the day at the beach and having dinner at the Surf Lodge. There were no rooms available there so they decided to head west, looking for a motel. They got a quarter-mile or so down Industrial Road, to the bend where it turns into Second House Road, when they were pulled over by an East Hampton Village police officer, stationed in Montauk on Saturday night as part of a task force targeting drunken drivers.

    “He had a beer,” Marcella Drumond said.

    Her husband, Jose Drumond, was asked to step out of the car, she said. She sat in the dark, watching him perform roadside sobriety tests, walking seven steps, heel touching toe, hands at the sides.

    Suddenly, she said, he was gone.

    The officer handed her the piece of paper.

    She had nowhere to go and no one to speak to. Portuguese is not a language frequently heard on the East End, and her English is minimal. She sat in their car all night, waiting for the morning.

    Told she was in the right place, she repeated, “He had a beer. And they arrested him. I hate this place. I want to go back to Brazil.”

    She pulled the car into a shadow cast by the building, an early morning respite from the rising summer sun.

    Melissa Aguanno, an assistant district attorney who is putting in her final two weeks at the D.A.’s office before making the plunge into private practice, was the first official to arrive. She was followed by two East Hampton police officers, one from the town, the other from the village, both carrying paperwork from the night’s arrests. Ms. Aguanno thumbed through the reports, making small talk with the officers before going inside.

    There had been 11 arrests during the night. There was a lot of paperwork.

    The sun was higher in the sky, the shadow cast by the still-locked courthouse gone, so Ms. Drumond got out of the car and walked to a picnic table shaded by a large oak tree.

    Tania Valverde, a translator, arrived. Ms. Valverde speaks five languages fluently, including Portuguese, having lived in Brazil for nine years. Ms. Drumond was pointed out to her. She went over and began talking.

    Hearing her native tongue, Ms. Drumond’s emotional dam burst, and she started to cry. The two women spoke for several minutes under the shady tree.

    Justice Catherine Cahill arrived. There were now several other people standing around the parking lot, friends and relatives of those arrested.

    An East Hampton Town police van pulled up. The first six arrestees stepped out, hands shackled behind their backs, and walked single-file into the building.

    “Where is he? He’s not there,” said Ms. Drumond.

    She was told he would be in the second group. She went into the courthouse and sat down as the first defendants were arraigned.

    Then they brought Mr. Drumond in, seating him at the end of the bench, closest to the onlookers. The couple were able to exchange a few words.

    Trevor M. Darrell, an attorney who was representing another defendant, acted as Mr. Drumond’s counsel for the arraignment. Mr. Drumond, he told the court, is an attorney in Brazil.

    Ms. Aguanno initially requested that bail be set at $800, a figure that made sense to Justice Cahill, until Mr. Darrell explained that his only resource for bail would be Ms. Drumond’s debit card, which had a $500 limit.

    The justice agreed to bail of $500 and set a return date to finish the arraignment for July 25 at 1 p.m., noting that the paperwork was incomplete but that Mr. Drumond had refused to take a breath test. An officer led him away.

    Ms. Drumond was given directions to a cash machine and to village police headquarters, where her husband was being held. Cash in hand, she went to the station. Detective Sgt. Bryan Eldridge greeted her, counted out the bills she handed him, and promised to bring her husband out in a couple of minutes.

    While she waited, she was told that in New York State, refusal to take a breath test leads to an automatic license suspension and immediate arrest.

    “In Brazil,” she said, “the breath test is not required, so nobody ever takes it.”

    The arrest report that was released on Monday does not say just what happened during Mr. Drumond’s arrest, so it was unclear as of yesterday whether his declining to take a breath test was what led to his being charged.

    After a short time the detective brought him out to where his wife waited, wished him luck, and went back to his office. Alone in the lobby, the Drumonds sat on a bench, embraced, and quietly cried.

   On Wednesday, the district attorney’s office agreed to lower the charge against Mr. Drumond to driving under the influence, a violation, in return for 40 hours of community service, which Mr. Drumond will complete over the next week.

     A head-on crash between a pickup truck and a Volvo on Route 114 south of Sag Harbor claimed the life of the Volvo driver, Douglas Foster Schneiderman, 51, of Maclean, Va., and left his two passengers hospitalized with serious injuries. The accident happened a little after noon on Sunday.

     Brian K. Midgett, 20, of East Hampton, the driver of the 1996 Ford truck, was airlifted to Stony Brook University Medical Center with what East Hampton Town police described as serious injuries. Police said Mr. Midgett's truck, which was southbound, had drifted into the oncoming lane.

      Police impounded both vehicles for inspection. Anyone with information about the accident has been asked to call (631) 537-7575.