As Election Day nears, endorsement announcements in the East Hampton Town race are beginning to trickle in, with the big news of this week being State Senator Kenneth P. LaValle’s and Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele’s support of the incumbent supervisor Bill Wilkinson, a Republican.

    Mr. Thiele, an Independence Party member, is also endorsing Bill Mott, an Independence Party candidate, for town board.

    Also this week, the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgendered Democrats of Suffolk County weighed in on the local race, endorsing the Democratic slate, Zach Cohen for supervisor and Sylvia Overby and Peter Van Scoyoc for town board, as well as Scott King for highway superintendent, and Sima Freierman, Stephen Lester, Samuel Kramer, Rona Klopman, Nanci LaGarenne, Loretta Sears, and Deborah Klughers for town trustees.

    In an interview yesterday, Mr. Thiele said that typically, state politicians do not get involved on such a local level, but “given the depth of the crisis in East Hampton,” he and Mr. LaValle, a Republican, decided it was necessary. They have found Mr. Wilkinson a “good partner” in tackling the town’s fiscal troubles. Mr. Thiele says Mr. Wilkinson’s competence in working to reduce the $27 million deficit he inherited is the crux of the reason he chose to support him for a second term. Mr. Thiele and Mr. LaValle also endorsed Mr. Wilkinson in 2009.

    “Our decision really had to do with the work I’ve done with Wilkinson in regards to town’s finances,” he said. The state lawmakers worked with Mr. Wilkinson on two pieces of legislation — a deficit financing bill and another giving the town athority to finance a voluntary employee separation incentive bill — and have seen him produce “two balanced budgets. Finances, fiscal policies, and budgeting from the federal level to the state on down is going to continue to be the big issue for the next two years.”

    Mr. Thiele said that both he and Senator LaValle believe Mr. Wilkinson deserves to finish the good work he has done on straightening out the town’s finances.

    Steve Henaghan, chairman of Gay and Lesbian Democrats, explained that his group’s endorsements were based on candidates’ responses to a questionnaire addressing issues that directly affect the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered community from marriage equality and the civil rights of transgender individuals to abortion and hate crime legislation.

    Mr. Henaghan explained in an interview yesterday that although the candidates running for these particular offices would not likely have to address these issues directly, it was of utmost importance to understand the candidates’ individual stances on these controversial topics.

    “Obviously we were concerned about marriage equality,” he said. “We wanted to know if the [candidates] personally support this law and would they speak out against those who want to weaken or overturn it. We also wanted to make sure they were supportive of transgender issues. Would they personally support a bill called the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act, which will grant the basic civil rights the everyone else has. These folks were very supportive of all of these issues.”

    A letter that will be sent to the two East Hampton Town justices asking them to do more to crack down on problems at the Surf Lodge restaurant was unanimously approved by the Montauk citizens advisory committee at a meeting on Monday.

    Written by Jay Fruin, a committee member, the letter asks Justices Lisa R. Rana and Catherine A. Cahill to take on the Surf Lodge, which, according to Pat Gunn, an assistant town attorney and the administrator of the town’s Public Safety Division, has been cited some 640 times since June for alleged code violations. The citations are for an outdoor bar and a food wagon that is parked outside the business.

    Lisa Grenci, the committee chairwoman, said she met with Rob McKinley, who runs the Surf Lodge, and told him he should remove the offending items. “If it’s an awning, get rid of it. If it’s a food truck, get rid of it. We’ve had enough, and we’re fed up with it,” she said she told him.

    In an e-mail message on Tuesday, Mr. McKinley disputed what Ms. Grenci said. He accused her of playing both sides of the fence. “Lisa also has no problem taking our money for rentals,” he said.

    Ms. Grenci, a real estate agent, explained that she has a client who has rented employee housing to Surf Lodge. “I can’t discriminate.”

    Mr. McKinley said the restaurant had not removed the awning or food truck as they did not believe they were in violation. “That’s what our lawyer and East Hampton court will decide,” he wrote.

    “And frankly I feel no matter what we do the ‘committees’ will find bogus claims against us because we aren’t what they want in town. But guess what? We are doing a lot more that is right than wrong,” he wrote.

    In its letter to the justices, the committee wrote, “This is to alert you about a critical issue before you which has negatively compromised the quality of life in the hamlet of Montauk. For the third summer, the business known as Surf Lodge has flagrantly and repeatedly abused the privilege to conduct business.” The letter will also be sent to the town attorney’s office.

    It goes on to say that “at the peak of the season their ongoing flagrant disregard for the law has consumed valuable code and law enforcement resources from other important duties. Their pattern of behavior negatively impacts the community while hundreds of other businesses are able to successfully operate without violating the same town codes and regulations.”

    The committee asked that the justices not consolidate all violations into a single or reduced fine, nor rearrange their court calendar for the convenience of the defense attorney. It also requested them to apply the maximum penalty for each individual violation.

    Committee members charged that the Surf Lodge, which is owned by King and Grove, a corporate group that includes Jayma Cardoso and Rob McKinley, is gaming the system by delaying the charges until after its liquor license is renewed, reportedly in January.

    Members suggested letting the State Liquor Authority know about the number of violations against the club, which opened in May 2009 and has drawn huge crowds and popular musical acts to the lakefront establishment ever since, on the theory that the license might not be renewed.

    At the meeting, the town’s code enforcement office was hit with accusations that code enforcement in Montauk is questionable. Members said they have been complaining about the 7-Eleven sign, which is on a state right of way in front of the establishment, for over a year with no results. “We don’t have code enforcement,” said Linda Barnds, the committee’s secretary.

    “We need the guys from East Hampton Village. They get things done,” said Ray Cortell, a committee member.

    Mr. Gunn of the Public Safety Division took issue with those comments on Tuesday. In an e-mail message he rejected that assertion and wondered where such “unfounded information” came from. “It’s an insult to the hard-working men and women in the ordinance enforcement department for anyone to make a reckless comment like that,” he wrote.

    “Surf Lodge is an ongoing litigation and cannot be discussed by the town while charges are pending,” he said.

    Since January, the ordinance department has opened 191 cases in Montauk, a number that represents 20 percent of cases townwide, he said.

    Mr. Gunn said the 7-Eleven sign was out of his jurisdiction because it is in a state right of way, but noted that the convenience store had been charged for failure to obtain permission for the sign from the East Hampton Town Architectural Review Board. He referred further questions to the town attorney’s office.

     Rob Connelly, an assistant town attorney, said yesterday that there were three charges against the Montauk 7-Eleven that were recently adjudicated in court, including the sidewalk sign. The store was found guilty, he said, and told to remove the sign.

    A long saga of legal challenges to a 1998 East Hampton Town law barring most ferries from docking here came to a close this week with a United States Supreme Court decision not to review the case. The decision was made on Monday morning, on the first day of the Supreme Court’s new term.

    The ruling means that a 2010 decision by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals upholding the town law, which banned vehicle and high-speed ferries, will stand.

    In a lawsuit filed in 2004, Paul G. Forsberg Sr. of Montauk’s Viking Ferry company, along with several ferry parent companies and a handful of Montauk individuals, claimed that the town’s law violated the Constitution’s Commerce Clause, which prohibits unfairly restricting interstate trade.

    The appeals court had agreed with a ruling by a lower court that the local benefits of the ferry ban — avoiding an increase in traffic and its associated problems — outweighed any potential negative impact on interstate commerce.

    “The case is over. The town has complete victory,” Richard Cahn, who was the attorney for East Hampton Town in the suit, said on Monday.  

    Mr. Cahn, of Cahn and Cahn in Huntington, has represented East Hampton in legal challenges to its ferry law since 2004, when the Cross Sound Ferry company, later joined by the Towns of Southold and Shelter Island, sued to have the law overturned. That lawsuit was dropped in 2005.

    He said earlier this week that he had argued before the U.S. Supreme Court before — almost 30 years ago, in a case regarding reapportionment in Suffolk County. “It would have been a wonderful experience for me to argue again in the Supreme Court,” he said. “But I regretfully forgo the privilege to win the case.”   

    Ready, get set, uh-oh: All the ducks are lined up for the much needed and long delayed dredging of Three Mile Harbor. The required permits are in place except for one expected shortly from the Army Corps of Engineers. The piping plovers have long since mated, so there is no longer a delay on their behalf, and winter flounder have months before they spawn.

    The dredge is set to be in place by the end of the month. In other words, the hang-ups that have bedeviled the project since 2007 seemed to have been smoothed out. But then last week . . .

    “The county sent out requests for easements to the people at Sammy’s Beach, about 15 residents,” said Larry Penny, East Hampton’s director of natural resources. “The answers were no.”

    The dredging is a project of the County Department of Public Works. It calls for as much as 80,000 cubic yards of sand to be removed from the harbor inlet as well as from around town-owned and private marinas at its south end.

    Mr. Penny said the residents objected to easements over their properties that would be required. The dredged material is to be piped along Sammy’s Beach and placed on town-owned land below the mean high tide, where it would be allowed to accumulate and “dewater.” However, if there is more sand dredged up than expected, the pipe would have to cross private property.

    “There’s a possibility they [the contractor] can put all the sand on the town beach, not like on top like in 1999,” Mr. Penny said. He was referring to the last comprehensive dredging of the harbor which resulted in a huge hole being dug into town-owned dunes and an equally large pile simply left in place. Residents and environmentalists complained.

    This time around the idea is to put at least some of the sand, which is expected to be clean, nearer the water to help build up the beach. It also has been suggested that a portion of the material can be trucked to other sites that suffer erosion.

    Peter Mendelman, the vice president of Seacoast Enterprises Associates, which operates three marinas on Three Mile Harbor and is a member of the harbor management committee of the East Hampton Town Trustees, said this week that the State Department of Environmental Conservation had approved the plan to nourish the beach.

    He urged property owners to grant the easements.

    “It’s going to go between mean high and mean low, super clean sand from the northern end of the harbor. I think this is all a failure in communication,” he said.

    He added that the request for easements had seemed to suggest that they were for the long term. Instead, the easements would be “just for the duration of the project.” Mr. Mendelman said that while Sammy’s Beach did not now have an erosion problem, a northeast winter storm could change that. “Elsewhere in town people are paying tens of thousands of dollars for sand,” Mr. Mendelman said.

    The proposed dredging at the harbor’s southern end has raised a separate issue. The original plan called for pilings to be removed from the docks at the Three Mile Harbor Boat Yard and Three Mile Marina so the channel leading to their docks could be dredged — an expensive and unpopular condition.

    On Monday, Gill Anderson, the commissioner of public works, said a compromise was being worked out. “If worse comes to worst, we could reduce the width of dredging. The problem is, that area becomes [shoaled] up quickest,” he said. Mr. Mendelman said that even if the dredging were narrowed, the channel would be at least 100 feet wide.

    Mr. Mendelman pointed out that the southern end of the harbor had not been dredged in 30 years, which has resulted in at least five groundings a year. The dredging would take place from the town dock and launching ramps at the head of the harbor west to the main channel and then north out past where the harbor opens up north of Marina Lane. He said it would dramatically improve tidal flushing, a plus for eelgrass and shellfish populations. 

    Because material dredged from the harbor’s southern end might contain contaminants, it will be stored at a town disposal site on Marina Lane. The Gibson and Cushman Contracting company of Bay Shore will dredge the main channel to a depth of 12 feet and do dredging 8 feet farther south than previously. The dredge is expected to arrive in three to four weeks, according to the commissioner.

Montauk Work Begins

    Meanwhile, the dredging of the Montauk Harbor Inlet,  pushed forward from its original 2013 start date by safety concerns, is set to begin this month. Staging began this week. The $414,590 project will remove between 15,000 and 20,000 cubic yards of material from the channel, and is expected to be finished by the end of the year.

    The schedule was changed following a series of severe storms starting early this year. Federal, state, and local officials stressed the importance of adequate access to the harbor for Montauk’s Coast Guard vessels fishing fleet.

    The Army Corps of Engineers New York District awarded that contract to the North America Landscaping, Construction, and Dredge Company of Ellicott City, Md. The contract includes the “beneficial reuse of the dredged sand” by placing it along the shore just west of the west jetty in the Soundview section of Montauk.

    A separate “feasibility” study by the Army Corps in cooperation with the State Department of Environmental Conservation is under way to find a long-term solution to the severe erosion there. Ways to keep sand on the Soundview beaches, perhaps via the construction of a series of rock groins, is an aim of the study, to be completed next year.

Concerned Citizens of Montauk has announced a series of talks in its ongoing effort to engage with and educate the community about the environmental challenges facing the hamlet. 

The series will feature scientists, policy experts, and practitioners who are at the forefront of notable efforts. “Toxin Free Landscapes,” with Edwina Von Gal, founder of the Perfect Earth Project, is the first event in the series. It happens on June 23 at 12:30 p.m. at the Montauk Library. On July 17, Gordian Raacke of Renewable Energy Long Island will discuss energy conservation at 5:30 p.m. at Fort Pond House. 

“We are thrilled to kick off our new speaker series with two incredibly talented and knowledgeable presenters,” Laura Tooman, C.C.O.M.’s president, said in a statement. “It is our hope that through this new program we will continue to educate our neighbors and engage the community in C.C.O.M.’s efforts to protect the environment and keep Montauk Montauk.”

    Pope Benedict XVI named Msgr. Peter Libasci the new bishop of the Diocese of Manchester, N.H., on Monday in Washington, D.C. The former pastor of St. Therese of Lisieux Catholic Church in Montauk, Father Peter, as he was then called, was a beloved member of the community.

    The Montauk pastor from 1999 to 2007, he was given the title of monsignor in 2004, but parishioners continued to call him Father Peter. He helped oversee the construction of a new church building through the sometimes nerve-racking process. But he didn’t get much time to enjoy it, as he was transferred from the parish immediately after the new church was dedicated. Parishioners were devastated when they received the news.

    Wherever he goes to bring the sacrament of confirmation, he takes with him the story of Montauk, he said yesterday. When he visited the church in New Hampshire for the first time, he spoke to parishioners about the people of Montauk and all the good times they shared.

    “It’s a good story, a God story of the love of people for their church and their faith in God. So, I have already brought you with me and you have helped to bring the gospel in a very real and human way to the wonderful people of New Hampshire. God bless you all. Yay, Montauk!” he wrote in an e-mail message.

    As pastor he officiated at many weddings, funerals, Masses, and other church activities in the parish center’s basement, which was set up as a church during construction. He always tried to find out a little bit of personal information about a couple being married, or the deceased, so he could add some local flavor to ceremonies. On more than one occasion he visited bars in Montauk to talk to friends or relatives of those who recently died so he’d have a story to tell.

    “I just always knew I’d become a priest,” he said in an interview when he first arrived in Montauk. He said it was something that was almost expected of him by his family, something that he had felt inside for as long as he could remember.

    He was born in Queens in 1951 and attended Catholic schools. He attended St. Meinrad Seminary in Indiana and was ordained in 1978. His first assignment as a priest was as an associate pastor of St. Raymond’s parish in East Rockaway. He served for nearly six years as associate pastor of SS. Cyril and Methodius parish in Deer Park and was an administrator and then pastor of Our Lady of Good Counsel parish in Inwood for 10 years.

    After he left the Montauk parish, he was named an auxiliary bishop by Bishop William Murphy of the Rockville Centre Diocese and served as the Episcopal vicar for the Eastern Vicariate of that diocese, which means he was a traveling man and presided over confirmations, communions, and other church celebrations on the eastern end of Long Island.

    “As priest, as pastor, as bishop, Bishop Peter Libasci brought a deep sense of the holy to the many pastoral efforts that have marked his tenure in the Diocese which will always be his home,” Bishop Murphy wrote.

    He will be formally installed on Dec. 8, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, said Bishop John McCormack, who preceded him in the position. “This is a big day for our Diocese and a big day for my successor,” he said, before joking about Bishop Libasci’s allegiance to the Yankees.

    He was overwhelmed when he learned he would become the bishop of Manchester, he said in a video recording posted on the Web site of the Diocese of Rockville Centre, drvc.org. In addition to thanking his family, friends, fellow priests, and God, Bishop Libasci said that he was looking forward to seeing the beauty of New Hampshire, its churches, people, and families.

    He is expected to be in Montauk to officiate at a confirmation ceremony on Nov. 6 at 1 p.m. There is no doubt that the church will be crowded on that day to welcome the newly ordained bishop back home.

    In print and online, from Amityville to Australia, the so-called East Hampton Ghost House is back in the news, having finally been sold after eight years on the market.

    The house, at 52 Middle Lane in East Hampton Village, is reputedly haunted by the restless spirit of its owner, Barton Kaplan, an antiques dealer from a monied family whose body was found at the bottom of his pool early on a summer Sunday after a night of partying. The Suffolk County Medical Examiner’s office classified the death as an accidental drowning.

    Ever since, summer renters at the 13-bedroom house have whispered of inexplicable happenings there: lights and faucets turning themselves on and off at will, furniture moving from place to place of its own accord. After the sale was recorded last week on The Real Deal, a Web site for real estate brokers, someone commented, “A couple and their children we know rented that house for a summer. One night after we’d had dinner out in the yard, we came back in to find the living room sofa upside down. True story.”

    In May 2007, the Corcoran Agency was asking $450,000 for a Memorial Day to Labor Day rental of the 18,000-square-foot house, which has, besides the expected amenities, an elevator, a screening room, two wine cellars, and an indoor spa and gym. The word around town was that the price would have been more, but brokers had to knock off $100,000 because the previous summer’s renters told everyone they knew that the place was haunted.

    At one point Mr. Kaplan’s father was said to have hired a psychic to exorcise whatever spirit had taken up residence at his son’s house. It didn’t work.

    Meanwhile, Mr. Kaplan’s live-in partner, one Sam Wagner, began putting it about that not only was the house haunted, but its grounds were as well, by Montaukett Indian warriors, no less, buried there in 1653, he maintained, after a battle with the Narragansett tribe. A good story — Mr. Wagner is reportedly writing a screenplay about the ghosts of Middle Lane — but, though there was some bad blood between the Montauketts and the Narragansetts that year, history has not recorded any such battle.

    Many people here will recall that not long before Mr. Kaplan drowned, Ted Ammon, a millionaire businessman, was murdered in an equally imposing house almost directly across Middle Lane from number 52. For two such grisly events to have occurred in close proximity on one of the quietest, most affluent lanes in the village, was strange enough, but stranger still was the enigmatic Mr. Wagner’s dual role. At the murder trial of Daniel Pelosi in 2004, Mr. Wagner, who described himself as a “Pop artist,” took the stand as the first witness for the defense. He testified that he and Mr. Ammon, after exchanging glances on Middle Lane a few years before the murder, had had sex together.

    “I, being an all-American gay human being . . . said something like, ‘Do you want to get busy?’ ” Mr. Wagner told the court. His testimony bolstered the defense’s contention that Mr. Ammon, who had no ties to the gay community, had picked up his killer at Two Mile Hollow Beach. However, Mr. Pelosi was convicted and is serving a 25-years-to-life term in prison.

    Mr. Wagner has since maintained that Mr. Kaplan’s ghost persists because he, Wagner, never got the $2 million Mr. Kaplan left him in an unsigned will.

    Whether it was fear of spirits or the dismal economy, the asking price of the East Hampton Ghost House fell by more than $10 million in the last four years, from $19.5 million to the $9.25 million it recently sold for. As of this week, the new owners will be 93rd on a list of the 100 highest property taxpayers in Suffolk County, at $67,625.26.

    Michele Tiberio, the Corcoran vice president who sold the house, said on Tuesday that she was “not at liberty” to identify the buyers, but that “they are very happy, and look forward to many years of happiness there.”

    “Do we need to get better? You better believe it,” said Charles Soriano, assistant superintendent of the East Hampton School District, at Tuesday’s school board meeting, where he gave a  presentation on elementary school test scores.

    The scores, Dr. Soriano was quick to point out, are measured from one test only, the New York State Testing Program. There are many other tests that take place over the course of the school year, and many other ways that teachers and administrators can track a grade’s progress. “However,” according to one slide in his presentation “Grade 3 results are unusually and disappointingly low in English language arts and math.”

    Forty-nine percent of last year’s third grade at John M. Marshall Elementary School did not pass the state’s English language arts test, and 46 percent failed the math section as well, numbers that were markedly different from those with which they were compared.

    The scores were shown in a bevy of different configurations — compared to schools statewide, schools in eastern and western Suffolk, and to six other school districts on the East End: Amagansett, Springs, Montauk, Sag Harbor, Southampton, and Tuckahoe.

    The scores are evaluated on a scale from level 1 (“not meeting learning standards”)  to level 4 (“meeting learning standards with distinction”). Children at level 2 are “partially meeting learning standards,” while those at level 3 are “meeting learning standards.”

    Gina Kraus, the principal-elect of the elementary school, also spoke about the scores, pointing out that many of the children who received level 2 English scores — 39 percent of the third grade — were within one or two questions of a level 3 rating. In other words, the lower scores were “top-heavy” with kids — 40 percent of the level 2 scorers — who were almost at a proficient level.

    Looking at the last year’s other third grades, 77 percent of Amagansett passed, 51 percent in East Hampton, 65 percent in Montauk, 67 percent in Sag Harbor, 39 percent in Southampton, 66 percent in Springs, and 39 percent in Tuckahoe.

    In math, 54 percent of East Hampton’s third grade passed, 82 percent in Amagansett, 83 percent in Montauk, 73 percent in Sag Harbor, 79 percent in Southampton, 55 percent in Springs, and 54 percent in Tuckahoe.

    Dr. Soriano cautioned the board, and the public, to “take care in drawing sweeping conclusions.”

    “Testing is illustrative, not definitive,” he said. “We can look at this in a different way.” He noted that many “limited English-proficient” students   — those who are learning to speak English — “were a level zero in E.L.A. at the beginning of the year, and then 39 percent of them score a level 2 by the time of the test. That could be considered a success story.”

    “It’s important to separate the myth from the truth,” said Dr. Soriano. “The scores are not weak over all, but something was definitely going on with the third grade last year.”

    He also said that the scores “do not define the kids or their performance,” and that the school looks forward to seeing a marked improvement in how last year’s third grade does this year on the fourth-grade tests.

    In fourth-grade E.L.A., 80 percent of Amagansett passed, 67 percent in East Hampton (tied with Montauk), 84 percent in Sag Harbor, 63 percent in Southampton, 57 percent in Springs, and 33 percent in Tuckahoe. Dr. Soriano remarked on the size of those classes, which can sway a test score: 15 students in Amagansett, 106 in East Hampton, 39 in Montauk, 75 in Sag Harbor, 87 in Southampton, 68 in Springs, and 49 in Tuckahoe.

    Fourth-grade math scores were even more in line with the surrounding districts: 75 percent passed in East Hampton, along with 87 percent in Amagansett, 76 percent in Montauk, 79 percent in Sag Harbor, 73 percent in Springs, 68 percent in Southampton, and 41 percent in Tuckahoe.

    John Marshall’s fifth-grade E.L.A. students fared even better. Seventy-five percent passed, compared to Amagansett’s 95 percent, Montauk’s 82 percent, Sag Harbor’s 68 percent, Southampton’s 46 percent, Springs’s 67 percent, and Tuckahoe’s 49 percent.

    Fifth-grade math scores were the highest presented on Tuesday night. Ninety-one percent of the test-takers passed, compared with 100 percent of Amagansett, 85 percent of Montauk, 87 percent of Sag Harbor, 66 percent of Southampton, 76 percent of Springs, and 60 percent of Tuckahoe.

    “We need to face reality,” Dr. Soriano said. “We live in a place that is quite diverse, but it’s not ‘them.’ These are just kids, trying to learn English.” Of the 81 students who started kindergarten this year, “39 are [limited English-proficient] — that’s almost half.”

    Patricia Hope, a board member, lauded Dr. Soriano on his “totally comprehensive” presentation.

    “I don’t want to give the impression that we only do this for a board meeting,” he said. “This is what we do. We’re doing it all the time, behind the scenes.”

    “This is what should occur, or part of what should occur, in a public meeting,” he added.

    Jacqueline Lowey, another board member, saw the importance of “setting some real objectives on getting kids to levels 3 and 4. But there’s not much for kids already at the upper end of the spectrum.” She said she understood the reasoning, that more of the school’s resources needed to go with the majority of the students, but hoped that it would become a real objective of the administration to get as many kids as possible to level 4.

    “We can say we expect 100 percent of our students to achieve level 4,” Dr. Soriano said. “But it’s more longitudinal. What can we expect from year to year? We need to focus on development over time,” he concluded.   

    Billy Mack of First Coastal, a coastal engineering firm based in Westhampton Beach, went before the East Hampton Town Trustees on Sept. 13 to ask permission to buttress a dune on the ocean beach, just east of the southern end of Wainscott Pond, with a low wall made of sand cubes.

    The trustees own and manage the beach there on behalf of the public. The house owned by First Coastal’s client sits behind the dune in question, with the pond at its back. Tropical Storm Irene has narrowed the ocean beach there, and Mr. Mack said there was danger of an ocean-to-pond breach during the winter months.

    His concern, he said, was based on the current state of a “sand wave” whose trough corresponded to the beach in front of the property. The eroding trough was deepened by Irene. Mr. Mack took aerial photos to illustrate his prognostication.

    Waves of sand are the source of this area’s most profound beauty, and of an increasing array of challenges. The brouhaha that developed when a resident of Georgica Beach installed fencing to mark the seaward boundary of her property (and claim the only remaining beach) was caused by the trough of another Irene-induced sand wave that swallowed the rest of the beach, less than a mile from First Coastal’s Wainscott client.

    Elsewhere along the coast, the alternating buildup and disappearance of beach has prompted other private-versus-public-beach  debates and lawsuits.

    On Tuesday, Mr. Mack and Aram Terchunian, First Coastal’s principals, met a reporter at the Princess Diner in Southampton to shed light on the mystery of sand waves, their cause, and what they can and cannot predict.

    Over coffee, with aerial photos, a computer, and a sketch pad, the coastal engineers showed how sand waves are formed when the shape of ocean waves, their oscillating design of peaks and troughs, is transferred, actually sculpted by wave energy, into the same physical pattern in beaches and near-shore bottom.   

    Seen from the air, the south-facing shoreline is a wavy line with peaks and troughs. Sometimes seen from the air is the mirror image of a beach’s pattern of peaks and troughs carved into offshore sand bars. On the beach, the trough of a sand wave appears as a shallow cove with an eroded, narrow beach at its most landward point. The peaks of sand waves extend seaward on either side of the trough. The peaks are areas of sand buildup, or accretion. 

    Mr. Terchunian summoned Google Earth on his computer to bring forth an aerial image of ocean waves caught in the act of breaking, with white water from the broken waves forming the same oscillating design, a line snaking along down the beach.

    The pattern is not always visible. During the summer months, it is masked by our predominant southwesterly flow of wind and waves. Wave action is strong enough to transport sand and rebuild beaches, but not strong enough to spur the currents that make the cuts in offshore bars, which, in turn trigger the sand-wave machine. 

    Mr. Terchunian described how storms with their powerful waves, tidal surges, and currents act as X-rays, or M.R.I.s, that reveal “the bones, the soft skeleton” of the sand-wave phenomenon.

    The more easterly, often storm-driven, waves and weather during the winter months are responsible for the east-to-west march of sand waves along the coast. Mr. Terchunian said he first realized the importance of sand waves during the stormy early ’90s.  

    “I had a client at Old Town Pond in Southampton. Their beach was heavily eroded, but Fowler Point nearby was fine. During the big storm, [the wider beach] moved 1,000 feet. I said, how did that happen?”

    Mr. Terchunian said he sent before-and-after aerial photos of the event to the late Nicholas Kraus, a native Long Islander and renowned coastal engineer, who in turn passed them on to Michelle Thevenot, a doctoral candidate. Ms. Thevenot wrote her thesis on the sand- wave phenomenon. These days, Mr. Terchunian said, the Army Corps of Engineers charts sand-waves and includes them in their plans when nourishing eroded beaches with sand.

    As for using the sand-wave pattern to predict beach vulnerability, Mr. Terchunian and Mr. Mack said it was possible up to a point.

    For example, the sand cube project near Wainscott Pond seemed justified, they said, by the beach’s configuration. Mr. Mack pointed to an aerial photo that showed how the deep trough of a sand wave threatened the client’s property. What’s more, it revealed what was not visible underwater just offshore, that being the trough’s mirror image — an opening in the sand bar.

    Such openings are caused by strong currents moving offshore, the result of waves and storm surge piling up close to the beach and seeking an escape route. The escape currents cut paths through the offshore bars. The openings are the offshore troughs of a sand wave. They permit waves to pass through without the slowing effect of the bar en route to the beach, thus increasing their eroding power.

    A strong storm could cut through the already narrow beach and unite the ocean and Wainscott Pond, or at least add to serious flooding that occurred behind the house during Irene. This was the concern that took Mr. Mack before the trustees. He noted that the dune in front of Ronald Lauder’s house, just 300 feet away, suffered no loss with the help of sand cubes at the toe.

    Mr. Terchunian said photos of the beach just prior to the infamous 1938 Hurricane showed troughs in the sand waves, and narrow beach where storm surge inundated the land during the big storm.

    “Sand waves are more important than dune” in determining where breaches and over-topping will occur, Mr. Terchunian said. “Dunes are just levies, the beach is doing all the work.” Along the same line, he said downdrift scouring of sand, caused by hard structures such as jetties, was certainly a cause of erosion but was trumped by the grander scale of the sand-wave phenomenon.

    He said the jetties at Georgica had, over time, disrupted the “natural balance” of the sand’s comings and goings. Even if the jetties were removed, it would take years to regain it, he added.

    Both men agreed that predictions based on sand-wave patterns could not extend too far out in time.

    They said that sand waves move down the beach year to year, but the speed of their progress depended on so many variables that long-range predictions as to exactly where and when serious erosion will take place were virtually impossible to make.

    Mr. Terchunian pointed out that coastal ponds such as Wainscott, Georgica, Sagg, and Hook did, at times, join forces with the trough of sand waves. “There is a fluid connection from pond to ocean,” he said. Breaching occurred when pond water under pressure to flow seaward turned the permeable barrier of rock and sand into a fluid mass that met storm surge moving shoreward.   

    First Coastal has been hired by the Sagaponack Village erosion control district to study the makeup, depth, and back-and-forth flow of sand. “This is all temporary until they come up with a long-term solution,” Mr. Terchunian said, referring to the kind of spot-beach nourishing, sandbagging, or sand-cube buttressing of dune the company has been involved in.

    Offshore deposits were likely the future source of Sagaponack beach sand, he said. Mining sand at least a mile from shore in water that was at least 30 feet deep would guarantee that it tapped deposits safely beyond the reach of the naturally replenishing sand wave, so as not to starve the system.  

   “Long Island has such wonderful beaches, sand riches, glacial outwash sand. We are passionate about beaches,” Mr. Terchunian concluded.

    An e-mailed letter to Ross School parents on Aug. 8 announced the addition of Mandarin Chinese as part of the lower-school curriculum, something that was welcomed by parents as a further step in Ross’s mission of creating “global citizens.”

    But it was the next letter from Michele Claeys, head of school, announcing that Mandarin would be required in grades kindergarten through 12, and a degree of fluency would be necessary for graduation — with Spanish relegated to before or after school lessons for K through 8 — that had some parents seeing red.

    At a lower school parents’ meeting last Friday, some of the parents were quite vocal about their opposition to this change in curriculum. Some brought up the importance of the Romance languages to the history of art and music, others felt that Spanish was simply more useful for Americans.

    “Mandarin has been offered at Ross since 1998,” Ms. Claeys said yesterday. “We’ve been closely examining our whole curriculum, and we’ve been getting some really good feedback.”

    The decision for students to engage in 12 years of Mandarin study coincides with the school’s determination that “M-term” — a three-week intensive study that has included many trips abroad to exotic places — will offer China as its sole international choice this year, along with other studies at the school and trips to locations in the United States.

    “The school started in Japan and China 20 years ago,” said Courtney Sale Ross, the school’s founder. “This is a way of honoring and celebrating our 20th anniversary.”

    M-terms next year will again include ventures to other ports, Mrs. Ross said. “If a faculty member had a great idea this year to go to Cuba, that’s great, hold that idea,” she said. “Cuba will still be there next year.”

    Both Ms. Claeys and Mrs. Ross were clear that Mandarin was a language that children needed to begin studying as soon as possible in elementary school, since “Mandarin takes significantly longer to learn,” Ms. Claeys said. “We want to give our students the highest levels of fluency possible.”

    “Americans are monolinguistic,” Mrs. Ross said. “We are geographically handicapped. European schools require you to speak two languages in addition to your home language by the time of graduation.”

    Why Chinese? “It’s not a secret that China’s economy is booming,” said Mrs. Ross. “It’s predicted that their economy will surpass ours in 10 years. And it’s many people’s opinion — not just mine, but the State Department, the leaders of this country — that students with a degree of fluency in Mandarin will possess a skill set that is highly valued.”

    She was also quick to point out that it is not just about the future, but also about the past. “China is historically rich,” she said. “It’s not just the language, it’s the culture.”

    Spanish will still be part of the schedule for the high school, and possibly the middle school. “It was a scheduling problem this year to keep Spanish class as part of the regular school day for the lower grades with this new initiative,” Mrs. Ross said, adding that parents who feel that they want their children to continue with Spanish are offered the opportunity, free of charge, before school begins, or an afternoon class for a fee.

    Ms. Claeys said that while fluency is hoped for by graduation, each student would be viewed individually, so that the years they have spent studying Mandarin would be taken into account for the final exam. “We’re phasing it in in the upper school to see what fluency can be achieved,” she said.

    “I Skyped last night with some of our Mainland Chinese boarders,” Mrs. Ross said. “I asked them what they would want for their U.S. colleagues going to China this year for M-term.”

    “One lovely girl from Hong Chou said she would be interested in service work, since people view China as an economic power, but service work there is very important.” Mrs. Ross also said she hoped some of the Chinese students at Ross would consider going back to their homeland for M-term to help the American students fully enjoy their experience.

    “My desire has always been to give these students grounding to be global citizens,” Mrs. Ross said. “The writing is on the wall — it’s going to be important in their lifetime to have a grasp of Mandarin Chinese.”

    “They will be able to build bridges with other nations as a result,” she said.

    As to the concerned parents, Mrs. Ross said, “I think it’s a bit of a tempest in a teapot. Most parents and faculty are really excited, and somehow it got twisted. I’m taking a stand on Chinese to create global citizens. It’s in keeping with the mission of the school.”