Montaukers and those who love the easternmost point in New York State are highly skeptical about an idea to allow camping and related concessions in Camp Hero. They are right to be ringing the alarm. Camping should not be permitted there.

In August, the State Department of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation asked interested parties to submit proposals for a camping concession that might include everything from tent sites to R.V. hookups. In addition, there is a possibility that food and liquor sales could some day be allowed there. For a very long time, Long Island state parks management has kept hands off Montauk. This is good and befits a wild and inspiring place. That would come to a screeching halt if a portion of Camp Hero were turned into a campground.

The response, at least locally, has been vigorously negative. Concerned Citizens of Montauk, the Montauk Citizens Advisory Committee, and the Eastern Long Island Chapter of the Surfrider Foundation have cautioned against it. 

Concerns include sewage, campers falling down the ocean bluffs, competition with local motels and rental properties, fire and emergency medical services, and a lack of state parks police to handle an additional load. There have been few problems at the state-run Hither Hills campground in Montauk, but that might not always be the case.

These are valid concerns, but there is something more important. If there is one place that should be a refuge from the rest of the Hamptons, or what might be called modern life, it is Montauk Point. Day-trippers and residents alike go to the Point and the park there to get away from it all, to soak up nature’s majesty in an undeveloped setting. Protecting the sense of peace that nature provides should be the greatest priority.

The Parks Department has said Camp Hero is “underutilized.” To us, that is exactly as it should be.

For whatever reason — maybe just dumb luck — the East Hampton Fire Department has had a relatively quiet couple of years, that is, up to the past few weeks. Most notable was the late September blaze at Ronald Perelman’s Creeks estate on Georgica Pond. 

If ever there was an incident that demonstrated just how sharp East Hampton’s firefighters are, this was it. Trouble was spotted a little before 10 p.m. on Sept. 28. By the time the first personnel arrived, there were flames coming through the roof of the 15,000-square-foot house. With the department’s 95-foot-tall ladder truck above and firefighters inside below, the blaze was under control in about 45 minutes. Other firefighters helped move some of the estate’s massive art collection out of harm’s way. The volunteers had to run an amazing 5,000 feet of hose from Montauk Highway to keep up the attack. Assistance came from all of the departments from Southampton east to Montauk — about 125 firefighters in all.

It would be easy to say “Job well done!” and be done with it, yet coming only a few days before Fire Prevention Week, this and other recent fires should serve as a reminder about safety. According to the National Fire Prevention Association, Americans have a greater chance of dying in a house fire than they did in the past even though the number of fires has remained about constant. This is particularly true for older Americans. The rate of firefighters’ injuries and deaths also has risen. This is explained in part by the prevalence of plastics and artificial, chemical-based products in everything from diapers to computers — all of which when burned produce highly dangerous smoke and gases.

David Browne, the East Hampton Town fire marshal, issued his annual Fire Prevention Week message the other day. He advised residents to check the home and office for places where fire could start, to test fire alarms, and figure out at least two ways to get out of every room. Other advice for the home includes recognizing risky heating sources and cooking safely. Tip sheets are available at nfpa.org. They are well worth a look.

A movie theater question of another sort has been in the news lately. After the Sag Harbor Cinema was destroyed in a fire almost two years ago, there were doubts that films would ever be shown there again. However, a group of citizens rallied and raised millions to purchase the Main Street site and begin reconstruction. The problem is that the money donated for the new Sag Harbor Cinema Arts Center is not enough. Now, the group overseeing the restoration has asked the Town of Southampton for money from the community preservation fund. 

Much as we love the idea of a revitalized art house theater in Sag Harbor, we cannot support the proposed town grant.

When the preservation fund was approved in the East End towns 20 years ago, it was clear that the voters believed the use of the fund would be strictly limited. It was for buying environmentally significant land, recreational sites, farmland, and for historic preservation. Tapping Southampton’s fund because the Sag Harbor Cinema group is having a hard time coming up with sufficient money to meet its goals would not be appropriate.

Early on, politicians tried to push the envelope for money from the community preservation fund. In Southampton, a supervisor seeking re-election made an indirect cash handout to some likely voters, going so far as to pose for photographs holding an oversize mock check made out to the Hampton Bays School District for $1.5 million. East Hampton Supervisor Bill McGintee resigned and his budget manager was arrested over their misdirection of preservation fund money to pay for routine town expenses.

More recently, voters approved an amendment that would allow up to 20 percent of the income in a calendar year to be used for water quality. How this will play out is not yet clear, but there already are troubling signs. For example, the fund may be used for a sewage treatment plant in the commercial downtown of Montauk — an area of negligible environmental value and one that has been targeted for the managed retreat of buildings in the face of continual erosion.

As worthy as the Sag Harbor Cinema restoration is, for preservation fund money to be used to speed the work along would be both improper and a very bad precedent, tempting other groups to come begging when in financial need. Southampton Town might well want to support the old theater’s rebirth and should be encouraged to do so, but this money is the wrong way to go about it.

For more than 40 years, power plants were the largest source of greenhouse gases in the United States. But since the early 2000s, generation of electricity has become less carbon-intensive with the growth of wind and solar and a switch to natural gas. Despite this switch in the sources of emission, the situation is not good. Cars, trucks, aircraft, and shipping emissions jumped in about 2016 and have continued to climb. That will only get worse if climate denier-in-chief President Trump’s promised rollback of fuel-efficiency standards is allowed to go into effect.

A United Nations scientific group released a frightening report this month that the worst consequences of climate change would be felt much sooner than had been anticipated. Among the threats are food shortages, wildfires, massive changes to the natural environment, and the displacement of 50 million people by floods, all within a generation. Even people who work in the field of climate change described the report as a bitter shock. 

For coastal Long Island, the implications are dire. With the anticipated atmospheric temperature increase, sea level rise will inundate the shoreline by 2040 — much sooner than previously thought. Large areas of the East End towns and the South Shore will have to be abandoned. It is not a stretch to say that East Hampton’s lucrative status as a summer resort would be upended unless steps are taken right now. 

Stopping the impending global disaster will require reversing emissions trends. The use of coal as an electricity source will have to go. This brings us back to alternative energy. East Hampton Town has the first solar facility, off Accabonac Road in Amagansett. New York State is cooperating with corporations to install wind turbines offshore. Notably, Deepwater Wind’s turbines would tie into the Long Island electric grid in East Hampton and be the first in the state. 

Those who are framing Deepwater as not beneficial to the East End miss the point. In the context of nearly unimaginable climate disruptions within our lifetimes, knee-jerk opposition would be laughable if the permanent disruption of our community’s economy were not at stake. It is worth noting that the League of Conservation Voters ranks Representative Lee Zeldin in the bottom 10 percent of all members of Congress on climate change.

Offshore wind may have its flaws; few large power sources do not. But Deepwater is a small part of an essential effort to actually save life on Earth as we know it.

At this point there is little to add to the reasons why Perry Gershon is the better choice for the East End in Congress than Lee Zeldin — but Mr. Gershon is better for the country as well. He has proven himself levelheaded and admirably determined. That he has driven almost 40,000 miles during his campaign in his own plug-in hybrid Chevrolet Volt says a lot about the kind of congressman he would be; Mr. Zeldin’s re-election campaign’s main vehicle is a gas-guzzling Suburban. 

Mr. Gershon is accessible. Mr. Zeldin holds brief public meetings in settings he finds personally comfortable. Mr. Gershon favors improving the nation’s gun laws. Mr. Zeldin wants owners of legal handguns from other states to be able to carry them concealed in New York. Mr. Gershon wants health care for all. Mr. Zeldin would take Medicaid away from millions. Mr. Gershon wants to see the Russia probe play out. Mr. Zeldin sponsored a bill to investigate the investigators. 

Mr. Zeldin has done almost nothing positive for the East End in the past three and a half years in Congress. Mr. Gershon would focus on issues important in the First District, such as Plum Island, environmental protection, and climate change. Mr. Zeldin has wasted his constituents’ time in appearances on Fox News. Mr. Gershon has spent the last two years asking for your vote. 

Mr. Zeldin, through his unconditional embrace of Donald J. Trump’s worst excesses, actively promotes the things that divide us. Mr. Gershon would work to bring us together.

Replacing Mr. Zeldin in the House of Representatives would deprive the president of one of his most eager backers. If only for that, a vote for Perry Gershon is a step toward a better future.

One of the most disheartening aspects of the 2018 election cycle has been a coordinated, deliberate effort to take the vote away from hundreds of thousands of United States citizens. 

Varied schemes have been the work of state and local Republicans bent on victory at all costs. Depending on where, officeholders have eagerly sought to suppress turnout, obfuscate deadlines, and outright disenfranchise fellow Americans along racial divides, mostly because they tend to vote Democratic. 

It is appalling that so many Republicans who believe themselves to be of good conscience are willing to countenance what could create lasting damage to democracy. If there is one issue that should unify the nation, it should be the right to participate in selecting leaders. This failure should be a source of shame.

The effort to suppress votes can be as obvious as limiting the number of polling places or curtailing their hours. The difference between majority white and majority black or Hispanic election districts can make the latter seem like another country. On the South Fork, voters might wait for a few minutes at most to fill out their ballots. However, in 2016, hours-long lines greeted would-be voters in Arizona, North Carolina, and Ohio, among other places, and are expected again this year.

Examples are numerous and horrifying. There have been registered-voter purges, in some cases simply because someone has sat out a couple of elections. Individual registrations in Georgia have been rejected for as little as a missing hyphen in a last name. In one county, officials ordered black senior citizens out of a bus that was to have taken them to an early voting site.

In Alabama, hundreds of thousands of people who remain eligible to vote despite a low felony conviction remain unregistered because of a welter of county-by-county policies and confusing laws. Kansas tried requiring citizenship documents of new registrants, which the American Civil Liberties Union said improperly blocked 35,0000 United States citizens from casting ballots. After a federal judge halted it, the state took another tack: shutting down polling places in minority areas. 

North Carolina has made it all but necessary for hourly workers to skip work in order to take part in early voting. It also eliminated Sunday voting, which traditionally was popular with black voters. North Dakota recently changed its law to require street addresses on the IDs it requires for voting; many Indian reservations in the state do not use street addresses, and under the law post office boxes are not considered adequate. In Tennessee, applications to register have been rejected because an applicant did not check a “Miss,” “Mrs.,” or “Mr.” box. 

No national Republican figure has denounced the strategy to keep black voters in the South or Democratic-leaning college students elsewhere from participating via absentee ballots. At every level, including at the Suffolk Board of Elections, it is shocking that officials and candidates can remain loyal to a party that has so completely collapsed on the most American of American values — the right to vote. The silence of fair-minded Republicans now is the saddest note of all.

If candidates can be judged by the company they keep, David Lys will be difficult to beat. Aside from winning a lopsided victory over David Gruber in a September primary, he has been vouched for by, among others, Perry B. Duryea III, former town Republican chairman; Alex Walter, a former zoning board chairman who was Supervisor Larry Cantwell’s assistant; Zachary Cohen, a former town supervisor candidate; Tim Taylor, the head of Citizens for Access Rights, and nearly the entire town Democratic power structure and many Republicans alike.

In his close to six years in town government, Mr. Lys, who is running for a one-year term on the East Hampton Town Board, has proven himself thoughtful and hard-working. He does his homework and tries to listen to all sides. 

As have so many office-seekers before him, Mr. Lys has made a point of expressing his concern about affordable housing for the old and for young adults who would like to stay in the community but cannot afford to do so. To answer this need, he points to efforts for dispersed town properties where apartments and single-family housing could be built. Reworking the town’s unpopular accessory apartment rule could also help, he says.

Mr. Lys preaches the importance of exercise and recreation and sees them as a way to improve ties among community residents. If it would take raising taxes to create more parks and better walking trails, he would consider it.

On the environment, Mr. Lys supports the plan for a sewage treatment plant in downtown Montauk. However, he also points to stormwater runoff from roads and parking lots as a major concern. Using technology to map such sites with greater precision might make keeping them functional easier, he says. 

He supports a proposed change that would make resort and hotel owners responsible for providing extra parking when they expand. While Mr. Lys believes that the town’s registry requirement for rental properties is well intentioned, he concedes that its enforcement has been lacking. He would support raising fines for violations to help pay for more staff to make inspections and keep an eye on the Wild West world of online listings, particularly in the high season. 

On erosion control, Mr. Lys believes the owners of threatened properties may soon begin seeking alternatives to standing and fighting nature. These could come in the form of development incentives in which they agree to move a business or residence to higher ground. Summing up his philosophy, Mr. Lys says, “The worst thing a government can do is not to try.”

Facing him in Tuesday’s vote is Manny Vilar, a state parks police officer who took a crack at town supervisor in 2017. Now he is seeking a town board seat, positioning himself as a person who would ask tough questions and try to push the town board toward what he sees as middle ground.

Mr. Vilar has pinned his long-shot campaign on his endorsement by the town’s Republican Committee, unlike Mr. Lys, who is a registered Republican but is backed by the Democratic and Working Families Parties. Mr. Vilar says a monolithic town board is reason for concern, and he may have a point, but he could easily play the role of gadfly from the guest podium at town board meetings — something he has almost never done.

Mr. Vilar is extraordinarily affable and seems to know everyone from Montauk to Albany. These qualities alone do not make an effective town leader. In close observation, his out of balance ratio between noise and answers would not bode well for Town Hall. He seems to find almost everything in town government a big question mark rather than a challenge he might roll up his sleeves to solve. “I don’t know enough to make an informed decision” could be his mantra. Well, we do, and we think East Hampton voters do, too. 

Energetic and with sterling community ties, Mr. Lys is the right person for the job.

A decrepit building on Montauk Highway in Wainscott that once thumped to the beat of the Star Room nightclub was reduced to rubble and carted away earlier this month. Last week, several unused structures on the Sag Harbor waterfront were removed and the site graded smooth. Both are to become parks. 

The plan for Wainscott is a small green for residents without close access to other public spaces. In Sag Harbor, the property, which was to become a residential development, will now be joined to open space on the other side of the bridge to North Haven as the John Steinbeck Memorial Park.

Land preservation has been a prominent tenet in and around East Hampton; many open spaces were secured before the cash spigot of the community preservation fund transfer tax was turned on. Among the most hard-fought battles was the one against a plan for more than 140 houses on Barcelona Neck. A similar effort staved off 262 houses at the Grace Estate in Northwest. Later, a luxury subdivision planned for 99 acres of Montauk moorland and bluffs galvanized activists; a petition drive caught the attention of officials, and a deal to save what would become Shadmoor State Park was struck with the landowners. 

In an early, major test of the preservation fund, East Hampton Town spent millions to beat back a proposal for a big-box retail building on the corner of Pantigo and Accabonac Roads in East Hampton Village. Instead, a former Buick dealership was razed, and it became a welcoming green entry to the business district.

In these examples, opposition was substantial and included individuals who later came around to more conservationist points of view. Each purchase was at substantial cost, but each one, in retrospect, was clearly money well spent.

The lesson from the past and present victories is that the seemingly impossible can be possible. Dream big, East End. Future generations will honor your foresight.

Democratic voters and members of minor parties across New York State will have a chance to make choices next Thursday in primaries for offices from town hall to the governor’s mansion. In East Hampton, the main event — between Councilman David Lys and David Gruber — is for the right to appear on the Democratic Party line in November’s general election.

Mr. Lys joined the East Hampton Town Board in January when he was appointed to fill Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc’s seat. Before that, he spent five years on the town’s zoning board of appeals and helped lead the restoration of the Amagansett Life-Saving Station.

Mr. Gruber ran for East Hampton Town supervisor and lost in 2002. Until recently, his predominant local interest has been lessening East Hampton Airport noise. His candidacy is legitimate even though he has failed to publically rein in his most enthusiastic and occasionally perfidious supporters, who, among other things, falsely claimed that Mr. Lys, a registered Republican, voted for Donald Trump in the last election. (Mr. Lys wrote in his father’s name.) 

The strident opposition to Mr. Lys defies easy understanding, but Mr. Gruber’s willingness to tolerate abject nastiness and falsehoods about him is a big negative. Even if Mr. Lys were to the right of Steve Bannon, the former Trump White House strategist, his single vote on a five-person town board would hardly change its direction. We can think of two possibilities: Either the Reform Democrats fear that Mr. Lys might go on to become town supervisor some day, and then unleash a sleeper cell of Republicans, or they have signed on to Mr. Gruber’s attempt to gain a position of authority, something that has long eluded his grasp. 

By the same calculus, Mr. Gruber would pose little threat should he win the Democratic primary next week and go on to defeat Manny Vilar, the undisputed Republican nominee. Though Mr. Gruber has built his political presence in East Hampton on closing, or strictly curtailing flights at, the town airport, his would likely be a single vote to do so. Given Mr. Vilar’s poor showing when he ran for town supervisor last year, as well as the Democratic registration and turnout edge, it is safe to say that either Mr. Lys or Mr. Gruber would be the winner on Nov. 6.

Because next Thursday’s primary will almost certainly decide who is the November victor, voter participation is critical. Those who prefer Mr. Lys’s role as a community leader to Mr. Gruber’s more behind-the-scenes approach will want to have their say. On the other hand, voters impressed by Mr. Gruber’s many years as a Town Hall observer and airport-noise activist will need to turn out en masse to award him the Democratic ballot line in November. 

It is often not how individuals vote that wins elections but who gets off the couch to go to the polls. Whatever your position on the candidates, a primary is a direct opportunity to influence government in a way that really matters. 

Fresh, line-caught tuna, a late-summer delight, has been coming across the Montauk docks lately. Looking through the photos on our Instagram feed lately, we have been thrilled by images from the fish markets of fat yellowfin and bigeyes lined up on ice or cut into sushi-grade slabs on stainless-steel tables. Tuna labeled “local” might be suspiciously ubiquitous on South Fork restaurant menus, but right now we can be assured of the real deal, not something flown in from a probably unsustainable fishery in the distant Pacific.

According to seafood ratings from Oceana and other environmental organizations, bigeye and yellowfin tuna from the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico are a responsible choice from an environmental perspective. These species landed elsewhere and by less-discriminating methods, such as drift longlining in the western and central Pacific, are considered poor choices. Sadly, the delicious and once abundant bluefin is a no-go on most organizations’ seafood charts.

Most seafood markets now announce the country of origin along with the price per pound, and with good reason. In most cases, local is always better. And at this time of year, for the grill or eaten raw, you can’t get more local than a Montauk tuna.