With this edition, The East Hampton Star celebrates its 130th anniversary. Much has changed about the communities The Star covers since its first 500 copies were published on Dec. 26, 1885, but much remains the same.

From the early days, East Hampton has always been an interesting place to live, and, as we say in the newsroom — just report on it and you can’t help but have an interesting newspaper. This isn’t entirely fair, of course. The Star’s success has always depended on the dedication and effort of its staff and contributors, as well as a healthy dose of what we like to call institutional knowledge.

When The Star was established, East Hampton was largely a farming and fishing town, though a rising tide of summer visitors was beginning to put it on the map. Then, as now, obituaries were a key part of the newspaper’s identity. Over time, attention has grown to include police news, balanced by accounts of the good works of townspeople, and by the opinions expressed in letters to the editor. Friction between new and old, and between the environment and the demands people put on it, have become a su/btext to almost every story that makes the front page.

Today, like so many other news organizations, The Star faces continually shifting challenges. Still, the mission of holding up an honest mirror to East Hampton and the surrounding hamlets and villages remains intact, whether its readers get their news from the print edition or in one of The Star’s digital forms. Throughout its history, The Star’s role has been to help the community know itself — and it will continue to be so. We thank you for reading.

A reader sent in a photograph this week taken on Gerard Drive in Springs on Saturday during the blizzard. Taken roughly around the time of the morning high tide on what is known as the Second Causeway, it shows a raging Gardiner’s Bay surging where the road ought to be. Only you can’t see the road, only riled dark-gray water and feathery white spume.

We bring this up not only because Jane Umanoff’s photograph is so arresting, but for what it says about the challenges that are ahead for East Hampton policymakers in regard to the town’s entire shoreline.

Montauk might command the headlines, what with outrage over the Army Corps of Engineers’ sandbag seawall, but officials will also have to come to terms with assaults on the bayside. Gerard Drive will obviously be high on the priority list, but to do what? Like portions of Dune Road in Southampton, a multimillion-dollar project to elevate the pavement might be called for, but so too might a further-sighted effort to eliminate houses from its lower-slung portions and return their sites to nature. Meanwhile, the community preservation fund, which could be tapped for this, appears likely to be skimmed by up to 20 percent for a range of too-loosely defined water quality projects, if an extension of the law is approved by voters in a November referendum,  

Where the money is going to come from for a sensible coastal program of retreat is, of course, a very good question. For the time being, town officials seem content to believe that federal dollars will pour in as part of the Army Corps’s Fire Island to Montauk Point Reformulation Project. We’ll believe that when we see the check. And anyway, the last thing the Corps is interested in is stepping back from the danger zones. 

Meanwhile, the deal on the Montauk work looms as a financial disaster for the town — and Suffolk County — both of which agreed to cover the cost of keeping the sandbag wall covered with sand. Last weekend’s storm did a pretty good job of sweeping away thousands of tons of trucked-in ugly yellow fill, which, had the job been completed, would have been Suffolk and East Hampton taxpayers’ responsibility to replace.

What is so frustrating about coastal policy is that officials seem incapable of enforcing existing rules, much less of coming up with a strategy for the long term. We hope that the East Hampton Town Board at least made time to visit the visual hell that was the Montauk beach in the aftermath of Saturday’s storm. And we hope they see Jane Umanoff’s picture of Gerard Drive.

Together, they are enough to make one fear for the future of this town. Supervisor Larry Cantwell and the rest of the town board are not paid to wallow in despair, they are paid to do something. Waiting for the Army Corps and its anachronistic approach just won’t cut it.

Now that the East Hampton Town Board has a problem on its hands of a long queue of people willing to be arrested in protest of the Army Corps of Engineers’ project in Montauk as well as some 250 others who pressed the matter at a meeting on Tuesday, the question is where the town can go from here. But it is even more important to consider whether coastal policy all the way from Town Hall to Albany and Capitol Hill must be overhauled.

Several local figures who sought money for the sandbag seawall, including former Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson and his then-allies on the town board, have remained out of the limelight although they more or less handed those who followed them into Town Hall a done deal.

However, the final responsibility for what is going on rests entirely with the current board, which signed off on the project and helped negotiate necessary access agreements with adjacent property owners. To be charitable, perhaps they, like many of the past days’ protestors, could not envision what the project would actually look like until the bulldozers rolled.

Up to last week, only a handful of individuals and just one organization, Defend H20, were on what we see as the right side, arguing against the seawall and pushing for a sensible, long-term program of moving endangered businesses and residences away from the shore — or condemning them and building a resilient dune in their places.

Supervisor Larry Cantwell and the rest of the town board had a chance early on to apply the brakes but chose not to. Perhaps they, like the project’s individual supporters and the Montauk Chamber of Commerce, allowed themselves to be conned by the idea of a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow in the form of millions of federal dollars to be spent here as part of the Army Corps’s Fire-Island-to-Montauk study. They should have known better: Destroying a beach and setting aside years of environmental regulation on the mere wisp of a promise of cash from Washington was outrageous.

As we have argued before, local governments, as well as the State of New York, are doomed when it comes to managing a rapidly changing coast unless a major change of policy occurs. The Army Corps, with its single-headed focus on preserving property, is the wrong agency for the task. Change must come from the very top after a frank national conversation about how sea level rise and storm risk is going to be dealt with, and by whom.

What is happening today on the Montauk beach makes it clear that the current regulatory structure is a failure, and that new, more far-sighted leadership will have to come from Washington.

Voters will be asked on Tuesday to select two people to serve four-year terms on the East Hampton Town Board. The job involves setting the town’s spending priorities, overseeing land-use policy, protecting water and the environment, appointing members of the planning, zoning, and architectural review boards, and the hiring and firing of many town personnel. They will earn $68,000 next year, plus benefits. Board members sit in on advisory committees and each is assigned as a point person on a portfolio of town departments and issues. 

Only one incumbent is in this year’s race, Kathee Burke-Gonzalez, who has been a steady and dedicated presence on the board and distinguished herself by taking on the noise problems stemming from East Hampton Airport. The others are first-time candidates: Jeffrey Bragman, Paul Giardina, and Gerard Larsen. Should Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc (whom The Star has endorsed) win as supervisor, there will be a one-seat vacancy on the town board next year. More on that later.

Considering many years of involvement with environmental matters, Mr. Bragman has more experience with East Hampton government than any other candidate, including Ms. Burke-Gonzalez and Mr. Van Scoyoc. When one considers the ins and outs that he has had to understand to advocate as a lawyer for clients against some of the worst missteps by officials, Mr. Bragman has time and again demonstrated his commitment to upholding the town code, particularly on environmental and neighborhood concerns. Over his career, he has shown willingness to take on entrenched powerbrokers, including working on behalf of Save Sag Harbor and on the problems at the town airport. We see Mr. Bragman as continuing in the long tradition of Democratic board members of putting community and the environment first and crafting an effective town code to protect them.

Mr. Giardina is a relatively new arrival on the local political scene. He popped up a little over a year ago as a critic of the then-proposed use of the community preservation fund for water improvement projects, calling it “a bit of a political issue, to say the least.” While he has positioned himself as a groundwater expert in his campaign, this is not supported by his education as a nuclear engineer who spent years running an Environmental Protection Agency office dealing with radiation and indoor air pollution. 

This is not to say he should not have offered an opinion on water issues nor does it disqualify him as a serious candidate for local office, but it was disingenuous to sell himself as the water guy when his expertise was in another field. Mr. Giardina is full of other good ideas, however, on opioid use and affordable housing, for example, making him worthy of consideration for the town board. Like many other Republicans, he has expressed doubts about sea-based wind power.

Mr. Larsen’s main pitch for town board, if there was one that could be discerned, was that he was East Hampton Village police chief, retiring earlier this year. He has correctly pointed to issues on which current and past town boards have failed to follow through, but since he has scarcely made an effort in the campaign, judging how he might do things differently is impossible. One thing about Mr. Larsen that would not change if he were elected, he has said, is his ownership of a private security business, which he started on the side while he was police chief and among whose largest accounts is the billionaire Georgica Pond-front property owner Ronald Perelman. 

Mr. Larsen is suing the Village of East Hampton, his former employer, alleging unfair competition because the mayor and one of the village trustees tried to force him out of the security business while they themselves took on similar outside work. East Hampton Town Hall does not need this kind of ethical circus, and voters would do well to steer in the another direction.

Our endorsements are for Ms. Burke-Gonzalez and Mr. Bragman, based on their unquestionably superior experience. However, the effort that Mr. Giardina put in during his campaign suggests that he could be a valuable public servant. With a win by Mr. Van Scoyoc as supervisor, the resulting Democratic majority on the board should appoint him to the open seat, thereby avoiding one-party rule and demonstrating to the community that they would welcome the full airing of opposing views.

News last month that two more sections of Accabonac Harbor had been permanently closed to shellfishing was met with little more than a collective shrug. We were surprised by the lack of outcry, and hope that other announcements of this depressing sort are not ahead.

About 20 acres in the harbor were declared off-limits year round by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation after it said routine water sampling had found unacceptable levels of fecal coliform bacteria, a sign of possible contamination by sewage. Shellfish taken from areas with high bacteria have the potential to cause human illness if consumed.

That these sites had already been listed as seasonally contaminated suggests that efforts to improve water quality have a long way to go. Concerned about the harbor, East Hampton Town officials have bought a number of parcels that are in the southern Accabonac watershed in Springs, but not enough to make a real difference. Ideas about septic system upgrades have not made it past the most preliminary stage either.

As with perennially troubled waters in parts of Montauk, the newly verboten Accabonac Harbor areas should be subject to a vigorous restoration effort by both citizens and government. As it looks to the coming year, East Hampton Town Hall must make reversing this trend a top priority.

“It’s almost Thanksgiving. Donate something.” That’s what a Star editorial staff member suggested as an idea for this page this week. So we took a short walk around the office, asking, “If you had $100 right now to give to charity, where would you send it?” Answers were easy to come by and showed a surprising range.

Given the Syrian refugee crisis, as well as the work of one of our contributing photographers in Greece, help for the migrants’ children was among the first things to spring to mind, as was support for getting medical supplies to where they are needed in Greece. Aid to groups helping children crossing the southern border of the United States also was mentioned. Other suggestions included Doctors Without Borders, school-construction efforts in Tibet, Amnesty International, potable water in developing countries, Alzheimer’s disease research, and marine mammal conservation.

Close to home, contributions were recommended to the Animal Rescue Fund of the Hamptons, the Retreat shelter for domestic violence victims and their families, the Group for the East End, Peconic Land Trust, Habitat for Humanity, East End Hospice, and any of the food pantries.

Given the relatively small sample of those who were at 153 Main Street at around lunchtime on Tuesday, the breadth of the list is notable. What can be gleaned is that because so many organizations are doing good work it might not matter to which you give. Our advice? Donate something to one you care about, but donate something.

It’s about the money, and it’s about the desire of some, if not many, East Hampton Town landlords not to see the party end.

Seeking to reduce the overwhelming number of illegal group rentals, too much turnover, and so-called party houses, the East Hampton Town Board has for months been contemplating a registry system. Its goal would be to provide law enforcement with adequate tools to make sure landlords comply with existing regulations.

Think of it this way: If enough landlords were following the law now, there would be no need for additional bureaucracy. If self-regulation, as the opposition to a registry seems to favor, really worked, there would be no need for the proposed measures, right? While many landlords operate within legal bounds, the registry is a creation of a collective failure to do so by others. Those who say that the town should enforce the laws on the books are missing the point. Frankly, the registry is an admission that the rules the town has now are difficult to enforce and that better tools are necessary.

One commenter on a website run by the registry’s opposition added what may have been unintended honesty, implying that income-tax cheats had better watch out because the town “can and probably will” provide the rental list to the state and Internal Revenue Service. He or she neglected to mention cash-strapped Suffolk County, which loses out on piles of money annually from short-term leases, which probably should be paying 3-percent hotel-motel taxes.

At next Thursday’s hearing on the registry, the town board should turn the tables and ask the no-registry speakers what kind of regulation they would find acceptable. Would a free registry be okay? What about one in which tenants’ names were not required? If the answer is no registry at all, officials will get a pretty good sense of what the town is up against.

Taken together, it all adds up. Excessive turnover, people crammed into shares, and short-term leases have helped contribute to a sense that East Hampton has surpassed the limits of its geography and infrastructure. It is sad, but not all that surprising, that the anti-regulation crowd fails to see this. The registry is one way to restore the saner, more peaceful East Hampton that most residents really want.

As panic grips some segments of America over the idea of allowing Syrian or other Middle Eastern refugees to settle in the United States, a few simple observations should be kept in mind. The statistics show, notably, that the risk of a terrorist being among those who pass through the rigorous vetting already in place is extremely low. 

According to research published recently by the Cato Institute, since 2001, not one of the 859,629 refugees admitted to the United States has carried out a terrorist attack. By comparison, 1 in 22,541 Americans committed a murder last year alone, according to the institute. 

U.S. politicians are big on finding imaginary threats to rail against. Witness the many governors who announced their desire to block refugees from their states, which prompted the House of Representatives to double down, passing an anti-refugee bill. Given the Cato numbers, it would be pretty easy later to claim victory over this made-up boogeyman. But America’s leaders have so far failed to find their voices about all the actual violence . . . or any solutions.

As world leaders meet in Paris this week to try to agree on a meaningful strategy to combat global warming, those of us who live on the East End should pay close attention. Eastern Long Island is especially vulnerable to sea level rise, one of the byproducts of a hotter planet. Current and future officials will face budget-busting challenges in the years ahead, as well as painful choices about whether to protect private property at the expense of common assets such as the region’s beaches and public waterfronts.

The conspiracy enthusiasts and lonely Internet prognosticators who insist the science behind the crisis is wrong are not to be taken seriously. The vast majority of expert opinion is consistent and daunting. In fact, the language used to describe the predictable effects of climate change is increasingly blunt. 

Even if the Paris talks were successful in holding warming to 6 degrees Fahrenheit, Coral Davenport, who covers climate change for The New York Times, observed, “Scientists say that that level of warming is still likely to cause food shortages and widespread extinctions of plant and animal life.” But even 6 degrees would be regarded as positive since current trends would push the planet’s increase to a “far more destructive temperature increase of more than 8 degrees Fahrenheit.”

Certainly there are individual, government, and corporate steps that should be taken. Individuals can choose electric and hybrid vehicles to eliminate tailpipe emissions. Households and businesses can reduce consumption of fossil fuels. East Hampton Town has set a 100-percent renewable energy goal for 2030. It has also sought to promote large-scale solar power facilities on two town-owned sites. And yet the reality is that greater steps will be required, and this will take national leadership.

It is quite shocking that the United States negotiators in Paris have conceded that there would be no way to get a two-thirds majority in the Republican-controlled Senate for a climate treaty. Instead, they hope to set voluntary goals. Meanwhile, Republicans in the House of Representatives are trying to block several of President Obama’s measures to curb domestic carbon emissions. 

New York’s senators, Kirsten Gillibrand and Charles Schumer, both Democrats, could reliably be expected to vote in favor of a climate deal. As for Representative Lee Zeldin, however, there is reason to doubt his commitment to turning the tide even though his congressional district is among those most likely to see severe flooding, erosion, and coastal inundation as a result of sea level rise. “I’m not sold yet on the whole argument that we have as serious a problem with climate change as other people,” he told Newsday last year. This is not only wrong, it is dangerous.

Then, too, looking at what is being said in the run-up to the Republican presidential primary, there is little hope of anything approaching a national consensus on climate change. This is a shame because divisions within the United States diminish the prospects for a successful outcome in Paris. 

With Mr. Zeldin irrationally questioning the science and with New York’s senators’ positions more or less assured, to be effective on a larger scale, East End residents must use their voices — and perhaps dollars — to try to move public opinion. It is in both our local interest and that of the planet on which we live.

Sag Harbor Village officials and their counterparts on the Southampton Town Board appear in agreement on a wish to see a portion of the Sag Harbor waterfront revert to public ownership. A developer has been working on a plan for townhouse-style units there and has filed application paperwork with the village. In effect, the structures would wall off that side of Sag Harbor from the water.

In a recent vote, the Southampton board agreed to add the property, which includes several parcels near the village’s 7-Eleven, to the town’s community preservation fund list. This will allow an official appraisal to be made and then, perhaps, an offer to the property owners. Therein lies the rub: Representatives of the partnership that controls the site have insisted that it is not for sale.

If you have ever driven over the bridge from North Haven approaching Sag Harbor and looked out to the right, you have seen the site. For Sag Harbor residents, as well as for the thousands of visitors who pass by each year, we hope that Greystone Property Development, a Manhattan company believed to own the controlling interest, reconsiders.

A deal should be struck to buy the developers out. A park would be much more welcome than residences and tie in well with the village’s existing walkable waterfront. Sag Harbor and Southampton should be willing to do whatever it takes to make the publicly accessible open space there a reality.