At this point it is unlikely that anything would influence in a positive way the work about to begin on the downtown Montauk beach. This is the wing-and-a-prayer $9 million effort by the United States Army Corps of Engineers intended to save the 10 private houses, motels, and condominiums there from falling into the Atlantic. The plan is for some 3,100 feet of beach to be excavated to make room for thousands of plastic-fabric sandbags, with the sand that is removed stockpiled temporarily in the Kirk Park parking lot and then used to cover them.

So many things are wrong with this undertaking that contemplating them is exhausting. However, in broad strokes, the project is flatly illegal under multiple state and town laws, and it could add millions of dollars in maintenance costs for East Hampton Town and Suffolk County taxpayers. Making this all the more distressing is that the work was predicated on a massaged economic analysis and false assertions that the situation was not the fault of long-term erosion patterns.

In the grand scheme, the Montauk plan represents a tragically missed opportunity. Following Hurricane Sandy, there was both the will and the money to think big about the coast. East Hampton Town officials should have led the way in promoting a strategy of retreat. This might have included buying out the row of valuable structures closest to the ocean, redeveloping a portion of downtown Montauk to accommodate new motels built to modern standards, and creating a revegetated, natural-functioning dune where they once stood. This is what should have happened. In the long run, it may also have cost taxpayers less than the project under way. Instead, those involved took the easy, if misguided, road.

What will happen now seems clear enough. The beach where the sandbags will go is very narrow and the sand used to cover them will wind up in the ocean. As a result, there will be no beach, and water will before long lap at the sandbags themselves. One of the town’s most extraordinary assets, the Montauk beach, will be gone, with a devastating effect on visitor revenue.

To call this effort shortsighted would be kind. We believe the long-term result will be a disaster, predicated on lies and green-lighted in the airy hope of future federal money that will make everything okay in the end. Allowing construction on the ocean dunes was a mistake in the first place. Now, town, county, state, and federal agencies are compounding the error, wasting public money in the process. None of this needed to happen. Don’t say we didn’t tell you so.

Among a field of 18 candidates for East Hampton Town trustee, the average voter could be forgiven for voting a straight party line or on name recognition alone. Given all the issues facing the town’s shorelines and waterways, however, the trustee board should be the best that it can be — and this means doing a little homework before making choices.

First, our endorsements in alphabetical order: Tyler Armstrong, Joe Bloecker, Francis Bock, Brian Byrnes, Rick Drew, Jim Grimes, Sean McCaffrey, Diane McNally, and Bill Taylor. Here are their qualifications:

Mr. Armstrong has quickly proven himself an intelligent, thoughtful candidate. He appears capable and would replace the departing Trustee Stephanie Forsberg in ably representing a younger generation of East Hampton residents.

Mr. Bock, who has previously been a town trustee and was its clerk at one time, has a practical levelheadedness and thinks long and hard about the issues. He has been outspoken about the need to work with, not against, the often-derided New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, because, face it, that agency has considerable regulatory overlap with the trustees.

Mr. Byrnes’s strengths include a deep commitment to residents’ welfare, whether at the senior citizens housing projects he manages or as a member of the town’s disability advisory board. He is energetic and all heart.

A former town trustee who stepped down to run unsuccessfully for assessor, Mr. Bloecker has salt-of-the-earth common sense. His dedication is unquestionable. Unlike some of the current trustees, whose poor attendance records are indefensible, you would expect to see him at every single trustee meeting.

Mr. Grimes runs a native plant and landscaping business in Montauk and that experience could prove valuable, particularly as the trustees think about watershed protection, invasive species, and wetland restoration in the face of sea level rise.

Following in the footsteps of his father, the late Trustee Jim McCaffrey, Mr. McCaffrey brings a Wainscott landscaping family’s perspective to the issues. He is unflappable and a consistent voice for preserving public access to trustee lands.

Ms. McNally has valuable institutional knowledge that would be a shame to lose. As the trustees’ clerk, she has run fair and open meetings, though she should have done more about moving more crowded sessions to a larger venue when the need arose. Her failure to speak out about the too-frequent absences among some trustees calls into question whether she should continue to serve as clerk, however.

Mr. Drew has impressed us with his deep knowledge of trustee matters and ample background in commercial and recreational pursuits on the water. He has an interest in government efficiency, which is something the kick-it-down-the-road trustees could really use right now.

One of Mr. Taylor’s strengths is knowing how to work with other levels of government, including the D.E.C. and Town Hall. Given the complex and interrelated nature of many of the environmental matters the trustees must deal with on a limited budget, his ability to be a bridge to other agencies is a must-have.

There you have it, nine in all, a balanced board able to take on the challenges of a new and ever-more-complicated age.

During a Tuesday debate among East Hampton Town Board candidates sponsored by the League of Women Voters, there was much talk about how to solve a range of problems, such as water degradation, traffic, noise, and crowding, and yet the discussion consistently sidestepped the core issue: population.

This was true of the panelists other than Tom Knobel, perhaps, the Republican candidate for supervisor, who said he wished things were the way they were back in 1979. But then he, too, made a passionate argument against using public money for so-called density reduction achieved by buying vacant building lots. Others, Democrats and Republicans alike, steered clear of whether steps should be taken to drive the total population down.

As best anyone knows the numbers, they are frightening and deserve attention. About 2,000 to 2,200 undeveloped and buildable parcels remain within East Hampton Town. As put in a county study of South Fork housing, you can figure about 4.2 people per house here, meaning that if all of the lots were built, the town would see an ultimate semipermanent population bump of more than 8,000. Of course, that is not even half of the story. The summer population is where the real trouble starts: the thousands of people in multiple-occupancy arrangements, the party houses, and day-trippers.

Every person who is here at a given point in time matters, and it is a failure of government not to plan accordingly and take them all into account. According to the best numbers available, five years ago the peak figure for East Hampton residents and overnight visitors was about 100,000. It is important to note that this number reflects only people sleeping here; an estimate of day-trippers and of the area’s highly mobile work force was not included.

Obviously, aggressive measures at all levels to reduce the available building lots must take place. At the same time, officials must be willing to use whatever levers they have to tamp down the flood. This includes seeking legal remedies to combat illegal rentals. Another step would be to address so-called attractive nuisances, such as free access to beaches, where young day-trippers and others congregate to drink alcohol, and the nightclubs and motels-cum-nightclubs that draw unreasonably large crowds. The town must also take a hard look at large summer events, such as festivals and benefits, and consider whether these too should be reduced.

Sometimes too many is just too much, and a safe, sane, and environmentally sustainable future for East Hampton Town will require an end to the more-is-better philosophy. When hundreds gathered at the Montauk Firehouse in July to demand relief, they were not asking for the status quo but for bold steps. If the East Hampton Town Board really wants to get serious about the challenges — as it appears most of the seated members and candidates do — understanding and then driving down the peak population number is of the utmost necessity. Unfortunately, the candidates for town board appear unwilling to accept this reality.

County Executive Steve Bellone has, by our count, made two significant forays into East Hampton Town in the past year and a half. This is far too few, but it is more than have been made by James O’Connor, his opponent in the Nov. 3 election. Both should have made the South Fork a bigger part of their campaigns.

Mr. O’Connor has made fiscal reform the centerpiece of his campaign. Suffolk has faced a budget deficit for some time. This is not particularly of Mr. Bellone’s making, but his budgets have been in part based on wildly optimistic sales tax projections — guesses that have fallen short by nearly $52 million in 2015-16 alone. As a result, the county has given serious consideration to raiding a reserve sewer fund to make up the difference. Mr. O’Connor’s answers have been uninspiring. He has recommended a finance board to oversee cuts, but has not outlined what the tough steps might be.

Mr. Bellone has had four years to deal with the financial distress, and Mr. O’Connor has rightly said the situation is getting worse not better. He has not, however, made a sufficient case that he would be the better alternative. Mr. Bellone earns our endorsement, but with the caveats that he had better put East Hampton on his day planner more often and get Suffolk on a sound budgetary footing without resorting to one-shot revenue bumps, imaginary sales tax estimates, and bare-faced accounting tricks.

Farmers and their advocates have for some time lamented a trend here in which publicly preserved land is lost from crop production. Though readers might not know it, many pass examples every day — places where development rights were sold years ago to the town or county with the expectation that the site remain agricultural. In the present-day reality of big-bucks South Fork real estate, however, many of these properties have been converted to lawns or, in some cases, horse riding facilities.

It would have been difficult at the time for planners and preservationists to have foreseen what happened; they assumed that simply blocking residential development would ensure that farming would survive in a given spot. Now, as a result, there has been discussion of whether government should go back to property owners with financial offers to secure more rights. This could be a tough sell with taxpayers, who might well ask why they are being tapped a second time when the land is already preserved. This calls for greater outreach.

One thing we have noticed is that the trails and birding people are running laps around the food producers in the public relations game. On any given weekend, for example, you could choose from a number of free guided hikes, or go see seals, learn about birds or trees or sea life, or hear about history.

Despite the fact that most of us eat three times a day, every day, it is easier to interact with the region’s wild lands than its farms. If there is going to be a renewed effort to make sure farming continues here, greater interaction between food producers and consumers must be part of the equation — and we’re talking about more than a quick conversation at a Saturday market.

To toss out a few ideas, it has seemed to us that even such simple steps as signs along roadsides explaining what crops are in the ground would help. So, too, would more opportunities for people to physically interact with farmland, perhaps on trails that skirt the corner of a field or places where one could stop to take in the view. There are fund-raising open houses and open gardens, so why not a similar open farms day? As it turns out, several of the community-supported agriculture operations here welcome visitors, but that is not generally known.

There are undoubtedly plenty of ways to bridge the gap between producers and plates. They should be explored, particularly if the pool of public generosity is to be drawn from once again.

The Springs School is crowded. There is no doubt about that. A committee charged with finding solutions, however, stopped short of calling for a major construction project.

This may have been a mistake that will cost the kids, at least in the short term. Springs is in a bind, and it comes down to money. Its school-age population is proportionately massive and property taxes there are often described as the highest in East Hampton Town. A persistent refusal on the part of town officials to undertake townwide property reappraisal, which is likely to be of help, may be leaving millions of tax dollars untapped in underassessed miles of high-value Springs waterfront. And a decade of weak housing enforcement dating back to Jay Schneiderman’s time as supervisor has made the hamlet a poster child for overcrowding.

Springs is also pressed by its neighboring school districts. Waiting for cooperation from Amagansett and East Hampton, as has been suggested, is far from a sure thing. East Hampton has its own large classes and space needs, and Amagansett, which maintains a climate of exclusivity, isn’t likely to take meaningful steps to aid children just over the hamlet line, even though many Springs parents work keeping up the houses in its wealthy areas. It is not surprising that the Springs School facilities committee stopped short of calling for a bond to pay for major renovations and expansion. There is a fear that district voters might say no. But this does not make the need go away. Facing it, the committee has recommended adding modular classrooms and other measures intended to provide more room.

However, we believe that nothing short of a major construction effort is needed — and a concerted effort to sell the plan to voters. In the end, Springs will continue to be forced to tap its own resources in assuring an adequate school to meet all its students’ needs.

The East Hampton Town Trustees were approached recently about allowing a small pilot oyster-growing program in waters that they control. We believe it would be a good project and should be allowed.

What several residents and oyster-fanciers were talking about is something along the lines of something already happening in Southold and Southampton Town waters. Private growers would get fingernail-sized seed oysters from the East Hampton Town Shellfish Hatchery and raise them to edible size in floating cages or bags. Commercial sale is not the goal; the point is to engage residents more fully in the natural world, with a side bonus of giving them delicious shellfish to savor.

The community at large would reap a bonus, too, in that the oysters would be a kind of marine Johnny Appleseed, in line with the true, stealth genius of the Cornell Cooperative Extension-connected SPAT (Southold Project in Aquaculture Training) program, spat being a word for oysters when their larvae attach to a suitable substrate.

The beauty of the program is that individuals tend relatively small bunches of their own oysters, nursing them past the vulnerable youthful stage, keeping their enclosures free of potentially choking seaweed and other algal growth, and helping them avoid predators. It takes at least 18 months for such coddled shellfish to reach edible size; more time is better, as much as two or three years for a really nice specimen. During that time, the oysters would have spawned at least once, sending out millions of microscopic veligers to bolster the natural population.

Oysters are thought of as a kind of vacuum cleaner of the seas, thanks to their prodigious filtering capacity. Efforts are even under way to return New York Harbor’s oyster beds to what they once were. Billions of planned oysters would, in theory, greatly rid the water of vast amounts of potential contaminants.

Around East Hampton Town, where concerns about surface waters are mounting, such an effort would be welcome — and tasty, too. Get those oyster knives ready!

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Note: This has been updated from a previous version. The source for the seed oysters would be the East Hampton Town Shellfish Hatchery, not the Southold Project in Aquaculture Training.

Support for outside commercial interests over home rule and the promise of meaningful noise control is a red line that candidates for East Hampton Town elected office should not cross. But Tom Knobel, Margaret Turner, and Lisa Mulhern-Larsen have been willing to finance their supervisor and town board campaigns largely with money from businesses and individuals seeking to block tough new aircraft limits.

By the most recent count, HeliFlite and related individuals, as well as a handful of pilots and airport businesses, have provided the Republicans with $115,000. It is difficult to see this as evidence of anything except a quid pro quo. However, Mr. Knobel, who is seeking the supervisor’s post, argued that the largess was only because the helicopter companies and others see him as having an “open mind.” We doubt voters are as credulous as Mr. Knobel might wish.

It is regrettable that the once-proud East Hampton Republican Party has come to this, taking money from outsiders who would put their corporate well-being ahead of the wishes of thousands of East Hampton residents for peace and quiet.

The Republican candidates may say what they will about all the other town issues and their qualifications for office, but by being financed almost entirely by airport-related donors, they have shown themselves sorely lacking in judgment and unfit for leadership. On the airport issue alone, Mr. Knobel, Ms. Turner, and Ms. Mulhern-Larsen are not likely to see wide support.

There is still time before Election Day for them to give back the tainted money and work to repair the damage, but not much. Voters should be watching closely in the campaign’s final days.

Yet another wastewater plan arrives, and again we find ourselves scratching our heads. This time a Massachusetts consultant has produced a set of recommendations for East Hampton Village intended to improve Hook and Town Ponds. These include sewage treatment projects for 87 watershed properties around Egypt Lane and North Main Street, an in-ground filter near the Nature Trail, and perhaps most visually notable, the creation of a million-dollar wetland on the grassy triangle near where Main Street, Woods Lane, and Ocean Avenue come together.

In all, the project might take three years to complete and cost $7.3 million. Money might come from additional taxes on some or all village properties or, as the consultant not so surprisingly urged, from tapping the community preservation fund. “A huge opportunity for community preservation,” was how Pio Lombardo of Lombardo Consultants put the prospect. But it could also represent a huge gravy train for his business, which, as its website boasts, can supply “turnkey services of designing, building, owning/financing, and operating wastewater and water facilities.”

Our skepticism about Mr. Lombardo’s work should not be interpreted as opposition to water improvements over all, or to wetlands for that matter. Far from it. What we do find fault with is his apparent predilection for a project in relatively rich East Hampton Village and another, in downtown Montauk, where a similar funding strategy was discussed.

In Montauk, as with the Hook and Town Ponds proposals, the environmental benefits of these massive undertakings are clear, but not necessarily of the highest necessity. Nowhere in either plan was there a sense that drinking water supplies would be protected or that important shellfishing areas restored. The town’s baymen might think that Georgica Pond’s crab and white perch fisheries should be considered a priority. A clam digger might say the south end of Accabonac Harbor or the perpetually befouled portions of Lake Montauk deserve help. Springs residents might ask about what comes out of their wells. And unlike Hook Pond, Georgica is an active recreational waterway.

Close watchers of government have seen this kind of thing before: A consultant waves around sheaves of apparently scientific reports and expects elected officials to just go along. Not so fast, we say. East Hampton Village and the town as a whole cannot expect to tackle the many water problems simultaneously. Instead of the work’s following the money, the environmental community and public health experts should take the lead, establishing the goals and setting priorities, then asking Mr. Lombardo or someone else to come up with a serious plan to meet them.

There is nothing wrong with East Hampton Village opting some day to save Town Pond. There just may be far more important problems to solve first.

As the South Fork clears out after what was, by almost all accounts, an unpleasant summer, work continues in East Hampton Town Hall on a proposal for a rental registry. Modeled on those in other towns, notably Southampton, the draft-in-process is expected to set up a procedure by which landlords would have to sign up with the town before offering anyplace for rent.

When the registry was first discussed in East Hampton last year it was met with loud opposition. Landlords told the town board that the rules would be a burden and an invasion of privacy. Given the piles of money that can be made by those willing to break the law — and they are many, judging from the thousands of online listings for law-breaking multiple or short-term housing — it is safe to bet that the protests were motivated at least in part by a fear that the lucrative party might come slamming to an end if a registry were in place.

That was then. Now, after the unbearably crowded summer of 2015, it appears that the town board may be willing to revisit the issue. It should.

Just as the new online marketplace has disrupted publishing, dating, taxi service, and social relations, so too has it upended real estate. Brokers who deal in rentals told stories this year of a sea change in which traditional month or summerlong leases were decreasing as  direct-by-owner deals appeared on the rise.

There also was a frenetic feeling in the air this summer as short-term tenants raced from one place to the next in an effort to get everything in before their weekend was up. It used to be that the bar to entry, a multi-thousand-dollar lease, was fairly high; now anybody with a couple of hundred bucks and a gas card can get a taste of Hamptons life for a few days, even in July and August. The web has aided group rentals as well, with last-minute vacancies advertised on Craigslist, for example, in defiance of local rules on fractional or share arrangements.

Opening the gates to a broader demographic may be desirable, but not when doing so ends up with a town filled beyond reasonable capacity. It is probably no accident that harmful algae blooms appeared in some water bodies for the first verified times this summer, fueled in part by all the wastewater flowing into groundwater. Services were stretched thin. A sense of frustration swelled.

By itself, registering landlords will not turn the tide and take us back to a quiet paradise. However, it and other deliberate steps could go a long way toward making summer bearable. The board should not be intimidated by the howls of anyone who profits at the community’s expense, enabled by an online marketplace that cares not for its effect on East Hampton or anyplace else for that matter.