The East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals has it exactly right in asking an applicant for a rock revetment in Montauk for a full environmental impact study before proceeding.

John Ryan, who owns a bluff-top house overlooking the Atlantic, has a big problem. Erosion is eating away at the property. But East Hampton Town banned so-called hard structures on the beaches there, and in much of the rest of town, in about 2005 when it adopted a comprehensive Local Waterfront Revitalization Plan. This plan was the product of more than a decade of effort, and it carries the weight of state law. It should bind the zoning board’s hand.

The rationale behind setting out zones where seawalls were allowed and where they were not was based on considerable observation and thought. It is clear that in the places where dunes or bluffs are fortified with stone, wood, or steel, security for private property comes at an unacceptable cost — the loss of beaches over which the public has a centuries-old right of passage. Armoring also results in the loss of habitat, potentially including that of the plover, on the federal list of endangered species, and myriad others that depend on untrammeled nature for nesting, feeding, and resting places during migration.

Mr. Ryan is hardly alone in his hope to stem the tides. This week the town zoning board also heard from a group of property owners whose Louse Point area bluffs in Springs are being eaten away. Together, they are asking for hundreds of feet of rock, which would almost certainly mean the end of the beach there, as it has nearby, and dire down-drift effects.

Officials at every level must begin to recognize when protecting private property comes at the too high price of the loss of the people’s access to the shore. East Hampton’s beaches are valuable to all of us, residents and visitors alike, and no more should be sacrificed to save anyone’s house.

The board will study the environmental impact as presented by Mr. Ryan, but that work was done long ago as part of the town’s coastal hazard plan. The conclusion was clear: There can be no hard structures there.

LILCO, LIPA, PSEG — the names may have changed over the years, but for more than 30 years electrical service on Long Island has been one frustration after another. At a meeting in East Hampton on Tuesday, residents and elected officials were expected to speak out about a host of issues; whether their pleas will receive a meaningful response is subject to doubt.

Back in the 1970s, the Long Island Lighting Company tried to bring the region the never-to-be-opened Shoreham nuclear power station. Its successor, the Long Island Power Authority, was responsible for continually soaring rates and wholly inadequate storm preparation. And now, as the region gets to know the Public Service Enterprise Group (as Orwell might have called it), we have been subject to a thuggish approach that brought unsightly and perhaps unsafe massive transmission lines to residential neighborhoods and treasured agricultural areas and an absence of long-term vision including a meaningful commitment to renewable sources and reducing greenhouse emissions.

PSEG is a for-profit company listed on the New York Stock Exchange. It seems that the bean-counters within it and its external shareholders are the guiding forces. This is evident in the new “Utility 2.0” plan, which relies on old-fashioned oil-burning power plants to meet supplemental demand on the East End, and seems to be a behind-the-scenes effort worthy of pulp fiction at intimidation of its critics.

PSEG’s deal with the state has the familiar hallmarks of a typical insider arrangement. The law pushed through by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, which supposedly was intended to reform Long Island’s electric service, does not clearly require the company to use competitive bidding, leaving key aspects of its operation essentially unregulated. As with many other initiatives from the governor’s office, when it came to PSEG, he left local governments twisting in the wind, able to do little more than beg for solutions.

Critics, including the Sierra Club, have said the “Utility 2.0” plan fails to provide for adequate alternative generation, notably by offshore wind turbines. PSEG also has sought to delay a 280-megawatt renewable-power project for which bids already had been sought.

Other critics have sharply faulted a demand-reduction project that appears likely to be watered down amid PSEG’s debt-minimization schemes. Gordian Raacke, the director of Renewable Energy Long Island, decried the utility’s approach, saying that it “seems determined to drag us back into the fossil fuel past.”

One has to wonder what it will take to finally break the utility nightmare that has defined electric service in the region. Without Albany taking the lead, there can be little hope of reform or alternatives. Given how much businesses and residents pay for power, they deserve better. Governor Cuomo, who has been understood as having national political aspirations, should recognize an opportunity here to demand a progressive, forward-leaning power policy for Long Island. New York State could become a model for the rest of the country. Instead, “Utility 2.0,” which was supposed to signal a new start, appears doomed from the outset. In the absence of the governor’s leadership, there is little hope for an environmentally sound energy future.

As the summer high season rapidly draws to a close, East Hampton officials and leaders of the various environmental and business organizations here should take a look around and ask if a new, overarching plan is warranted to manage our town’s exploding popularity as a destination for short-term tourism and visitors.

Judging from the stunning number of rentals (mostly illegal) on online listing sites such as Airbnb and HomeAway and the fact that many houses were booked solid this summer, East Hampton’s guest-accommodation capacity has swelled almost overnight. Massive and continual traffic headaches support the casual observation that far more people were here between June and Labor Day than ever before. Restaurants were full every night of the week, grocery lines were a fact of life at all hours except the very early morning or late at night, and the beaches were crowded.

Downtown Montauk fairly boiled over with pedestrians this year when the sun did not shine, and the thunder from its clubs and gin mills could be heard for miles pretty much every night. Police struggled to meet the demand for increased patrols. Daytime beer parties and evening bonfires left the ocean beaches in appalling condition in Montauk and in other parts of town. All in all, summer 2014 appears to have been one in which the old, peaceful order hung on by just a thread.

The East Hampton Town Comprehensive Plan, last updated in 2005, is undoubtedly due for an overhaul anyway, but the escalating draw of people who do not own houses here or rent for a season, or even a summer month, suggests that the more urgent need is for effective controls that balance the desires and needs of tourists and visitors with those of residents.

We believe that East Hampton Town has reached a saturation point beyond which irreparable harm to the place we know and love will be inevitable. Community leaders, both from private groups and among elected officials, must make a priority of preparing for the seasons to come and the ever-greater demands the Hamptons’ notoriety has wrought.

Credit must be given for a new East Hampton Town Board initiative to deal with persistent quality-of-life violations and business owners who act as if laws do not apply to them. It is about time and should send a message that the rules matter and will be enforced.

Acting on complaints made by neighbors, officials have cited two Montauk property owners for allegedly turning their houses into hot-mattress hotels with a different set of guests every weekend. As difficult as these cases may be to prosecute, enforcement of existing law is not optional.

Notable, too, has been the effort to restrain the daytime bar crowd at Cyril’s Fish House on Napeague that spills onto the Montauk Highway right-of-way and snarls traffic. Acting on information provided by East Hampton Town, the New York State Liquor Authority voted last week to cancel Cyril’s license to sell alcohol. The move may have alarmed some in the bar and restaurant sector here, but was long overdue.

Farther to the east, the town has decided to get tough about the Memory Motel, which cordoned off most of its parking lot as an outdoor bar. The town’s response to this blatant affront to its zoning code has the parties headed to court to fight it out.

Looking to the upcoming town budget season, it is clear that more money must be provided for code enforcement and legal confrontations. Making sure the laws already on the books are efficiently applied has to be a central goal as the town looks ahead to next year.

“Justice will bring peace,” Lesley McSpadden said during a television appearance this week. Ms. McSpadden is the mother of Michael Brown, who was shot and killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Mo., on Aug. 9. While the focus now is rightly on the circumstances of the death of the 18-year-old, whom friends called Big Mike, the anger in the streets appears to be equally about how those in authority in this country treat people of color, particularly young black men.

Incidents of racial and ethnic profiling are a persistent stain on the United States’ ideals. It was evident in the arrest of a black Harvard professor while he was trying to get into his own house and can be seen in the targeting of Latino drivers for greater scrutiny by police on patrol.

As unacceptable as the nights of destruction in Ferguson have been, they cannot be dismissed as the work of “outside agitators”; Al Qaeda or some other unseen hand is not at work in Missouri. The homegrown rage in the streets is genuine and deep, the product of a law enforcement ethos still steeped in the policies of repression.

Justice might indeed bring quiet to the streets of Ferguson, but it will do little to remedy the increasingly militarized police from coast to coast, which sees minorities and young men of color as adversaries. The list of those brutalized by police in racially tinged circumstances is long and should be a continuing source of shame. So, too, is the record of judicial imbalance in criminal sentencing and so-called “three strikes” laws.

Once Michael Brown’s death no longer commands the headlines, the key test will be if Americans will find a way to embrace one another and celebrate all of us — our differences and similarities alike. Teaching police to stand down and not view young black men as the enemy is one place to start.

Justice for Big Mike and the others, yes, but the re-examination of what we stand for as a nation must not and cannot stop there.

Things are bad in the air around East Hampton Airport. Even though just how bad may be open to debate, there is no question that residents across the North and South Forks have been suffering from aircraft noise. The good news is that relief may be on the horizon.

According to the latest numbers, flights in and out of the town-owned airfield have increased substantially over last year. Between Jan. 1 and Aug. 4 helicopter traffic jumped by almost 44 percent over the same period in 2013. Fixed-wing aircraft using the airport rose as well. The surprising 2014 numbers come as officials are already grappling with accumulated complaints about noise from earlier years and a previous town administration that spent four years basically giving helicopter operators a free pass. Better weather this summer may have played a part in the dramatic spike, but people were also complaining last year, which underscores the fact that noise is a longstanding problem and cannot be ignored.

Unless East Hampton Town acts, route changes mandated by the Federal Aviation Administration could be approaching that would only anger a different set of residents. At a meeting last week in Southold with that town’s supervisor, F.A.A. staff, Representative Tim Bishop, and aides to Senator Charles E. Schumer, the discussion was about shifting flight paths away from the North Fork. But the numbers show that moving traffic around is not going to make a meaningful difference on the ground here. Whether the F.A.A. agrees to direct the loudest aircraft over Northwest Woods, Georgica Pond, Noyac, or the North Fork, some people are going to suffer unfairly for the convenience of a tiny portion of summer visitors and part-time residents.

Paid spokesmen for the helicopter industry have predicted dire consequences if airport limits are put in place. These claims, even if credible, do not outweigh the expectation of peace and quiet by residents of both forks. Officials from all of the affected towns and villages should work with the F.A.A. on an aggressive plan to reduce the total number of flights and curtail the hours helicopters can use the airport. The rights of those who live here must take precedence over commercial interests and the desire of some of the well-off to avoid the maddenly slow Long Island Expressway. You know what? If a certain number of weekend hedge-funders and others decide to spend their vacation time elsewhere, we’ll manage just fine without them.

Unfortunately, as the debate over airport traffic raged, conditions there deteriorated, particularly putting private pilots at risk. East Hampton Town officials are moving quickly now on several safety upgrades. These include lighting, tree work, and reconstruction of a crumbling and dangerous secondary runway. All of this can be paid for without F.A.A. money by using income from landing fees and other airport revenue. This is important because federal dollars come with attached strings, which make local regulation of noisy aircraft more difficult.

East Hampton Town Councilwoman Kathee Burke-Gonzalez has taken on a monumental task in getting many of the airport’s constituencies to talk to one another. She is to be congratulated for helping to guide the town toward likely new rules on noise and much-needed repairs.

The emerging united front among local pilots and anti-noise advocates must include the F.A.A. as well, since its cooperation will be essential if the town, as expected, imposes helicopter curfews, so-called slot limits on the number of landings and takeoffs, or other measures.

On paper, East Hampton Village’s proposed code changes to allow some duneland projects to proceed with reduced official scrutiny may make sense; on the ground, however, one of the proposals — to allow property owners to place “beach-compatible” sand on the dunes without applying for a variance from the code — is regrettable. Hearings on these and several other changes are scheduled for tomorrow’s village board meeting.

Our objection to exempting oceanfront property owners from prohibitions that now cover work on the dunes comes down to the simple fact that there is not enough sand to be found of sufficiently high quality. One thing is clear: The junk that passes for beach-compatible sand is garbage, pure and simple.

Take Georgica Beach in East Hampton Village, for example. Stone-flecked yellow sand from who knows where was dumped there to protect the exposed foundation of a guest house. To the east, a lot of the material brought in to protect threatened Montauk resorts has left the beach altered. In several places on the bay beach as well, we picked up bits of asphalt roadway and even what appeared to be a chunk of a green-painted concrete tennis court. The state’s Department of Environmental Conservation later told us the detritus came from an A-okay project.

With the standard for what passes as beach sand these days so low, village officials should not ease the way for property owners to fast-track coastal work. In the worst-case scenario, you could expect high “privacy dunes” to arise in these extraordinarily fragile micro­environments. It doesn’t seem as if the village trustees actually thought this through.

Another duneland regulation the board has proposed is reasonable, however. Property owners would be able to seek permits for elevated walkways with reduced paperwork and a minimum of delay. We support this change. On the matter of dune-building, however, the board should take a long, hard look before acting. Exempting property owners from thorough review would be likely to damage natural habitats and diminish the quality of one of East Hampton Village’s most precious assets — its beaches. At a time when projects near the beach should be getting more scrutiny, not less, the proposal is moving village government in the wrong direction.

In and of itself, a massive members-only club proposed for the former East Deck Motel site at Ditch Plain does not represent the end of Montauk as we know and love it, but it comes close.

Here is what is understood so far: An anonymous new owner has come up with a plan to more than double the use of the property by building a two-story complex with an Olympic-size swimming pool, a restaurant, and below-grade parking. The club would be open to some 179 members, along with their families and guests, based apparently on the space available on the beach in front of the parcel.

Built to meet Federal Emergency Management Agency standards, with a ground floor about 15 feet above sea level, the proposed 12,000-square-foot main building would tower over the area, cutting off views from nearby houses, and greatly change the look and feel of the area — for the worse. It could be that a grandiose plan for the new club was presented as an initial ante to be bargained down to what the owner really wants. But even at half the size, it would represent an unwise doubling of the former motel. And remember, this comes in part from the legal team responsible for the Montauk Beach House, another intrusion on parking, public property, and the community.

Viewed another way, the project amounts to a proposal to privatize a longstanding, popular public beach. If the plan eventually is approved, the club’s members, by force of numbers alone, would take over the sand between the so-called East Deck parking area and the legendary Dirt Lot. Though passage would not technically be blocked, amenities, like daybeds and beach lounge chairs, might well make it clear that ordinary folks are not welcome. Surfers at Ditch, already often frustrated by the crowded lineup, might well have to swallow a new and more self-entitled breed less willing to share the waves because they’ve paid for the privilege. And East Hampton officials will also have to consider what additional burden the additional club crowd might put on the town lifeguards just to the west.

The plan was the talk of Saturday’s Montauk Playhouse fund-raiser, where Alice Houseknecht, a former East Deck owner, was among the honorees. It appears that Ms. Houseknecht was hornswoggled by the mystery owner or his or her representatives when she sold the property. She reported last fall that she had been assured there would be no second story on the new structure and that the integrity of the site would be maintained. Based on the paperwork submitted to town planners so far, this is not true, which suggests that the people behind the scheme cannot be taken at their word. Town officials must proceed with the greatest suspicion in reviewing their project.

Our doubts also have been raised by the faceless owner’s successfully getting the town to accept a questionable gift of an expensive dune restoration project that looked then, as it does even more now, like a pot-sweetener for requests that were to come. We wonder just how ethical, or even legal, it was for a municipality to accept a donation from a party with an active plan working its way through its regulatory offices or about to be. Whether or not the gift was intended to curry favor (which it almost certainy was), it was unwise of officials to accept it.

Unfortunately, the project makes it clear that the site’s zoning, and that of other attractive parcels, especially around Montauk, is too permissive. In the 2005 East Hampton Town Comprehensive Plan, no changes were recommended for the resort zoning at Ditch Plain, including the Montauk Shores Condominium trailer park. This means that well-funded investors could further try to maximize their returns in spite of a widely held view that Montauk is already at its saturation point in terms of resorts and visitors.

What happens at East Deck aside, as pressures continue for more, bigger, and fancier projects, officials need to take a hard look at whether existing rules are adequate to assure that the town’s shoreline remains one residents can be proud of. Concepts like the Ditch Plain club, which only add to congestion and environmental impacts and at the same time use public resources as if they were their own, have little place here.

Everybody eats; not everybody plays golf. And there, in a nutshell, you have why a private club’s offer to take over most of a large parcel of town-owned former farmland in Amagansett should be rejected out of hand.

Some weeks ago, after successfully negotiating a community preservation fund purchase of a multi-parcel site for which luxury housing for the over-50 crowd had been planned, the East Hampton Town Board called for proposals about how the property might be used. Among the responses was a thick document from the South Fork Country Club offering to set up a driving range and instruction tees and greens there. A fine horse barn there would be used for club equipment and about a third of the land would be returned to farming. While the new site would serve the club’s members, the proposal notes that the public would be able to use the facility, presumably for a fee. The club said it would pay the town $75,000 a year for the land’s use and return it in better shape than when it was purchased.

Even though the preservation fund law allows municipalities to buy land for recreation, and golf is indeed a form of recreation, the South Fork’s proposal should be rejected. Perhaps 1 in 10 people in the United States occasionally golf, but only a fraction of that number do so more than a few times a year. According to a recent report from the National Golf Foundation, the sport suffered a net loss of 400,000 players last year. Looking toward the future, golf’s biggest defections were seen among those under 35. This is hardly the kind of trend the East Hampton Town Board should consider hitching itself to — especially on such a visible and, at $10.1 million, expensive recent land buy.

As we understand it, there are several other proposals making the rounds, and apparently most of them involve better agricultural purposes. Several East Hampton Town Board members have expressed a preference for farming or related uses there, and we agree. Food production is preferable, as it would revitalize the site, preserving community access and providing educational opportunities for a much larger proportion of local residents than golf ever could. You can’t fault the South Fork Country Club, which has an 18-hole course and clubhouse nearby, for asking. Nevertheless, its option should be placed on the bottom of the pile.

As a discussion heats up about what — if anything — should be done about commercial trucks parked in residential parts of town, greater focus is needed on the underlying question: whether a house lot has become a place of business.

Aesthetic concerns about trucks and other equipment are less important than whether the use of a property is in violation of the town code. From a regulatory point of view, this may be considerably more difficult than banning vehicles based on weight or other physical criteria. However, parking trucks and storing gear necessary for making a living is a longstanding tradition in East Hampton Town, and officials should move with extreme caution on legislative changes that might hurt small, owner-operated concerns.

During a hearing earlier this month in Town Hall, the owners of a number of small businesses urged the town board to take on the number of vehicles that should be permitted overnight in residential areas, but they also asked that no restrictions be imposed on the types of trucks. This is a reasonable suggestion; it protects the interest of small operations but discourages fleet parking that can turn the yard next door into an industrial zone.

On the other side of the coin, however, business owners must work to be better neighbors. Far too many seem to feel they have an unfettered right to run noisy landscaping, construction, or plumbing operations from their properties. In fact, while the town code allows “home offices,” such as those one might use to run the bookkeeping side of such a concern, commercial activities themselves are banned in residentially zoned areas.

Business owners and the town board alike should work toward a one-person, one-truck compromise. There really is no reason why someone should not be able to head home in his or her plumbing or pool-service vehicle, for example, at the end of a long day. Beyond that, only limited storage of material, equipment, and supplies should be allowed, perhaps based on a percentage of lot area, as loading and unloading operations could easily grow into noisy — and already prohibited — uses.

Regulating all this is, of course, easier to talk about than to do. Town officials will have their hands full rooting out those construction companies or others that have in some cases entirely paved backyards to accommodate large numbers of vehicles. The goal should be community peace and quiet. That someone might consider someone else’s work truck unsightly takes a distant second.