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.

One of the people who have been thinking a lot about a proposed surf club on the old East Deck Motel site at Ditch Plain in Montauk stopped in at The Star office the other day to point something out. Mike Bottini, an outdoorsman and member of the Surfrider Foundation’s local chapter, laid out a set of papers on our front desk, showing that a string of public and largely protected lands extend from Montauk Point nearly to the hamlet’s commercial downtown. East Hampton Town officials are believed to be in talks with ED40, the new corporate owners of the East Deck, about using the community preservation fund to buy the site. As Mike said, adding the property to the string of public and largely untouched lands would help complete a wonderful picture.

With the rebirth of longboarding and the rise of Montauk’s surfing lifestyle, Ditch Plain with its dependable and mostly forgiving break became what you might say is the center of the universe for many visitors, part-timers, and year-round residents. If the waves are only occasionally world-class, no matter; you can surf there almost every day of the year with the right equipment, and, in summer, some of the sport’s greatest stylists, including Joel Tudor, Robert August, and Wingnut Weaver, have been known to put their toes over the nose there.

ED40 never threatened the wave itself, but that hardly mattered. Its plan for a two-story private club with restaurant, pool, and other amenities would have not only altered the look of Ditch Plain but, what is more important to devotees, the feel of the place. For those lucky enough to own houses or rent in the neighborhood, the personal and commercial traffic the club would generate would become a source of continual annoyance. East Hampton Town’s buying the former motel and either keeping it as is or restoring parts of the beachfront to a natural state would eliminate the threat. While this alone might be enough to argue in favor of a deal, there are additional considerations.

Over the last decade or so, town officials have puzzled over how to provide more bathing beach capacity. Using some of the East Deck site for parking could help ease pressure elsewhere and better accommodate the numbers of beachgoers’ vehicles that already try to shoe-horn into Ditch Plain’s three inadequate lots. The site could provide a staging area for town lifeguards and improved access for emergency vehicles. Also, the single public restroom at Ditch is in desperate need of an upgrade; a second, more modern facility with a more environmentally appropriate septic system is in order.

Taking an idea from the Village of East Hampton, which very lucratively rents out the Sea Spray summer cottages near Main Beach, we can envision a setup at Ditch Plain in which the town actually gains revenue by retaining or renovating some of the motel for guests or coming up with a new arrangement.

The downside as we see it is cost. ED40 paid $15 million for the property last year; the price cannot have fallen since then, and the owners will undoubtedly want to be repaid for the dune-building they did there and on adjacent town land. The town cannot pay more than its appraisers say the property is worth, and a large deal might knock out a good chunk of the community preservation fund’s cash on hand. However, the town has the ability to borrow against future transfer-tax receipts for the fund, so the money is available one way or the other.

Setting aside highly politicized recriminations about the Keyes Island purchase in Three Mile Harbor, hardly an ill word has ever been said about preservation fund acquisitions. And, going further back in time, land buys have always been viewed favorably. Purported damage to a municipal property at Sammy’s Beach in East Hampton may have cost one town supervisor a shot a re-election, and an attempt to sell off a town property in Montauk badly sullied the reputation of another.

It has been understood for a long time here that preservation is the best investment. The huge outcry over the ED40 plan is an indication of how deep and heartfelt affection for Ditch Plain has become. It is difficult to come up with a significant downside to public purchase. Officials should proceed with talks knowing that they are on the right track and will enjoy wide community support.

When the numbers are laid out, they are stark: This year, between Thursday, May 22, and Memorial Day, a four-day span, there were 475 complaints about noise coming from aircraft using East Hampton Airport. This was nearly double the number recorded during the same period the previous year and, just as significant, the calls came from more than twice the households as in 2013. East Hampton Town officials clearly have a noise crisis on their hands.

The sheer scale of airport use is stunning. Over the four-day weekend, there were 872 “operations,” as takeoffs and landings are called in regulatory parlance, about 20 percent more than during the same weekend the year before. Of these, 341 were window-rattling helicopters, which led to the greater share of the public’s complaints. Furthermore, traffic controllers at the airport are beginning to say that the route changes designed to limit helicopter noise are instead creating potential problems.

Fiddling with routes only moves the problems around — and may be a danger to those in the air as well as those on the ground. Setting curfews on the noisiest aircraft and perhaps implementing curbs on the number of helicopters that can use the airport per hour appear to be ahead. East Hampton Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell said on Tuesday that there must be limits. How right he is.

Historically, the New York State Department of Transportation has not been a model for managing construction projects in this region. When it comes to traffic and transportation, it has been assumed that South Fork municipalities best understand the unique ebb and flow of traffic that defines the area. In the case of recent roadwork by the Southampton Town, however, that assumption has proven wrong. Changes being undertaken in front of Cromer’s Market on Noyac Road, covering about 100 yards of road length, have made it clear that nothing about the state’s successful Route 27 project was taken into account.

Here is what was learned this spring as the state successfully resurfaced Montauk Highway from County Road 39 to Stephen Hand’s Path in East Hampton: Major road projects should be completed off-season and certainly before Memorial Day; such work should take place after 10 a.m. and before 3 p.m. if necessary during daylight, but preferably at night, and that one side of the road should be paved or nearly completed before the other side or shoulder is torn up.

The volume of traffic during high season here is such that all other routes east and west, including the back roads used as alternates, are clotted with cars. And like it or not, Noyac Road has become a popular option. So it was surprising that, on a recent morning at the height of rush hour, eastbound traffic was backed up past Trout Pond as drivers waited for about 30 minutes for a flagman to allow vehicles through on a single lane as work went on.

If Southampton’s Highway Department cared about residents, businesses, and the region’s air quality (surely compromised by the exhaust of scores of standing vehicles all day), it would make every effort not to add to the burden of traffic as people try to get to work, provide goods and services, run errands, or even breathe during the busiest time of the year. It should look to the state for guidance, as odd as that may seem.

Southampton’s approach to the community does not bode well for its plan to rebuild an aging bridge over Sagg Pond. With the way it has treated morning commuters in Noyac as an example, we can only watch with increasing concern.

Pressure is mounting for meetings of the East Hampton Town Trustees to be aired on LTV, the town’s public access cable channel. This is a reasonable suggestion and should be explored.

The trustees are the only one of East Hampton’s important boards whose meetings are not televised and available for replay on demand on the LTV website. Town board meetings are shown live and archived online, as are other proceedings, including those of the planning, zoning, and architectural review boards. The sessions of the East Hampton Village Board and Z.B.A. are live as well and available for replay, as are those of the East Hampton School Board. But not the trustees, who gather twice a month. This should change.

To be fair, interest in watching trustees’ sessions started to rise only during a recent debate over a town board attempt to ban alcohol at Amagansett’s Indian Wells and Atlantic Avenue Beaches. Some residents who favored the ban were annoyed at the trustees’ opposition and seemed to think more people would share their outrage if they could see the panel’s future deliberations for themselves. But other trustee matters also merit broader public attention. The trustees have an important function in local government and greater public knowledge of their affairs would help dispel the sense that they operate in a vacuum.

Technical issues and cost might stand in the way of the immediate airing of trustee meetings, but this should not be the end of the matter. The Lamb Building, where the trustees gather, is not yet wired for videotaping, unlike other official town and village venues. The trustees could consider meeting in Town Hall, but the zoning board is already there at the same time on Tuesdays. As an interim measure, it might suffice if LTV could assign a single camera operator to tape trustee sessions. That way, even if live broadcasts were not immediately possible, the online version could be made available.

Seeing trustee meetings will go only part of the way toward getting them more in step with the town’s other agencies. Unfortunately, the trustees are elected in one massive, difficult-to-comprehend slate. Unlike all the other boards, which have staggered terms, all nine trustee seats come up simultaneously. Take it from us: It is extremely difficult to interview and assess the qualities of 18 trustee candidates from the two major political parties, and we are paid to do it. Because it is almost impossible for ordinary voters to make reasoned decisions among so many people, the contest becomes one of name recognition.

The trustees are also at a disadvantage because, unlike the boards that meet in Town Hall, they have a tiny staff and few resources to call on. Had the trustees been in the flow of government and the public eye, some of the tension that greeted the alcohol ban discussion might have been avoided. Promoting greater awareness among residents of the valuable work the trustees do, and how they do it, is a fine place to start.

Some 120 acres of undeveloped land across multiple parcels in Montauk are coming up for possible purchase by the Town of East Hampton and there are some deals in the pipeline or already inked, using money from the community preservation fund transfer tax. The properties are most, if not all, part of the Lake Montauk watershed, which is the focus of an important environmental-protection effort.

Lake Montauk was permanently opened to the flow of the tides in the 1920s when the Carl Fisher company set about developing it as a key feature of its resort. Two long stone jetties, which reach into Block Island Sound, do their best to keep the lake’s narrow connection to the deep, refreshing waters open. But since the lake is loaded with marinas and commercial enterprises and is ringed with houses, it is little surprise that pollution is a problem. Parts of the lake are closed to swimming and shellfishing on a permanent basis, and seasonal tests have indicated high levels of bacterial contamination in other locations.

Buying and neutralizing as many of the vacant parcels around the lake as possible is just the first part of a long campaign. The authors of a recent report prepared at the behest of the East Hampton Town Board have said that water testing must be increased and the noxious contribution of the many, mostly residential, septic systems quantified. Following that, the town might provide cash incentives, low-cost loans, or tax breaks for sanitary system upgrades.

The health of the lake is not simply an indulgence; environmental quality has long been understood as a key component of East Hampton Town’s attractiveness to second-home owners and short-term visitors, both of whom are economically crucial. And now that at least two companies, a successful oyster-growing concern and another just getting started, are growing food in the lake itself, there is added incentive to get it right.

Helping save the lake through aggressive land purchases is a great start, but, as the report’s authors said, it is only the first salvo in an ongoing campaign.

The chief executive officer of the Starbucks corporation and the East Hampton Village Zoning Board of Appeals together have a world-class stall job under way, though the Z.B.A. appears to be inching toward putting a stop to it. This display of backbone, however cartilaginous, is overdue — though we will believe it when we see it.

Howard Schultz, with his wife, Sherri, had formally asked the zoning board back in April for permission to retain a garage that mysteriously became a good-size guesthouse on their Gracie Lane property. The village zoning chairman, citing a family responsibility involving one of the Schultzes’ lawyers, presented a request last week for a delay of two more months before the board’s deliberations might begin. Conveniently, this would push the eventual moment of reckoning past Labor Day, when, one can assume, the Schultzes would no longer regularly frequent their East Hampton spread or need to house their visitors, extended family, staff, or whomever, in the much debated structure.

The thing about this particular request is that the Schultzes are not seeking to build something new. On the contrary, they have been asking to keep unchanged a garage that had been improperly expanded. Though legally entitled to a garage of only 650 square feet with a single apartment for a caretaker, the building now has 1,000 square feet of floor area, with four bedrooms and three and a half bathrooms. According to their lawyers, when the Schultzes bought the property they were assured by the brokers that everything was legal. Nevertheless, when they applied to the Z.B.A. for permission to expand their house two years ago, they agreed to return the garage to its original size. They did not do so.

Every day that the zoning board has given over to the lawyers’ maneuvering and artful delays is one in which the couple continues to have the use of the wrongly altered structure. By failing to call a halt to the dodge last week when the matter was, at least on paper, to reach conclusion, the board essentially agreed to a fifth extension of time.

The principal lawyer for the couple, Leonard Ackerman of East Hampton, is supposed to appear at the next meeting, on Friday, July 25, or otherwise make the case for adjourning deliberations until the middle of September. Another postponement is hard to swallow, however, given that at various times the Schultzes have been represented by a coterie of attorneys, including a moonlighting Fred W. Thiele Jr., who just happens to also be a state assemblyman.

By contrast, extensions of time on matters before the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals are extremely rare. At Town Hall, applicants and their attorneys make their cases in hearings, the gavel comes down, and decisions are forthcoming in 60 days or less, as state law requires. Once in a while, the record might be kept open for one side or the other to respond to a late document, but only long enough for that purpose rather than for indefinite months on end as in the village in this and many other matters. It is a fair model, one that requires all involved to be well prepared, and it offers swift solutions, benefiting both applicants and the community.

Concerns about the absence of timely and efficient review are not idle or without importance. By allowing matters to drag on, the village zoning board is effectively cutting the public out of the process. Few residents have the means or stamina to attend every continuation of such protracted hearings. Interest becomes diluted; attention wanes. This drastically reduces the potential role of neighbors and other parties and makes government an insiders’ game that only the pros can win.

What is infuriating about this is that it all comes down to money. If a middle-class homeowner or even a run-of-the-mill millionaire promised to reduce the size of a clearly illegal structure but neglected to do so, one would expect no leniency. There is a double standard at work here.

Credit Mr. and Ms. Schultz’s hubris with finally forcing the issue and bringing the zoning board to the point where some of its members appear to be moving toward what they should have said months ago: No.

It is difficult to imagine a more convincing argument for the immediate consolidation of school districts than the president of the Wainscott School Board’s plea that a modest affordable housing development be kept out of that school district. That this was not roundly rejected from the start is disappointing, to say the least.

David Eagan, the board president, cautioned East Hampton Town officials last week that it would be difficult to accommodate the perhaps 40 additional students the housing would bring in and that it could lead to higher taxes and the need to expand the tiny lower-grades schoolhouse. Take it elsewhere, he seemed to say, like Springs or East Hampton. And therein should lay the death knell of the anachronistic smaller South Fork school districts.

The housing plan is worthwhile. A local nonprofit, with county, state, and federal money, would build a 48-apartment complex on about 31 acres of town-owned land off Stephen Hand’s Path. Current residents of East Hampton Town would be eligible for preference as renters. One of the project’s backers estimated that in addition to the 20 students who would be educated at the Wainscott School, the costs for another 20 who would attend middle school and high school elsewhere could well be added to tax bills. Even so, these numbers are small when compared to several neighboring school districts.

If a school system is too microscopic to handle even the children of a modest work force residence project, something is out of balance. What Wainscott’s board members seem to be saying is that they might welcome the labor of those who live in publicly underwritten houses, but that they had better live elsewhere. One might easily expect the same walls to be thrown up in Sagaponack and Amagansett. The latter school district, in what may be an effort to maintain the exclusivity inherent in its tiny size, has a no-visitors policy that crimps district-shopping by prospective parents.

Speculating, we have long been under the impression that much of the resistance to district consolidation comes from the respective small-school administrators, some of whom stand to lose high-paying jobs in the inevitable shakeout. Scare tactics in the form of studies claiming huge tax increases are trotted out as these leaders begin to see a threat to positions with top compensation packages of around $300,000 a year, when benefits are added.

Larger districts might make for positive change on the school boards, which are made up of well-meaning ordinary citizens who find themselves in thrall to superintendents and their intricate knowledge of the complex functions of running an educational system. So complete is the capitulation that in several districts, notably East Hampton’s, the superintendent sits at the head of the table at board meetings, instead of in the audience.

From the parents’ perspective, small schools are a dream come true. Who wouldn’t want a good education in an idyllic setting for their children that is paid for by someone else? But parents’ wishes do not always make for sound policy. By all accounts, East Hampton Town is in an affordable housing crisis; even less-desirable neighborhoods are priced out of reach of working people as gentrification goes on. There are many causes for this, including the impact of more than a decade of nearly complete town failure to enforce group-housing laws, which has lead to an artificial inflation of prices at the low end of the market.

Let’s amplify that point for a moment: Houses in Springs, for example, are priced beyond the means of local middle-class families in part because illegal multiple rentals allow owners to cover mortgages that would otherwise be unaffordable. This is yet another reason why code enforcement matters, but whether at this point there is any way back is an open question. The result is that there really is little hope for someone starting out or getting by on the area’s modest average salaries to find a decent, year-round rental, and almost no way toward homeownership without breaking the law along the way.

Wainscott’s position is understandable, but must not be the end of the discussion. A neutral analysis could resolve the question about higher taxes, but its not-in-my-backyard stance should be ignored. A regional school district that could spread the tax burden around would be the best course. Of course, a change in state law about how schools raise money might help shift some of the cost off the backs of property owners and more equitably onto this area’s considerable summertime sales and hotel tax income. Then, too, townwide property reassessment might reveal large untapped reserves among long-undervalued parcels.

Education, housing, and taxes are massive and interrelated issues. Progress on these fronts is not going to be made by Wainscott’s thumbing its nose at the rest of the community.

Pity poor Montauk. First it comes under attack from hordes of people partying on weekends, then it becomes overrun with guests in illegal short-term rentals, and now, parts of the public’s property are being usurped by private businesses.

East Hampton Town officials will be certainly met with howls of outrage when, as we suspect, they take on restaurant owners and others who have in rapidly increasing numbers this summer been placing tables out on the sidewalk for their patrons. Any number of downtown eateries are getting in on the act, expanding their seating capacity to make the most of a short season. One can understand why they  do so, but that does not make it right or fair to the taxpayers whose property they are using. Perhaps these businesses are taking a cue from Gurney’s Inn, also in Montauk, which has set out dozens of chairs and daybeds apparently in the traditional right of way over the beach. If those charged with regulating public properties here see no harm in these instances, they should at least charge fees for the privilege.

Then there are places, like the Memory Motel, which has in effect stolen public property by turning most of its off-street parking lot into an outdoor bar. As a result, more patrons of the popular drinking spot have to put their vehicles elsewhere, and this is hardly the worst of it. By all accounts, chaos rules there late at night as far too many revelers roll off into the darkness. This is similar to what happened at the Montauk Beach House, which added a club and live music venue without providing a single additional off-street parking space.

Now, though apparently within legal bounds, the mysterious owners of the former East Deck Motel have presented the town with plans to expand and become a members-only beach club at Ditch Plain. This, too, will have an impact on the surrounding area and undoubtedly add to the sense of a hamlet out of control, in which the love of money takes precedence.

In a landmark decision, the United States National Marine Fisheries Service has listed the scalloped hammerhead shark as an endangered species, making it the first shark protected under the Endangered Species Act. This is only one of the top ocean predators left vulnerable because of fishing and other human activities. Many additional species of shark are considered at risk of extinction, thanks largely to a continuing demand for their fins for soup.

In the waters off eastern Long Island, there is little commercial fishing specifically for sharks. Instead, they are harried by sportfishermen, often during tournaments in which money and bragging rights are at stake. It is surprising that there is just one catch-and-release tournament here, the $10,000 Shark’s Eye competition, which debuted last summer at the Montauk Marine Basin and will be held again this weekend.

By all accounts, the tournament was a success. Sharks were caught, tagged with tracking devices, and then released. No weigh-in system was used; instead, each shark caught was photographed and allotted a set amount of points based on its species. To make sure all competitors played fair, a member from a rival team was on board at all times.

Last year’s winner, Richie Nessel, said the Shark’s Eye was the “most fun” he had ever had in a tournament. It provided education and entertainment for students at the Montauk School as well, who named a 200-pound blue shark Beamer. His movements were tracked at Ocearch.org, so it is known that he traveled over 9,000 miles since the tournament last July. As of this week, his satellite tag was somewhere off Costa Rica.

The Shark’s Eye tournament and others like it also provide valuable scientific data. Tracking systems allow scientists to gather information about sharks’ health as well as travels. Furthermore, they promote public interest in sharks. If people become interested enough in a shark like Beamer to track his progress, perhaps they will care enough to avoid turning him into soup. Six other sharks are expected to be tagged during this weekend’s tournament.

Conservationists would welcome the expansion of catch-and-release tournaments, and we believe more of them would not reduce enthusiasm. The model exists, it isn’t difficult to copy, and it has proven successful. Montauk is known worldwide as a fishing community and has the ability to influence the fishing world. There is no better place for ocean conservation to take hold. Better, more progressive tournaments could help make that happen.