In the early 1980s, the East Hampton Town Board disbanded the Planning Department. While that does not seem to be the goal of today’s Town Hall leaders, a continued push to change the way the department operates should have those who favor environmental protection and solid land-use management concerned.

    The latest salvo came in a memorandum from a recently appointed member of the town zoning board of appeals to Marguerite Wolffsohn, who heads the Planning Department. In the memo, Don Cirillo expressed displeasure with the planners’ environmental review of building applications. Among other things, he described the planning staff as arbitrary and engaged in blackmailing applicants to do its bidding in order to secure permits. Ms. Wolffsohn fired back in her own memo, calling Mr. Cirillo’s allegations unfounded and defending her department’s professionalism.

     Much of Mr. Cirillo’s language echoed complaints heard over the years from lawyers involved in land-use projects for themselves or clients, as well as from people in related fields, so this is not new. What is unusual, however, is for a blunt, one-sided critique to come from an appointed official. It is unlikely that Mr. Cirillo was alone in his criticism, but he didn’t indicate whether he was speaking on behalf of others, even other members of the Z.B.A. Because the memo was so harsh and because Mr. Cirillo is in a position of influence as vice chairman of the Z.B.A., it is important that he disclose who his confidants are. We have asked him to do so and will report if and when he responds.

    Supervisor Bill Wilkinson and Councilwoman Theresa Quigley, the deputy supervisor, have spoken out about what they see as failings in the town planning-review process and expressed their shared desire to see it streamlined. They have not commented publicly about Mr. Cirillo’s critique, but they have made no secret of their hostility for the Planning Department.

    That Mr. Cirillo is a former treasurer of the town Republican Committee and his wife is a current committee member is relevant here because Mr. Wilkinson, a Republican, is seeking re-election this fall. The memo may turn out to be a political liability, especially if it is consistent with the supervisor’s personal views.

    Among the several points Mr. Cirillo makes, his general assertion that the process is overly cumbersome in all matters is wrong. Most permits that require Planning Department review are processed in an effective and efficient manner; what does take longer — sometimes far longer — are requests for complicated projects, those for which environmental regulations come into play and those for the expansion of businesses in residential zones, among others.

    Yes, tricky applications are going to take a long time to review and the outcomes are not guaranteed. All of the town’s permit procedures, including the Planning Department’s, undoubtedly can be improved. But the memo’s declaration of war on sound environmental review and the professionalism of the town planners is dangerous, poorly thought through, and should be repudiated by those in Mr. Cirillo’s party if they are to have any credibility on these issues among the public. Voters like their East Hampton a certain way, and look dimly at those who favor the bulldozer’s blade over heritage and preservation. It is a message that all sides cannot lose sight of.

    About a year ago, an outcry greeted a proposal to erect a wind turbine on a tree farm off Long Lane in East Hampton. Now, a second property owner has plans to build one nearby, but this time it is unlikely to spark the same degree of opposition.

    The Iacono farm, famous for its chickens, eggs, holiday geese, and homemade cookies, has alerted East Hampton Town that it will soon put an electricity-generating windmill on its seven acres. We say alerted because the family’s lawyer has told the town that the State Agricultural and Markets Law supersedes the town zoning code and that the Iaconos can do what they like in this regard. Apparently, notifying the town board was a courtesy.

    When the first Long Lane turbine was announced, opponents worried most about how the 120-foot tower on which it rotated would look in the farmland landscape — much of which had been preserved with public dollars in development-rights buys. Others, especially those with houses close by, worried about noise and whether the spinning blades would make an aggravating whir. From what we have observed, these concerns were overstated. The anticipated problems turned out to be relatively innocuous.

     While the Long Lane turbine and the one now planned may be limited in their impact on views and neighbors, other alternative-energy projects might not be. Officials have known for a while now that East Hampton Town’s rules for windmills and the like are deficient, but they have not made a priority of revamping them. In the absence of a thorough, publicly discussed policy, it could prove impossible for property owners to obtain permission for small-scale turbines on residential land, where town rules unarguably apply.

    This newest proposal is a reminder that a comprehensive alternative-energy statute remains to be written.

Right now, the much-ballyhooed New York property tax cap appears to be much ado about very little. Under the terms of a bill passed last week, which the governor is expected to sign shortly, tax increases would be held to 2 percent annually or the rate of inflation, whichever is less. But the cap has a significant hole in it, particularly where local government is concerned.

    In order to go past the 2-percent limit, three-fifths of the deciding body for a particular budget would have to agree to break the cap. For school districts, this means getting 60 percent of voters to approve it in a referendum. So far, so good. However, for other forms of government, approval for higher tax levies would come from its elected representatives alone.

    Eastern Long Island’s towns and villages, like most of the smaller municipalities across New York, are governed by five-member boards. This means that it would take only a three-person majority to reach 60 percent and exceed the limit. As such, the bill is patently unfair, placing greater restraints on schools while essentially allowing cities (although not New York), counties, towns, villages, and special taxing districts to continue business as usual.

    If Albany really intended to pass a meaningful bill with adequate restraint on the growth of government, this is an embarrassing loophole. For towns and villages from Niagara to East Hampton, the number of yes votes required to approve an annual spending plan is the same as would be necessary to bust the cap.

    It is, frankly, stunning that lawmakers, many of whom came to their current posts with small-town government experience, could have missed this important detail — unless they didn’t miss it and the escape valve was intentional. Requiring a four-member supermajority for municipalities to exceed the tax cap might have been an option.

    If Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo is serious about protecting taxpayers from runaway local government and school spending, he should not have signed this bill.

    East Hampton Village took a small but significant step late last month in banning the use of certain plastic bags by retailers and restaurants. It is only the second local government in the State of New York to enact such a measure, after Southampton Village. Following the village board’s sensible decision, we hope that the Town of East Hampton will put similar restrictions in place.

    The new village law will give retailers until early next year to exhaust their supplies. Once the six-month grace period is up, however, places like the chain supermarket Waldbaum’s will have the option of providing customers with recycled-paper bags or expecting them to bring along their own bags, as some shoppers already do. Exempted are bags larger than 28-by-36 inches and those thick enough — 2.25 mils, for the record — to be used again.

    For example, the distinctive white-and-orange bags from the high-end grocery Citarella are likely to remain in circulation; the wispy ones from the Chinese takeout place off Newtown Lane as well as the supermarket will be no more. The Ladies Village Improvement Society, whose members recycle plastic sacks for use in the Bargain Books and Bargain Box shops, will, like other nonprofits, be exempt from compliance.

    Plastic bags are part of a much larger picture of the United States’ dependence on the fossil fuels used to make them. Global energy security is (or should be) a top concern for Washington. While a village like East Hampton can make only a tiny contribution to reducing this country’s dependence on imported oil, every bit helps. After the bags are used, they end up in landfills or flutter off into the environment, where they slowly break down into ever-smaller fragments and can then work their way into the marine and terrestrial food chains.

    Southampton Village led the way, and Southampton Town officials are in preliminary discussions about a townwide ban. Suffolk lawmakers have from time to time considered the possibility, but have failed to take action, though there is still hope. East Hampton Town, which must deal with the hundreds of thousands of these bags that pass through its waste facilities each year, would benefit directly from reducing the stream. It should consider a ban at its earliest convenience.

    East Hampton Village officials deserve a hearty cry of “Well done!” for this unabashedly bold move to help the planet.

    A war for the future of Lake Montauk is on, and the battle going on right now is about docks. No sooner did the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals allow one property owner to extend his pier farther into the lake, than another decided to take his chance. If this second applicant manages to convince the Z.B.A. of his case, expect more to follow.

    Lake Montauk, unlike East Hampton’s other waterways, is the responsibility of the town board; the town trustees manage our other bays and harbors. The trustees have long had a strict no-new-docks policy, and they have gone to great lengths to limit what happens along their shorelines.

    Lake Montauk, on the other hand, suffers from its general popularity and proximity to world-class fishing grounds. Unfortunately, upland conditions have added to the deterioration of the lake’s water quality as development has been allowed to proceed with only minimal limits. Another negative factor is a thick clay layer over the soil in some places, which helps speed waste from septic systems along in the groundwater, much of which enters the lake fairly rapidly.

    A few docks will not break the lake. However, taken together with all of its other stresses, plans for any new construction on or near this important waterway should be subject to the strictest environmental review, and existing violations should be prosecuted to the fullest.

    The joint East Hampton Town and Village Disabilities Advisory Board has issued a call for the public to help it develop a list of spots where access by the disabled is a problem. Civic-minded citizens and officials should make it a priority. The committee has only met irregularly, but its chairman, Glenn Hall of Amagansett, is eager to take problems with accessibility, whether to public or business places, to the right officials.

    As a former disabilities committee chairman has pointed out, in several instances East Hampton Town itself is apparently in violation of its own access policy, as well as state and federal law. Two problems Richard Rosenthal cited were at Town Hall, where assisted-listening devices were not provided, and at the entrance to the Town Justice Court. There, the wheelchair ramp is a lumpy splash of asphalt, while handicapped parking is tucked away senselessly around a corner of the building without proper pavement markings.

    The Americans with Disabilities Act is intended to ensure that all citizens have equal access to workplaces and government offices. However, the act can have no effect unless citizens and officials alike speak out about where changes are necessary. Furthermore, town and village officials should not let budget restraints interfere with quick corrective action. We have heard that East Hampton Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson has taken notice of these problems and is working to correct them. This work is to be encouraged.

    Eighteen years ago, a few months after my grandmother on my father’s side celebrated a milestone birthday, she and my stepgrandfather, Milt, took the entire family on a weekend getaway to the Catskills.

    There were 16 of us then and our destination was the Concord, the largest resort in the Borscht Belt, and at the time one of the last of its kind. According to Wikipedia, it had some 1,500 rooms and a dining room that seated 3,000. The food was kosher, to cater to what had historically been a Jewish clientele.

    The weekend we were there, Howie Mandel was the Saturday evening entertainment, offering a stand-up routine rife with four-letter expletives. (The children were supposed to be in bed.) Though I was already 22 and in college, my grandmother — a modern woman and not overly proper — told me recently that she had been surprised by his language and embarrassed that I was exposed to it.

    Before that trip, everything I knew about the Catskills I had learned watching “Dirty Dancing.” But despite the instructive value of the movie, I knew nothing of the area’s history or its popularity as a Jewish summer vacation spot. My father and his two sisters had gone to summer camp in the Catskills and had memories of family vacations not far from the Concord.

    Most of the other big Borscht Belt resorts were already closed by the time of our visit. Five years later, the Concord would follow suit, sitting empty and abandoned, with only its golf course operational, for a decade until demolition finally began a few years ago.

    To me, the Concord was like a landlocked cruise ship, a mammoth place where activities were scheduled throughout the day and you dressed up for dinner. It was fun, in an unexpected way.

    Two weeks ago, as a belated celebration of Nana and Milt’s 25th anniversary and an especially big birthday for Milt, my grandparents again gathered the family for a weekend in the Catskills. This time we were 21 and our destination was the Villa Roma Resort and Conference Center in Callicoon. Not quite as vast as the Concord, it still offered an array of on-site activities including indoor and outdoor pools and boccie courts, tennis, golf, shuffleboard, a bowling alley, a nightclub, bumper boats, and, my favorite, a go-kart race track, a k a the Monaco Speedway. Had it rained, we could easily have entertained ourselves without ever leaving the expansive building.

    The family portraits looked very different this time than they had 18 years ago.

    Age aside, there had been two divorces, an uncle lost to cancer, and the addition of two fiancées, a grandchild, a grandson-in-law (my husband), and two great-grandchildren (my kids). Cousins who were toddlers or not yet born in 1993 were old enough, or almost, to share a beer with this time around. After rendezvousing with the rest of the arriving family members at our hospitality suite on Friday afternoon, my daughter declared it “a party” and determined to sleep as little as possible for the entire weekend.

    She didn’t want to miss a moment, and I don’t blame her.

    At dinner on Friday and Saturday nights, with all but the youngest of us clustered around a big table with a view of the pretty hills beyond, my grandmother gushed about how lucky she was to have all of us there together. I couldn’t agree more.

    The older I get the more I appreciate time with family. And with relatives who are emotionally connected but geographically scattered, that time doesn’t come often enough. Who else will volunteer to hang out with your 3-year-old or vie for a chance to chase after your fiercely independent 1-year-old walker? For other people, even the closest of friends, it gets old. For family . . . well, they’re family.

    Having experienced the fun of her aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents at dinner and then breakfast on Saturday, Jade had no interest in spending time away from them in the kiddie pool — “too splashy” — or even going to the playground. She just wanted to “go to the party.”

    There were three outdoor pools, but securing a lounge chair near them was harder than getting a parking spot at Indian Wells in August. The pool gates opened at 9 a.m.; however, if you were not up and waiting on line by 7, you were out of luck for the day. Being a beach girl, the idea of sitting in such close quarters with so many other people by the side of an overly warm and overcrowded pool did not appeal to me. Maybe that’s because I did not get on line at 7 and therefore did not have a lounge chair.

    I wondered, as I stepped between the tanning-oil-slathered bodies, where did these people come from? What was Villa Roma’s primary demographic? I’m a reporter, an amateur anthropologist. I can’t help it. I always want to figure a place out. Did they come from a nearby city? From suburban New York or New Jersey, and if so, why wouldn’t they go to the beach? Were they upstate vacationers? People without pools or beaches at home?

    An answer of sorts came later that evening during the resort’s Saturday comedy show. A comedian whose name I did not catch with a routine aimed at Italian-Americans from Jersey, like him. Who knows? We may not have been the typical Villa Roma guests, but it didn’t matter. It was fun to be somewhere different, to be away from one resort area in the height of the season and enjoying another.

    And did I mention there were go-karts?

—

    Carissa Katz is an associate editor at The Star.

    Tucked away in a recent report on the quality of Suffolk’s water is a striking image: a map showing in years how much time it takes for rainwater to get in the ground and reach eastern Long Island’s bays, streams, and harbors. The graphic is meaningful in that it illustrates just how long it takes for contaminants to move from one point to another, as well as the time it takes for pollution-reduction efforts to be reflected in surface water quality.

    For regional planners and elected officials, the map and the document from which it comes — the Suffolk Comprehensive Water Resources Management Plan — make for a sobering reminder of the challenges ahead in protecting marine ecosystems and drinking water.

    For some time now, private organizations, like the Concerned Citizens of Montauk, Peconic Baykeeper, Nature Conservancy, and Group for the East End, have been raising the alarm, but responses, particularly in East Hampton Town, have been wanting. This may be because the town’s leaders have other priorities, lack  understanding of the scale of the risks, or have little willingness to take them on. Even longer term, rising sea level is predicted to reduce supplies of potable waters on both the North and South Forks.

    Fortunately, the crisis is not imminent; the county report indicates that groundwater will remain adequate until 2030. But two decades can come and go all too quickly. And in some coastal locations, the demand for water may exceed the limited and shallow freshwater aquifer more rapidly than in other areas of the East End.

    Adding to a sense of urgency is the report’s finding that tests have shown increasing levels of contaminants — nitrates, volatile organic compounds, and pesticides — over the last two decades. The study’s authors recommend continued implementation of groundwater quality regulations, new rules to reduce the impact of future development, improving and monitoring wastewater from existing houses and businesses, and, perhaps most important, open space protection. This recommendation is described in the report as the most effective means of protecting ground and surface waters. No news there, but a welcome reminder.    

    Immediate testing and protections for the roughly 28 percent of Suffolk residents who get water from private wells is suggested. Also on a to-be-considered list are a county law mandating odd-even lawn watering days, mandating sensors that can shut off landscape irrigation when it rains, tiered billing rates to encourage conservation, and other water-wise measures. The study’s authors call for Suffolk to commit funding for the staff and technical resources necessary to protect ground and surface waters for future generations.

    Unfortunately, East Hampton Town appears to be wading in a groundwater problem of its own. Its septic wastewater treatment plant on Springs-Fireplace Road has been cited by the state for discharge violations. As the town board moves to correct this, board members are likely to become more focused than they have been on water quality, maybe even taking the time to sit down and read the county report and take stock of its recommendations.

    Groundwater may move gradually, but government can be even slower. This is an issue that cannot wait for another day or a different political or economic climate. The time for constructive, effective steps on water protection for the long term is now.

    As expected, samples taken at South Lake Beach in Montauk after Monday’s rain showed the presence of human waste. The water would be clean enough to swim in by Thursday, at least according to Suffolk Health Department standards, but, frankly, we doubt many people — if they knew about the test results — would want to. The question for East Hampton Town is how officials should respond now that they have been reminded of the problem.

    South Lake is one of two beaches within East Hampton Town’s boundaries where post-rainfall sampling shows unsafe conditions. The other is Havens Beach in Sag Harbor, where bureaucratic inaction has long delayed remediation. Two troubled beaches are two too many. Residents should expect those in charge to make safe bathing areas a top priority.

    A cautionary note comes from the recent experience of Northport Village, which was cited by the Environmental Protection Agency for inadequate stormwater and wastewater discharge management — violations under the Clean Water Act. After inspections, the agency found that the village had failed at a planning level and also had maintenance problems with catch basins and drainpipes, conditions that have been observed here as well.

    Northport has until Sept. 30 to beef up its road-runoff efforts, until Nov. 30 to deal with non-point sources into its harbor, and until Jan. 31 to complete a full pollution audit. Penalties could cost the village up to $37,500 a day if it fails to meet the deadlines.

    East Hampton Town cannot wait until federal inspectors appear on our shores to improve the situation. It must identify and eliminate the sources of human waste at South Lake and work with Sag Harbor to finally solve the Havens Beach problem. These steps, though urgent, will take time. For this season, officials should post detailed warnings at these beaches to allow those who might go in the water to make informed choices.

    The sperm whale calf that died on a rocky Montauk beach on July 30 did more than tell darkly of the mysteries of the deep. It brought to mind the awful time in April 2010, when a young humpback whale languished in the East Hampton surf. This time, the Montauk calf died relatively quickly, unlike 2010 when the larger humpback hung on for the better part of three days before succumbing to a shot from a high-powered rifle and a dose of phenobarbital.

    Now, as then, some people are critical of the time both cetaceans spent marooned before they died, saying a more humane, speedier method of dispatching the huge animals must be found.

    One expert in marine mammals said that quick, if bloody, methods for euthanizing whales could be used by those who know how, and could have worked in the Montauk whale’s case. He criticized the length of time it took before both whales died. Other experts have defended the official responses, pointing out that whale strandings are very rare and that no one has much experience with knowing what to do when one must be put down.

    Of course, this would not have been the case a century ago, when East Hampton’s whalemen still watched the surf for telltale spouts. The old killing implements hang in museums hereabouts, and, if someone still knew how they were used, even the largest whale could be dispatched in a hurry. In those days, the boatheader would creep to the front of a light, 28-foot, offshore whaleboat to kill the whale with a 15-foot-long, razor-sharp lance. In time, the men turned to so-called bomb guns, but they apparently never worked very well and the more sure results of an experienced hand and a well-honed blade were preferred.

    Those who work with whales say that a modern analog to the time-honored lance can be found — a means of more quickly dispatching these creatures when there is no hope of recovery. The federal government, whose responsibilities include marine mammals, and the Riverhead Foundation, which handles strandings on Long Island, should work with local, willing veterinarians to take care of these majestic animals more swiftly when their time has come.