A proposal for a tennis court on West End Road in East Hampton Village — and the inevitable noise that would emanate from it — has rankled the would-be developer of an adjacent parcel on Georgica Cove. 

“The best word I can come up with is it would be devastating,” Bruce Lifton said Friday of Edward Conard’s plan for the court at 30 West End Road. 

Mr. Lifton owns a neighboring 1.6-acre parcel at 26 West End Road. 

Mr. Conard, a former managing director at Bain Capital and author of the best sellers “The Upside of Inequality: How Good Intentions Undermine the Middle Class” and “Unintended Consequences: Why Everything You’ve Been Told About the Economy Is Wrong,” bought the 1.1-acre lot at 30 West End Road from Mr. Lifton in 2016 for $12 million. 

Both properties were part of a block of four that once belonged to Courtney Ross. The music and film mogul David Geffen bought all four in 2014 and sold them two years later to Mr. Lifton, who sold the vacant lots at 20 and 24 West End Road to another buyer for a total of $24 million.

On Mr. Conard’s narrow parcel, a pre-existing nonconforming house dating to the 1920s — once Ms. Ross’s guest house — is situated just 1.3 feet from the western property line. As proposed, a portion of the tennis court would fall within the front and side-yard setbacks on what is a comparatively small lot in the neighborhood. 

Next door, Mr. Lifton has demolished the original house at 26 West End Road and intends to develop the now-vacant property, which is on the market for $23.5 million.

Because the village’s zoning code requires any new structure to be at least 150 feet from wetlands, a new house at Mr. Lifton’s property would be directly adjacent to the proposed tennis court at #30, a fact that both Mr. Lifton and his attorney, Michael Walsh, emphasized to the board. 

“I’m short on words because I stand here before you scared,” Mr. Lifton said during the zoning board hearing on the application Friday. If Mr. Conard’s plans are allowed to proceed, “anywhere I build my home, I’m next to a tennis court. It totally sucks the enjoyment . . . out of my property.” 

“I stand here before you shaking,” said Mr. Lifton. “I’ll be the guy next to the tennis court. . . . I beg you to deny this.” 

Mr. Conard has offered mitigation in the form of a sound-attenuating fence around the court that would likely be camouflaged by vegetation, an upgrade to the property’s sanitary system, and removal of the septic system and half-bathroom from a children’s playhouse on the property.

His attorney, Leonard Ackerman, submitted a study of the neighborhood showing that several properties in the immediate vicinity feature tennis courts, and a separate report pertaining to noise. The variance relief requested is minial, he said, and the tennis court would be 900 square feet smaller than the standard 7,200 square feet.

But the neighborhood study undercut, rather than supported, an argument for variance relief, said Lys Marigold, the zoning board’s vice chairwoman, “because it shows how much, much, much, much smaller the property is versus the other ones” that feature a tennis court. And those courts, “to our knowledge, didn’t require variances,” said Frank Newbold, the board’s chairman. 

“You have a very small, narrow piece of property,” Ms. Marigold said. “You basically are going to walk outside the house and fall into the tennis court.” 

Is that a ground for denying the application? Mr. Ackerman asked. “To Lys’s point,” Mr. Newbold said, “sometimes a lot is, maybe, too small for a tennis court.” 

“You were told that the character of the neighborhood is large lots, and that there are a number of tennis courts in the neighborhood, and that because of that fact, this one-acre lot has sufficient area” for a court, Mr. Walsh said. In fact, he said, of the 22 waterfront lots in the neighborhood, the only one on the Georgica Cove side of West End Road with a tennis court is four times larger than 30 West End Road, and the other lots with tennis courts are two and a half acres or larger. “The fact of the matter is, this is one of the two smallest lots in the entire neighborhood,” he said. 

Mr. Conard also owns an adjacent two-acre property at 36 West End Road, west of #30, which he purchased in 2002.

Mr. Walsh presented a composite map of Mr. Conard’s adjoining lots. “The first observation that we made was that 100 percent of that tennis court is located in the principal building envelope on this one-acre lot,” he said. “The only reason this tennis court can be sited on this lot at all is because of the gross nonconformity of the house,” he added, pointing to its proximity to the western property line. “But for that nonconformity, there is zero location on this lot for a tennis court, none whatsoever.” To site the court in its proposed location, “you’re creating a much greater nonconformity.”

Further, he said, Mr. Ackerman’s report on noise did not address the real issue. “A tennis court has three noises,” he said. “The thwock of a ball being hit by a racket,” often at an elevation greater than the height of the proposed sound-attenuating fence; “the bounce of the tennis ball on the court. . . . And then you have the noise of the players . . . it’s called a ‘tennis grunt.’ ” The report, he insisted, “really tells us nothing apropos of tennis.”

There is sufficient space on Mr. Conard’s larger, adjoining property for a tennis court that would not require variance relief, Mr. Walsh said, as well as a thick hedge and a thick row of trees or bushes that would minimize noise impacts on the adjoining property to the west. The village’s zoning code “compels a denial of this application,” he said. 

The hearing was left open and is scheduled to resume at the board’s next meeting, on June 8. 

In other news, the board announced seven determinations at Friday’s meeting. The board approved Maidstone Club’s application for a special permit and variances to build a 676-square-foot warming hut for its paddleball courts, legalize two storage sheds, and permit 100,000 square feet more of lot coverage than is legally pre-existing at 50 Old Beach Lane. The approval was conditioned on the placement of shields on the courts’ exterior lighting in compliance with a design review board determination. 

The board granted Jonathan Schulhof and Kimberly Kravis variances to legalize a generator and air-conditioning condenser within the front-yard setback at 101 Georgica Close Road. 

The Ann Tiernan Article XI Trust was granted variances allowing reconstruction with alterations of a swimming pool and pool house at 15 Gould Street. The pool falls within side and rear-yard setbacks, and the pool house is one foot taller than the maximum permitted for accessory structures. 

The board granted George and Lauren Dempsey variances to permit construction of a swimming pool that will result in 3,046 square feet of lot coverage at 7 Church Street, where 2,500 square feet is permitted under current code and the pre-existing coverage is 2,669 square feet.

Lawrence and Leslie Hillel were granted variances to permit 2,275 square feet of coverage to accommodate a shed and terrace, where the maximum permitted lot coverage at 1 Palma Terrace is 1,963 square feet, and for the shed to fall within the side-yard setback. Mr. Hillel, a member of the board, had recused himself from the hearing. 

William and Tracy Grathwohl were granted variances to construct additions to a pre-existing, nonconforming detached garage in the front yard at 67 Georgica Close Road, and to legalize an arbor. The garage will be larger and taller than is permitted by code, and the arbor falls within the required side-yard setback. The board attached the conditions that a half-bathroom will be removed, a stairway to the second floor will be replaced with a pull-down ladder, that there will be no second floor in the proposed additions to the garage, and that it is maintained only as attic storage space. 

The board granted Jamie Coy Wallace a variance to permit construction of an addition, a swimming pool, decking, and a detached garage resulting in approximately 500 square feet of lot coverage beyond what is permitted at 56 Mill Hill Lane.

Against a backdrop of Fort Pond’s tranquil blue water, officials of Concerned Citizens of Montauk announced a partnership with Christopher Gobler of Stony Brook University on Monday, under which Dr. Gobler’s lab will analyze water samples taken from the pond by C.C.O.M. in order to monitor harmful algal blooms, which appeared in 2015 and last year. 

The announcement comes as the East Hampton Town Board moves toward creation of a wastewater treatment system, and a tax district to fund it, for Montauk’s densely developed downtown, acting on the belief that excessive nitrogen loading is behind the pond’s ecological woes. 

Starting this month, C.C.O.M. officials will collect water samples biweekly; from June through September, samples will be collected weekly. Dr. Gobler’s analysis of them will be the basis for posting public health advisories, if necessary, and tracking the onset and persistence of harmful algal blooms, Laura Tooman, C.C.O.M.’s president, said. 

“This information is not just important to signify that we have an environmental crisis,” she said. “It’s also to help notify the public for health and safety reasons.” 

Depending on sample analysis and conditions during the summer season, weekly testing may continue through October, or be reduced to biweekly, Ms. Tooman said. 

C.C.O.M.’s funding, sourced through grants and donations, will cover the costs of the sampling and transportation to Dr. Gobler’s lab; the State Department of Environmental Conservation will pay for the processing of the samples. 

Dr. Gobler has been monitoring water under the jurisdiction of the town trustees for five years, with a particular focus on Georgica Pond in East Hampton, which has experienced toxic blooms of cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae, in each of the last several summers. His lab also analyzes water collected from lakes, ponds, and other water bodies on Long Island and in New York City for the D.E.C.

On Monday, Dr. Gobler and C.C.O.M. officials were joined, at Fort Pond House at Carol Morrison Park, by officials including Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc, Councilwoman Sylvia Overby, and Councilman David Lys of the town board; Peter Scully, the deputy county executive; County Legislator Bridget Fleming, and Carrie Meek-Gallagher, the D.E.C.’s regional director. Nearly all of them emphasized the importance of science and data-driven decision making as the impetus for Dr. Gobler’s hiring. 

Last summer, the swimming portion of the MightyMan Montauk Triathlon was canceled because of a dense blue-green algae bloom in Fort Pond. That, Dr. Gobler said, was “a sign that things are not as they should be.” Harmful algal blooms, he said, are a symptom of the misuse of land. 

“The big issue here is we know very little about what’s going on in Fort Pond,” Dr. Gobler said. “Not a lot of data has been collected. We’ve received samples on occasion over the last several years, but only a handful. To address the problem, we really need to get more information. This is step one.” 

By year’s end, “we’ll have a very robust data set,” he said, calling that “the first step toward turning this around and improving things.” 

Ms. Fleming noted that cyanobacteria were detected last week in Lake Agawam in Southampton, and in Shinnecock Bay shortly before that. “The attack is largely due to human activity,” she said. “This, in combination with climate change, means that unless it’s all hands on deck for a solution, it’s going to get worse before it gets better. . . . We at the legislative level, the county level, certainly at the state level, have said this is a crisis and we need to address it. But the only way that government can be effective is by partnering with academic institutions and environmental institutions, and particularly to ensure that our efforts are data-driven.” 

The county government, she said, is committed to “taking the science that you’re going to bring to us and doing what we can, working with the community, to try to resolve this problem. It’s a big deal, but we are in it until we win it.”

Mr. Scully, a former regional director of the D.E.C., said that while Long Island may be experiencing a water-quality crisis, “If we have one thing going for us, it’s the fact that we have tremendous academic and science-based institutions that are helping us to evaluate the situation.” The problem, he said, “did not occur overnight, it’s not going to be fixed overnight,” but Dr. Gobler’s engagement “is a huge step forward for us.” 

The discussion veered into related topics. “We have a fairly good idea that septic systems are a huge contributing factor to this,” Ms. Tooman said, with several officials talking about the importance of replacing primitive and failing septic systems with state-of-the-art systems that reduce nitrogen, and the programs to encourage homeowners to do that. A community oyster garden program has proven popular and, in its third year, will grow considerably, an effort to clean the water through natural processes, as oysters are filter-feeding organisms. And the town board, Mr. Van Scoyoc reminded those in attendance, is acting on a wastewater treatment district for the hamlet’s downtown. 

“It’s not just these isolated issues, it’s all tied into one bigger picture, which is that we really have to start paying more attention and take better care of the place where we live,” the supervisor said. “We can do that in small ways, we can do that in big ways, but we need to do all of it, as much of it as we can, now and into the future so we can ensure that what’s so beautiful about this place remains for all to enjoy.”

The Sag Harbor Partnership is inching ever closer to applying for a building permit to construct the Sag Harbor Cinema Center, a cultural institution intended for the site of the Sag Harbor movie theater, which was destroyed by fire.

“We’re almost ready to file,” said April Gornik, the vice president of the group. “And with enough funding, we’ll be able to begin building soon.” Plans already have been approved by the village’s planning, zoning, and architectural review boards, although the partnership has yet to submit detailed construction drawings to the village’s Building Department, which is to make sure they are in accord with the conceptual drawings the village boards signed off on.

In the meantime, the group has been going gangbusters to raise money for the work, with $3 million by July 1 the fund-raising goal.

A cocktail party was held in April, and, despite bad weather, a yard sale benefit took place last weekend at Christ Episcopal Church.

“The yard sale was a success,” Susan Mead, the partnership’s treasurer, said. “And we also have a fund-raiser scheduled for June 18.”

That will be a food truck party at Estia’s Little Kitchen, featuring vendors such as Around the Fire Pizza, Joe & Liza’s Ice Cream, and the Plaza Cafe, as well as live music. The cinema will receive 25 percent of vendor sales. Entry will be $10 for adults, $5 for children. Ms. Mead said a few private benefit parties are in the works, although details were unconfirmed. Solidly on the schedule, however, is a reprise of the fund-raising extravaganza the partnership held last year.

The Big Tent: Party for the Cinema, on July 8 on Long Wharf, will feature an art auction and wine and food from local sources. The partnership expects to have tickets on sale soon.

Sag Harbor’s third annual Cultural Heritage Weekend will focus on the evolution of a diverse community over three centuries through a variety of events and programs presented from Friday through Sunday by the member organizations of the Sag Harbor Cultural District.

The Eastville Community Historical Society will open a new exhibition, “Black Leisure: Respite in Sag Harbor,” on Saturday from noon to 4 p.m. Featuring vintage photographs from the society’s Johnson Family Collection, the show will illuminate the Black Leisure Movement, a national phenomenon that was primarily a resistance to Jim Crow and found expression locally in the Eastville, Sag Harbor Hills, Azurest, and Ninevah communities, which share 180 years of uninterrupted African-American ownership.

In addition, there will be a free walking tour of Eastville with Georgette Grier-Key, the society’s executive director, on Saturday afternoon from 2 to 3.

Programs at the Custom House Museum throughout the day on Saturday will include live music played on early colonial instruments, a demonstration of traditional boatbuilding techniques on the lawn, and “Surviving Political Turmoil,” a new guided tour of the Custom House that examines Henry Packer Dering’s 32 years as the village’s first customs agent.

John Steinbeck wrote “The Winter of Our Discontent,” his final novel, while living in Sag Harbor, and Canio’s Cultural Cafe will hold a marathon reading of that work, which is set in a village based on Sag Harbor, on Saturday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. and on Sunday from 11 to 3. Susan Shillinglaw, the director of the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas, Calif., will kick off the celebration with a talk at Canio’s Books tomorrow at 5 p.m., and an after-party and silent auction will follow Sunday’s reading.

“Sag Harbor Through Letters, Journalism, Costumes, Art, Photos, Scrapbooks, and Local Voices” will be on view at the Sag Harbor Historical Society’s Annie Cooper Boyd House on Saturday from 1 to 4 p.m. The exhibition will include mannequins in vintage clothing, historical documents, early paintings of the village, and photographs by current residents. During the event, a videographer will be on hand to record attendees’ experiences and memories of life in Sag Harbor.

At “Sag Harbor: Past and Present,” an afternoon of rare film clips and slides on Sunday from 3 to 4:30 at the John Jermain Memorial Library, Jack Youngs, the president of the historical society, will discuss changes to the village’s architecture and population.

The library will host several other activities, including “Remember/Imagine,” an art workshop for children ages 7 to 11, on Saturday morning from 10:30 to 11 and “Record Your Sag Harbor Story,” an oral history recording booth that will be open from noon to 5 that day. Preregistration for both is required. An outdoor jazz concert by the musicians of the Jam Session at Bay Burger will also happen at the library on Saturday, from 2 to 4 p.m. In the event of rain, it will move inside.

The Whaling and Historical Museum will have “Our Town, Sag Harbor in Focus,” a free photography exhibition that sees life in Sag Harbor and on the East End through the eyes of Pierson High School students, open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. tomorrow, Saturday, and Sunday.

At noon on Saturday, the Rev. Karen Ann Campbell will give a tour of Christ Episcopal Church that will focus on how changes in religious practice in Sag Harbor have followed the economic developments in the area, including the church’s heritage as the first Episcopal presence on the East End. Daniel Koontz will demonstrate the church’s organ at 12:30.

The Episcopal church’s lawn will be the site of Yard Sale for the Cinema: Clean for a Cause! on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Hardcover books, new clothing and shoes, electronics, furniture, jewelry, purses, linens, kitchenware, small appliances, artwork, and new children’s toys are among the many items the sale of which will benefit the Sag Harbor Cinema Arts Center. The rain date is Sunday from noon to 2.

Rabbi Daniel N. Geffen of Temple Adas Israel will discuss the diverse customs and traditions that exist within Judaism as well as the diversity of the temple’s congregation tomorrow at 4 p.m. A tour of the temple will follow.

The roundabout being constructed at the intersection of Route 114 and Buell and Toilsome Lanes in East Hampton Village will not be finished by Memorial Day weekend as planned, Drew Bennett, the engineer overseeing the project, informed the village board on May 9. 

In February, Mr. Bennett had predicted that the roundabout would be completed by May 21, just in time for the onslaught of traffic the Memorial Day weekend would bring to the East End. However, in a letter updating the board on the status of the project, he stated that bad weather and a winter that lingered long into March had pushed the project back by at least four or five weeks.  

Still, Mr. Bennett said the site, which is currently chock-a-block with construction material, signs, and barriers marking off where crews are at work, will become easier to navigate before the holiday weekend thanks to the installation of splitter islands and a curb around the center circle, which he said would be finished by next Thursday. 

“This will reduce the orange safety barrel population on the site by about 50 percent and will improve circulation,” he wrote.

Although missing the Memorial Day deadline is a setback, Becky Molinaro Hansen, the village administrator, said the main goal now is to get the roundabout finished prior to June 22, “when school gets out and the season really goes into full swing.” To reach that deadline, Ms. Hansen said that crews would be toiling five days a week, but if traffic snarls become a problem the village will reduce the number of workdays to ease congestion. 

In his letter, Mr. Bennett estimated that the balance of the work remaining on the center island would be completed by June 21, although finishing the sidewalks and curbs in the area may take longer. “This will be a challenging deadline for this piece of work,” he wrote. “Therefore, this target completion date could shift out.”

The East Hampton Village Board will hold a public hearing tomorrow at 11 a.m. on a proposed law that would allow retail stores in the commercial district to prepare and sell takeout food and beverages. 

The law would amend zoning code provisions adopted in 2008 that prohibited new retail stores from preparing food on site and then serving it in a ready-to-consume state in paper or plastic containers. The code drew a distinction between stores with no indoor seating (classifying them as “fast-food” establishments) and sit-down restaurants, which are welcome to provide takeout. 

Pre-existing sites, such as the one now occupied by Mary’s Marvelous, were not affected by the code change, but newly established stores in locations that had not previously offered takeout food were forbidden from selling to-go items prepared on site. 

The restriction has been burdensome to several retail businesses, said Becky Molinaro Hansen, the village administrator. The Juice Press, for instance, has been forced to have the juices it sells shipped to East Hampton prepackaged. Second Nature, the vitamin and herbal supplements shop, which makes freshly prepared juices and smoothies at its Southampton location, has been eager but unable to do the same in East Hampton. “People want to see you take the cucumber and squeeze it in front of them,” said Lisa Blinderman, the owner of Second Nature, who said that easing the code would be good for all village businesses. “Food is what brings people into town,” she said. 

The new law could also prove to be a boon to the owners of the Buoy One seafood market on Race Lane, who are looking to open a Hamptons Coffee Company store in the space next door to their shop.

In its announcement of the public hearing, the board noted that the initial intent of the 2008 code was to limit littering and to keep public trash receptacles from overflowing, but it acknowledged that, while those issues are still a concern, there is a growing consumer demand for takeout food and beverages.

The second annual East Hampton Village spring street fair will be held on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Newtown Lane. The street will be shut down to traffic to make way for approximately 50 booths, set up back to back and stretching from Main Street to Park Place. 

Some booths will serve as showcases for the work of local artisans such as Nauti Gal soaps, Graced by the Bay jewelry, and Sag Harbor Glass. Others will be staffed by local businesses, community groups, and nonprofit organizations like Project Most, East Hampton Meals on Wheels, and the Springs Food Pantry. The Town of East Hampton will have an information booth touting the launch of its new Energize East Hampton initiative, which seeks to help make it more affordable for homeowners and businesses to transition to energy-efficient systems such as solar power. 

Given that the fair falls on the day before Mother’s Day, there will be a station set up in front of the Eileen Fisher store that will allow passers-by to design their own card for Mom free of charge. A slate of live musical acts will perform throughout the day, including a 45-minute set by the Tekulsky-Potter Band, featuring Justice Steven Tekulsky and Job Potter, the chairman of the town’s planning board. Also, Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr. will make a special proclamation at noon. 

A couple of new additions to the fair will be an area dedicated to serving a variety of food, including lobster rolls, beef jerky, and fried wontons, and the businesses in the commercial district have been invited to hold sidewalk sales during the event.

The Tom Twomey Series of lectures on topics of local and national interest will return to the East Hampton Library for its fourth season on Saturday at 6 p.m., when Jim Rutenberg, a media columnist at The New York Times, addresses “Fake News, Real News, and Failing Upward at The New York Times.” 

Brooke Kroeger, a journalism professor at New York University, will conduct the interview. A question-and-answer period will follow. 

Six subsequent programs, which will continue into October, will focus on the economy, life lessons, gardens, craft breweries, corporate culture, art, and estates. Each one-hour program includes a question-and-answer session.

Mr. Rutenberg recently shared a Pulitzer Prize with a team of colleagues put together by The Times, in the wake of its reporting on sexual harassment allegations against the Fox News host Bill O’Reilly, to investigate other men who had abused their power. He was among the group that reported on the film producer Harvey Weinstein’s decades-long harassment and abuse of women. 

He has most recently been reporting on the allegations by a former Playboy model and a pornographic film actress of affairs with President Trump during his current marriage. The allegations, one of which involves a hush-money payment from the president’s personal attorney shortly before the 2016 election, have raised a host of questions for a president already the subject of an investigation probing Russian meddling in that election. 

Mr. Rutenberg, who has a house in Montauk, said that he enjoys events such as Saturday’s lecture, and has spoken about his work around the United States as well as in Europe. “I like getting different questions because it makes me think outside of my own box,” he said on Sunday. Because Mr. Trump’s presidency “is like nothing before,” he and his colleagues are in demand for speaking engagements. “People everywhere want to talk about this, and I think it’s a good thing to talk about, because we don’t have the answers yet. There’s been a ton of good thinking, and the questions from the crowd really help me as a reporter.” 

Every newspaper, he said, “should be doing as much of this as they can, because you tap in with what people’s concerns are, and what they want to know.”

It is a particularly strange time for media professionals: Reporters, publications, and truth itself are under withering assault from the president of the United States. “I’ve come under some attack,” Mr. Rutenberg, who co-led The Times’s coverage of the 2012 presidential campaign, said. “All my colleagues have. It was really bad during the campaign. I feel like now it’s, ‘Fake news, fake news, fake news,’ and we’re just doing our jobs and reporting. As you find things that are happening in an investigation and you have that established as fact, it’s strange now that a certain part of the country, and part of the media listenership and viewership and readership, just will not believe it, because they’re being told from the top that it’s not true. That’s kind of a new thing.” 

He also covered Senator John McCain’s 2008 presidential bid, the administration of George W. Bush, and Mr. Bush’s 2000 campaign, “and in my time I’ve never seen it where, when you debunk something solidly, to some people it just doesn’t matter, because they don’t trust anything you say. . . . Not to say the press is perfect — we open ourselves up, at times, to it — but the campaign against the press is decades in the making. Now, here we are.”

But many journalists and newspapers are equal to the challenge, he said. “Active journalism is always rewarding, or I wouldn’t do it, but this is extraordinarily rewarding work. You unearth things that are true, it’s a spectacular story . . . and journalism is really succeeding in figuring things out through this haze.” 

It is important not to “overcommit” or make predictions, given, for example, the widespread belief that Hillary Clinton would defeat Mr. Trump in the 2016 election, he said. “We’re not here to have an argument with the president, we’re just here for the truth. That’s the key.” 

The Twomey series was named in memory of Tom Twomey, the former chairman of the library’s board of managers who died in 2014. Admission is free, but advance reservations have been requested and can be made at tomtwomeyseries.org or by calling the library’s reference desk.

A lawsuit filed by former East Hampton Village Police Chief Jerry Larsen against the village, Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr., and Richard Lawler, a village board member, was dealt a setback by the New York State Supreme Court late last month.

The suit, which was initiated in federal court in August of last year, claims that the mayor, who is a retired East Hampton Village police officer, and Mr. Lawler, also the village's police commissioner, abused their positions and violated the village's ethics code by prohibiting Mr. Larsen from taking outside security work in the village, while they were engaged in businesses that provided similar services. He is seeking damages and attorney's fees.

As part of that suit, Mr. Larsen's attorneys filed a Freedom of Information Law request seeking documents relating to an investigation conducted in 2009 by the village board into the non-village employment and business activities of village employees. They were looking for communications from the board to employees, meeting minutes, and records of the outside employment of board members.

It was in 2009, Mr. Larsen's suit alleges, that the mayor and the board directed the then-police chief to divest ownership in his security company, Protec, to refrain from doing business within the village or hiring any village employees, and to shut down the blood and alcohol-testing division of his company. The suit claims that between 2009 and 2010, Protec's gross profit decreased approximately 76 percent as a direct result of the restriction against doing business in the village.

In response to the FOIL request, the village provided an array of documents, but omitted police officers' personnel records in accordance with a state law that requires that a police officer consent to or that a judge mandate such a release.

Last September, Mr. Larsen's lawyers filed a petition known as an Article 78 proceeding to compel the release of the personnel files and it was that petition that was dismissed by Acting State Supreme Court Justice Court Martha Luft on April 26.

Although the federal lawsuit is ongoing, the mayor on Friday released a pointed statement on the State Supreme Court's decision. "This was simply an attempt by a disgruntled and litigious former employee to discredit the policies and procedures that the village and every other municipality must adhere to when it comes to police personnel records," the statement read in part.

James Wicks, an attorney for Mr. Larsen, also released a statement declaring that "this is a complex matter being litigated in both state and federal courts made necessary by Paul Rickenbach's pervasive conflict of interest." He added that in spite of the court's decision, "the village ultimately produced most of the records we sought."

 

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation has reclassified 24 acres in Northwest Harbor in East Hampton and the Devon Yacht Club boat basin in Amagansett as uncertified year round, meaning the waterways are closed to shellfishing.

The D.E.C. took the action due to water quality surveys showing elevated levels of fecal coliform bacteria that do not meet the state's bacteriological standards for certified, or open, shellfish harvesting areas.

A D.E.C. spokesman said in an email that stormwater runoff and waste from wildlife are considered major contributing factors to increases in fecal coliform levels, and that areas that do not meet the certification standard must be closed to harvesting to protect public health. The water quality data is collected as part of the D.E.C.'s routine monitoring program for certification of shellfish lands for harvest.

The changes, which took effect as of the D.E.C.'s May 2 announcement, were part of a larger action in Suffolk and Nassau Counties.

Under the new restrictions, a 300-yard radius from the mouth of Alewife Pond in Northwest Harbor is now closed to shellfishing 12 months a year; previously the off-limited area had been smaller. The Devon boat basin had previously been classified as open from Oct. 15 to May 15 each year.

A seasonal closure period covering three acres in Cold Spring Pond in Southampton was extended by 60 days; 98 acres in West Creek, a tributary of Great Peconic Bay in the Town of Southold, are now closed year round; 44 acres in Orient Harbor and Oyster Ponds, also in Southold, will be closed from May 15 through Oct. 31 annually; 1,100 acres in Hempstead Bay were designated uncertified from Nov. 1 through April 30 annually, and eight acres in outer Hempstead Harbor were designated uncertified year round. 

The D.E.C. also moved to reopen a total of 1,168 acres to shellfishing in Southold and Hempstead. In Southold, 28 seasonally closed acres in Hallock Bay/Little Bay are now opened year round; 171 acres in Goose, Town, and Jockey Creeks, tributaries of Southold Bay, will have their current seasonally open periods extended by 46 days; 83 acres in Richmond Creek, a tributary of Little Peconic Bay, will have its seasonally open period extended by 30 days; 36 previously closed acres in Cutchogue Harbor will be open from Nov. 1 though May 14 annually, and 850 previously closed acres in Hempstead Bay are now open for harvest from May 1 through Oct. 31 annually. 

These areas were reopened or their certified periods extended after having been found to meet the D.E.C.'s standards for certified areas. 

Detailed descriptions of the new landmarks and boundaries for the newly closed and reopened areas, including the new dates of the seasonal closures, are available from the D.E.C. by calling 631-444-0492 and are posted on its website.