A ribbon-cutting ceremony for Accabonac Solar, the first ground-based, megawatt-scale, solar electricity-generating installation on the South Fork, was held on Monday. 

Upon its expected completion next month, the former brush dump site on Accabonac Road in East Hampton will house 3,456 panels, each 77 by 39 inches and comprising 72 photovoltaic cells, all of them facing due south and tilted upward at 25 degrees. 

Four of the five members of the East Hampton Town Board were on hand for the ceremony, as were Kim Shaw, director of the town’s Natural Resources Department, Linda James, chairwoman of the energy sustainability advisory committee, and Gordian Raacke, executive director of Renewable Energy Long Island. 

The town leased the site to AES Distributed Energy, the developers of the solar farm previously proposed by SunEdison, which later filed for bankruptcy. Multiple arrays of solar panels, following the contours of the land across two acres, will connect to the electrical grid. When the installation is operational, which is expected before year’s end, it will provide electricity equivalent to more than half the annual electricity usage at town buildings, according to a release issued by the town on Monday. 

The Long Island Power Authority has made a 20-year commitment to purchase electricity from AES Distributed Energy. “We use only the finest equipment,” Jeff Gorman, AES Distributed Energy’s project and business development director, said of the 320-watt panels, several hundred of which are already in place. “Our projects are designed to have a 35-year useful life. We have a 20-year commitment from LIPA to buy the energy. After the first 20 years, we’ll be looking to keep this project up and running. Hopefully, LIPA or somebody else is here in Year 21 and beyond to continue to buy it.” 

The solar farm’s capacity is approximately 1.1 megawatts, Mr. Gorman said, “but we’re going to produce 1.6 million kilowatt hours.” It will generate electricity equivalent to that used annually by 129 houses, he said. 

“I’m excited to see Accabonac Solar near completion,” Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc said in the statement issued by the town. “With the first megawatt-scale solar farm on the South Fork, along with offshore wind, and offering rooftop solar to local residents, East Hampton is well on its way to meet our 100-percent renewable energy goals.”

In 2014 the town set a goal of meeting 100 percent of community-wide electricity needs with renewable energy sources by 2020, and meeting the equivalent of 100 percent of annual community-wide energy consumption in all sectors, including electricity, heating, and transportation, with renewable sources by 2030. 

Should it clear permitting and regulatory hurdles, the proposed South Fork Wind Farm, a 15-turbine installation to be constructed 35 miles offshore from Montauk, could be operational late in 2022. The town’s Energize East Hampton initiative, comprising Solarize East Hampton, East Hampton Green Homes, and the South Fork Peak Savers program, provides incentives for year-round residents, second-home owners, and businesses to install solar panels and cut energy use with free energy audits and smart thermostats, as well as rebates for variable-speed swimming pool pumps. 

AES Distributed Energy also operates the solar farm at the Cedar Creek Water Treatment Plant in Wantagh, and plans to develop another at Francis S. Gabreski Airport in Westhampton Beach.

As if to emphasize the urgency of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Oct. 8 report stating that severe impacts of climate change are forecast as early as 2040 absent a radical and unprecedentedly rapid transformation of the global economy, Hurricane Michael suddenly intensified in the Gulf of Mexico, becoming the first Category 4 storm to make landfall in the Florida Panhandle. Packing 155-mile-per-hour winds, it left a trail of death and destruction there and in Georgia. 

The scientists on the panel, convened by the United Nations, issued a report commissioned by world leaders following the 2015 Paris Agreement, under which 195 nations adopted the goal of holding an increase in the global average temperature to less than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, or 2 degrees Celsius, above pre-industrial levels and to pursue an effort toward a lesser increase of 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, or 1.5 degrees Celsius. 

“Sea level rise will continue beyond 2100 even if global warming is limited to 1.5 degrees C in the 21st century,” the report states, because of Antarctic ice sheet instability and/or irreversible loss of the Greenland ice sheet that could mean sea level rise “over hundreds to thousands of years.” 

“Impacts of climate change in the ocean are increasing risks to fisheries and aquaculture via impacts on the physiology, survivorship, habitat, reproduction, disease incidence, and risk of invasive species,” the report says. One model projected a decrease in global annual catch of about 1.5 million tons at 2.7 degrees of warming compared to a more than 3-million-ton annual decrease at 3.6 degrees of warming, according to the report. The report warns of a mass die-off of coral reefs and worsening food shortages and wildfires as soon as 2040. 

Global net emissions of carbon dioxide must be cut by 45 percent by 2030 and be “net zero” — emissions offset by carbon capture and storage, or absorption by billions of trees planted for that purpose, for example — by 2050 in order to limit warming to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, the report says. Achieving those targets will require “rapid and far-reaching transitions in energy, land, urban and infrastructure (including transport and buildings), and industrial systems,” it states, all aimed at deep reductions in carbon dioxide emissions across all sectors. Carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere, a technology in its infancy, will almost certainly be needed in tandem with immediate and severe emissions reductions. 

“This report is the most forceful alarm ever issued by this highly respected international panel of climate scientists,” said Gordian Raacke, the executive director of Renewable Energy Long Island. “The special report makes it clear that we must now act very quickly and at scale.”

“The longer it takes, the more critical it is to move it forward as much as we can,” John Andrews, co-group leader of the Long Island East chapter of Citizens Climate Lobby, said of the urgency to bend the CO2 emissions curve sharply downward. “What it’s going to take, I on’t know. It might take an environmental Pearl Harbor” to rouse people and government to action. 

Given collective inaction, said Mr. Andrews, a retired scientist who worked in energy efficient building research at Brookhaven National Laboratory, it is now a question of mitigation, not prevention. “It’s too late, in my judgment, to completely solve the problem, but not too late to make it a lot less bad than if no action is taken.” 

Each incremental rise in temperature makes the problem worse, he said. “There’s nothing sacred about 1.5 or 2 — those are benchmarks. The higher the number gets, the more likely it is there will be nasty feedback effects such as the one I really worry about — frozen methane in the permafrost.” Melting permafrost releases methane, a very potent greenhouse gas, which in turn causes more melting, a potentially devastating positive feedback loop. “The higher the warming gets, the more likely these insidious vicious cycles happen,” he said. 

“The science of climate change was settled in 1979,” East Hampton Town Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc said. “Here we are, 40 years later.” He noted local events including the infestation of southern pine beetles, “which now are able to survive this far north,” in Northwest Woods, “four very strong northeasters in three and a half weeks in March” along with several others last winter, and a storm that dumped 13.5 inches of rain in a matter of hours, flooding and destroying his car. “We need to take notice and do what we can,” he said. “It’s really critical.” 

In 2014, the town board set a goal of meeting 100 percent of communitywide electricity consumption with renewable sources by 2020 and the equivalent of 100 percent of economywide energy consumption with renewables by 2030. It will not meet the former target; the proposed South Fork Wind Farm, a 90-megawatt installation to be constructed approximately 35 miles from Montauk, will not be operational before 2022. But the town has taken a number of steps to reduce energy consumption and has joined with companies to provide incentives for residents to install solar panels, smart thermostats, and state-of-the-art swimming pool pumps that dramatically cut electricity demand. 

Mr. Raacke was recently asked to serve as spokesman for the Long Island chapter of the Climate Reality Project, an education and advocacy group that seeks to counter climate-change denial. “While both the towns on the South Fork and New York State have recognized the scale and urgency of action at the local level,” Mr. Raacke said, “faster and more far-reaching action is needed here on Long Island and elsewhere.” 

Such action is unlikely in Washington, D.C., in the short term. Although the Trump administration surprised observers by approving the intergovernmental panel’s report, the president has dismissed climate change as a hoax. More recently, he told the “60 Minutes” correspondent Lesley Stahl that “Something’s changing and it’ll change back again. I don’t think it’s a hoax, I think there’s probably a difference. But I don’t know that it’s man-made.” He cited no evidence to support those assertions. 

“I simply have to hope the political situation will improve,” Mr. Andrews said. Citizens Climate Lobby, or C.C.L.­­­­, is nonpartisan and takes a positive approach to its lobbying efforts. The group advocates a steadily rising fee on fossil-fuel emissions, imposed at the mine, well, or port of entry, which it says accounts for emissions’ true cost. This, the group says, will create a level playing field for all energy sources. Net fees would be returned directly to households as a monthly dividend, injecting billions into the economy, spurring innovation, and building aggregate demand for low-carbon products at the consumer level, it argues.

Voters in Washington State will decide next month whether to adopt a carbon fee, a measure that failed in 2016. “The reason I’m high on C.C.L. is I think it’s the best way to go,” Mr. Andrews said of a carbon fee. “In the current administration, it’s not going to happen, of course, but there is the Washington State initiative, which at least moves in the right direction. Beyond that, I feel frustrated about the fact that there hasn’t been action. . . . I really don’t know what more to say.”

“I think there may be more traction now for some type of carbon pricing,” Mr. Raacke said. But he also pointed to more action on the state level, including the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a cooperative effort among New York, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont to cap and reduce CO2 emissions from the power sector. The states have put a price on carbon emissions from power plants by setting emissions caps and selling nearly all emissions allowances through auctions, proceeds from which are invested in energy efficiency, renewable energy, and other consumer benefit programs. 

He also referred to the United States Climate Alliance, founded after President Trump announced a withdrawal from the Paris Agreement last year. “It was started by New York and California and is a bipartisan coalition of governors committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions consistent with the goals of the Paris Agreement,” he said. The alliance comprises 17 governors, their states representing more than 40 percent of the population. 

“The good news,” Mr. Raacke said, “is that we still have a chance to keep global temperature increases within the guardrail of 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius, which is necessary to avoid catastrophic climate change.”

The hamlet-by-hamlet master plan that the East Hampton Town Planning board commissioned in 2016 and began rolling out in draft form earlier this month in a series of public meetings, starting with Wainscott, is intended to provide an integrated look at how the Town of East Hampton should evolve going forward. And it lays out a lovely, almost anything-is-possible vision for everything from village parklands to revitalized business districts.

But even when the entire hamlet master plan is approved, it won’t be a series of binding recommendations. It’s meant to be an educated wish list and possible action plan put together by the hired consultants who studied the town’s zoning laws and each hamlet in depth, and solicited residents’ opinions during workshops before making recommendations on what each hamlet could do.

Emphasis on “could.”

As the town planning board’s early engagement with just one stakeholder — the Tintle family, owners of a 70.4-acre sand and gravel pit in Wainscott through Wainscott Commercial Center L.L.C. — already suggests, it’s going to be a long and laborious process before Wainscott or any of the hamlets is dramatically reconfigured from end to end.

“The tricky part,” said Jeff Bragman, the East Hampton Town Board’s liaison to Wainscott’s Citizens Advisory Committee, “is how do you get from here to there? How do you make it a reality?”

In Wainscott’s case, the hamlet plan draft recommendations range from ways to build affordable housing to adding a congestion-thwarting traffic circle on Route 27 to environmental safeguards such as protecting Georgica Pond and the hamlet’s drinking water.

The study notes residents’ wishes to add a Long Island Rail Road stop in Wainscott, and their concerns that adding any housing could overwhelm the tiny Wainscott School. It recommends carving out beautiful green space and a recreation area that would serve as a more picturesque gateway to the rest of East Hampton town as it unfurls all the way to Montauk. It suggests requiring buildings to be aesthetically pleasing with architecture that reflects the local vernacular.

The Wainscott hamlet plan has detailed graphics, too, showing a reorganized and more pedestrian-friendly commercial district with bike paths, connected sidewalks, and a bigger consolidated parking area on the north side of Route 27 to encourage visitors to shop and linger longer, something the “strip mall character” of Wainscott’s existing business district doesn’t do now.

However, dealing with even one site — in this case, the sand pit, the largest parcel of commercial-industrial zoned land left in Wainscott — is bedeviled by complexities. 

The East Hampton Town Planning Board informed the Wainscott Commercial Center owners by letter that its January 2018 application to subdivide the site into 50 lots of about one acre each, all zoned for commercial-industrial use, does not dovetail with the town’s hamlet study for Wainscott.

“We think it does,” David Eagan, Wainscott Commercial Center’s senior vice president in charge of development, said by phone this week.

“It really does not,” Mr. Bragman said. The town planning board agrees with him.

In applications such as this one, state law requires the town to consider the impacts on the environment, public health, recreation, traffic, and other aspects.

In a letter sent by Greg Schantz, senior town planner, to Mr. Eagan and the Wainscott Commercial Center developers dated Sept. 13, the owners were told that the town planners are asking the applicants to conduct a detailed environmental impact statement on their subdivision proposal.

The developers were also told that East Hampton Town code requires the planning board to consider “an integrated plan which considers all necessary aspects of a subdivision,” but their proposal, as is, does not cover a long list of things the town would require if it were to approve the sand pit subdivision request. 

“The Department feels that there is a potential for significant adverse environmental impacts as a result of the proposed project,” according to the letter. The proposal “does not account for the construction that would most likely need to occur to create the subdivision, including but not limited to: paving for the streets, clearing and grading, fire protection, adequate drainage. There needs to be a traffic impact study.”

The planning board noted that the Suffolk County Department of Health Services found excess metal levels in groundwater tests at another sand and gravel pit on the South Fork, presumably Sand Land in Noyac, which John Tintle, one of the Wainscott pit owners, also owns.

At the Wainscott sand pit, the town planning board letter stated, “The southeastern corner of the property sits 500 feet from the waters of Georgica Pond. Georgica Pond has suffered greatly from various contamination sources and the planning board considers any potential for adverse impacts to this protected water body significant.”

“The site’s past use for intensive industrial activities warrants comprehensive soil and groundwater testing,” the letter said, adding that “A community wastewater system may also be required.”

Mr. Eagan said the sand pit’s owners are working to meet the town’s requirements, including conducting their own soil and groundwater testing.

He echoed Mr. Bragman’s contention that whatever changes happen in Wainscott thanks to the hamlet plan will take years — “if not decades,” Mr. Eagan said.

The rare size and unique importance of the sand pit parcel alone suggests a final determination on the site could be a long, drawn-out process.

Mr. Eagan said, “We did a study, and there are only about 20 commercial-industrial lots left in the entire town of East Hampton.” 

While his group envisions the sand pit staying zoned for commercial-industrial use, the town planners do not. Their letter also stated that the “property is more than three times the size of the existing Wainscott business area and, because of its size and location, will have an oversize influence on the future of Wainscott. The draft hamlet plan supports a balance of uses, with the south end of the pit incorporated into a village-style redevelopment off of Montauk Highway. The plan also suggests a large area of parkland within the former sand mine. It integrates the development of the property into the plan for the entire business area.”

The developers’ proposal “would preclude many of the mixed-use proposals the Wainscott hamlet study draft advocates,” according to town planners.

Several community members at the most recent Wainscott Citizens Advisory Committee meeting suggested the town just buy the sand pit parcel outright. Rick Del Mastro, a longtime member of the Wainscott C.A.C., has been corresponding with Town Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc and following up with the State Department of Environmental Conservation to ensure the state will conduct its own tests at the sand pit, and have access to the site even if the Wainscott Commercial Center owners resist — something that happened at Mr. Tintle’s other mine in Noyac and sparked litigation.

But Mr. Bragman and Mr. Eagan said no discussions for the town to buy the sand pit are underway. Marguerite Wolffsohn, the town’s planning director, confirmed that on Monday, adding, “The town wants to follow the hamlet plan.”

Even getting the hamlet master plan to this stage has been a long process. The draft has taken three years (and counting). The vision the hamlet plan lays out is based on existing zoning, not what may come. Even when it’s finally approved, Mr. Van Scoyoc has stressed, the hamlet plans are intended to be used to complement, not replace, the East Hampton Town Comprehensive Plan that was adopted in 2005.

For now, Mr. Eagan is promising a cooperative approach from his side.

“I think there’s a lot of fear out there,” Mr. Eagan said. “I think people are rightfully, justifiably concerned, and we understand that. But this is a long, good- faith effort by this family to move forward with this property. It happens to overlap with this study, and I think at the end of the day that will be beneficial to everybody. We can work with them.”

Mr. Bragman said once all of the draft hamlet plans are presented at public meetings, then tweaked as necessary, “What happens next is the town board eventually approves the hamlet vision plan.” And then? “Then we figure out what baby steps need to be taken to get the ball rolling.”

The draft hamlet plan for East Hampton will be presented tonight. Amagansett will be considered on Nov. 1, Springs on Nov. 15, and Montauk on Dec. 6. All the hearings will be held at Town Hall during the town board meetings that start at 6:30 p.m.

“It really is kind of a wish list,” Mr. Bragman added. “But it’s also useful. It helps you imagine what the reinvention of these towns can look like and plan it in an intelligent way.”

Weeks before the Nov. 6 election, Representative Lee Zeldin holds an eight-point lead over his challenger, Perry Gershon of East Hampton, in the race to represent New York’s First Congressional District, according to a New York Times Upshot/Siena College poll released last week. 

The poll, however, is based on just 502 respondents of 27,178 calls made, according to the Times website. “Each candidate’s total could easily be five points different if we polled everyone in the district,” says the site, which shows Mr. Zeldin, a Republican seeking a third term, leading 49 to 41 percent, with 10 percent either undecided or refusing to answer. “And having a small sample is only one possible source of error.”

According to the poll, conducted from Oct. 4 to Oct. 8, Mr. Gershon suffered from a lack of name recognition just a month before Election Day. While 29 percent of respondents view him favorably against 27 percent unfavorable, 44 percent responded “don’t know.” 

Mr. Zeldin, a former state senator who unseated Representative Tim Bishop in 2014, was seen favorably by 48 percent, versus 35 percent unfavorable. Seventeen percent responded “don’t know.” 

Barack Obama narrowly won New York’s First Congressional District in 2008 and 2012, but Donald Trump won the district by 12 points in 2016. That year, Mr. Zeldin easily prevailed against a challenge by former Southampton Town Supervisor Anna Throne-Holst, winning by 16.4 percentage points. 

“The recent poll commissioned by The New York Times and conducted by Siena College reflects the continued widespread support our congressman, Lee Zeldin, has in every corner of this district, because of his proven record of securing wins for the community he grew up in,” Chris Boyle, the Zeldin for Congress communications director, said in an email yesterday. “This is also the result of hundreds of volunteers and supporters on the ground walking door to door, making phone calls, and requesting lawn signs to help get the message out.” Mr. Boyle said that Mr. Zeldin and his supporters would nonetheless “take absolutely nothing for granted these final weeks” before the election. 

Mr. Gershon said yesterday that he does not believe the Times-Siena poll accurately reflects the race. Subsequent polling by his campaign has him trailing by less than four percentage points, he said. “What I think the Times poll shows more than anything else is there was a ‘Kavanaugh blip,’ ” he said, referring to rising poll numbers for Republicans following the fraught hearing and investigation into the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the United States Supreme Court. “I’m not concerned with it.”

Democratic voters do appear far more motivated this year than in 2016. Turnout in the June 26 primary election, in which Mr. Gershon bested four other Democratic hopefuls, was significantly higher than in 2016. According to the Suffolk County Board of Elections, 22,240 Democratic votes were cast in June, versus 12,641 cast in the 2016 Democratic primary. 

The website FiveThirtyEight gives Mr. Zeldin a 6-in-7 chance of winning, predicting a 52-to-45-percent margin of victory. Its model forecasts a 49.3 percent turnout in the district. “NY-1 is 10.4 points more Republican than the nation overall,” the site says, basing its assertion on how the district has voted in recent presidential and state legislative elections. 

The Cook Political Report and the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics also project Mr. Zeldin’s re-election. However, “The margin of sampling error on the overall lead is nine points, roughly twice as large as the margin for a single candidate’s vote share,” The Times’s website states. 

The pollsters note that results are necessarily inexact. “Even if we got turnout exactly right, the margin of error wouldn’t capture all of the error in a poll,” the authors write. “The simplest version assumes we have a perfect random sample of the voting population. We do not. People who respond to surveys are almost always too old, too white, too educated, and too politically engaged to accurately represent everyone.” 

Respondents, for example, skewed older: just 9 percent were ages 18 to 29. Sixty-one percent fell into the 30-64 demographic, and 30 percent were 65 and older. More than six times as many respondents identified themselves as white versus nonwhite. Pollsters compensated by giving more weight to respondents from underrepresented groups, according to The Times’s website. 

Among respondents who were undecided or refused to answer, “These voters most closely resembled Democrats,” the site says, based on answers to questions about issues.

President Trump won 51 percent approval in the Times-Siena poll versus 43 percent disapproval among respondents. Forty-nine percent prefer that Republicans maintain control of the House of Representatives, against 43 percent preferring a Democratic majority. Fifty-three percent supported Mr. Kavanaugh’s nomination, versus 41 percent opposed. Forty-one percent did not believe the allegations of sexual assault made against him, versus 31 percent who did and 27 percent who said they did not know.

Forty-six percent of respondents said they would prefer their representative support President Trump and his agenda, with 47 percent saying that he or she should serve as a check. Mr. Gershon has echoed the latter sentiment, saying that a Democratic-majority House is important for that reason.

Mr. Gershon disputed the Times-Siena poll’s assertion of 51 percent approval for President Trump. “All our data says Trump is under water in Suffolk County,” he said. “The Times poll had Trump a couple points above water, which tells me that either people’s opinion changed radically in a couple of days, which I find very hard to believe, or the poll picked up an outlier, maybe because of the Kavanaugh effect.”

The race to represent New York’s First Congressional District was roiled by accusations of fraud by both candidates this week, with mailings sent to voters being at the heart of dual controversies. 

Representative Lee Zeldin, the Republican incumbent who is seeking a third term, and Perry Gershon, his Democratic challenger, both called for investigations into what they charge are attempts to defraud voters. 

Absentee ballots must be postmarked by Nov. 5, which is one day before Election Day. The Zeldin campaign, however, sent a mailer last week advising voters to exercise their right to vote “by completing your requested absentee ballot and postmarking it by November 6th.” Absentee ballots postmarked after Nov. 5, however, would be disqualified. 

An identical situation occurred during Mr. Zeldin’s 2016 re-election campaign, when a mailer referenced a deadline one day later than the actual deadline for absentee ballots to have been postmarked. In that campaign, Mr. Zeldin easily prevailed in a race against former Southampton Town Supervisor Anna Throne-Holst. 

Mr. Gershon, who lives in East Hampton, pounced on the mailing. “The Department of Justice needs toˇinvestigate what is clearly an attempt to defraud the voters of Suffolk County,” he said in a statement. “The fact that this has happened two elections in a row is not a coincidence, and it’s not a mistake. It’s an irresponsible, anti-democratic strategy of deliberate deception.” He accused Mr. Zeldin of “resorting to desperate suppression tactics to try to save his floundering campaign.” 

Chris Boyle, a spokesman for Mr. Zeldin’s campaign, dismissed Mr. Gershon’s remarks, blaming the document’s incorrect date on an error by the printer, PDQ Print and Mail of Bohemia. An email from Mr. Boyle included a quote from PDQ’s owner, Scott Nordin. “Unfortunately in a printing error, the absentee ballot mail piece sent out for Lee Zeldin last week had a mistake in the date absentee ballots need to be postmarked by. The Zeldin Campaign had sent and approved the piece with November 5th (the correct date) but in a printing error, the wrong file was printed. A new run with the corrected date was then immediately sent back out.”

Mr. Boyle added that the Zeldin campaign realized the error before going to print and updated the proof, but the printer had accidentally used the version that included the incorrect date. “A follow-up mail piece was immediately sent to the same recipients that accurately only had the November 5th date on both sides,” he said. Emails, Facebook ads, and the campaign’s website landing page had always referenced the correct date, he said. “We absolutely want everyone to be completely aware that the date to postmark absentee ballots is November 5th.”

Asked about the identical incident that occurred in 2016, Mr. Boyle said that he could not answer as he was not with the campaign at the time, and that “this issue just now became a non-issue instantly because it was completely corrected by our campaign immediately.” He said that most of the incorrect mailer’s recipients were not Democrats. He did not respond to a follow-up question, in an email sent on Tuesday, asking to whom the incorrect mailer had been sent and how its list of recipients had been determined. 

Late on Tuesday, Mr. Zeldin’s campaign charged that voters in historically Republican areas of the district had been sent absentee ballots that did not include Mr. Zeldin’s name. An email from the campaign included an attached image of an absentee ballot mailed to a voter in Nissequogue, in the Town of Smithtown, that lists the Third Congressional District’s candidates, and not the First.

In a statement, Mr. Zeldin called for “an immediate investigation into who is responsible for this Republican voter suppression targeting the most highly saturated concentration of Republican voters in the First Congressional District.” Neither Mr. Zeldin nor Mr. Gershon appears on the ballot. 

“I want to know how this happened, who is responsible for this happening, why this happened, and how this will be fixed instantly,” he said. “On behalf of all impacted absentee ballot applicants, I’m demanding immediate answers from leadership at the Suffolk Board of Elections. All recipients must be notified immediately not to fill out the inaccurate absentee ballot and new ballots must be mailed out to these individuals tomorrow.” 

With respect to his campaign’s mailer that included the incorrect date, Mr. Zeldin charged that Mr. Gershon was “trying to manufacture a crisis out of something that was already completely resolved,” and that he hoped his opponent “would be just as fired up over actual voter suppression that is very much unresolved, real, and highly problematic.”

Mr. Gershon also said he wanted answers. In an email to The Star yesterday, he said, “This is a nonpartisan issue.

Democrats and Republicans received absentee ballots from the Suffolk County Board of Elections. I want to know how this happened, who is responsible for this happening, why this happened, and how this will be fixed forthwith.”

He again accused Mr. Zeldin of fraud. “When added to Lee Zeldin’s attempts to suppress votes by sending mailers with the wrong mail-by date, it’s a reminder that Americans too often take for granted the privilege of free and fair elections,” he said. “Our government should be protecting our right to choose representatives who will work for us in Washington — not sending out ballots containing the names of candidates running in a different district.”

Less than two weeks before Election Day, the Cook Political Report has the race in its “likely Republican” column, and the University of Virginia Center for Politics’ website put the race in its “leans Republican” column. A New York Times poll conducted between Oct. 4 and 8 gave Mr. Zeldin a 49-to-41-percent lead. 

The candidates will debate on Monday at 7 p.m. at Hampton Bays High School.

Southampton Town

Owners of historic properties who are having trouble maintaining them can apply for a 2019 landmarks maintenance program award. The deadline is Dec. 28. 

Award money can be used to support projects that contribute to the preservation and long-term sustainability of designated properties. Projects can include exterior improvements, structural stabilization, window, door, and shutter restoration, and fixing water penetration issues.

The Southampton Landmarks and Historic Districts board manages the program and has awarded $78,000 over the past five years. Historic properties in Water Mill, East Quogue, Shinnecock Hills, and Hampton Bays have benefited. 

To be eligible for the award, a property must already have been designated a town landmark. Owner-applicants are also required to have basic or enhanced School Tax Relief (STAR) status. The work must be completed in a year and verified by a Landmarks and Historic Districts board member. 

Owners interested in finding out if their property is one of the 980 identified in a 2014 town survey, which might qualify for town landmark status and subsequent benefits, can check a Southampton historic resources survey available online at southamptontownny.gov/390/Historical-Studies-Reports. Applications are available online, as well.

The federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management will hold a public scoping meeting on the construction and operations plan submitted by Deepwater Wind for its proposed South Fork Wind Farm on Nov. 5 from 5 to 8 p.m. at the American Legion Hall in Amagansett. 

Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke announced on Oct. 17 that the bureau would publish a notice of intent to prepare an environmental impact statement for the construction and operations plan. If approved, Deepwater Wind, which was recently acquired by the Danish company Orsted and will be renamed Orsted US Offshore Wind once the transaction is completed, would be able to construct the 15-turbine installation approximately 35 miles from Montauk. The public scoping process is used to identify problems and potential alternatives for consideration in the impact statement. 

Publication of the notice of intent initiates the public scoping process and opens a 30-day comment period, which extends through Nov. 19. The bureau will hold meetings and accept comments at the Nov. 5 meeting, as well as at meetings on Nov. 7 in New Bedford, Mass., and on Nov. 8 in Narragansett, R.I.

For many years, commercial fishermen in New York have complained about the inequities they faced in the numbers­­­ of summer flounder they could land (as well as other popular species), when compared to other states along the East Coast. The fight has gone on for nearly 30 years and continues to this day.

In April, the Mid-Atlantic Fisheries Management Council approved a summer flounder commercial issues draft amendment that rejected a motion by New York representatives to add provisions that would more adequately address the state-by-state quota inequity in the fluke fishery. Once again, the council and Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission solicited public comment on the draft amendment, which ended last week. While a decision has yet to be made, it’s very clear that frustration abounds concerning an imbalance between many on land and those who work on the water.

State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. has called for two additional options in the summer flounder commercial issues draft amendment — to negotiate new state quota shares of summer flounder and to include a coast-wide quota and management of summer flounder. 

“The state-by-state quotas created by the Mid-Atlantic Fisheries Management Council and the Department of Commerce’s National Marine Fisheries Service, pursuant to the Magnuson-Stevens Act, are based upon faulty and incomplete collection data, which discriminate against commercial fishermen in the State of New York,” Mr. Thiele said in an Oct. 15 statement. “As a result of these discriminatory practices, New York’s quota for a number of species of black sea bass, bluefish, scup, and fluke are much lower than would be allocated under a fair nondiscriminatory system. New York’s summer flounder quota was less than half that allocated to Rhode Island, New Jersey, Virginia, and North Carolina. This inequitable and discriminatory quota system is crippling the economic viability of New York’s commercial industry and has resulted in unwarranted economic and job losses. An amendment of this kind is vital.”

Mr. Thiele added, “I have long opposed the inadequate quota system that has stunted the growth of New York’s commercial fishing industry by unfairly discriminating against New York fishermen to the benefit of other states. It is imperative for the federal government to correct this injustice that has plagued the New York State commercial fishing industry for far too long.”

In 2013, Governor Cuomo visited Montauk and promised to sue the federal government over the state’s low share of the East Coast fluke fishery. That promise was reiterated by the governor in late 2017. This spring, instead of litigation, the state filed a petition with the Department of Commerce protesting the quota. There has been no reported response.

“If favorable action is not taken by the federal government to amend the quota system and adequately adjust New York’s allocation by the end of the year, the state must keep its promise to protect our fishing industry, challenge these quotas, and bring litigation to fight for our fair share,” Mr. Thiele said.

Bonnie Brady, executive director of the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association, is equally frustrated by the inaction in getting New York on par with other states. “We totally support Mr. Thiele’s statement,” she said last week. “The petition that was filed by the D.E.C., the N.M.F.S. responded that we should work through the council process, as if New York hadn’t for the last 26 years since it was put into effect in 1992 by the M.A.F.M.C. It’s shameful. If I were the N.M.F.S., I’d be embarrassed by using that reason to deny New York’s petition for rule making.”

The Sagaponack Village Board will hold a public hearing on Nov. 13 on proposed deer fence regulations. The current code states that permits to install eight-foot-high deer fences are allowed only for properties in agriculture production. The proposed legislation defines agricultural production to mean a commercial enterprise. The change would allow the board to grant fence permits to bona fide farmers who want to protect cash crops, while denying permits to homeowners who want to grow fruits and vegetables. 

“We’re not trying to get into a fight with anybody, we just clarified what we need to evaluate proposals,” Mayor Donald Louchheim said on Friday.

The murkiness of the village code became apparent after a July 9 board meeting at which two people, one who owns property on Parsonage Lane, the other on Bridge Lane, applied for permits to build high fences. Parsonage Lane neighbors vehemently opposed fencing and questioned whether the property owners could legitimately claim to be farmers.

After months of adjourning hearings on the applications, the board enacted a 90-day moratorium on deer fencing in September while it worked on rewriting the code. The legislation now under consideration, Mayor Louchheim said, is largely based on the state’s Agriculture and Markets Law. “We did a very thorough job and took into consideration criticisms from neighboring property owners and the needs of legitimate farmers,” Mr. Louchheim said. “I’d like to think we touched all the bases.” 

The proposed law requires applicants to demonstrate an economic loss would occur without fencing, that other types and heights of fencing had been investigated, and that the installation would be done in a manner to protect the “visual and scenic resources of the village.” A survey showing the location of the fence and any encroachments on contiguous properties would have to be submitted. 

The law, said the mayor, was crafted to provide leeway for the creation of new farms. “One of our missions is to encourage more agricultural use of the open space that’s been preserved here.” If the law is passed, Mr. Louchheim predicted that the two applicants now before the board would receive permission to install some deer fencing, though likely not the full amount they are seeking.

If the proposed law were adopted, an application for a fence from the owner of a start-up farm would be evaluated on such criteria as the amount of capital investment in the business, the business plan, the acreage in production, the applicant’s experience and direct participation, and the property’s two-year history of crop production. One provision that would apply to both established and new farms is that any fence on agricultural land that remains fallow for two years would be subject to removal at the owner’s expense. 

At the public hearing, the mayor expects to hear a wide range of views. “We have extremists on both ends. People who want no deer fencing, and people who think, ‘It’s my property and I can do whatever I goddamn please.’ ”

With warnings about catastrophic climate change growing ever more urgent, the Town of East Hampton has moved proactively, having set a goal to achieve its energy needs from renewable sources. 

On an individual level, Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc is leading by example. Last summer, he took advantage of the town’s Solarize East Hampton program to install photovoltaic panels on the roof of his house in Northwest Woods. 

Through a request for proposals, the town selected GreenLogic Energy as its designated solar installer. The company conducts a free assessment to ensure that a property receives adequate sunlight, Mr. Van Scoyoc said this week. “The condition of your roof is important,” he said. “You want to make sure it will outlast the expected life of the panels,” 20 to 25 years. 

“From that point, you look at your electric bill,” he said. “You want to balance your current or projected electric usage with the amount of generation that you have on the roof. You don’t want to produce considerably more than you’re using — the idea is to offset and generate an equivalent amount, reducing your electric bill to the basic service charge.”

Through net metering, in which solar panels are connected to a public-utility power grid and surplus power is transferred onto it, utility customers can offset the cost of power drawn from the utility. Mr. Van Scoyoc likened the system to a cellphone plan’s rollover minutes. “If you create a surplus during some portion of the year, it gets banked into your account so in periods of rain or shorter days, you get the credit of those banked hours on your electric bill,” he said. 

The Van Scoyocs were using around 11,000 kilowatts of electricity annually, the supervisor said. “We sized our system to basically produce that much, based on the amount of sunshine per day.” 

Installation and inspections were a simple process, he said, lasting just a few days. “The contractor took care of all permitting,” he said. “We only had to sign a few papers.”

A $5,000 state rebate, and another on the federal tax return, meant no out-of-pocket costs, Mr. Van Scoyoc said. GreenLogic arranges loans to cover the cost of the installation, payable with the rebates. “The idea is to get your loan payments at or below your monthly electric bill,” he said. “We more than did that.” 

At the same time, the Van Scoyocs took advantage of a rebate for installation of a variable-speed swimming pool pump and a free Nest thermostat through the South Fork Peak Savers program, and changed all lightbulbs to LED. “As a result of all those cost-saving measures, we are producing about 20 percent more electricity than we are currently using, on average, since installation,” the supervisor said. The monthly electric bill, provided the solar array produces as much or more electricity than is consumed, is $14.10. 

An app provides data on daily, weekly, and monthly electricity usage as well as the amount of carbon dioxide not released into the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels. 

“I would encourage residents all over town, if you can, take advantage of it,” Mr. Van Scoyoc said of the Solarize East Hampton program.