A mosquito collected in East Hampton has tested positive for West Nile virus, according to James Tomarken, the commissioner of the Suffolk County Department of Health Services, who made the announcement on Friday. 

The East Hampton mosquito was the first found to be infected here this year and one of 12 taken from July 23 through 29 to test positive. So far this year 35 infected mosquitoes have been collected across the county. To date, no human cases have been reported.

West Nile virus, first detected in birds and mosquitoes in Suffolk County in 1999 and each year thereafter, is transmitted to humans by the bite of an infected mosquito. 

“The confirmation of West Nile virus in mosquito samples or birds indicates the presence of West Nile virus in the area,” Dr. Tomarken said in a statement on Friday. “While there is no cause for alarm, we advise residents to cooperate with us in our efforts to reduce the exposure to the virus, which can be debilitating to humans.” 

To keep mosquitoes from laying eggs inside and outside of residences and thereby reduce the possibility of mosquito bites, residents have been advised that at least once a week they should empty and scrub, turn over, cover, or throw out containers that hold water, such as vases, pets’ water bowls, flower pot saucers, discarded tires, buckets, pool covers, birdbaths, trash cans, and rain barrels.

To avoid the possibility of mosquito bites, residents have been advised to minimize outdoor activities between dusk and dawn; wear shoes and socks, long pants, and long-sleeve shirts when mosquitoes are active; use mosquito repellent, following label directions carefully, and make sure all windows and doors have screens in good repair. Individuals most at risk, particularly those who are 50 or older or have compromised immune systems, have been urged to take extra precautions.

Most people infected with West Nile will experience mild or no symptoms, but some can develop severe symptoms, including high fever, headache, neck stiffness, stupor, disorientation, coma, tremors, convulsions, muscle weakness, vision loss, numbness, and paralysis. The symptoms may last several weeks and have neurological effects that may be permanent. 

The county announcement warned that dead birds might indicate the presence of West Nile virus. To report dead birds, the public has been asked to call the county’s public health information line at 631-852-5999 between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m., Monday through Friday. Residents also have been encouraged to take a photograph of any dead bird.

The county applies methoprene, a mosquito larvicide, and Bti, a biological agent, over marsh areas on Napeague and Beach Hampton, in Amagansett, as well as at Accabonac Harbor. Methoprene’s use is controversial, however; while county officials have long insisted it is not harmful to nontarget species, others disagree. 

In an effort to reduce methoprene’s use, the East Hampton Town Trustees and the Nature Conservancy launched a pilot program to quantify mosquito larvae at Accabonac Harbor this year. The county decides whether or not to apply methoprene based on those results. 

The program should continue despite the appearance of a West Nile-infected mosquito in East Hampton, said Nicole Maher, a senior coastal scientist with the Nature Conservancy. “It doesn’t change our program, it just makes it more important that we collect this real-time and spatially important data on mosquito breeding,” Dr. Maher said. “The collaboration between the Nature Conservancy, vector control, and the trustees has been a really positive experience so far, reducing the number of times that vector control needed to spray, reducing the number of areas they needed to spray, and increasing trust and transparency among the various stakeholders.”

Susan McGraw Keber, a trustee who participates in the weekly sampling, agreed. “My goal as a trustee and resident . . . is to eradicate all spraying of methoprene,” she said yesterday. “That’s why I got involved in this. Accabonac and water is very precious. I feel a sense of duty to stop chemicals in our waters.”

To report mosquito problems or stagnant pools of water that residents cannot remediate themselves, they have been asked to call the Department of Public Works Vector Control Division at 631-852-4270. A county informational brochure, “Get the Buzz on Mosquito Protection,” is available in English and Spanish at suffolkcountyny.gov.

Health Care Workers for Gershon

In New York’s First Congressional District, 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East has announced its endorsement of Perry Gershon.

“Our union is dedicated to the ideals that make it possible for every working person to create the life they envision for themselves and their family,” Gabby Seay, 1199SEIU’s political director, said in a statement issued last week. “We believe Perry will fight to protect family-sustaining jobs, expand access to quality health care, and serve as a true advocate for working people.”

“We must reaffirm the importance of unions to our communities by taking action on behalf of workers,” Mr. Gershon said in the same statement. “Income inequality, the lack of well-paying jobs, the lack of affordable health care, are all symptoms of a much greater problem in our country: People have forgotten that the fundamental right to assembly is the source of greatness in our country. When the American people unite, organize, and act as one collective, there is nothing that can hold us back from continuing to be the greatest nation in the world.”

—

C.S.E.A. Backs Thiele

The Civil Service Employees Association has endorsed State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. in his 2018 re-election bid. Mr. Thiele is a member of the Independence Party. 

Mr. Thiele expressed appreciation for the endorsement in a statement last Thursday and praised unions as “the backbone of this country. They established a foundation for job security and economic stability for all working people. I support, and will continue to fight for, the right of every person to have access to good jobs, good benefits, and fair wages, as they are fundamental to achieving a sustainable standard of living.”

Mr. Thiele will not face a primary challenger. Election Day is Nov. 6.

Mr. Thiele also picked up an endorsement from the New York State United Teachers, a federation of more than 1,200 local unions representing people who work in, or are retired from, New York’s schools, colleges, and health care facilities. It is affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, as well as the AFL-CIO and Education International, with more than 20 million members worldwide.

Candidates who earned NYSUT’s endorsement “showed through their advocacy, their accessibility, and their strong pro-education, pro-labor voting records that they are true friends of public education, organized labor, and working people,” Andy Pallota, NYSUT’s president, said in a statement. “They have demonstrated a willingness to stand shoulder to shoulder with educators to fight for better public schools, colleges and hospitals. We are proud to support them.”

The East Hampton Town Board announced yesterday that the town has maintained its top-tier AAA credit rating, as affirmed by Moody’s Investors Service. 

In preparation for yesterday’s sale of $16.5 million in general obligation bonds for the town, Moody’s affirmed that the town’s financial status continues to warrant the AAA rating it was awarded last year. 

The rating reflects confidence not only in the town’s present financial condition but also in its practices, according to a statement issued by the town. Moody’s cited East Hampton’s “conservative budgeting and proactive financial management practices” as well as its “modest debt burden” and “sizable tax base” as factors in the triple-A rating and positive outlook. The town has built reserves while lowering overall indebtedness, according to Moody’s. 

Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc said in yesterday’s statement that “it is very satisfying to have Moody’s acknowledge through our AAA rating the town’s strong financial position as well as the work we have been doing to maintain that strength. Our substantial financial reserves and surplus were particularly noted by Moody’s as factors that have allowed us to maintain the highest rating possible.” The town will strive to maintain those reserves at levels expected for a triple-A credit, he said. 

The bonds being sold are to finance projects including a townwide upgrade to its emergency communications system, a new records management system, a new fuel facility at East Hampton Airport, and structural improvements to the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter.

Responding to concerns from parents of children who swim at a small beach inside the mouth of Three Mile Harbor at Maidstone Park in Springs, the East Hampton Town Trustees erected sections of split-rail fencing last month to discourage trucks from backing down to the water’s edge. 

“Several moms were concerned about all the trucks backing up on the south side of ‘Baby Beach’ where the little ones wade in the shallow water,” said Brian Byrnes, a trustee. “Since we’ve done that, people are really pleased.” 

Mr. Byrnes acknowledged some opposition to the move from those considering it an encroachment on the public’s right to drive on the beach. “We were more concerned about the moms,” he said. 

Sections of fence are spaced apart, so vehicle access to the water’s edge remains. “It’s a small thing,” Mr. Byrnes said, “but it gets a little crazy there on nice weekends.”

The East Hampton Town Board collectively denounced the increase in takeoffs and landings at East Hampton Airport in a press release issued last Thursday, calling a 29-percent increase in helicopter flights between 2016 and last year a direct consequence of a federal Court of Appeals’ November 2016 ruling that the town could not independently enact the curfews and limits it had set the previous year. 

A mandatory curfew from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m., and one from 8 p.m. to 9 a.m. directed at aircraft, including helicopters, deemed noisy, were in effect from July 2015 until the court’s ruling. Complaints by East Hampton and Southampton Town residents living under flight paths to and from the airport have soared since then. 

According to statistics in an Aug. 8 report on last year’s airport operations by Councilwoman Sylvia Overby and Councilman Jeff Bragman, the board’s co-liaisons to the airport, the volume of takeoffs and landings was relatively stable from 2014 through 2016. But 2017 saw a 7-percent increase in operations over the previous year, or 27,546 operations versus 25,836. Operations are calculated by doubling the number of reported landings. 

In enacting its curfews, according to last Thursday’s release, the board had relied on written statements from the Federal Aviation Administration to then-Representative Tim Bishop stating that once federal grant assurances expired in 2014 the town, as the airport’s proprietor, was authorized to adopt noise restrictions. But due to the appeals court’s decision, East Hampton Town  must complete an analysis known as a Part 161 study in order to propose and enact noise or operational restrictions on aircraft. That process is ongoing. 

The board’s statement followed a communication from the Eastern Region Helicopter Council to its members stating that the southern route to the

airport was unavailable due to overcrowding of different aircraft types. That statement, which was inaccurate, nonetheless upset what had been a balance between southern and northern flight paths. But those paths are voluntary, Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc said last week, because the town has no authority to mandate them. 

At the board’s meeting at the Montauk Firehouse on Tuesday, Ms. Overby told her colleagues that “We’re looking for noise abatement maps to continue to be used so our constituents here, and those on the North Fork, get some relief during summer,” when airport operations are at a peak. 

Mr. Bragman suggested that the board summon Jeff Smith, chairman of the Eastern Region Helicopter Council, to speak to residents at a meeting of the board so that they are informed as to the council’s directives to its members with respect to the airport.

Insisting that the Town of East Hampton, not to mention civilization itself, faces imminent climate chaos, four residents urged the town trustees on Monday night to look positively on the proposed South Fork Wind Farm as a means of curtailing the use of fossil fuels, but also to “consider the bigger picture and the larger cost to all of us” of climate change.

Cate Rogers, a representative of the Climate Reality Project, told the trustees that the daily emission of 110 million tons of heat-trapping fossil-fuel gases, which she likened to treating the atmosphere “like an open sewer,” was the primary cause of rising global temperatures. The trustees, who have jurisdiction over many of the town’s beaches, bottomlands, and waterways, may have a say in whether or not Deepwater Wind can run its proposed wind farm’s transmission cable beneath an ocean beach in Wainscott.

Sea level rise is an inevitable result of melting glaciers, but another consequence, warmer ocean temperatures, will cause both stronger and more frequent storms, along with dramatic changes to marine habitat. “That impacts our fishing industry,” said Ms. Rogers, who is also the chairwoman of the East Hampton Town Democratic Committee. 

The commercial fishing industry opposes the wind farm, and Ms. Rogers noted that some critics have called it an industrialization of the oceans. “I think that ship has sailed,” she said. “The offshore oil industry is thriving — another industrialized use of the ocean.” 

But, she said, the costs of solar, wind, and other renewable sources are falling and clean energy is becoming more accessible, providing the means to “create a safe, sustainable and prosperous future.” She supports the South Fork Wind Farm, “but my goal tonight is to bring climate change to the forefront,” Ms. Rogers said. “I’m asking you to please consider the bigger picture and the larger cost to all of us.”

Gordian Raacke, the executive director of Renewable Energy Long Island, spoke in starker terms. “We’ve heard about the impacts of climate change on sea level rise and the extreme weather events that we’re starting to witness,” he said, “and we hear about the impacts on oceans, whether it’s warming or acidification.” Now, he said, scientists have observed a slowing of the Gulf Stream. “If that is in fact happening, we are in pretty deep trouble.”

A 2017 study published in the journal Nature stated that the Gulf Stream is flowing at its slowest rate in at least 1,600 years, probably due to climate change. A shutdown in its circulation, the study’s authors wrote, would bring rapid sea level rise along the East Coast, among other impacts.

The year 2020 is crucial, according to another 2017 study published in Nature, this one co-authored by Christiana Figueres, the former executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which helped shape the 2015 Paris Agreement in which 195 countries set the goal of holding an increase in global average temperatures to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit. Should emissions continue to rise or even remain stable beyond that year, the goal would be almost unattainable, the authors wrote. 

“We have very little time left and we face a humongous, giant threat,” Mr. Raacke said, “and our solutions to this problem have to be commensurate in scale to the threat we’re facing. There is now a real sense of urgency, because we have waited far too long to act. We could have started this when scientists first told us that we need to begin to ramp down our carbon emissions, but we have done nothing, nothing that was able to bring that curve of annual emissions down.”

“We now have about a decade, some say just a few years left, to begin to bend this emissions curve down so that by mid-century we’ll . . . essentially decarbonize our entire economy,” he said.

Mr. Raacke suggested solar panels should be deployed “on every house that’s suitable for it, parking lots, everywhere else,” as well as improve energy efficiency in houses and lower peak energy demand. “But we also will need offshore wind,” he said. “If we fail to take dramatic action, tipping points and feedback loops will accelerate the melting of glaciers and ice sheets to a point of no return, to a point where all hope would be lost.” 

The trustees, he said, “bear an even greater burden on your shoulders, because we elected you to act on our behalf.” 

Christopher Carillo, the trustees’ attorney, asked that the speakers return in a few weeks to explain to the trustees how the South Fork Wind Farm can reverse the adverse impacts of climate change. Linda James, chairwoman of the town’s energy sustainability advisory committee, distributed a depiction of the committee’s recommended energy portfolio, which includes the aforementioned renewables as well as battery storage, green building practices, and community choice aggregation, and promised Mr. Carillo “a complete presentation of what this portfolio . . . can mean to our community, and how we, the trustees, and the town-appointed committees can work collaboratively to accomplish this.” 

Another speaker, Joan McGivern, took issue with assertions made by a member of the town board and a candidate for the board with respect to Deepwater Wind’s insistence that the town and trustees grant easements allowing it to land the wind farm’s transmission cable and route it to the Long Island Power Authority substation in East Hampton, before it submits its applications to federal and state agencies. 

Councilman Jeff Bragman has said that Deepwater Wind need not secure an easement before submitting applications, that in fact it would be unusual, according to the State Public Service Commission’s general counsel. In a letter in last week’s Star, David Gruber, a candidate for town board, agreed. 

“It is true that it’s rare to receive easement rights when you’re a public utility or a publicly regulated entity and you already have a right to use a public utility right of way,” Ms. McGivern, who is an attorney, said. “It is not rare when talking about a private applicant, like a non-utility applicant or a non-municipal applicant” [such as Deepwater Wind], “that doesn’t have access to public utility rights of way.”

Quoting from a legal analysis, “Siting Transmission Lines for New York Offshore Wind Projects,” from “Environmental Law in New York,” published one year ago, she said that “a private applicant must secure those rights from the pertinent municipality if it will require crossing or occupying municipal property.” It would be pointless, she said, for Deepwater Wind to undergo a years-long review process only to learn that it could not secure the rights to the transmission cable’s preferred route.

As long as it is determined not to have adverse environmental impacts, “Resolve to negotiate a deal so we can get on with getting the South Fork Wind Farm built,” she told the trustees. 

Also at the meeting, Rod Richardson, who was arrested last month for trespassing on Cartwright Shoal, a sand spit off Gardiner’s Island, urged the trustees to investigate the Goelet family trust’s claim of ownership, which he doubts. The purported owners’ security forces, he charged, wrongly intimidate and threaten anyone anchoring on the foreshore, and even harass paddleboarders on the water. Colonial-era documents, he said, prove that the spit, which is often submerged, is public property, and “marine patrol enforcement on this spit of land is a waste of public resources.” A letter from Mr. Richardson is in this issue of The Star. 

Several others in attendance at the meeting spoke in defense of Mr. Richardson.

Sharon Bakes has two children who are 8 and 14 years old, and acknowledges she can’t definitively prove the well water at the Noyac house her children have lived in their entire lives contributed to their developmental problems. But she is concerned about what might be leeching into the soil and water there from the controversial Sand Land industrial mine, which has been operating on Middle Line Highway in Noyac since 1961. Janet Verneuille, a nearby Noyac homeowner, also worries about the water at her house.

Now, the frequently litigious, often contentious two-decade-old fight over the Sand Land operation could be nearing an end if some local residents, environmental groups, and elected officials have their way following a study by the Suffolk Department of Health Services released on June 29, which cited the presence of contaminants in groundwater beneath the site.

“Sand Land should be shut down,” State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. said Monday, reiterating remarks he made at a July 13 press conference to discuss the Health Department’s findings, which was also attended by Southampton Town Supervisor Jay Schneiderman and Suffolk County Legislator Bridget Fleming, along with representatives of the Citizens Campaign for the Environment, the Group for the East End, and the Noyac Civic Council.

Mr. Schneiderman stressed in a phone interview Monday that the issue is complex. “Sand mines aren’t inherently bad,” he said. But, based on the county’s study, he believes the Sand Land mine should not have its five-year permit renewed by the State Department of Environmental Conservation nor its application to mine a larger and deeper area of the 50-acre site approved. The permit is up for renewal in November. 

The Suffolk Health Department study found that Sand Land’s mining and other operations, such as processing vegetative waste, construction debris, compost, and mulch, has resulted in the release of iron, manganese, thallium, sodium, nitrate, ammonia, and radioactivity into the deep recharge area beneath the site and the aquifer. Iron was found in the deepest parts of the water table at concentrations over 200 times the drinking-water standard and manganese was found at concentrations at almost 100 times the drinking-water standard.

The entire South Fork’s long-term drinking water supply is dependent on the groundwater protection area where the mine is located.

“I recall when we first moved here 25 years ago, a friend of ours, a professor at the college, used to bottle his own water from our tap because he believed it was the cleanest, safest water to drink,” Ms. Verneuille said. “Our well draws water from the aquifer, so we are anxious about possible health impacts on our family and neighbors. It’s the talk of the community.”

Sand Land, which is owned and operated by John Tintle of Wainscott Sand and Gravel, is promising to keep fighting. It will contest the county’s findings, the company’s attorney, Brian Matthews of Matthews, Kirst & Cooley in East Hampton, said in a phone interview Monday. Sand Land also has no intention of rescinding its applications to remain in business or expand, Mr. Matthews said.

Mr. Matthews said his client disagrees with the health department’s interpretations of the data it collected, and that he has hired his own experts. “We think the conclusions are flawed,” Mr. Matthews said. He noted that Sand Land had not been cited for any violations by the D.E.C. He also released a statement on his client’s behalf that read, in part: “The review conducted to date reveals a number of internal inconsistencies and other critical findings that belie the county’s conclusion that the use of the site has adversely impacted the groundwater.”

One of the facts Sand Land has seized upon is that the 36 private wells in Noyac surrounding the mine that the county tested were all found to meet drinking-water standards. The county’s report goes on to note, however, that the residential wells are unlikely to be as deep as the 137 to 150-foot test wells the county drilled at the Sand Land site, which could explain the variations.

Ms. Bakes, Ms. Verneuille, and Elena Loreto, president of the Noyac Civic Council, said they recently paid for private tests of their wells and they also came up clean. But they worry that could change, Adrienne Esposito, executive director of Citizens Campaign for the Environment, said.

Ms. Esposito, whose environmental group joined this fight seven years ago, said, “It is scientifically valid now — we know they’re polluting. We know this pollution is coming from the mulching and composting operations that they’re doing. This is so mind-blowing. Why would the state wait for someone’s private well water to be polluted when it’s now been proven this mine is a known polluter? Enough already.”

The chance that the county study could lead to another round of litigation in addition to the cases pending at the local and state level surprises no one involved. The county’s ability to even conduct its tests at the mine was a drawn-out process.

Sand Land officials initially agreed in 2015 to let the county’s on-site well drilling and water testing happen, then rescinded permission. County officials had to go to court to gain access. That finally happened in 2017, and the wells were drilled in October. The county’s lab completed testing of the samples in February 2018. In March, the county’s hydrogeologists completed quality control and validation processes and sent samples to the D.E.C. and New York State Department of Health. 

But even before the county released its final report on June 29, the Group for the East End, Citizens Campaign for the Environment, and Noyac Civic Council, which has over 500 members, successfully filed a Freedom of Information Act request for access to the raw data the county obtained. The groups hired their own expert and his report came to the same general conclusions as the county health department’s.

To residents long frustrated with the pace of this fight, consensus seemed like a eureka moment. The test results corroborated for the first time their long-held suspicion that the plant is a hazard.

Now some of those residents say they are even more upset that testing wasn’t done all along to make sure no damage was being done and the site was regulated.

“We’ve been warning the D.E.C. about this for more than 10 years, and they will harass fishermen and people that are growing oysters, but they don’t give a damn about this,” Ms. Loreto, who has owned a house in Noyac for 41 years, said. “I’ve written to the governor, I’ve written to the D.E.C., and nobody gets back to you.”

“Well, never mistake lethargy for strategy,” Bob DeLuca, president of the Group of Concerned Citizens, said. “Historically the state hasn’t seemed to know what to do, or have the volition to do anything. But somebody there has to look at this now and say, ‘Houston, we’ve got a problem.’ ”

Mr. Matthews, Sand Land’s attorney, said the company’s testing of its three wells at the mine show different results than the county reported.

But Mr. Thiele and Mr. Schneiderman said they stand by the Suffolk Health Department’s conclusions.

“People might reasonably disagree on policy decisions that should be taken now, but not the science,” Mr. Thiele said. “I don’t always agree with the Suffolk County Health Department on the policy side, but when it comes to their lab, their water quality testing, Suffolk County is basically state of the art. Never have they been wrong in their technical work on water testing, to my knowledge. They are the envy of the state.”

For Ms. Bakes, who has watched this play out as she raised her children, the county report has fanned hope that the end of the fight is near. But she’s wary. “I don’t feel like we’ve had enough accountability or regulation of the mine,” she said. “Some people here are getting bottled water or Poland Spring deliveries to their homes. That’s just for drinking. We have filters on our water, too. ­­­But I don’t know if it filters out carcinogens or the heavy metals they’re finding. This is a huge issue, and we still don’t have any answers.”

Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. and State Senator Kenneth P. LaValle passed a three-bill package to promote water quality protection. The bills passed both houses of the Legislature by overwhelming margins and will be submitted to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to sign into law. 

One bill would authorize towns in the Peconic Bay region to establish a septic system replacement loan program using money from the community preservation fund, a portion of which can be allocated to water quality improvement projects. As set forth in the bill, towns may require loans made under the program to be repaid by the property owner through a charge on the property benefited. Such a charge would be levied and collected in the same manner as town taxes. Revenue received by the town from the repayment of loans would be deposited back into the community preservation fund. Towns would be authorized to use a combination of grants and loans to incentivize septic system upgrades.

Another bill would clarify existing law by authorizing the use of the community preservation fund for the construction of public water mains and connections to provide drinking water to inhabitants whose drinking water supply has been contaminated by toxic chemicals, hazardous substances, or emerging contaminants. The East Hampton Town Board recently declared a state of emergency for residential wells in Wainscott that were discovered to be contaminated with perfluorinated compounds. Last month, it voted to enter into an inter-municipal agreement with the Suffolk County Water Authority to jointly apply for grant funding to extend water mains to affected properties. 

The third bill would authorize local laws requiring the monitoring of groundwater impacts resulting from mining or the reclamation of mines within a county with a population of one million or more that draws its primary source of drinking water for a majority of residents from a designated sole-source aquifer. 

“All levels of government are working together to address the problem of declining water quality on Long Island as we see increasing incidents of contamination from sources as diverse as sand mines, nitrogen, and emerging chemicals,” Mr. Thiele said in a statement, “The State Legislature must provide not only money but other tools to combat the continuing health threat to our water resources. Increased water quality monitoring, extension of public water, and nitrogen reduction through septic system upgrades are all steps to restoring our water quality. We urge the governor to give these tools to our local governments.”

Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone has endorsed Perry Gershon’s campaign to represent New York’s First Congressional District. Mr. Gershon, who lives in East Hampton, won the June 26 Democratic primary and will challenge the incumbent, Representative Lee Zeldin, in the Nov. 6 election. 

“Perry Gershon has a proven track record of success as a small-business owner and job creator,” Mr. Bellone, a Democrat, said in a statement, “and I know he’ll use that experience in Congress to bring real change to New York’s First Congressional District. He’s going to Washington to address the biggest problems facing our district, including access to quality and affordable health care and lifting the caps on our state and property tax deductions. Perry is the representative we deserve and need fighting for our best interests, and that’s why I am proud to endorse his candidacy.”

Mr. Gershon’s campaign opened a Southampton office last weekend and plans to open an office in Farmingville shortly.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo on Monday called on Ryan Zinke, the secretary of the interior, to support New York’s offshore wind initiative by delineating and leasing at least four new wind energy areas recommended by the State’s Offshore Wind Master Plan. The governor’s letter, issued on the heels of a report that President Trump is hostile to wind power, also enclosed the state’s comments on the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s Call for Information and Nominations, which closed on Monday. 

“New York’s commitment to offshore wind is real and unwavering,” the governor wrote to Mr. Zinke. “Our first 90 megawatts of offshore wind energy” — a reference to Deepwater Wind’s proposed South Fork Wind Farm — “are already underway, we have initiated a process to procure at least an additional 800 megawatts by 2019, and the U.S. Department of Energy recently selected the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority to head the National Offshore Wind Research and Development Consortium.”

This represents merely a beginning, the governor wrote, as the state aims to develop 2.4 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030. “The realization of that goal will create thousands of new jobs and offer New Yorkers overwhelming benefits in the form of lower energy costs, a more resilient power grid, and a cleaner environment,” he wrote.

New York’s commitment to offshore wind, he said, “is smarter, cleaner, and safer than the frightening federal proposal to allow offshore drilling. Instead of trying to revive the fossil fuel industry, I call on you to join us in our efforts to build a 21st-century clean energy economy.”

The Trump administration said at the beginning of this year that it would allow new offshore oil and gas drilling in nearly all coastal waters, including along the Eastern Seaboard. A spill, the governor wrote to Mr. Zinke, “would threaten 60 percent of our state’s population that live along our tidal coastline and put at risk the tens of billions of dollars in economic activity and hundreds of thousands of jobs created by our ocean economy. Now is not the time to trade our coastal ecosystem, our fisheries and ports, and our marine and other wildlife for greenhouse gas-emitting fossil fuels.”

The governor’s call for support of offshore wind development closely followed a report on the news website Axios stating that Mr. Trump has “a visceral hatred of wind turbines,” believing that they offer a poor return on investment, blight coastlines, and obstruct views. “Trump has even told officials to ‘think of all the birds’ that wind turbines are killing,” according to Axios, “though sources familiar with these comments tell us they doubt the president actually cares about endangered wildlife.”

Nonetheless, Axios’s Amy Harder and Jonathan Swan wrote, the administration’s energy policy is contradictory. For example, Mr. Zinke’s department “is working with Democratic-led state governments to lease federal waters for wind off Massachusetts and nearby states, and also working to streamline permitting to make it easier for companies to build offshore wind farms.”