Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. and State Senator Kenneth P. LaValle announced on Monday that the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation will host a series of meetings to gather feedback from key stakeholders about the state’s current commercial fishing licensing system and ideas for reforms to modernize and improve the program. 

Among the meetings to be held on Long Island is one next Thursday at 6 p.m. at Southampton Town Hall, at 116 Hampton Road. Another will happen on Tuesday at the D.E.C.’s division of marine resources office in suite 1 at 205 North Belle Mead Road in East Setauket. Another is set for Aug. 21 at 6 p.m. at the Suffolk County Marine Environmental Learning Center, at 3690 Cedar Beach Road in Southold. 

Last year, Mr. Thiele and Mr. LaValle blocked the D.E.C. from continuing the current commercial licensing scheme for another three years. As a compromise, the licensing scheme was limited to one year, and Basil Seggos, the D.E.C. commissioner, agreed to come to Long Island last fall to meet with members of commercial fishing industry.

At that meeting, the industry unanimously supported a challenge to the federal quotas and a demand that the commercial fishing licensing system be reformed to improve access and transferability of licenses. Mr. Seggos promised action. 

In a statement issued on Monday, Mr. Thiele said, “I am pleased to see that the D.E.C. is keeping its promise to support a vital Long Island industry that is getting choked out by poor regulation. Commercial fishermen have long suffered from unfair and inequitable quotas arbitrarily set by the federal government based on faulty data. Additionally, the current regulations related to the transfer of permits and licenses have thwarted the proper operation of this industry.”

“We must resolve these issues with our fishing community at the table in full participation,” Mr. LaValle said in the same statement. “The economic survival of our commercial fishermen must be our ultimate priority. I, too, applaud the D.E.C.’s efforts to fight for fair and equitable quotas and will continue my efforts to protect this vital industry.” 

George LaPointe, a marine fisheries consultant retained by the D.E.C., will facilitate the meetings. A former commissioner of the Maine Department of Natural Resources, Mr. LaPointe will analyze and evaluate the current marine commercial licensing system and provide recommendations on how to improve and revise it.

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.”

East Hampton Town announced on Monday that 32 unrelated people were found to be occupying a single-family house at 38 Railroad Avenue in East Hampton, off Abraham's Path, after a search warrant was executed there on Sunday morning.

The East Hampton Town Police Department, along with the town's Ordinance Enforcement Department, building inspectors, and fire marshals, executed the warrant shortly after 6 a.m., according to a release issued by the town. Eighteen of the people at the house were sleeping on mattresses on the basement floor. 

The town code prohibits multifamily occupancy in single-family residences, as well as rental or occupancy of less than the entire residence. Language in the code also addresses overcrowding and excessive turnover.

Additional code violations included a gasoline generator and storage tank in the basement where the 18 occupants were sleeping, according to the release. Use of the generator could have created lethal levels of carbon monoxide, police said, and the basement was equipped with neither smoke nor carbon monoxide detectors. 

The town said the property's owner was Evan Davis of Jamaica, Queens. Mr. Davis, who was not at the property at the time the search warrant was executed, will be given an appearance ticket once he has been located, according to the statement from Town Hall. Braham Elorda was identified as the house's manager. He was issued an appearance ticket to appear in East Hampton Town's Justice Court. 

The majority of the occupants are not from East Hampton, according to the release, but are employed by local businesses. They told investigators that they pay Mr. Elorda between $100 and $150 per week in cash to live in the house. Some had just arrived to stay there, and others had been in residence for longer.

The multiple code violations could result in fines totaling tens of thousands of dollars, according to the release. 

"Overcrowded housing such as this not only places residents in dangerous conditions but poses a risk to public safety and the environment when septic systems are overtaxed, and diminishes the quality of life for others in neighborhoods designed for single-family residences," Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc said in the statement. "The town will continue to actively enforce our codes to ensure the safety of all our residents."

Execution of the warrant followed an investigation into the property initiated by the town's Ordinance Enforcement Department. The investigation is continuing.

The Town of East Hampton and the Suffolk County Water Authority have jointly applied for grant funding under New York State's Clean Water Infrastructure Act of 2017 to extend water mains to residences in Wainscott at which private wells have tested positive for perfluorinated compounds.

The grant, if secured, would cover the lesser of $10 million or 40 percent of the estimated $24 million-plus cost of the project, which is expected to begin early in August. The town board had previously announced its intention to apply for a grant to offset the project's cost. 

The move follows the board's July 5 vote to enter into an inter-municipal agreement with the water authority, which paved the way for a grant application. The water authority is acting as lead agency in the application. 

The town previously established a water supply district in the impacted area and will fund the project through the issuance of bonds, with any grant money to be used for reimbursement. The impacted area lies south of East Hampton Airport, stretching to the Atlantic Ocean. 

Approximately 45,000 feet of water main between 6 and 16 inches in diameter are to be installed in the area. Copper and high-density polyethylene pipe service lines will be installed between the water main and impacted residences. Meters, meter vaults, and fire hydrants will also be installed.

Existing private wells will be disconnected from the internal plumbing of homes to prevent the possibility of cross-contamination with the public water system. The State Health Department has recommended that residents not use their private wells for irrigation purposes.

Since the detection of perfluorooctane sulfonate, or PFOS, and perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, in multiple private wells in the hamlet, which was announced in October, the town has provided bottled water to affected residents and offered a rebate for those who opt to install point-of-entry water treatment systems.

"We're very happy to be able to help residents of Wainscott secure a drinking water supply that is safe and constantly tested for the presence of nearly of 400 chemicals, far more than we are required to test for," Jeffrey Szabo, the water authority's chief executive officer, said in a statement issued on Tuesday. "Additionally, Wainscott residents should know that our internal standards for water quality are more rigorous than regulations require."

The project is expected to be completed by year's end. 

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.”

Nothing less than the long-term viability of waterfront houses on Gardiner’s Bay is in the hands of the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals, according to an attorney and contractor representing a Cranberry Hole Road, Amagansett, property owner, and while the long-term solution is an erosion control district, in which a large-scale beach nourishment and dune reconstruction project would be undertaken, an existing sandbag revetment should be allowed to remain between a house and the beach for as long as five years. 

That was the message delivered to the board at its July 17 meeting by representatives of Nigel Curtiss of 393 Cranberry Hole Road.

With Gardiner’s Bay lapping ever closer to Mr. Curtiss’s house, “I don’t know if it’s going to be here next year, in 10 years, next week, or even tomorrow,” Richard A. Hammer, the attorney, told the board. “These things are very tenuous under the current situation.” 

The hearing, Mr. Hammer said, was “an opportunity for us to begin a discussion of one of the single most important issues affecting this particular stretch of coastline: the sustainability of approximately 30 houses” between the Devon Yacht Club and the defunct fish processing factory at Promised Land. 

But the house is in a coastal erosion hazard zone where erosion structures are prohibited, a prohibition based, Mr. Hammer said, on the absence of any such existing structures when the zone was established. “However,” he said, “even in the Planning Department’s own analysis, it documents a loss of 44 feet of protected dune land.” Historical aerial photographs, he said, indicate that the property has lost around 110 feet of protected dune in front of it since about 1962. 

The town’s Building Department issued an emergency permit allowing the revetment’s construction in September 2017, under a provision allowing sandbags for up to six months with the possibility of a three-month extension. 

“It was pretty much already known that we would be requesting some form of relief on this property absent some large, comprehensive solution,” Mr. Hammer said. “It just wasn’t known exactly when we would be here. I will guarantee that unless we take a more long-range view of these issues, pretty much all of the adjacent properties will be in front of you . . . for more permanent relief from the town code to protect their houses before they’re obviously consumed by the bay.” 

The applicant needs immediate protection of his house, Mr. Hammer said; the sandbag revetment is “a placeholder” to provide some protection pending a long-term solution. 

That solution, said Aram Terchunian, a coastal geologist and owner of First Coastal, a Westhampton Beach consulting and contracting company, is a beach nourishment project akin to that conducted by his firm on the ocean beach in Sagaponack, which he said had been successful. 

Hard structures in the waters at the fish factory, where oceangoing vessels once docked in deep berths, are responsible for erosion at Mr. Curtiss’s property and others nearby, Mr. Terchunian said. He referred to a “classic jetty-inlet situation, without the inlet,” in which a hard structure interrupts the natural movement of sand, building up beach in one location while eroding it in others. “This caused the entire system to be thrown out of equilibrium,” he said. 

Adding sea level rise to the equation, “An unprotected dune and doing nothing spells catastrophe for this entire stretch,” he said. “Mr. Curtiss is just one of the first in that line.” 

In his experience, the creation of an erosion control district, beach nourishment, and dune reconstruction would span five years. “We’re looking at doing an erosion control district,” he said. “But we have to survive between today and when we can implement a project like this.” 

But Brian Frank, the town’s chief environmental analyst, offered the board a different perspective. Many of the town’s regulations exist to protect the beaches. “The town code identifies beaches as the signature of the town,” he said, “and, without me using hyperbole, uses the language that they are perhaps the single most important economic assets of the town.” 

This, he said, is why erosion control structures are a concern. A revetment such as Mr. Curtiss’s “results in accelerated erosion in front of the structures, and results in flank, or scour, erosion at either end.” That, in turn, prompts adjoining property owners to install their own structures. “This domino effect proliferates and results in extensive areas of beach loss,” Mr. Frank said. Mr. Curtiss’s application, he said, does not meet the town’s standards for an erosion control structure. 

Scour erosion at either end of the revetment was evident after each of the northeasters of last winter and spring, Mr. Frank said. “You have a loss of resource. This is what the town’s regulations against coastal erosion structures are intended to prevent: the permanent and irretrievable loss of resource. And if you have this thing sitting here for the next five years, I don’t see how you’re going to mitigate those impacts over that time period.” 

The emergency permit granted Mr. Curtiss last year “was to put a Band-Aid on that problem and prevent somebody from losing their house while a more long-term solution was developed,” he said, “ideally before the end of that six or nine-month period, not coming to you at the end of it here.” 

Mr. Curtiss bought the property in 2015, Mr. Frank said. “It was already a rough situation. We’ve got to break this cycle of going back and finding culprits that are 50, 60, 70, 100 years old, to say, ‘Because of something that was done there, we have to do something that is similarly damaging to the resources now, out of necessity.’ ”

Samuel Kramer, the board’s vice chairman, presiding in the absence of the chairman, John Whelan, asked Mr. Frank if he would object to a short-term variance allowing the revetment to remain while Mr. Curtiss pursued an erosion control district. There is no assurance that such a district would be created, was the reply. Moreover, Mr. Frank said, an erosion control district’s efficacy is unknown, given the reality of climate change and sea level rise. 

“I do think you’re going to have to take a look at making alterations to the structure for long-term viability,” he said, perhaps relocating it landward, perhaps raising it on pilings. 

Mr. Terchunian said that the two sides shared “a tremendous amount of common ground,” and asked the board to be mindful that “if nothing happens, the consequences are very severe, and it’s not just this house, it’s going to be a bunch of houses, and it’s going to happen in a very short period of time.”

The hearing was closed, but Mr. Kramer said that the record would be left open so that Mr. Hammer could respond to points Mr. Frank had raised.

The East Hampton Independence Party is under fire for accusations that petitions it filed with the Suffolk County Board of Elections nominating David Gruber as its candidate for town councilman are fraudulent, containing eight forged signatures and the name of a person who died in 2016. 

“We have a stack of affidavits saying, ‘I didn’t sign this,’ ” Amos Goodman, chairman of the East Hampton Town Republican Committee, said last week of several signatures on the Independence Party’s nominating petitions for Mr. Gruber. “We’re going to go to court to get him bounced” from the Independence Party line on the Nov. 6 ballot, he vowed. 

Manny Vilar and Gerard Larsen, who ran unsuccessfully for East Hampton Town supervisor and councilman on the Republican Party line last year, are petitioners in a suit filed on July 25 seeking to invalidate the petitions and thus the Independence Party’s nomination of Mr. Gruber, who is also set to face Councilman David Lys in a Sept. 13 Democratic Party primary election. 

The Independence Party announced its selection of Mr. Gruber as its candidate on July 14. The suit, which cites several additional irregularities in the nominating petitions, seeks to bar the board of elections from including Mr. Gruber’s name on Independence Party ballots for the primary or general elections. He was to appear at a hearing this morning at State Supreme Court in Riverhead, but it has been adjourned until Friday, Aug. 10. 

Mr. Larsen is a registered Independence Party member. Last year, he, Mr. Vilar, and their running mate on the Republican ticket, Paul Giardina, sought but did not receive the party’s nomination for supervisor and councilmen. Mr. Larsen attempted to force an Independence Party primary, but a state appellate court overturned an earlier decision and his effort failed over a minor flaw in the wording of his petitions. 

A July 17 release from the Republican Committee announcing Mr. Vilar’s candidacy for town board stated that Lisa Mulhern Larsen, Mr. Larsen’s wife, who made her own unsuccessful bid for town board in 2015, had considered a run this year but ultimately abandoned the idea and threw her support to Mr. Vilar. Ms. Mulhern Larsen is a member of the Independence Party.

Last week, Elaine Jones, chairwoman of the East Hampton Independence Party, accused the Republican Party of “trying to hijack the Independence Party” by “getting Independence people to run primaries.” Ms. Jones implied that Mr. Goodman tried to blackmail her, threatening to challenge the Independence Party’s petitions if the party would not allow a primary challenge by Mr. Vilar. 

Mr. Goodman dismissed the accusation of attempting to force Mr. Vilar onto the Independence Party line. “Frankly, I believe that we have to do things differently as a Republican Party if we’re going to have different results,” he said last week, referring to Mr. Larsen’s effort to force an Independence Party primary last year. “Part of that is applying strict scrutiny the way it applies to us. So when you see Jerry Larsen bounced off” an Independence Party primary bid in 2017, “you’re damn right I’m going to look at the petitions.” Ms. Jones “can call that blackmail,” he said. “It’s not.” 

Mr. Goodman said that an investigator who examined the Independence Party’s nominating petitions found them riddled with fraudulent signatures, and predicted that enough will be deemed invalid to scuttle the Independence Party’s appearance on the November ballot. The party needs 54 signatures to put a candidate on the ballot. Of the 73 it submitted, the Republican committee charges that 32 are invalid, which, if substantiated, would leave them short of the requirement. “This was forgery, filing a false instrument,” Mr. Goodman said. 

Ms. Jones fired back yesterday, saying that she wished she had filed a challenge to the Republicans’ petitions, citing signatures and addresses she said were illegible and suggesting that many had been written by the same person. The deadline to challenge petitions was July 16, according to an official with the board of elections. 

In a press release he issued on Tuesday, Mr. Gruber questioned Mr. Goodman’s motives, saying that he “simultaneously carried nominating petitions for Mr. Vilar in the Republican Party and for Lisa Larsen in the Independence Party. It is highly unusual, to say the least, for a party chair to seek to nominate someone else to run on another line against his own candidate.” It was clear, he said, that Ms. Larsen’s nomination “was only a maneuver” by Mr. Goodman to put Mr. Vilar on the Independence Party line, “although the Independence Party does not want him there.” 

Earlier on Tuesday, Mr. Gruber said that he was grateful for the Independence Party’s endorsement but, as he is not a member, he had no control over the process. “I discovered, to my chagrin, that legally and formally, I am the respondent in the petition filed to invalidate those petitions,” he said. “Never having been involved in this, I was unaware. I’m trying to figure out what is the appropriate response.” 

“In a sense,” he said of the Independence Party, “I consider myself essentially a guest in their house. I am very grateful for their endorsement,” he said, pointing to “their recognition that I am very concerned about the fate of the local community here, which I think is their dominant concern.” 

He acknowledged that being kept off the Independence Party line on Election Day would be “a big disappointment,” but the Sept. 13 Democratic primary in which he will face Mr. Lys is “far more critical.”

It appears that there will be at least one primary election for a seat on the East Hampton Town Board on Sept. 13. 

The East Hampton Reform Demo­crats, which its candidate for town board described as a caucus within the town’s Democratic Party, announced on Monday that it has filed sufficient designating petitions with the Suffolk County Board of Elections to put David Gruber on the Democratic primary ballot.

Barring any successful challenge to a petition, Mr. Gruber will face off against David Lys, who was appointed to the town board in January to fill the seat vacated when Peter Van Scoyoc became supervisor. 

Republicans, meanwhile, have nominated Manny Vilar, who ran for town supervisor last year on the Republican and Conservative tickets, to run for a seat on the town board. And the East Hampton Independence Party announced on Saturday that it had filed sufficient designating petitions to put Mr. Gruber on its ballot.

The East Hampton Town Democratic Committee chose Mr. Lys as its candidate last month over the objection of a sizable minority of its members. 

Not long after, Mr. Gruber, a former chairman of the committee and its 2001 candidate for supervisor, launched the East Hampton Reform Democrats and declared his candidacy for a seat on the town board. He serves on the town’s airport management advisory committee, was a founder of the Hayground School in Bridgehampton, and was a co-founder, with the actor Alec Baldwin, of the East Hampton Conservators.

Mr. Lys has changed his party registration from Republican to Democratic, but a statement issued by the Reform Democrats says that as he is not yet technically an enrolled Democrat, “he required special permission from the Suffolk County Democratic Committee,” known as a Wilson-Pakula certificate, in order to appear on the Democratic Party ballot. 

For its part, the East Hampton Town Democratic Committee issued a statement on Saturday criticizing Mr. Gruber’s actions and accusing him of filing petitions for a slate of candidates for the committee “apparently in retaliation against those who did not vote for him” for the party’s nomination for councilman. The statement described Mr. Gruber as “a hedge fund manager and previously unsuccessful candidate for supervisor” who “recently returned to East Hampton having lived in Paris and New York for the past 14 years.” The statement quotes Mr. Van Scoyoc, former Supervisor Larry Cantwell, and former Supervisor Judith Hope as supporting Cate Rogers, who was elected chairwoman of the Democratic Committee last month, and opposing Mr. Gruber’s candidacy. 

As for the Independence Party, Elaine Jones, its chairwoman, said in a statement on Saturday that her party “came away convinced” that Mr. Gruber “is far better equipped” than Mr. Lys “to achieve what our members want — clean healthy water, job opportunities for young people, affordable housing for seniors, working families, and especially young adults who grew up here and don’t want to be forced to leave.” She also cited protection of the commercial fishing industry against perceived threats posed by the proposed South Fork Wind Farm, and of the laws governing the community preservation fund, in supporting Mr. Gruber.

Amos Goodman, chairman of the East Hampton Town Republican Committee, was quick to criticize Mr. Gruber on Tuesday, calling him “a strident and stubborn throwback to yesterday” who “will deliver nothing but more partisanship and less competence. Our town government can little afford that type of backwards vision for the future,” he said in a statement. 

Lisa Mulhern Larsen, who ran unsuccessfully for a seat on the town board in 2015, had considered a run on the Independence Party line but decided against it last weekend, according to the Republicans’ release. She could not be reached for comment.

According to the release, Ms. Larsen has endorsed Mr. Vilar, the founding president of the Police Benevolent Association of New York State and a first sergeant with the New York State Parks Police. 

While the Democratic factions’ feud plays out publicly, Mr. Vilar took a conciliatory approach to the campaign. “I commend everybody that ever runs for office,” he said. “It’s a good thing they’re invested in their community, throwing their hat in the ring. Everybody involved has the best intentions at heart. They’re all good people. I look forward to moving the ball forward. I look at every campaign as an opportunity to bring issues to light and give our community a voice.” 

He criticized the proposed South Fork Wind Farm as “an industrialization of our oceans for profit” that would put commercial fishing at risk, and said that the town board has fallen short on work-force housing, remediation of the aging and failing septic systems that are compromising the health of the town’s waterways, and stabilization of the ocean beach in downtown Montauk. “The airport,” he said, “is still a mess. Nothing has been worked out. Everybody keeps pointing the finger at someone else, I don’t see anybody rolling up their sleeves. . . . The airport is a vital part of our economy and necessary in case of natural disaster, but we’ve got to try and reach a happy ground.” 

Mr. Vilar spoke of a “long and well-established track record” of bipartisanship. “I’m looking forward to getting on the town board, making friends and allies, and working with everybody to push the ball forward. I’m not under any pressure by any party, anywhere. I truly am Switzerland.”

The winner of the election will serve only the final year of Mr. Van Scoyoc’s term, and will have to stand for election in 2019, should he or she seek to hold the seat.