With the Town of East Hampton’s emergency communication systems “poised to collapse,” the Police Department’s communications technician detailed a $425,000 change order to the town board on Tuesday, which he said would cover various items discovered to be substandard or left out of the initial proposal from Motorola, the telecommunications company that is providing the equipment. 

Ed Schnell told the board that the existing system, which is used by police, all of the fire departments and ambulance companies, town bus drivers, Highway Department workers, Parks and Recreation staff, and others, came online around 20 years ago. “There’s no spare parts available, and it’s currently held together with bubblegum and tape,” he said. Worse, the present five-channel communications system, which accommodates four channels for talking, is inadequate during crises, such as the fire that destroyed the Sag Harbor Cinema in 2016, he said. 

At police headquarters in Wainscott, engineers determined that the existing 54-foot-tall tower is not tall enough for a clear link between it and the tower behind Town Hall, Mr. Schnell said. It must be 85 feet tall, which will require orange and white stripes and a steady red light atop it to comply with Federal Aviation Administration requirements. 

“We’re unsure right now, until we get the engineer’s report, whether we’re going to be able to bolt 30 feet to the top or bolt 30 feet to the bottom, or if we’re going to be able to reuse the foundation and just put a new metal pole on,” he said. “In any case, it will be in the same spot and serve the same purpose.” A new subpanel in the radio equipment room will also be installed.

Old and unused antennas and lines on a tower north of East Hampton Airport will be removed to free up space and allow the Police Department “to take advantage of the best space we have with the new system,” Mr. Schnell said. Unused antennas and lines will also be removed from the tower at Town Hall “to reduce load and clean up the mess of cables,” he said, and a subpanel in its radio equipment room is also needed. Internal grounding must also be brought up to standard. 

In Noyac, at a site leased from the Town of Southampton, a 12-by-10-foot building must be replaced along with antennas and lines on a tower in order to reach the new building’s location. Additionally, training and items erroneously thought to be accounted for, including software options essential for the system to function, must be procured, Mr. Schnell said. 

An additional $250,000 will be needed to bring the tower at the recycling and transfer station in Montauk, which is “way overloaded,” to current loading standards. It will be strengthened, not replaced, he said. Its attendant shelter must be replaced, though, as its roof is leaking and the entire structure is rusted. “It’s actually cheaper to replace the entire building than it is to rehab it,” he said. 

The new digital Motorola system will increase capacity from four “talk paths” to 12, “which should free us from the ‘system busy’ issue we have,” Mr. Schnell said, and upgrade the system to federal public-safety standards. 

The town’s capital budget calls for spending a total of $5 million for the emergency communications system during 2018 and 2019.

The East Hampton Town Trustees, who award the William T. Rysam Fund scholarship to a graduating high school student for his or her college education each year, are developing a new source to benefit the fund. In the process, they also hope to raise awareness about the danger that balloons pose to marine life. 

At their June 25 meeting, Susan McGraw Keber, a trustee who is also an illustrator and cartoonist, displayed the “balloon fish” she designed, proposing that it illustrate a T-shirt that the trustees would sell at events including their annual Largest Clam Contest, usually held in September at their offices on Bluff Road in Amagansett, and the Fisherman’s Fair, held in August in Springs. 

Ms. McGraw Keber, who serves on the trustees’ education committee, displayed her design — a fish crafted from found balloons — at the June 25 meeting. She said that the impetus for her illustration was an effort to convey the message to children that balloons, which are popular at birthdays, weddings, and other celebrations, are hazardous to marine life. 

“Even balloons marketed as biodegradable or ‘eco-friendly’ can still take years to disintegrate,” according to the online platform One Green Planet. “When balloons make their way into the water, their tattered ends and floating pieces can resemble jellyfish or other sea life consumed by marine animals such as sea turtles, fish, and dolphins.” Pieces of latex or Mylar, mistaken for food and ingested, can get lodged in the digestive tract, inhibiting animals’ ability to eat and causing a slow and painful death by starvation, according to One Green Planet. Animals can also become entangled in balloon strings, which can injure or strangle them. 

The illustration is “a way to express to kids that balloons are very dangerous for wildlife,” Ms. McGraw Keber said. It is also a nod to the balloon fish, also known as the spiny puffer and spiny porcupine fish, which can inflate its body to discourage attack by predators, she said. “The next thing that came was the T-shirt idea. Since we have the Rysam fund scholarship, I thought this was a nice way to raise funds for it.” 

Capt. William J. Rysam came to East Hampton “around 1790, with his five or six daughters,” according to Hugh King, the East Hampton town crier, so that they could attend Clinton Academy, which was co-educational. He bequeathed the town a $500 fund in 1813, his will stipulating that the trustees were to apply the interest generated from it to “the schooling of poor children whose parents were not able to pay for such tuition,” according to trustee records. Interest earned on the fund balance, and the $1 entry fee for the Largest Clam Contest and its clam chowder competition, support the annual $500 scholarship. 

Applicants are required to submit an essay to the trustees, in which they typically describe the importance of the town’s natural environment and resources to themselves and their families. 

Ms. McGraw Keber said that the T-shirt will feature the illustration and a slogan along the lines of “Don’t feed fish balloons” on the front and “East Hampton Town Trustees” on the back. “We’re trying to get kids, parents, and real estate brokerages” — which often display balloons at open house events — “away from this, to make them understand our marine life is greatly affected,” she told her colleagues.

A lengthy and at times testy exchange between members of the East Hampton Town Board on Tuesday illustrated tensions over the board’s response to the discovery of perfluorinated chemicals, or PFCs, in more than 150 residential wells in Wainscott. 

Councilman Jeff Bragman, the board’s liaison to the hamlet’s citizens advisory committee, had asked that the topic be put on Tuesday’s work session agenda. At issue, the town’s program to offer rebates for the installation of point-of-entry water treatment systems to property owners whose wells were found to be contaminated. Rebates of up to 90 percent, not to exceed $3,000, are offered to affected property owners who submit an invoice attesting to a system’s purchase and installation and an affidavit, signed by the system’s installer.

The program followed the board’s declaration of a state of emergency and was created as an interim measure pending the Suffolk County Water Authority’s extension of water mains to affected properties, which may not be completed before year’s end. 

Mr. Bragman, who has been the most vocal member of the board as to the urgency presented by perfluorooctane sulfonate, or PFOS, and perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, referred on Tuesday to recent media reports that the federal Environmental Protection Agency may have suppressed a study that would have increased warnings about PFCs, which have been found in water supplies across the country. They have been linked to cancers, thyroid problems, and serious complications of pregnancy. 

“It’s somewhat alarming,” Mr. Bragman said. “I’ve said before that these chemicals are very dangerous. They’re endocrine disruptors, which means that very minute amounts can cause damage to the human body.” 

Yet just 11 point-of-entry treatment systems, or POETs, have been installed in Wainscott, he said, and suggested that language in the affidavit declaring “that the installer was making a representation that the filtration system was capable of filtering PFOS and PFOA” is responsible for the low number. “That’s a tricky statement, and it caused some hesitation in a couple of the companies” because “there is no standard set by any agencies — state or federal — that establishes safety limits for these systems.” The wording of the affidavit, he said after the meeting, left installers fearful of potential liability and legal jeopardy. 

The town is relying on a schematic drawing provided by the State Department of Environmental Conservation “for a filtration system that works,” he said. He proposed changing the wording of materials given to the public to include the D.E.C.’s recommended POET design and removing any assertions from the installer’s affidavit. “If we simply change the representation from the installer’s affidavit to our paperwork that we hand to people so that it says, ‘This is the D.E.C. system,’ we’ve done our job in giving people the information that they need to get the system that’s going to work in their house,” said Mr. Bragman, who is an attorney. The systems, he said, “are urgently needed to minimize exposure.” 

Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc said that he agreed that guaranteeing safe drinking water to Wainscott residents should be done expeditiously, but disagreed as to the affidavit. “There has to be some acknowledgement that the system that’s been installed actually does what it’s supposed to do,” he said. “If the installer is not willing to state that the system they installed actually filters out these chemicals, I don’t think we should be committing public funds to those.” 

Among at least five companies installing POETs, just one has raised concerns about the affidavit, the supervisor said. He asserted that few systems have been installed because Wainscott residents know that public water will soon be extended to their neighborhoods, “and that they will be expending their funds for the service line connections in the form of additional taxes on their tax bill.” The grant may leave them still owing thousands of dollars, he said, “because in some cases these systems are significantly higher than the amount that you suggested we grant.” 

In fact, Mr. Bragman countered, “The costs of the system are coming in under what we’ve granted.” The point, he said, “is that it’s not a sensible decision to refrain from putting in a home filtration system because public water may be coming in months, or longer. . . . This is about risk reduction. . . . If we can simplify the language and get one of the larger companies to participate here, I think we should do it. I think we should get the word out and be encouraging people to put these in.” 

The largest installer’s discomfort over the affidavit is not a reason to change protocol, Mr. Van Scoyoc said. “There are more than enough companies out here to serve the public and install these. I strongly feel that we shouldn’t be committing public funds for something that doesn’t do the job. . . . How would you verify it without an affidavit from the installer that the system does the job that it’s supposed to do?” Based on calls to his office, he said, “people will decide on their own as to whether or not they want to sign up for this program.” Some residents are weighing whether or not to continue relying on the bottled water the town has provided since discovery of the PFCs was announced in October until they are connected to public water, he said.  

“That is not a wise decision,” Mr. Bragman said, “and we should be counseling people.”

“That’s a decision they’re allowed to make on their own,” the supervisor replied. 

  The board will vote on a resolution at tonight’s meeting to enter into an intermunicipal agreement with the Suffolk County Water Authority that will pave the way for grant funding to offset the cost of extending the public water mains throughout Wainscott, Mr. Van Scoyoc said. The grant could cover the lesser of $10 million or 40 percent of the project’s cost. 

That is a good step, Mr. Bragman said, “but it’s a complicated matrix of government entities involved, and it’s going to take a while before they get actual water supply systems. In the interim, I would urge everybody in Wainscott who’s got a well contamination issue to come and get a home filtration system installed.”

David Gruber, a former chairman of the East Hampton Town Democratic Committee and its 2001 candidate for supervisor, has declared his candidacy for a seat on the town board and launched the East Hampton Reform Democrats, which he describes as a caucus within the town’s Democratic Party. 

Mr. Gruber was recently passed over for the East Hampton Town Democratic Committee’s nomination in favor of Councilman David Lys, who was appointed in January to serve what would have been the remaining year of Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc’s term as councilman. Mr. Van Scoyoc was elected supervisor in November, creating the vacancy. 

Mr. Gruber is hoping to force a primary election in which he would face off against Mr. Lys, who won 63 percent of the Democratic committee’s vote at the June 1 nominating convention. Mr. Lys’s appointment and subsequent nomination by the Democrats angered several members of the committee, who pointed to his Republican Party registration, which he only recently changed to the Democratic Party. Should Mr. Gruber be successful in petitioning for a primary, it would be held on Sept. 13. 

The East Hampton Reform Party, Mr. Gruber said on Tuesday, is “a registered campaign finance committee, a multi-candidate committee, including me.” Members will also seek election to the Democratic committee, he said. The Reform Party includes current and former elected officials and Democratic committee members, he said, as well as other “politically active Democrats who are concerned about the direction of the Democratic Party in East Hampton.” 

In a letter to The Star that appears in today’s issue, he criticized the town board, asserting that its members “don’t know what to do about the fact that they don’t know what they are doing.” He is particularly critical of the board’s actions with respect to the proposed South Fork Wind Farm, a 15-turbine installation planned to be constructed approximately 35 miles from Montauk that would deliver electricity to the South Fork via a transmission cable proposed to make its landing at the ocean beach in Wainscott. “They have done nothing, not even commission a review of existing scientific literature, to ascertain possible adverse environmental impacts on our town, particularly on the fishing industry,” he wrote.

An advertisement in last week’s issue of The Star sought registered Democrats to perform “political campaign work.” A logo bore the slogan “A moral compass, a progressive party.” 

Mr. Gruber, who also served as a trustee and treasurer of the Hampton Day School and co-founded the East Hampton Conservators, said that he is still in the process of gathering signatures to get his name on the ballot in a primary election. “Once that is done, it will be time to start a real campaign,” he said.

Accabonac Harbor in Springs has been spared, at least for the time being, from Suffolk County’s annual aerial application of methoprene, a mosquito larvicide. A survey on Monday of mosquito breeding in the harbor, conducted by two East Hampton Town trustees and three volunteers, showed few areas of significant mosquito breeding, said John Aldred, a trustee. 

County vector control officials were informed of the finding, and decided   not to spray at Accabonac this week.

The trustees celebrated the decision at their meeting that night, taking it as a sign that their new larval sampling program is succeeding in reducing the controversial use of methoprene. Environmentalists, scientists, and many elected officials believe the larvicide is harmful to nontarget species, including lobsters, crabs, and fish. 

The county routinely applies methoprene via low-flying helicopters over marshes at Napeague and Beach Hampton in Amagansett, and at Accabonac Harbor. Last year, Suffolk Legislator Bridget Fleming, along with the Nature Conservancy, which owns land around the harbor, the trustees, and vector control officials agreed on a trial program to map mosquito breeding through weekly water sampling there.

Surveying began last week and is to continue weekly until August. Mr. Aldred and Susan McGraw Keber, a trustee, with the volunteers, are conducting the sampling and sending their findings to vector control. County officials use the data to fine-tune their protocol, reducing overall application of methoprene. (In conjunction with methoprene, the county also applies Bacillus thuringiensis israelensis, or Bti, a naturally occurring bacterium that contains toxin-producing spores that affect mosquito, blackfly, and fungus gnat larvae.) 

Mr. Aldred told his colleagues at Monday’s meeting that “vector control sent an email out in the afternoon saying they won’t have to do any spraying this week as a result of our sampling.”

“That’s real, serious progress,” said Bill Taylor. “They weren’t willing to listen to us two years ago.” 

The discussion, however, followed a long exchange with Kevin McAllister, a marine scientist and activist who has long urged the trustees to take a stronger stand against the county’s use of methoprene over waterways under their jurisdiction.

“We’ve collectively enlisted the Nature Conservancy to oversee larval monitoring,” Mr. McAllister said. “All well and good, but I would like to know where we’re going with this. From my perspective, the science is very settled. Methoprene has impacts, no question.” 

The goal, he insisted, should be an absolute end to its use. “I hope you don’t lose your voice on this and continue to stand firm in your opposition to methoprene,” he said, suggesting that by participating in the trial, “opposition to the use of methoprene is essentially silenced, for the time being. It shouldn’t be. This should be very clear-cut to all of us now.”

The goal, answered Jim Grimes, is to identify and monitor breeding activity, and to “see if you could hit these hotspots you know existed with Bti and hopefully avoid spraying of those areas, and if this worked out, it would be expanded to other areas. . . . At the same time, I’m sympathetic to the health department. Its role is the public’s well-being.” 

The South Fork has not been immune to West Nile virus or Eastern equine encephalitis, Mr. Grimes added. Last September, a mosquito collected in Bridgehampton tested positive for West Nile, one of more than 100 samples to test positive in the county. 

Mr. Grimes described the monitoring as a baby step. “Changing a program has got to start somewhere. It was made very plain in 2016 that they were not necessarily going to take methoprene out of their toolbox. . . . You’ve got to start someplace. You can rail against the machine, but more good can be done working toward something, as opposed to coming and saying the same thing over and over.” 

“I’m reserved in my anticipation that we may eliminate methoprene,” said Ms. Keber. Progress will be slow, she said, “but it’s a process we’re going to have to go through in order for us to make headway.” Rick Drew acknowledged that Mr. McAllister presents a persuasive case, but asked that he “follow it up with recommendations of best practices that might be incorporated in a level-two program going forward.” 

Mr. McAllister maintained that the county is motivated more by nuisance control than disease prevention. “As a scientist,” he said, “I have full conviction that methoprene needs to fully stop.” 

On Tuesday, he acknowledged that the Accabonac Harbor program does represent progress toward that goal, but “I just hope this isn’t a delay tactic” or “a charade to ultimately drag out a process where everybody goes silent after a while.”

Mosquitoes can carry West Nile virus, Eastern equine encephalitis, and other diseases. Although methoprene is registered by the federal Environmental Protection Agency and the State Department of Environmental Conservation, its use has long been controversial on the South Fork. 

Also at the meeting, the trustees approved the Cornell Cooperative Extension’s Long Island Shellfish Restoration Project, a state grant-funded effort to seed waterways with 115 million hard clams and 40 million oyster spat. C.C.E. has identified four nursery sites in the town, three of them under trustee jurisdiction, at which two floating upweller system nurseries, known as FLUPSYs, will be placed. 

Kim Barbour, the cooperative extension’s marine program outreach manager, said she hoped that eight FLUPSYs could be in East Hampton waters by next month, at Sunset Cove Marina and Three Mile Harbor Marina, both at Three Mile Harbor; the Lion Head Beach Association marina, at Hog Creek in Springs, and at Gurney’s Yacht Club in Lake Montauk, where the trustees do not assert jurisdiction. “Our clams are getting big,” she said. “We need to try to move on this if possible, or find alternative locations outside of town waters. We wanted to bring this project here.” 

The trustees also approved another proposal, the Accabonac Macroalgae Bio-extraction Project, a study to determine the feasibility of removing excess nitrogen from water by placing, and then removing, macroalgae that absorbs it. 

Thirty metal frames will be installed in Accabonac Harbor near Pussy’s Pond, onto which two types of seaweed will be affixed. The vegetation — gracilaria, a genus of red algae, and ulva, a green alga also called sea lettuce — will be analyzed every two to four weeks, and upon its removal, after three months, to see if it is a viable way of removing excess nitrogen from the water. 

The frames will be in a shallow area that is closed to shellfishing, so conflict with other user groups is unlikely, the trustees determined.

Cate Rogers was elected chairwoman of the East Hampton Town Democratic Committee on June 20, the culmination of a months-long changing of the guard that saw accusations of manipulating the process and a lawsuit that was dismissed. 

Ms. Rogers, a member of the committee who until recently was a member of the town’s zoning board of appeals and served as its vice chairwoman, prevailed over Rona Klopman. Ms. Klopman had filed an Article 78 action against the committee to determine its “true current membership,” which she charged had been manipulated by Jeanne Frankl, the committee’s longtime chairwoman, who is retiring. The action was dismissed last month. 

Twenty-nine members of the committee cast votes, with Ms. Rogers winning approximately 60 percent to Ms. Klopman’s 40 percent, with votes weighted based on the number of Democrats in each district who voted in the last gubernatorial election. 

In a statement issued by the committee, Ms. Rogers said that, “our committee is known for the excellent work we’ve done in connecting with our voters and their issues and the community at large and I intend to sustain and to further that reputation. 

Ms. Rogers serves on the town’s energy sustainability advisory committee. She is also a climate leader in former Vice President Al Gore’s Climate Change initiative. She was unavailable to comment on her election as she was attending a climate conference in Europe this week, according to Betty Mazur, the committee’s vice chairwoman.

“I am excited that Cate Rogers has been elected by a strong majority of the Democratic Committee to lead and take us into the future,” Ms. Frankl said in the statement issued by the committee. “Cate has the experience and vision to inspire us and the temperament to bring us together in working for sound, progressive, forward-looking Democratic governance both locally and nationally.” 

In the same statement, Ms. Rogers thanked Ms. Frankl for her service and said that, “We will work hard collaboratively and fulfill our mission as Demo- crats dedicated to our community and our country.”

The State Department of Environmental Conservation has announced $1.6 million in grants to East Hampton, Brookhaven, Islip, and Hempstead to expand and upgrade public shellfish hatcheries. The grants, announced on June 20, support Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s Long Island Shellfish Restoration initiative. 

Barley Dunne, director of the town’s shellfish hatchery, said that East Hampton’s share of the grant is $400,000. “The majority of the budget will go toward labor, including a full-timer and seasonal help,” he said in an email. The remainder, he said, will be allocated to equipment including a solar-powered, paddlewheel-driven floating upweller system, known as a FLUPSY; a continuous-flow algae culture system; pumps and tanks at the hatchery’s nursery, including an oyster spat-on-shell setting tank, a utility trailer, and a 17-foot skiff. 

Municipal grant recipients are obligated to supply a minimum of 15 percent of the yield associated with the hatchery expansion to one or more of five shellfish sanctuaries to be established on Long Island from 2020 to 2024.

The objective, Mr. Dunne said, “is to expand our production in order to supply the state with shellfish for their sanctuary project,” as outlined in the June 20 announcement. The East Hampton hatchery, he said, will provide 2 million clams and 1.2 million oysters in the form of spat-on-shell next year, and continue to provide at least 15 percent of the yield associated with its expansion through 2024.

The restoration of hard clams to Long Island’s coastal waters is expected to benefit the water quality of the area. As filter feeders, hard clams obtain their food by filtering microscopic organisms, mostly microalgae, from the water column. If concentrated heavily enough, adult hard clams have demonstrated the ability to filter brown tide algae. The restoration effort offers the potential, as water quality improves, to provide a more stable environment for additional clam growth, and by extension, the growth of the local shellfish economy.

In an effort to improve conditions at the three parking lots serving the Ditch Plain ocean beach in Montauk, the East Hampton Town Board amended the town code at its meeting last Thursday, and also voted to prohibit parking on the entirety of Leeton Road on Napeague during the summer season. 

With respect to the popular Ditch Plain Beach, the board voted to designate the westernmost lot, where a comfort station is situated, as resident-only parking. Also added to the code is a resident or nonresident permit requirement for cars parking at the Otis Road lot, between the dead end at the beach line and Deforest Road. The board also voted to prohibit the parking of trailers at all three lots. The regulations are in effect 24 hours per day and year round. 

Another amendment, adding a $425 penalty for parking on Deforest Road, drew questions from a Springs resident. To establish a $425 penalty “for one road,” David Buda said, “is extremely onerous, unique, bizarre. Is this the most important road in the town that it needs to have a unique parking penalty? I don’t think so.” 

But Richard Monahan of Montauk, an emergency medical technician, thanked the board for its action, which he said was important given the difficulty in traversing the western lots during emergencies. The amendments, he said, “will alleviate that problem.” 

The board also voted to prohibit parking on all of Leeton Road, which runs parallel and to the south of Montauk Highway near the ocean beach between Atlantic and Dolphin Drives. Signs at present prohibit parking on half of the narrow street, and the code amendment will add that prohibition to its entirety. The prohibition is in effect from May 15 to Oct. 1. 

Also last Thursday, the board adopted a law to address multiple utility poles on town highways and rights of way. As a pole is replaced because of damage or deterioration, utilities often erect a new one next to it without removing the original. The law requires any entity receiving a permit to install a utility pole that is next to or in close proximity to another one to remove the double pole within 60 days. 

The amendment “allows us to have an enforcement mechanism for safety standards that have been too lax in the town for a while,” Councilman David Lys said on Monday. The law addresses the visual blight presented by unused poles, he said. “Another thing is, poles have a lot of chemicals in them, and if they don’t need to be there I think they should remove them. This allows us to take a more direct action against utilities for not being so mindful of the residents of the Town of East Hampton in removing of their equipment.”

The board will return to the subject of parking at its meeting next Thursday. The meeting will include public hearings on a proposal to modify parking at the municipal lot in Amagansett and at that hamlet’s Long Island Rail Road station. In the municipal lot, following long discussion by the hamlet’s citizens advisory committee and the town board, parking at approximately 10 spaces in the southernmost row would be limited to 30 minutes.

At the train station’s small lot, where cars have long been parked for weeks and months at a time, the town-owned spaces, on the south and west sides of the lot, would be limited to 72 hours. (The Metropolitan Transportation Authority owns part of the lot.) As with the municipal lot, the hamlet’s citizens advisory committee had taken note of the scarcity of parking at the station and brought it to the board’s attention. 

The hearings will be held during the 6:30 p.m. meeting at Town Hall.

Until recently, groups of 10 to 25 people were able to visit Plum Island, an uninhabited 840-acre question-mark-shape island in Long Island Sound and a wildlife sanctuary a mile and a half off Orient Point named for its beach plums. 

The island is home to a center that studies diseases that affect cattle, sheep, goats, and pigs, among other animals, most notably foot-and-mouth disease, rather than any that affect humans. It has been federal property since Fort Terry was built there in 1897 during the Spanish-American War. It became the Plum Island Animal Disease Center in the early 1950s and was operated as a research facility until 2013 when the Department of Homeland Security, which is charged with protecting food from animal-borne diseases, decided to move its mission to a new national facility in Kansas.

Now, as a response to litigation by a coalition of six environmental groups, the Department of Homeland Security has canceled all tours, including those sponsored by agencies hoping to establish the island’s environmental importance.  The coalition filed suit in 2016 to prevent the island’s sale, arguing that a sale was prohibited under the Endangered Species Act and alleging that a sale would put the endangered wildlife at risk. 

The island has been labeled a “critical resource area” by the Fish and Wildlife Service, a “significant coastal fish and wildlife habitat” by the New York State Department of State, and an “environmental stewardship area” in a scientific study of Long Island Sound. It is home to endangered piping plovers and to several hundred gray and harbor seals each winter. 

The government had decided to sell the island in 2009. With its location between the pricey developed coasts of Long Island and Connecticut, estimates of its value were in the hundreds of millions of dollars. But Save the Sound, Peconic Baykeeper, and Group for the East End formed a coalition to contest the sale.

In 2013 the Town of Southold, which has jurisdiction, zoned the island for the first time, designating 80 percent as a conservation district that could not be developed. The local community wanted none of the high-density development talked about for the island. The new zoning took a substantial chunk out of the potential sale price.

In an email, John Verrico, chief of media relations, science, and technology for the Homeland Security Department, said, “The purpose of the revised visitor policy is to minimize risks to the government in litigation and the eventual sale.” He said the new policy would remain in place for the foreseeable future, but that as circumstances changed, the department would consider reversing the policy “based on resource availability.” 

This may seem like a victory, but the environmental coalition remains cautious, concerned about deep-pocketed developers and potential changes in town leadership.

Suffolk County

Springs-Fireplace Road

Suffolk County is planning improvements along Springs-Fireplace Road, County Road 41, from Three Mile Harbor Road to Old Stone Highway. Legislator Bridget Fleming has co-sponsored the necessary resolution, which focuses on continuous sidewalks along the south side of the road, new catch basins, leaching pools, and drainage swales, as well as places to allow a resurfaced roadway to have proper sloping. The drainage system will be repaired and upgraded to correct flooding, as well.

In a statement, East Hampton Town Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc said the work would help improve safety along the key access road. 

Offshore Wind

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has extended the public comment period until July 30 on potential lease areas for offshore wind energy development. Deepwater Wind, a Rhode Island company, plans to construct a 15-turbine South Fork Wind Farm approximately 35 miles off Montauk. The 256-square-mile area is also to be the site of Revolution Wind, a larger installation that is to deliver power to Connecticut and Rhode Island. Local commercial fishermen have been almost unanimous in opposition to these plans, fearing damage or destruction to their livelihoods.

In association with the State Department of Environmental Conservation and the State Energy Research and Development Authority, two public sessions will take place, the first on July 11 at the Montauk Community Playhouse and the second at the Shinnecock commercial fishing dock office at 333 Beach Road (Dune Road) in Hampton Bays. Both sessions will be from 4 to 8 p.m. 

Those unable to attend can submit comments electronically via regulations.gov, entering BOEM-2018-0004 in the search bar. 

Firefighting Foam Lawsuit

New York State Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the state attorney general, Barbara G. Underwood, announced on June 20 that a lawsuit has been filed against six companies that manufacture hazardous firefighting foam, which has resulted in groundwater contamination, including in Wainscott. The $38 million suit seeks to recoup the costs of cleaning up products from 3M, Tyco Fire Products, Chemguard, Buckeye Fire Equipment, National Foam, and Kidde-Fenwal. The State Department of Environmental Conservation is working to determine the exact source of the contamination in Wainscott.

The suit alleges the companies are liable under state law for contamination caused by perfluorooctane sulfonic acid/perfluoroctane sulfonate (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid/perflurooctanoate (PFOA), based on having manufactured and marketed products with defective designs, inadequate warning of dangers, and the creation of a public nuisance, a statement from the attorney general said. The suit also claims that by the 1970s, all of the companies knew, or should have known, that PFOA and PFOS were “mobile and persistent in the environment, accumulated in fish and other wildlife, and could be linked to severe harms to fish, wildlife, and people.” 

“Access to clean drinking water should be a right, not a privilege, and it is time to hold the companies associated with contaminating our most precious resource accountable,” Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. said in a statement. Chemicals found in the foam have been found in several other sites in his assembly district, including the Gabreski Air National Guard Base in Westhampton Beach. “We must recover costs and natural-resource damages associated with their negligence in an effort to protect the health and safety of our community,” he said. 

Bereavement Leave

Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. announced this week that he had helped pass legislation to add bereavement as a legitimate reason for paid family leave. The bill he co-sponsored expands paid family leave, included for the first time in the 2016-17 fiscal budget, to allow people time to grieve without facing financial problems or other repercussions.

As a result, paid family leave will eventually provide up to 12 weeks of benefits for eligible workers to care for an infant, a family member with a serious health condition, or to ease the burden on families when earners are called to active military service. Benefits began this year with eight weeks at 50 percent of an average weekly wage. By 2021, the program will provide up to 12 weeks with 67 percent of an employee’s average weekly wage.

“Allowing individuals the necessary time to grieve leads to an improved quality of life, increases employee loyalty, betters outcomes, and creates an overall healthier work force,” Mr. Thiele said. 

The program is funded through a small payroll deduction from each employee.