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.

The East Hampton Town Trustees were asked to allow two programs to proceed in waters under­ their jurisdiction, both intended to restore those waters’ health and the marine life within them. 

Kim Barbour, Cornell Cooperative Extension’s marine program outreach manager, told the seven trustees present  at their meeting on Monday that the Long Island Shellfish Restoration Project, funded by a state grant, is an effort to produce and seed waterways with 115 million hard clams and 40 million oyster spat. The extension has identified four nursery sites in the town, three of them under trustee jurisdiction, at which two floating upweller system nurseries, known as FLUPSYs, would be placed. 

Deployment has already started in Huntington, Ms. Barbour said, and the plan is to continue eastward, with the hope that eight FLUPSYs could be in East Hampton waters next month. “The crunch time is now,” she said, “because the clams are getting big enough that they need to move on to their new home in these floating upweller systems.” In total, the extension’s goal is to deploy around 40 FLUPSYs this year and 30 more in 2019. 

The proposed nursery sites are at Sunset Cove Marina and Three Mile Harbor Marina, both at Three Mile Harbor, the Lion Head Beach Association marina at Hog Creek, and at Gurney’s Yacht Club in Lake Montauk, where the trustees do not have jurisdiction. 

Cornell Cooperative Extension has a memorandum of understanding with each property owner, Ms. Barbour said. Because the FLUPSYs, which measure approximately 16 by 16 feet, are designed to fit in a dock space or adjacent to a bulkhead, conflict with other user groups is unlikely. The initiative also holds “stewardship and education opportunities that we want to provide as part of these projects,” Ms. Barbour said.

The trustees supported the initiative, but asked Ms. Barbour to submit the proposal in writing, with a decision likely at the next meeting, on June 25. 

The other proposal, the Accabonac Macroalgae Bio-Extraction Project, is meant to study the feasibility of removing excess nitrogen from water by placing, and then removing, macroalgae that absorb it. “We wanted to start looking at the potential for macroalgae for nutrient bioextraction,” she said. “We’re putting this out in areas we’ve mapped as high nutrient inputs.” 

The project would see the temporary installation of 30 metal frames, which Ms. Barbour likened to lobster traps, in Accabonac Harbor near Pussy’s Pond, onto which two types of seaweed would be affixed. The vegetation — gracilaria, a genus of red algae, and ulva, green algae also called sea lettuce — would be analyzed every two to four weeks, and after its removal after three months, “to see if this could be part of the nutrient solution,” she said. 

A majority of the frames will be placed to capture as much effluent from Pussy’s Pond as is possible without restricting flow. The others will be placed over groundwater seepage points nearby. 

As with the shellfish restoration effort, time is of the essence, Ms. Barbour said, asking that the frames be deployed this month or early in July so that three months of data could be obtained. “We’re also trying to identify different beneficial reuses of this spent macroalgae,” she said, such as composting, culinary use, and even in cosmetics. 

Again, the trustees were supportive of the proposal, but thought that comments should be sought from baymen, to ensure the frames would not impede their work, before approval.

The East Hampton Town Board voted on Tuesday to extend by six months a moratorium on development in Wainscott. The moratorium, enacted in November 2016, applies to propertry zoned for central business or commercial-industrial use and to residential parcels being used for nonresidential purposes. 

An extension of the moratorium is meant to allow the town to complete the Wainscott hamlet study, which is underway and which may come up with proposed changes to the zoning code and other laws that could affect future development. The moratorium prohibits the town planning board from approving subdivisions or site plans.

The affected area is primarily along Montauk Highway, bordered by the Long Island Rail Road tracks to the north, Town Line Road to the west, and the East Hampton Village boundary to the east. The area already has the most traffic in the hamlet, and additional development could negatively impact neighboring residential properties. 

In a May 1 presentation to the board, Peter Flinker, of Dodson and Flinker, a Massachusetts consulting firm, and Lisa Liquori, of Fine Arts and Sciences, who is a former town planning director, said Wainscott’s commercial district is inconsistent and not always aesthetically pleasing, with parking in front of some structures and behind others. Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc said at the meeting that the town’s westernmost hamlet is characteristic of “development done haphazardly and organically over time,” resulting in traffic problems. 

Also on Tuesday, Andy Gaites, a senior environmental analyst in the town’s land acquisition department, told the board that emergency vehicle access at the Rod’s Valley park preserve adjacent to Montauk’s Hither Woods should be rerouted landward. Part of the path is along the water’s edge on Fort Pond Bay and it often becomes impassable due to erosion and storm debris, including large rocks and logs, he said. 

Mr. Gaites proposed a new access trail that would traverse Hither Woods, which is owned by the state, Suffolk County, and the town, and Rod’s Valley, which is town owned. It is an obvious location, he said, as the path was previously disturbed by a dirt road. Little or no valuable vegetation would be lost, he said. 

The state’s Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation is willing to work with the land acquisition department to “get this job done in-house,” Mr. Gaites said, at little cost to the town. 

“To pull the trail off the beach is probably a good idea,” Supervisor Van Scoyoc said. His colleagues agreed. 

In other matters, at its meeting next Thursday, at 6:30 p.m., the board will hold public hearings aimed at addressing the scarcity of parking at the three lots serving the ocean beach at Ditch Plain in Montauk. One hearing will consider whether to amend the code to prohibit parking trailers there, while another will address whether to add restrictions to parking, including a residents-only designation.

New York State

Crab Data Sought

Crabbers on the East End could be in for a surprise. The State Department of Environmental Conservation is tagging full-grown female blue-claw crabs with yellow wire between the lateral tines of their carapaces to investigate their migration and habitat patterns. If crabbers land a crab with a tag, they have been asked to report the serial number on it on the department’s website. It will indicate where the crab was tagged and when, and even who else might have caught it earlier.

The D.E.C. has also asked recreational crabbers to help its biologists by keeping track of their catches. Questions listed in a voluntary online survey include the method used to catch the crabs, the location, and the number of male or female crabs encountered. Even trips in which not a single crab is found are important to the data-collection effort, the D.E.C. said. Details are at dec.ny.gov; the online crabbing survey is mobile-phone friendly. At selected points on Great South Bay, staff of the D.E.C. Division of Marine Resources will be asking crabbers in person if they would care to participate.

The D.E.C. has reminded crabbers that any egg-bearing females must be immediately returned to the waters from which they were taken.

Suffolk County Legislator Al Krupski has endorsed Kate Browning, who is seeking the Democratic Party’s nomination to challenge Representative Lee Zeldin in New York’s First Congressional District. Ms. Browning, a former county legislator, is one of five candidates in Tuesday’s primary election. 

“I’m proud to endorse Kate Browning for Congress,” Mr. Krupski said in a statement. “As a colleague of Kate’s in the Suffolk County Legislature, I saw firsthand her ability and willingness to work with everyone regardless of party or faction, for the benefit of Suffolk County residents. She has a proven record fighting for open space and farmland preservation and she will continue that good work in Congress.” 

Ms. Browning will face Elaine DiMasi, Perry Gershon, David Pechefsky, and Vivian Viloria-Fisher in the primary election. Mr. Zeldin is seeking a third term in Congress.

The East Hampton Town Board will hold a  hearing at 6:30 p.m. on proposed parking restrictions at the lots serving the popular Ditch Plain ocean beach in Montauk. 

Three months after Montauk residents aired  concerns that the town would “pave paradise” in an effort to improve circulation and navigability, the two westernmost lots have nonetheless been repaved and reconfigured. The easternmost lot, commonly referred to as “Dirt Lot,” remains unpaved, as residents had urged in March. 

Under consideration tonight is a law that would add a residents-only restriction to the westernmost lot, where there is a comfort station. Residents, including members of the hamlet’s citizens advisory committee, had asked the board to consider this restriction, according to Councilwoman Sylvia Overby, the town board’s liaison to the committee. 

Another proposal is that a resident or nonresident permit be required to park at the lot that extends from Deforest Road to the beach line at the dead end of Otis Road. A third proposal would prohibit parking trailers in any of the three lots, which is aimed at alleviating the scarcity of spaces and improving navigability. 

In March, Ms. Overby likened the proposals to the effort made to improve navigability and safety at Indian Wells Beach in Amagansett. That beach’s residents-only parking lot now has an attended booth on Indian Wells Highway, and nonresident vehicles and the buses and taxis that once deposited and collected beachgoers are turned away. 

At the board’s March 20 meeting, Montauk residents had expressed frustration that the board, however well intentioned, would further erode the hamlet’s rural character by paving the lots. Some also expressed the fear that adding impervious surfaces would force stormwater to the ocean and questioned the need to reconfigure the lots to create additional spaces. They asked the board to rethink its proposals.

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

“Governor Cuomo is continuing to invest in New York’s natural assets to support our coastal communities and the ecosystems that they rely on,” Basil Seggos, the D.E.C. commissioner, said in a statement. “The public hatchery expansion grants and New York’s Shellfish Restoration Council will help re-establish these areas as prime coastal habitat and support much-needed upgrades to our shellfish hatcheries. These grants play a critical role in New York’s $10.4 million shellfish restoration effort to improve water quality and bolster Long Island’s coastal communities.”

The grants will provide each municipality with approximately $400,000 to improve existing hatcheries. Funded projects range from new or expanded water intake systems, algal culture systems, larval culture systems, broodstock conditioning, spawning and holding systems, setting tanks and systems, juvenile seed culture equipment and systems, and field grow-out systems for seed shellfish that are expected to yield approximately 12 million hard clam seed and 3 million oysters by 2019.

Municipal grant awardees will be 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 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.

Residents of Amagansett and members of its citizens advisory committee chided the East Hampton Town Board on Tuesday over its June 7 vote to allow the East Hampton Library’s annual Authors Night fund-raiser and children’s fair to be held at 555 Montauk Highway, an open field the town bought using the community preservation fund in 2014. 

They also complained that they were left out of the discussion of the events, scheduled for Aug. 11 and 12, warned of nightmarish traffic on the summer weekend, and predicted property damage. Board members disagreed with these predications, as well as an accusation that a fundraiser represented misuse of CPF acquire properties

More than 2,000 people attended the 13th annual Authors Night last year in a field on Maidstone Lane in East Hampton Village, where more than 100 writers and editors signed and sold books to benefit the library. The site is unavailable this year because of its agricultural use.

At its June 5 meeting, the board discussed the library’s application, which had been vetted by a committee charged with reviewing mass-gathering permit applications. Nancy Lynn Thiele, a deputy town attorney, told the board that all necessary security and insurance documents had been provided. A public hearing was held two days later, and with no public comment the board approved the application.

On Tuesday, Amagansett residents heaped scorn on the board for approving Authors Night in their hamlet. “I wonder what magic it has,” John Broderick said of the 555 site. “It seems to have a mystical pull on the town board and other people, to lead them to do these crazy acts and tell us that it’s for our benefit, as long as the magic rituals are hidden from us. The first of these fantasy schemes was this 10,000-person, two-day rock concert. . . . The then-supervisor told me his faith in human nature would prevent the audience from rampaging through the village.

Next, Mr. Broderick said, “came the marauders who wanted to build castles. . . . Whether it looked like a giant miniature golf course didn’t matter.” Now, he continued, “another spell has been cast,” a “two-day, traffic-stopping event.” How, he asked, would an additional 1,000 cars be funneled into and out of the hamlet on an already crowded summer weekend? “Did anyone feel responsible to discuss this in public with the citizens?” he asked. The committee, he said, was shocked when Councilman David Lys, the town board’s liaison, informed them of the plan on June 11. 

Vicki Littman, a former chairwoman of the citizens committee, said her family had lived next to the 555 site since 1903. “It is extremely alarming to find out after the fact that the town board voted to approve a large fund-raising event on C.P.F. property without any community discussion or input. What is most appalling is the fact that this town board would consider using C.P.F. properties for any other intended uses than what it was purchased for,” she said.

Other speakers ridiculed the board members’ assertion that reading is a form of recreation. “Frankly, I can’t see how you can stretch the definition of recreation to include these book events,” Michael Jordan said. Everyone supports the library, he and others said, but Authors Night is inappropriate for the site. “I don’t see how this supports the purpose for which it was acquired. Next year, with legalization of recreational marijuana, maybe there should be a marijuana fair.” 

Susan Bratton complained that the permit approval “sounded like a fait accompli. We’d have liked to have had input.” Such an event “will directly impact quality of life in Amagansett on that weekend,” she said. 

Several speakers worried aloud about a precedent that could be set, and asked that the permit be rescinded pending further vetting that would include comments from Amagansett residents. 

But the board had discussed it in open session, Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc said. Duck Creek Farm in Springs, which was also purchased with C.P.F. money in 2006, hosts art exhibitions and other events, as does the East Hampton Historical Farm Museum, he said. “As far as C.A.C.s,” said Councilwoman Sylvia Overby, “the property was bought for the entire community. It wasn’t purchased just for Amagansett residents.” 

But Councilman Jeff Bragman had a different point of view. “The discussion we need to have and did not in front of the public was whether this was appropriate for C.P.F.,” he said. “We certainly would have been a little better informed about what you people sitting in the audience thought.” 

The C.P.F. law “has allowed some broad interpretations,” Mr. Van Scoyoc said. The board looked at Authors Night and the children’s fair as a not-for-profit event for “a community organization that has a tax line within the tax bill,” calling it “a quasi-municipal use of the property.” 

“I have to respectfully disagree,” Mr. Bragman said. “I’m very afraid of this line being drawn to permit not-for-profits.”  

“While drawing a line is important,” Mr. Van Scoyoc conceded, “where we draw it needs further discussion.” 

Almost a decade ago, a two-day music festival was proposed for the 555 site but ultimately aborted. More recently, a Connecticut developer planned a market-rate condominium complex for older adults there, which was hotly debated. After that was abandoned, the town purchased the property with the intended use being passive recreation. With the exception of an annual fund-raiser for Soldier Ride, which has hosted concerts and barbecues there, the site has not been used for mass gatherings.

Correction: Due to an editing error, an earlier version of this article incorrectly said that the town board had agreed that the use of the Amagansett property for a fund-raiser represented a misuse of C.P.F.-acquired properties. In fact, the board did not acknowledge that it was a misuse of such properties. 

The East Hampton Town Trustees, who assert jurisdiction over most of the town’s beaches, bottomlands, and waterways, are apparently divided as to whether or not to grant a lease to Deepwater Wind to land the transmission cable of the proposed South Fork Wind Farm under the ocean beach at the end of Beach Lane in Wainscott. 

But their authority may not even extend to the beach in question, Francis Bock, the body’s clerk, said on Tuesday. The trustees have not conducted a title search to prove ownership, he said, nor have they seen a deed to the property.

“There are records that indicate in 1881, I believe, the trustees turned over Beach Lane to the commissioners of highways,” a three-member department of the town. “The indication is it was turned over to them to the water line. If you look at a tax map, you will see almost every road end from there to, I believe, Wiborg’s Beach,” in East Hampton, “goes right down to the water.” 

Other trustees do not believe the body ceded ownership of the beach, Mr. Bock said. But “if you accept what those records show, it indicates to me that Stephen Lynch,” the town’s superintendent of highways, “is in charge of it.”

The wind farm is to be situated some 35 miles east of Montauk. 

The four-week span in which the East Hampton Town Trustees solicited public comment on the proposed South Fork Wind Farm, following a joint hearing with the town board, ended last Thursday, and the trustees have called an executive session to discuss their next move on Monday at 5:30 p.m., an hour before their regularly scheduled meeting. Such so-called executive sessions may be held only in certain circumstances; this would not appear to be one of those.

Discussion on Monday will focus on how the trustees will vote, “if we vote,” Mr. Bock said on Tuesday. “There’s a possibility we may not vote,” given the uncertainty surrounding their jurisdiction. 

Mr. Bock said that Monday’s special session would be followed by another, possibly on Wednesday. After hearing from some 60 speakers at the May 17 joint hearing, the trustees received approximately 50 more comments during the four-week period, many coming from those who had spoken at the hearing. “From what I’ve seen it’s probably a fairly even split,” in favor of and opposed to the wind farm, he said. 

Meanwhile, Deepwater Wind officials are awaiting decisions from the trustees and town board before they submit applications to multiple federal and state permitting agencies, vetting of which is expected to take up to two years. They had hoped to submit those applications in the first quarter of this year in order to maintain a timetable that could see the wind farm operational late in 2022. 

“We have been delaying our permit application for several months, waiting to know whether or not we have the approvals we need from the town and trustees, before we can submit our permit applications,” Clint Plummer, Deepwater Wind’s vice president of development, said on Tuesday. “It’s getting very tight on time. We’ve delayed for several months, and we need to submit permit applications very soon.” 

Mr. Plummer would not comment on the question of trustees’ ownership of the beach in Wainscott. “We know that we have to have certainty that if we go through this permitting process that we have the real estate rights we need to actually build the project,” he said. “We need to have the town and trustees take a vote. . . . I remain very confident about where we stand in that respect.” Should the real estate rights be denied, “We’ll have to go to one of the alternative landings,” most likely state-owned land at Napeague, he said. “In that case, we are very confident we have a viable and workable route.” In that event, an $8-million-plus community benefits package proposed to the town and trustees in exchange for the easements would be withdrawn, he said.  

Nonetheless, “We really want to do a deal with the town and trustees, in part because we’ve been working here so long. I think everybody recognizes we’ve come up with a consensus that works for the community.”

Regardless of the local governing bodies’ decision, offshore wind has determined proponents at higher levels of government, and LIPA, in a statement issued last Thursday, called the South Fork Wind Farm “the foundation of a sustainable wind energy industry on Long Island.” 

While the town board and trustees deliberate, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo is making offshore wind a priority. On Friday, he announced an $18.5 million grant awarded by the federal Department of Energy to the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority to lead a nationwide consortium to advance offshore wind technology. The consortium is to create a public-private partnership including offshore wind developers, utilities, research laboratories, and states including New Jersey and California. Its mission is to develop innovations in wind farm design and methods to reduce siting and installation costs, and explore advanced technology for operations, maintenance, and supply-chain development. 

The governor issued the Offshore Wind Master Plan earlier this year. It is to guide the development of 2.4 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030, the year that 50 percent of the state’s electricity is mandated to come from renewable sources as specified in the Clean Energy Standard, issued in 2016. Mr. Cuomo also directed NYSERDA to invest $15 million in clean energy work force development and infrastructure advancement to support the nascent industry. 

“The South Fork continues to experience electricity load growth,” according to LIPA’s statement, which cites growing commercial activity and ongoing, and larger, residential construction. The South Fork Wind Farm “demonstrates how governments at all layers can work with the private sector to make smart energy decisions and solve a long-term supply problem to the South Fork without the need to build unsightly and costly poles and wires.” 

Neighboring states are also moving forward with offshore wind. On June 13, Gov. Dannel Malloy and the commissioner of Connecticut’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection announced 250 megawatts of renewable energy projects, including 200 megawatts from Deepwater Wind’s Revolution Wind Farm, proposed in the same federal lease area in which the South Fork Wind Farm is to be constructed. Revolution Wind is to comprise two separate projects: Rhode Island is already slated to receive 400 megawatts from the installation. Massachusetts has also committed to 800 megawatts of offshore wind-generated electricity. 

“As you see playing out in Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Massachusetts, offshore wind is going be a very large industry,” Mr. Plummer said. “There’s going to be a lot of these projects developed. That’s just the momentum behind our industry, because it makes fundamental sense. We’re very proud of our work in East Hampton over these last several years, and hope in particular the board and trustees can consider their yes vote to be part of establishing a very high bar.”

As part of an effort to remediate the harmful algae that have regularly bloomed in Three Mile Harbor since the 1980s, the chairman of the town’s water quality technical advisory committee recommended on Tuesday that the town board pursue several mitigation measures. 

Excessive nutrients in waterways, for which failing septic systems and stormwater runoff are blamed, promote the algal blooms that choke off oxygen, restricting the growth of eelgrass, killing marine life, and rendering shellfish unsafe for consumption. 

At the town board’s meeting on Tuesday, Chris Clapp of the water quality advisory committee proposed that projects aimed at eliminating the flow of nutrients and pollutants before they reach the harbor be moved from a conceptual to a design and engineering stage. 

At present, stormwater drains directly into the head of Three Mile Harbor via collection and discharge pipes at Fairway Drive, Gardiner’s Cove Road, and the Soak Hides dreen, Mr. Clapp told the board. He recommended the design and engineering of bioswales, vegetated depressions in the landscape that help filter stormwater — such as those created at the Town Pond green and behind the Methodist church in East Hampton Village — at each of these locations. 

Depressions would be designed to intercept and treat the initial inch to inch and a half of stormwater flow. “Imagine rinsing off your car after pollen is on it,” Mr. Clapp told the board. “That first inch and a half of water is what gets 90 percent off.” The same thing happens on roads in a rain event, he said. “That conveys the majority of pollutants, the nitrogen, phosphorous, and pathogens which are impairing our waters. These swales are designed to treat that first flush, as it’s known.” 

Also recommended was a project with Cornell Cooperative Extension that would see the installation of a permeable reactive barrier behind the bulkhead at the town dock. A device comprising trench boxes filled with ground woodchips or another reactive substance that intercepts groundwater as it seeps into a water body, such a barrier has demonstrated an 85-percent reduction in nitrogen seepage at Pussy’s Pond in Springs. “It’s able to remediate pollutants that are already in the groundwater stream before they enter into the surface waters,” Mr. Clapp said. 

A permeable reactive barrier at Three Mile Harbor would provide a mitigation measure “while you work on the long-term fix of treating the source of those nutrients,” leaching of nitrogen and phosphorous from aging and failing septic systems, he said.

“Many of the existing septic systems in that location are in groundwater at least part of the time, if not all of the time,” Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc said. “And we’re seeing harmful algal blooms, some very concerning,” such as those that can accumulate in bivalves and crabs and, if consumed, cause paralytic shellfish poisoning. To remediate waters at the head of the harbor and improve the overall ecology of the entire waterway, “it’s critical that we take some steps,” he said.