The East Hampton Town Board has voted to authorize a state of emergency for Wainscott in order to direct money to residents whose wells were found to be contaminated by toxic perfluorinated chemicals, or PFCs. 

Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc announced at the board’s meeting on Tuesday that he and Councilman Jeff Bragman were co-sponsoring the state-of-emergency declaration. The move came weeks after Mr. Bragman first called on his colleagues to act swiftly to encourage the installation of in-home filtration where wells are contaminated. “We feel this is the most expedient way we can address those concerns,” Mr. Van Scoyoc said on Tuesday. 

The money will come in the form of rebates of up to 90 percent of the cost of a point-of-entry water treatment system, to a maximum of $3,000, to ensure the safety of residents’ drinking water. Homeowners will have to submit an affidavit and invoice attesting to a system’s purchase and installation to be eligible for the rebate, Mr. Van Scoyoc said. 

Qualifying residents who are interested in taking advantage of the program have been asked to contact the town’s purchasing department at 631-324-4183.

The Suffolk County Water Authority is to extend public water mains and connect them to residences throughout the hamlet, but by its estimate, construction would not begin before August and would take four to five months to complete. That project is forecast to cost $24.3 million, for which the town will issue bonds and seek grant funding to offset the cost to taxpayers. 

A special meeting will be held on Monday at 6:30 p.m. at Town Hall for a public hearing on creation of a water supply district in the hamlet, a prerequisite to the water authority’s extension of public water. The district is to encompass much of the hamlet south of East Hampton Airport, a site suspected to be a source of the perfluorinated compounds, stretching from Industrial Road on the north to Town Line Road to the west, Daniel’s Hole Road and Georgica Pond to the east, and the Atlantic Ocean to the south. 

According to an information sheet issued by the town, the cost of extending water mains will be repaid by property taxes on parcels townwide, excluding the villages. As an example, the document lists an estimated cost to taxpayers for a house assessed at $7,000, having a market value of $1.2 million, at $35 to $38 per year, representing an increase of less than 2 percent. 

The portion of the debt attributed to the cost of connecting individual residences to the water main will ultimately be paid for by the particular property owner. Charges apportioned to the specific cost of connecting each house will be added to Wainscott residents’ tax bills, to be amortized over the expected 20-year life of the bond, according to the document. 

With the Water Authority as lead agency, the town will jointly apply for an inter-municipal water infrastructure grant from the State Environmental Facilities Corporation. The grant could cover the lesser of $10 million or 40 percent of the projects’ cost. 

Money could also come from the town’s community preservation fund: Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. and State Senator Kenneth P. LaValle have sponsored a bill to clarify that use of C.P.F. money for the water supply district would be acceptable. A $1 million allocation for Wainscott water infrastructure improvements, proposed by Deepwater Wind as part of a community benefits package in exchange for easements to land the transmission cable from its proposed South Fork Wind Farm at an ocean beach in Wainscott, could provide additional funding, should the town board and trustees agree to the proposal.

County Health Department officials announced the discovery of the toxic compounds in Wainscott wells in October, and the town has provided bottled water to affected residents since then while the board contemplated a more permanent response to the crisis. The town has expanded its initial survey of the area to encompasses some 400 residential properties.

The discovery of perfluorooctanesulfonic acid, or PFOS, and perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, has left Wainscott residents anxious and angry. A Southampton lawyer has filed a lawsuit against the town and several chemical manufacturers on behalf of a Wainscott resident, asserting that the town is responsible for allowing the harmful chemicals, which are used in multiple products including fire-suppressing foam, to reach the water supply. 

PFOS is a key ingredient in fabric protectors and stain repellents, and is found in other products including polishes, paints, varnishes, cleaning products, and carpets. Studies have associated higher levels of PFOS with increased risk of kidney disease. 

PFOA is a coating used on cookware and in other consumer products. The federal Environmental Protection Agency issued a lifetime health advisory for PFOA after studies showed that high levels were associated with certain cancers, liver damage, thyroid disease, and problems for fetuses and breastfed babies, among other groups. 

Together, the compounds have been used to make aqueous film-forming foam, or A.F.F.F., a component of firefighting foams. They are deemed emerging contaminants by federal and state officials, who have established a health advisory level for exposure of 70 parts per trillion. 

According to the information sheet issued by the town, state and county health officials widened areas tested for PFC contamination after the chemicals were discovered in water in multiple locations on Long Island. Firefighting foam was cited as a source of those contaminations. The State Department of Environmental Conservation is working to determine the exact source of the contamination in Wainscott.

The East Hampton Housing Authority has received a $7 million grant from New York State for the affordable housing complex it is planning to build at 531 Montauk Highway in Amagansett. Catherine Casey, the executive director of the housing authority, said that the money awarded Monday means that the project now has the funding it needs to go forward. 

In a statement released on Monday, Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. announced that the grant would be provided by the New York State Homes and Community Renewal agency, which is spending more than $200 million in a statewide effort to build or preserve more than 2,800 affordable apartments. 

The Amagansett housing development will provide 37 apartments for families and individuals with low to moderate incomes. 

Ms. Casey said that the $7 million grant actually amounts to more like $18 million after factoring in the 10 years of tax credits that have also been awarded to the project. "There are still lots of details to work out," said Ms. Casey, who is scheduled to meet with the agency that awarded the money, but the state's grant, she said, means "the project is essentially fully-funded."

New York State

Bill to Curb Sand Mines

Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. and State Senator Kenneth P. LaValle have introduced legislation that would prohibit state agencies from approving permits for sand mining in cases in which the sand mine is located together with facilities where waste is processed, stored, sold, or transferred. 

The legislation is in response to documented cases of groundwater contamination in which sand mines and waste-processing facilities have been located in places designated as special groundwater protection areas. The legislation, if approved, will only apply to Suffolk and Nassau Counties, as Long Island is primarily served by an underground sole-source aquifer. The bill is currently before the Environmental Conservation Committee.

Federal

Congressional Candidates Debate

Candidates in the Democratic Congressional primary here will discuss the issues during a debate in Hampton Bays tonight sponsored by the League of Women Voters of the Hamptons. Five candidates are running for the chance to face Representative Lee Zeldin in November: Kate Browning, Vivian Viloria-Fisher, Elaine DiMasi, Perry Gershon, and David Pechefsky. 

At tonight’s debate, which begins at 7 in the Hampton Bays High School auditorium, each will make timed opening and closing statements and then answer questions submitted by members of the local media, the league, and the audience. Cathy Peacock, a co-chairwoman of the league’s government committee, will moderate. 

The debate will be taped by Southampton Town’s public access channel, SEA-TV, and will be made available to East Hampton Town’s LTV as well. The primary will be held on June 26.

A ruler with authoritarian tendencies. Inside, endless palace intrigue as warring factions vie for influence. Outside, bullying of allies and threatening of adversaries. A tight-lipped investigator seemingly closing in and soon, perhaps, to compel a climactic showdown. 

Is this the White House, or a work of Shakespeare? 

And if the latter, is it comedy or tragedy? “That’s what I don’t know yet,” said Richard Horwich, of Northwest Woods in East Hampton. “We’re only in, I would say, Act Two.” 

Mr. Horwich, a retired professor who taught at New York University and Brooklyn College, leads the Shakespeare Discussion Group at the Amagansett Library and serves as dramaturge, or adviser, with the Hamptons Shakespeare Festival. He is also the author of “Shakespeare’s Dilemmas” (“the scholarship is thorough and admirable,” William M. Peterson wrote in The Star’s review). 

Likening President Trump to a Shakespearian character is not new. In a 2016 article in The Los Angeles Times, written before the election, Charles McNulty asked, “What would Shakespeare, the greatest detective of the soul of man in literary history, have made of Donald Trump?” After turning to the comedies for material, he settled on “Julius Caesar” and “Coriolanus,” citing their “almost prophetic reading of our current moment.” Last year, New York’s Public Theater was harshly criticized for a depiction of the assassination of a very Trumpian Roman ruler in its production of “Julius Caesar.” One performance was disrupted by protesters.

“Tyrant: Shakespeare on Trump,” a recent book by the scholar Stephen Greenblatt, defines a tyrant, Mr. Horwich said, as “a leader manifestly unsuited to govern, someone dangerously impulsive or viciously conniving or indifferent to the truth” — someone who, Mr. Greenblatt writes, has “limitless self-regard, the law-breaking, the pleasure in inflicting pain, the compulsive desire to dominate. He is pathologically narcissistic and supremely arrogant. He masquerades as a populist but has only disdain for the common people.” 

Does this remind you of anyone? 

Mr. Greenblatt, Mr. Horwich said, cites characters and works including Jack Cade in “Henry VI, Part 3,” Richard III, Macbeth, Julius Caesar, King Lear, Cori olanus,” and Leontes from “The Winter’s Tale.” “He makes a very good case for most of them,” he said, “but I don’t see Julius Caesar, Lear, or Coriolanus as tyrannical. But then, I don’t yet see Trump as a tyrant — only a wannabe, who might develop into one under the right circumstances, unless someone like Richmond, Macduff, or Brutus stops him.” 

Rather, Mr. Horwich sees Richard II as the closest analogue to the 45th president of the United States, despite some obvious differences. “What so many people despise about Trump is that he’s trampling on American institutions, breaking our national taboos, dragging our world reputation down, compromising our integrity. That’s exactly what did Richard in. He’s in the same business as Trump: real estate.” 

“Richard, like Trump, kept alienating his supporters until there were none left, a process we’re watching unfold. Richard, like Trump, was a military hawk, so intent on defeating and annexing Ireland that he bankrupted the treasury to fight a war there.”

“And in his sexual proclivities,” Mr. Horwich said, Richard II “is the mirror image of Trump. Trump is so blatantly sexist and macho, so eager to prove his manhood by grabbing [women], bragging about the size of his ‘fingers,’ etc., that he’s a laughingstock. Richard isn’t quite that, but characters in the play are always making snide, veiled references to his effeteness, even effeminacy — and in fact, in real life, he designed his own clothes and is credited with the invention of the handkerchief. That’s distinctly un-Trumpian, yet there’s a kind of . . . I’m not going to call it sexual dysfunction, but a kind of a removal from the mainstream, one to one side, the other to the other, that makes him unpopular and the subject of ridicule.” 

There are, of course, outcomes apart from comedy and tragedy, “and one of them is irony,” Mr. Horwich said. “Shakespeare’s tragedies, as they get later and later, the endings become more and more ironic. It becomes more about the failure of kings, in particular, to realize dreams or hopes or ambitions, and fail their countries. Lear is an example of that.” 

What follows Act Two in, perhaps, “The Tragicomedy of Trump,” is anyone’s guess. “Who knows how all this is going to play out?” Mr. Horwich asked. “He might be deposed, he might have his throne usurped. . . . Will the Republicans somehow get their way and defang” Robert Mueller, the special counsel, “and derail his investigation? I would bring it all into line with the fates of various and sundry of Shakespeare’s kings.” 

The Shakespeare Discussion Group will meet on June 9 at 10:30 a.m. at the Amagansett Library.

Seize the moment with the urgency our predicament demands, pause and rethink the project, or reject it out of hand. Those were among the suggestions of more than 50 people who addressed a joint hearing of the East Hampton Town Board and the town trustees last Thursday, called to gauge public support for the proposed South Fork Wind Farm. 

Deepwater Wind, a Rhode Island company that built and operates the nation’s first offshore wind farm, a five-turbine installation off Block Island, will soon submit permit applications to multiple agencies including the New York State Public Service Commission for the 15-turbine South Fork Wind Farm, to be situated approximately 35 miles off Montauk. The 90-megawatt installation, proponents say, is an essential component in the town’s goal of achieving 100 percent of its electricity from renewable sources. Or, according to its opponents, it will have a negligible impact on reducing carbon emissions while damaging or destroying fertile marine habitat and the commercial fishing industry that depends on it. 

The town and trustees are charged with a decision to issue easements — or a lease, in the trustees’ collective view — allowing the wind farm’s transmission cable to come ashore at the end of Beach Lane in Wainscott and make its way underground to the Long Island Power Authority substation on Cove Hollow Road in East Hampton. 

The three-hour joint hearing, held at LTV Studios in Wainscott to accommodate the expected crowd, seemed to leave the five members of the town board and nine trustees drained, as did the cheers and occasional jeers from the audience, as residents and other interested persons made a case for or against the boards’ approval, based on issues ranging from the cost to LIPA ratepayers to the existential crisis several speakers said climate change represents. At one point, members of the two governing bodies sparred over who should be allowed to speak. 

While the South Fork Wind Farm was praised by some and criticized by others, in a sense it was a stand-in for the object of many residents’ scorn: LIPA. Even some proponents of offshore wind said that the wind farm would condemn ­LIPA customers to a business-as-usual relationship with a monopoly. To many speakers, approval of the proposed wind farm represents the tip of the iceberg, a harbinger of hundreds of turbines eventually dotting the Mid-Atlantic and New England coastlines. 

“Is this wind farm really the best way to go clean?” asked Carl Safina, a marine science professor, author, and prominent environmentalist who lives in Amagansett. “Are we simply trading one way of getting our energy from a monopoly for another way of handing the monopoly a literal windfall?” In its request for proposals to address the South Fork’s energy needs, he said, LIPA received but did not select a number of decentralized projects. “Why didn’t they choose them? Because decentralized energy is a major threat to giant utilities. . . . We could have had several clean, decentralized projects going forward simultaneously. I think we’d all be better off in the long run with various configurations of wind, solar, shallow geothermal energy, and other new clean tech applied directly at homes, businesses, and parking lots.” 

But “We are in a planetary emergency,” said Francesca Rheannon, president of the Accabonac Protection Committee and a member of the town’s energy sustainability advisory committee. “I wish that we had the time to not have to make such difficult choices, and sometimes choices in which we have to make some decisions that are not perfect, in order to survive on this planet.” 

The Atlantic cod fishery is beginning to collapse due to warming ocean waters, she said, and the shells of shellfish in the Pacific have thinned as the average acidity of the oceans has increased by some 30 percent. “The most important thing that we can do in this room is overcome our differences and begin to work together despite them.” Like many speakers both for and against the wind farm, she advocated reduced energy consumption, battery storage, and power generation through solar and other means to provide the town bargaining power against LIPA. 

Kevin McAllister of the advocacy group Defend H2O spoke for many when he said that he was “highly conflicted” by the proposed wind farm. “The notion of industrialization of the ocean is unsettling,” he said. “With that said, consider Deepwater Horizon in 2010,” in which an explosion on an offshore rig caused the release of 210 million gallons of oil and another 2 million gallons of surfactants into the Gulf of Mexico. “It is unsettling,” he said, “but I think we have to move away from the oil. . . . Putting aside the economics and the need, I think the environmental impacts are manageable.” 

Tom Bjurlof, who founded a consultancy that worked with American and European companies and governments on regulatory issues in energy, telecoms, and wireless communication, said that while Germany has aggressively developed offshore wind, “carbon reductions in Germany are close to nonexistent.” Because wind is variable and uncontrollable, he said, supplemental electricity plants must accompany renewable-energy installations to provide power, sometimes for days on end, when a wind farm isn’t generating electricity, and LIPA’s legacy fossil-fuel plants are obsolete. “This is why LIPA has an additional half-billion dollars in their budget for the South Fork.” PSEG, the Long Island division of which manages the electricity grid for LIPA, is building “massive fossil plants” in Connecticut and New Jersey, he said, “required by offshore wind farms.” If one is truly interested in carbon reduction, “you need to look into this,” he said. 

Whether or not the South Fork Wind Farm represents a small step back from climate catastrophe, the hearing’s most contentious moment came when a proponent of the wind farm wanted to discuss the pocketbook issue — the rates that individual customers would pay for electricity should LIPA purchase power from Deepwater Wind, as the entities’ contract stipulates. As Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc called on Gordian Raacke, executive director of the advocacy group Renewable Energy Long Island, Rick Drew of the trustees spoke up. “We were told no one from Deepwater Wind was going to be speaking tonight.” 

The supervisor answered that any member of the public was welcome to speak regardless of affiliation, noting that Roger Clayman of the Long Island Federation of Labor had already advocated for the wind farm. “I think it’s highly inappropriate that a paid advocate should be speaking on behalf of a project for our community,” Mr. Drew said. “This is very, very inappropriate.” 

“So you want to suspend this gentleman’s civil rights?” Mr. Van Scoyoc asked, as calls to “Let him speak!” rang out from the audience. 

Mr. Drew persisted. “He’s a paid advocate! He’s paid by PSEG and LIPA. He’s paid by Deepwater Wind.” (Deepwater Wind was among the sponsors of an energy forum organized by Renewable Energy Long Island and donated money enabling the latter to host two boat trips to the Block Island Wind Farm last year, but neither Mr. Raacke nor Renewable Energy Long Island has a contractual relationship with the company.) 

“That’s totally out of order, Rick,” the supervisor said. “I’m very disappointed in you.” He asked that people be respectful of one another despite differences of opinion. 

Though he said nothing during the exchange, Francis Bock, the trustees’ clerk, said on Tuesday that Mr. Drew was “absolutely out of line.” Mr. Raacke, he said, “is a lobbyist who has been pushing for renewable energy for the 10 years I’ve known him. He gets funding from multiple resources, and he’s no different than Bonnie Brady,” executive director of the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association, “who’s a lobbyist for the fishing industry. To try to disallow him to speak, I thought, was pretty outrageous.” 

Mr. Raacke said that the net cost of LIPA’s entire South Fork plan, which also includes battery storage and its Peak Savers program, would add between .5 and 2 percent to ratepayers’ bills. “For the average customer, LIPA said it would be $1.19 per month,” he said. “Based on publicly available data, we can do our own math. If your bill would be $100 a month, it might go up by a dollar or two. But if the fuel cost for conventional power generation rises over the next 20 years, our electric bills will go up, and unfortunately nobody can tell us how much. With wind power, the cost is known.” 

When it was her turn to speak, Ms. Brady told the board and trustees not to grant access to Deepwater Wind until it completes “a comprehensive fisheries research monitoring and mitigation plan, with compensation, if need be,” with the town’s fisheries advisory committee. Such a plan, she added, “must also be paid for by the applicant,” as Rhode Island’s Coastal Resource Management Council had required when the developer was planning the Block Island Wind Farm. “Don’t let them swindle you,” she said. 

Some of the evening’s most  eloquent remarks came from those bearing the least responsibility for climate change. Sixteen-year-old Emily Berkemeyer, representing the Suffolk Student Climate Action Committee, said that she was at the hearing “because my future depends on it.” The reality of climate change has never been clearer, she said. “Wind power is becoming the United States’ number one renewable energy source in terms of generating capacity, meaning that it is a perfect option for the South Fork’s growing demand for energy, especially during the summer seasons.” 

“I realize it is a concern of many here” that a wind farm will impact the fishing industry, she said. “I ask those in opposition to realize the bigger picture.” Absent a transition to offshore wind power, “the ocean’s temperatures will continue to rise, and many species of fish and marine life will migrate toward northern, cooler waters, dramatically changing the ecosystem and the way of life for many Long Island communities.” 

When the last speakers had delivered their remarks, the town board resolved to keep the record open for written comments through next Thursday. The trustees then moved to keep their record open through June 14.

The East Hampton Town Democratic Committee will convene tomorrow night to select a candidate to run for a seat on the town board this November. The meeting will be held at 7 p.m. at St. Michael's Lutheran Church in Amagansett. 

The seat is currently held by David Lys, whom the board appointed in January to fill the seat vacated by Peter Van Scoyoc when he became town supervisor. Mr. Lys announced his intention to run for the seat on May 20, and said that he will run on the Democratic Party line. He recently changed his party registration from Republican to Democrat. 

Prior to that, the party had put out the call for candidates interested in running for the seat Mr. Lys occupies. 

At his May 20 announcement in Montauk, Mr. Lys urged supporters to be aware that a primary for the seat was a possibility. His colleagues on the town board, all Democrats, were on hand for the announcement, as were several officers of the Democratic committee. A primary would be held on Sept. 13.  C.W.  

Elaine DiMasi, a candidate for the Democratic Party’s nomination to represent the First Congressional District, will meet voters on Monday from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at the Elizabeth Dow showroom at 14 Gingerbread Lane in East Hampton. 

A project manager and physicist at Brookhaven National Laboratory for more than two decades, Ms. DiMasi has touted her scientific background and management experience to make a case for her candidacy. The First District, she said, can and should be a hub for a clean-energy economy, serving as both a technology incubator and manufacturing site for solar and wind-power infrastructure. 

Ms. DiMasi is one of five candidates for the Democratic nomination. The winner of the June 26 primary election will challenge Representative Lee Zeldin, who is seeking a third term. 

Southampton Town Gets AAA Rating

Southampton Town received a AAA credit rating from Standard and Poor’s on May 30. The rating, the agency’s highest, was assigned to the town’s 2018 municipal bonds, which will be used to finance infrastructure projects as well as improvements to parks and beaches, public safety, and technology. According to a report released by the agency, the rating reflects the view that the town is “very strong” in terms of its economy, management, fiscal policies, budgetary performance, liquidity, and debt position. Standard and Poor’s also deemed the town “stable,” meaning the agency does not expect the rating to change within the next two years.

 In a statement celebrating the news, Supervisor Jay Schneiderman said, “On behalf of the town board, I extend my congratulations and sincere thanks to the staff in all town departments for their collective efforts in maintaining this highest achievement.”

The Suffolk County Department of Public Works’ division of vector control planned to apply larvicide to multiple salt marshes in the Towns of East Hampton and Southampton yesterday and today. The action is to control mosquitoes through the application of methoprene and Bti by helicopters flying at low altitude.

Marshes in Napeague and Beach Hampton in Amagansett, and Accabonac Harbor in Springs, were to be treated between 6 a.m. and 8 p.m. In the Town of Southampton, the county was to treat Stokes Pond, Jagger Lane, Moneybogue Bay, Westhampton Dunes, Dune Road, Meadow Lane, North Haven, Iron Point, and North Sea. Marshlands in Babylon, Islip, Brookhaven, Riverhead, Southold, and Smithtown were also to be treated.

On Monday, members of the East Hampton Town Trustees, the Nature Conservancy, and the vector control division are to hold a training session for a weekly mosquito larvae sampling program in Accabonac Harbor that is to continue until the middle of August. In a trial program, trustees and volunteers will collect samples, sending data to vector control every Monday morning, the hoped-for outcome a more finely targeted, minimized use of methoprene. The program follows a meeting among the trustees, county officials including Legislator Bridget Fleming, and environmental advocates. 

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 and is applied in accordance with required state and federal permits, its use is controversial on the South Fork. Many environmentalists, scientists, and elected officials have agitated for a ban on the larvicide, which they argue is harmful to nontarget species, including lobsters, crabs, and fish.

Lori Miller-Carr, who marked her 30th year working for the East Hampton Town Trustees yesterday, will retire as the trustees’ secretary on May 30. 

But, it turns out, 30 years wasn’t quite enough.

At their meeting on Monday the trustees unanimously voted to rehire Ms. Miller-Carr, effective May 31, as a part-time secretary, working  two days a week. The trustees rely on a part-time secretary as well as one who is full time. They therefore followed the resolution hiring Ms. Miller-Carr with another naming Arlene Tesar, who is already in the trustees’ employ, as the full-time secretary. 

Ms. Miller-Carr will lose the weekly stipend for the secretary who attends meetings and records minutes. That will now go to Ms. Tesar. Ms. Miller-Carr will receive a maximum of $17,000 per year. 

“To be honest, I’ve worked for so long that I don’t think I could not work,” Ms. Miller-Carr said on Tuesday. “I have so much planned to do, but still want to be able to come in here.” Ms. Tesar, she said, “has been great. She’s doing a good job. She’s very friendly to the public. I’m really happy that she’s taking my place as secretary.” 

In 1988, when she started working for the trustees, Ms. Miller-Carr’s office was at the East Hampton Town Marine Museum, a proverbial stone’s throw from the trustees’ headquarters in the Donald Lamb Building on Bluff Road in Amagansett. “I think back then we had, maybe, three file cabinets; now we have 13. It’s gotten so much busier,” she said. 

Recalling her first year as secretary, Ms. Miller-Carr said she did not have a computer. “I think it was maybe six months later. David Talmage was elected trustee, and he was blind. He had a voice-activated computer, and he taught me.” 

Diane McNally, a longtime trustee and the body’s clerk for almost as long, preceded Ms. Miller-Carr as secretary. “She was on maternity leave,” Ms. Miller-Carr said. “She wrote this long list of things to do — if it wasn’t for her, I would have been lost! She was a godsend.” 

The trustees used to store boat moorings at the Marine Museum after their removal from Three Mile Harbor in the fall, she said. “They’d put them on the Marine Museum porch. I was out there counting them when a green Mercedes pulled up, all the windows shaded.” The driver got out and asked Ms. Miller-Carr when the museum was open. “It was Billy Joel,” she said. The musician and his then-wife, the model Christie Brinkley, lived on Further Lane at the time, “and their daughter used to go to school in Amagansett.”

There were other visitors to — or, perhaps, residents of — the museum. Ms. Miller-Carr said that she and John Courtney, a former trustees’ attorney, believe the building is haunted. “I worked there all by myself. The only time anyone was there was when the museum was open in the summer and fall. In the summer, there were a lot of classes.” One winter, “I’m typing away or whatever, and hear these kids running up and down the stairs, making noise. I looked out, and there was nobody at all. John had the same thing happen to him.” 

Nevertheless, Ms. Miller-Carr said, “I’m not afraid of ghosts, if there is such a thing. I’m more afraid of live people.”

Among the many trustees Ms. Miller-Carr has enjoyed working with, “Jim McCaffrey stands out,” she said, referring to the late clerk, or presiding officer. “He was a kind gentleman. He was almost like a grandfather to me. I was going through a divorce, and he was always very, very nice to me. I’ll never forget. Gordon Vorpahl was another. A good trustee, and a real nice person.” 

“Most of the people I worked with were really, really good people, and they really cared about the environment and the baymen. This board that we have now, they are all workers. It’s really great to see.”