The United States Navy is planning a new round of sonar and weapons testing and training exercises in its Atlantic Training and Testing Study Area, which covers some 2.6 million nautical miles of inshore and offshore waters, extending from the coastline of New England to the Gulf of Mexico.

The exercises are scheduled to begin in November 2018; the Navy first needs to renew permits issued by the National Marine Fisheries Service under the Endangered Species and Marine Mammal Protection Acts, as its activities have been deemed potentially harmful to whales, dolphins, fish, birds, and sea turtles.

A public comment period extends through August, and several hearings are being held on the proposal, though none in the New York area. Comments may be submitted online at the project’s website, AFTTEIS.com, or by mail to the Naval Facilities Engineering Command Atlantic, Attention Code EV22KP (AFTT EIS Project Managers), 6506 Hampton Boulevard, Norfolk, Va. 23508-1278.

A draft environmental impact statement describing the project and its potential effects on ocean habitat, pelagic animals, vegetation, and other areas — including reports addressing marine mammal strandings associated with Navy sonar activities and an analysis of the acoustic impacts on marine mammals and sea turtles — is on the website.

  The document concludes that most environmental impacts, according to the Navy, would be short-term or minimal. The use of sonar and explosives could cause behavior changes, injury, or death in fish, marine mammals, birds, or sea turtles and other reptiles, the statement says. However, while individual animals may be affected, the analysis says that for the various species there is little potential for long-term or populationwide impacts.

In a fact sheet on sonar and marine mammals, the National Marine Fisheries Service describes how “most, if not all, marine animals rely to some extent on sound for a wide range of biological functions, including communication, navigation, foraging, and predator detection.”

In certain conditions, the fact sheet says, “mid-frequency military sonars may play a role in marine mammal strandings.” The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and partner agencies are trying to better understand the issues, according to the fact sheet, “and to identify the most effective way to mitigate adverse effects of active sonar operations while balancing important national security needs.”

The sonar systems used by the Navy to detect enemy submarines, a question-and-answer column in Scientific American magazine says, “generate slow-rolling sound waves topping out at around 235 decibels,” while the sound from loud rock bands tops out at 130 decibels. The sound waves travel underwater for hundreds of miles and retain high decibels as far as 300 miles from their source. There is evidence, according to the magazine, that, to avoid the sonar waves, whales will swim hundreds of miles, rapidly change their depth, causing physical harm to themselves, and beach themselves. In 2005, the article notes, 34 whales of three different species were stranded and died along the Outer Banks of North Carolina during Navy sonar training nearby.

The Natural Resources Defense Council successfully sued the Navy in 2003 to restrict the use of low-frequency sonar off the California coast. Two years later, after a coalition led by the council asked federal courts to further restrict more harmful, far-ranging sonar use off the Southern California coast, the Supreme Court ruled that the Navy should be allowed to continue the sonar testing, citing national security. In its legal brief, the coalition referred to Navy documents that estimated the sonar testing “would kill some 170,000 marine mammals and cause permanent injury to more than 500 whales, not to mention temporary deafness for at least 8,000 others,” Scientific American reported.

The exact locations and dates of the upcoming naval exercises have not been released. According to Navy documents, the activities are necessary to maintain military readiness, and may include testing torpedoes, unmanned vehicles, sonar systems, or “similar activities that are critical to the success of undersea warfare.”

Sonar, the Navy says, “is critical to the Navy’s ability to defend against adversary submarines and anti-ship mines,” and therefore “is necessary to conduct scientific research, evaluate new sonar systems, and maintain the operational capability of current systems.”  

There are more than 300 “extremely quiet modern submarines,” according to the Navy document, operated by more than 40 nations worldwide, making anti-submarine warfare training a top priority. “While simulators provide early skill repetition and enhance teamwork, there is no substitute for training in a realistic environment,” the Navy says.        

The Navy works with the fisheries service to “reduce the potential impacts of training and testing activities on the ocean environment,” and provides funds to research marine species physiology and behavior in an attempt to better understand and avoid the effects of its training and testing activities on the marine environment,” according to the agency’s environmental impact statement. It has taken a “proactive role” throughout the Atlantic testing area to protect the North Atlantic right whale, a highly endangered species, the Navy says.

Income into the Peconic Bay Region Community Preservation Fund — the land preservation and water quality fund established by the five East End towns — in June reached its highest monthly total since December 2014.

A total of $11.2 million was collected for the regional fund that month. This year’s six-month total for January through June is also up. At $49.2 million, it is 6.8 percent higher than the total for the first half of 2016.

According to Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr., who issued a press release with the recent figures, “Revenues have shown increasing strength in the last four months. These revenue increases demonstrate a strengthening real estate market on the East End.”

In East Hampton, however, preservation fund revenues, which come from a 2-percent tax on real estate transfers, were down by just over 20 percent in the first six months of 2017, compared to last year. Approximately $13 million was raised from January through June.

Compared to the first half of last year, revenues in Southampton were up by 22 percent, at $30 million. The Town of Southold saw a 26-percent increase, with $3.5 million flowing into its preservation fund between January and June. Revenues in Riverhead were up by 10 percent, at $1.5 million, and up by 20 percent for Shelter Island, at $1 million.

The East Hampton Town Democratic Committee and Resist and Replace, an activist group that seeks to hold local, state, and federal representatives accountable and to promote those opposed to Trump administration policies, has invited the public to meet candidates for two Suffolk County positions on Monday at 7 p.m. at St. Michael’s Lutheran Church in Amagansett.

The Suffolk County Democratic Committee’s chairman, Rich Schaffer, will present Tim Sini, the county police commissioner who is running to be Suffolk district attorney, and Bridget Fleming, who is seeking re-election to the County Legislature. Ms. Fleming, who lives in Noyac, is a former member of the Southampton Town Board. She was elected to the legislature in 2015.

Those interested in attending have been asked to R.S.V.P. by sending an email to [email protected].

The East Hampton Town Trustees approved three initiatives aimed at restoring eelgrass in waterways at their meeting on Monday.

Kim Barbour of Cornell Cooperative Extension described proposed research projects, including a groundwater discharge study in Napeague Harbor. The study would pinpoint the best spots to plant eelgrass, which provides essential habitat to marine life but was decimated by algal blooms in the 1980s and ’90s and is further stressed by higher water temperatures.

Groundwater discharge in eelgrass meadows and nonvegetated areas would be identified. If discharge is detected, water temperature recorders will be placed in and outside the area to determine if there is a significant difference in temperature within, versus outside, the areas in question, and how far above the bottom the discharge can influence temperature. A demonstrable link between areas of submarine groundwater discharge and eelgrass would help researchers identify future sites for restoration, Ms. Barbour, the cooperative extension’s marine program outreach manager, said.

The survey would take one to two weeks. Based on the results, test plantings will be done in October at sites deemed the most suitable, as part of the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation’s Fluke Habitat Restoration Project, for which it has provided a grant to the extension. The trustees had already approved a $2,500 grant toward the study, and the Lazy Point Neighborhood Association has also provided funding, Ms. Barbour said. Plantings will be expanded and maintained as part of the extension’s Back to the Bays stewardship initiative.

A second initiative would see similar research conducted in the headwaters of Three Mile Harbor. There, a submarine groundwater seepage survey, to be conducted next month, would identify the source and quantify the areas of excessive nitrogen loading and high groundwater influx. Based on that information, sites for test plantings of eelgrass, and for the installation of permeable reactive barriers, boxes filled with ground-up wood chips that intercept groundwater as it seeps into a water body, would be identified.

“The whole idea of the work we do gathering this data,” Ms. Barbour said, “would be put into a final report that we would present to the board, with recommendations of different treatments and different types of projects.”

Ms. Barbour also sought the trustees’ approval for a hard-clam seeding event, a plan that grew out of the cooperative extension’s Paddle for the Bays race last month in Three Mile Harbor. The extension endeavors to engage the community in stewardship efforts centered on shellfish population enhancement, and the proposed planting would be in partnership with the town’s shellfish hatchery. The hatchery has approximately 100,000 clams that are an appropriate size to seed, she said. “We would invite anyone from the paddle community to help us broadcast these clams,” she told the trustees.

Time is of the essence, Ms. Barbour said. The two research projects would ideally take place next month, so that sites could be identified in time for planting in October. “Eelgrass is very slow to recover on its own to begin with,” she said. “Everything is pointing not in its favor to try to come back naturally. We’re getting to the point where we need to home in on locations, doing more research to fully understand what’s happening in that specific subwatershed area.”

“Once we get success,” she said, “we want to revisit it every year and make sure we’re building on that.”

The trustees gave unanimous approval to each of the proposals.

Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. and State Senator Kenneth P. LaValle have sponsored legislation that would set up a seafood marketing task force to promote the marketing and sustainability of seafood landed in New York State waters.

The legislation, passed last month, requires Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s signature to become law. Mr. Thiele said last week that he hoped that would happen before summer’s end.

Along with promoting the marketing and sustainability of New York seafood, the task force would provide the governor and Legislature with a report of its progress and findings, addressing research, marketing, expansion, and funding opportunities. Its intent is to stimulate the economy and create jobs for coastal communities.

In addition, the task force is intended to help New York’s commercial fishermen compete with those of other coastal states; Massachusetts and Rhode Island have established similar entities.

A request from the Cornell Cooperative Extension initiated the legislation, Mr. Thiele said. “I see all this married together into one effort to promote the product and create demand for product, particularly locally,” he said. “Increasing demand for product is good for commercial fishermen. Another part of it is, we compete with these other states.”

“There’s been regional interest on a state-by-state basis to promote local seafood,” said John Scotti, a marine educator at the extension who proposed legislation creating a task force to Mr. Thiele. “I think it’s an outgrowth of the local-food movement. Sometimes there’s an opportune time for an idea. Right now, we see that consumer demand is all about ‘local.’ ”

Along with competition from neighboring states, New York’s commercial fishing industry competes with imported seafood, which constitutes more than 80 percent of the seafood consumed in the United States, according to an estimate by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“There are some issues relative to seafood imports,” Mr. Scotti said. “One has to do with depressing local product. But it’s also very often mislabeled and unregulated.”

East Hampton Town may have had its efforts to stem noise from aircraft using East Hampton Airport shot down in court, and found no success in a bid to have the Supreme Court review the case, but town board members are not giving up.

The town board is hoping to find leverage in Washington, D.C., that would result in an amendment to a Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization bill now before Congress that would give the town authority to impose airport rules. At the same time, through state legislation, the town is seeking to ensure that community members have a say in future decisions that could whittle away that authority.

That legislation, now awaiting Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s signature, would make acceptance of federal airport money subject to local vote, and “puts some of the decision-making power back into the hands of the community,” State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. said in a recent press release.

Federal airport money comes from grants that carry an obligation to operate an airport according to Federal Aviation Administration dictates, outlined as “grant assurances,” which remain in effect for up to 20 years. While any entity that operates an airport must abide by F.A.A. rules, the degree to which local regulations may be imposed is in part dependent on the grant assurances in effect.

A 2005 memo from the F.A.A. to then-Congressman Timothy Bishop outlined the agency’s position and addressed the impact of a lawsuit settlement that invalidated several of the grant assurances that had been in place. With those grant assurances moot, and as long as no new ones were put in place, the memo stated the town had the right to restrict access to the airport in order to reduce noise.

The East Hampton Town Board would like to see those assertions codified by inclusion in the F.A.A. legislation pending in Congress. The existing town board has declined new F.A.A. grants to avoid further obligating the town but future town boards may do otherwise.

The town has drafted proposed amendment language that states that the last three town grant assurances expired as of Dec. 31, 2014; that the town is not subject to the Airport Noise and Capacity Act of 1990 and so is not required to follow a detailed application procedure, called a Part 161 study, to get F.A.A. permission to impose airport noise and access restrictions (unless it wishes to receive new F.A.A. grants), and that it would not be violating prohibitions by adopting such restrictions.

The state legislation awaiting the governor’s signature would allow East Hampton officials to hold a permissive referendum, or public vote, before accepting state or federal airport grants. Should a town board move to accept grants without holding a vote, residents would be able to force one by petition with the signatures of at least 5 percent of those who voted in the last gubernatorial election.

In an email this week, the Quiet Skies Coalition, an East Hampton group, urged residents to ask Mr. Cuomo to act on the bill, noting that it had taken Assemblyman Thiele and State Senator Ken LaValle, who co-sponsored the bill, three years to get it passed as home-rule legislation.

According to Kathleen Cunningham, who heads the Quiet Skies Coalition, the law “is the linchpin to next steps in taking back local control of this airport.” In an email, she also said, “Aviation interests will surely be pushing on the governor to let it die on his desk.”  

With regard to the federal legislation, the town board this week called on members of the East End Supervisors and Mayors Association to reach out to New York’s Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, and Representative Lee Zeldin, asking them to support the amendment. It is necessary, town officials wrote in a letter to East End officials, because legal actions filed by the National Business Aviation Association are pending that call into question whether the F.A.A. had the authority to settle the lawsuit.

“Regaining local control of East Hampton Airport and allowing our local community to put in place commonsense noise abatement measures is something the entire East End community supports,” said East Hampton Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell in the town board’s letter.

“The F.A.A. reauthorization bill is the perfect opportunity to clarify the intent of the 2005 settlement agreement and establish once and for all that the Town of East Hampton has local control over  its municipally-owned airport,” Councilwoman Burke-Gonzalez said. “We appreciate any and all efforts by our congressional delegation to that end.”

Planned development districts, or P.D.D.s, which were designed to allow flexible use of residential, mixed use, commercial, and industrial areas in the Town of Southampton, are no more. The Southampton Town Board repealed the highly controversial law by unanimous vote on July 11. 

P.D.D.s allowed unique zoning regulations for specific properties in exchange for community benefits. More than 20 such districts had been approved since the law was adopted in 1995 and dozens more had been requested. The vote was 4 to 0, with Councilwoman Christine Scalera unable to attend the meeting. 

“I believe the P.D.D. law to be fundamentally flawed,” Supervisor Jay Schneiderman said in a statement following the vote. “It’s not the spirit of good planning. Proper planning allows property owners reasonable confidence as to how development will unfold over time.”

The law, the supervisor wrote, was intended to allow “more creative and imaginative design . . . than was presently achieved under conventional land-use techniques and zoning regulations.”

In 2013, the law was amended to require a supermajority of the town board — four of five members — to approve a P.D.D. project. The law authorized the town board rather than the planning board to make P.D.D. decisions.

When Mr. Schneiderman campaigned for supervisor in 2015, he said the community benefit component of the law allowed special-interest groups to lean on town officials and that proposed community benefits tended to be unrelated to the projects themselves.

After his election, Councilman John Bouvier, the supervisor’s running mate, sponsored a year-long moratorium on new P.D.D. applications. It had been in place since June of 2016. The board continued to process applications already submitted, however, like a mixed commercial and residential use project in Bridgehampton, called the Gateway, and the Hills at Southampton in East Quogue, a resort and golf development. The developer of Gateway canceled the application, however, leaving the Hills the only remaining P.D.D. application under consideration.

Mr. Schneiderman had proposed repealing the P.D.D. law in May. Fixing it, he said, proved to be too complicated. Carl Benincasa, a town attorney, said a basic principal of zoning legislation was predictability. The P.D.D. law “created a level of unpredictability that caused some concern for this board and the community at large,” he said.

A court decision last fall prohibiting barns and other structures on farmland protected by a Suffolk County program may play into a lawsuit challenging a barn on Peconic Land Trust acreage in Amagansett.

Fouad Chartouni, whose residential property is surrounded on three sides by farmland fronting on Town Lane, filed suit in November seeking to overturn county approval for the barn.

The barn was to be used by tenants renting portions of the land trust’s Deborah Light Preserve. It has remained unoccupied as a result of the lawsuit, John v.H. Halsey of the Peconic Land Trust said yesterday.

The county’s farmland preservation program, established in 1974 and approved by voters, provided money for the county to buy the development rights of farmland while it remained in private hands. Two amendments, adopted by the Suffolk Legislature in 2010 and 2013, cleared the way for such structures through waivers and hardship exemptions for farmers, but the amendments were overturned in September by Justice Thomas Whelan of State Supreme Court.

His decision, in favor of a Long Island Pine Barrens Society lawsuit, said that construction of fences, barns, greenhouses, irrigation systems, and the like was illegal on farmland whose development rights had been purchased by the county.

 The potential for development on farmland, the Pine Barrens Society argued, was not among the provisions of the program. It said the county had no right to modify the program after it was approved by voters, that doing so circumvented their will and created a back door for development on protected land.

The ruling, which the county has appealed, has thrown the future of farm buildings on protected sites into question and roiled county officials and agriculture advocates who see it as a threat to farming’s future in the county. Approximately 366 acres of farmland in East Hampton are affected.

Providing farmers with the ability to put up structures is key to helping them adapt, diversify, and survive, supporters of revising the rules, including County Legislator Al Krupski and County Executive Steve Bellone, have said. A proposed county law would allow farmers to erect some structures without permits; the exemptions that Justice Whelan ruled against would in that case be dropped. State legislation that would clarify the objective of Suffolk’s farmland development rights purchases as intended to preserve agriculture and allow farm buildings and uses as defined in state law has also been introduced.

The Amagansett barn, on Town Lane farmland owned by the Peconic Land Trust but for which the county purchased development rights, prompted Mr. Chartouni to sue the county’s farmland committee and its division of planning and environment as well as the land trust. The farmland committee had approved the construction, at the western edge of farmland a distance behind the Balsam Farms farm stand, last July. An East Hampton Town building permit was issued and the barn was put up before the Building Department determined that an application should have been made to the planning board for site-plan review. A stop-work order was issued, and an application is now undergoing review.

The construction of the barn was part of the land trust’s Farms for the Future initiative, through which farmland on the North and South Forks is leased to numerous small-scale farmers. A barn to hold equipment and other items is “an essential piece of farming,” Pam Greene, a senior vice president of the land trust, said yesterday. She declined to comment on the pending lawsuit.

Linda Margolin, Mr. Chartouni’s attorney, said Tuesday that, while the county farmland committee approved the Peconic Land Trust’s barn before Judge Whelan’s ruling, she believes his decision that the county lacks the authority to allow structures on protected farmland should void permits issued even before the ruling. She has also called into question the farmland committee’s decision-making procedure, saying, for instance, that the barn’s impact on neighboring properties, the view, soil, and water was not properly considered. She also said adjacent property owners had not been notified of the application for a building permit. At 98 by 60 feet and 24 feet high with a reflective exterior, the barn is looming, Ms. Margolin said.

She nevertheless acknowledged that farmers’ inability to put up barns and the like “poses big practical problems” for those who want to expand their operations.

Southampton has established the East Coast’s first “green zone” in a town-owned East Quogue park, where it is using electric-powered maintenance equipment only, to reduce noise levels and eliminate carbon emissions and toxic pollutants.

“So far, so good,” Kristen Doulous, the director of the town’s Parks and Recreation Department told the Bridgehampton Citizens Advisory Committee on Monday. Nicholas Palumbo, a member of the town’s sustainability committee and the director of Suffolk County Community College’s sustainability program, reported that in the one month since the project began, neighbors have said the noise reduction has improved their lives.

While members of the advisory committee were in strong support of the project, they clearly hoped for more. All agreed the greatest reduction in noise and fumes would lie with the commercial landscaper.

Mr. Palumbo said the sustainability committee was encouraging landscapers to make the switch to electricity, despite doubling the cost. “If homeowners talk to their contractors and say they want quieter equipment, it’s going to force them to invest in quieter ones,” he told the committee.

With the help of Quiet Communities, a nonprofit environmental group based in Massachusetts, the town implemented its plan for quieter, more environmentally friendly electric equipment. The East Quogue Village Green, a four-acre parcel on Montauk Highway, was chosen because it is also part of a residential neighborhood. A trailer was placed there and outfitted with sockets so the mowers could be recharged. Batteries can be swapped out on leaf blowers, though not on the mowers, which, however, can run six to eight hours on a single charge.

Gasoline-powered lawn and garden equipment, which the commercial landscape industry large relies on, is a source of high levels of localized emissions such as hazardous air pollutants and carbon dioxide. Battery-powered equipment has become viable on a commercial level, though the price tag can be double.

Alejandro Saralegui, who lives in Bridgehampton and is the director of the Madoo Conservancy in Sagaponack, said that “the health issue is huge” when it comes to gas-powered leaf blowers and mowers. At Madoo, a two-acre property, leaf blowers have not been used in years. “You’re blowing up fertilizers, the ground in your driveway — it’s really quite bad for you,” Mr. Saralegui said.

According to research conducted by Quiet Communities, the adverse health effects of exhaust emissions and other fine particulates include cardiovascular disease, stroke, respiratory disease, cancer, neurological conditions, and effects on prenatal development.

Members of the advisory committee expressed hope that the town could somehow force the use of electric equipment on parkland in Bridgehampton. Pamela Harwood, the chairwoman, asked what was being done to persuade the business community of the benefits. “Most people use landscapers, most people don’t do their own work,” she said, adding she is one of the few who does her own.

Mr. Palumbo said an informational event held at the college last year had attracted a “fair number” of contractors, though the only one they know of to have made the switch is Jackson Dodds & Co., which has converted at least one team to all electric.

Jenice Delano, a committee member, suggested that the town allow landscapers to swap out gas-powered equipment for electric-powered equipment, similar to a gun buy-back program.

  Quieter Communities has proposed a similar idea, an event in which community residents and businesses can turn in their fuel-powered lawn and garden equipment and obtain electric landscape maintenance equipment at a discount. Subsidies are available from manufacturers and government agencies.

The town’s sustainability committee is looking into the grant opportunities, Mr. Palumbo said.

Ms. Harwood, who also is a member of the Horticultural Alliance of the Hamptons, said residents have to become more selective about the companies they hire. Alliance members, she said, often remark that landscapers do a lot of unnecessary work. Mr. Palumbo agreed, saying some landscapers are paid to make sure “giant lawns are free of every last leaf.”

The “green zone” certification was achieved through the American Green Zone Alliance, and a ceremony marking it was held last week.

A Suffolk County effort mandated by the state is underway with the goal of reducing property taxes or eliminating tax increases by getting municipalities in the county to coordinate or eliminate duplicated services and to make purchases together for better prices.

To help develop a plan to be submitted to the County Legislature, County Executive Steve Bellone has set up a series of community meetings to solicit ideas and public opinion.

A meeting will be held at East Hampton Town Hall at 11 a.m. on Monday. It will be followed by a meeting that night at 6 at Southampton Town Hall, and others in Babylon and Huntington on Tuesday and July 18.

The effort is required under a tax savings initiative included by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo in the recently approved state budget. It requires each county across the state to empanel a committee comprising town supervisors and village mayors that will identify, propose, and implement programs to “save taxpayers money through shared, coordinated, and more efficient services between local governments within the county.”

The state has required savings plans to be submitted to county legislatures by Aug. 1, with public hearings and a vote on the plans by mid-September.

Counties that create successful plans may be eligible for one-time state grants matching the net amount of savings achieved by implementing their plans.

According to a state press release, property taxes are the largest tax burden for New York taxpayers. The typical taxpayer, it says, pays 2.5 times more in property taxes than in income taxes.

A state website contains information about the program.