Conditions in Georgica Pond are ripe for yet another harmful algal bloom, the East Hampton Town Trustees were told on Monday, and they should consider an emergency opening of the pond to the Atlantic Ocean, which would mitigate the situation.

Sara Davison, executive director of the Friends of Georgica Pond Foundation, a group of homeowners working to improve the pond’s ecological health, told the trustees that because weather and water conditions prevented its traditional spring letting, the pond is a foot higher than it was at this time last year. “That has a very large horizontal spread effect,” she said, more than six feet.

The trustees were generally in favor of an emergency opening but differed as to how to go about it. They are presently negotiating with the State Department of Environmental Conservation for a permit to dredge the pond, a larger effort to increase water circulation.

“My biggest concern is it creating or having a negative impact on our dredging permits, which are bigger-picture, longer-term items,” said Jim Grimes. “That’s what’s fueling our trepidation.”

Complicating the issue, several pairs of federaly protected piping plovers have nested and laid eggs earlier than usual on the ocean beach bordering the pond.

Tyler Armstrong said that inaction was a greater danger, “because if it is so full and it breaks on its own in a storm, it’s going to cause more risks to the plovers, it’s more likely to cause an opening we can’t control. . . . I think it would help our dredging permit in the long run if we can show that we need to have this pond opened as much as possible because these kinds of situations arise. If we have the ability to control it manually, we are reducing the risk to endangered species and to adjacent properties.”

But Diane McNally, the board’s former clerk, did not support seeking permits from any agency, citing the trustees’ jurisdiction over the town’s common lands. The question of cooperating with the D.E.C., and even recognizing its authority, has been a source of friction among the trustees.

“What I am really reluctant to do,” Mr. Grimes said, “is create an atmosphere now that is so antagonistic with the agencies, by acting unilaterally on something, that we’re unable to move forward with anything.”

When working with other governing bodies, Ms. McNally said, the trustees’ unique status under the Dongan Patent of 1686, as an entity that predates them, must be maintained. That, she said, “means not recognizing that the D.E.C. can tell us when we can open the pond. If we need to open it for its health and safety, open it!” Instead of acknowledging the need for state or federal permission, “Go at it from another way,” she said.

“If we’re going to try to work for the overall health of the pond,” Bill Taylor, a deputy clerk, countered, “we all have to work together. It’s not just us, it’s not just one pond. These algae blooms, all this is going on all over the island, all over the world. We have to work together in a cohesive manner to get this done.”

“The pond is warming up,” Ms. Davison said. Salinity is extremely low and chlorophyll is very high, according to data transmitted by the telemetry buoy that was returned to the pond last week by Christopher Gobler and his researchers from Stony Brook University’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, who annually monitor the pond for both the trustees and the homeowners.

Dr. Gobler’s team is measuring bacteria in the pond this week, she said, and while measurements taken by the Surfrider Foundation on May 9 were low, “We’re very worried about what they are today, with the higher water levels and the proximity of septic systems to the pond.” Nitrogen and phosphorous leaching from septic systems also promote harmful algal blooms such as cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae, which has prompted the trustees to close the pond to the harvesting of crabs and other marine life for much of the last several summers.

Opening the pond to the ocean would lower the water level and temperature, and flush the bacteria that promote algal blooms.

 The letting of Georgica Pond means a surge of water toward the ocean, an event that is impossible to control and can be dangerous. The presence of nesting plovers would typically preclude such an action.

But the Army Corps of Engineers, in consultation with the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, has granted the Southampton Town Trustees emergency opening permits for Mecox Bay and Sagaponack Pond, where there are nesting plovers, Ms. Davison pointed out. She asked that the East Hampton trustees take the same action.

“Of course, their nesting takes priority,” she said of the endangered shorebirds, “but our curiosity was piqued that the Army Corps and the Fish and Wildlife Service felt it was possible to have an emergency opening in those two other ponds in the presence of plovers.” She urged the board to contact the corps, the Fish and Wildlife Service, and the D.E.C. for permission to open the pond.

Ms. Davison asked that the trustees “look at the unique situation here, whether there’s any room to explore without jeopardizing the birds or the long-term success of the permit with the D.E.C.  . . . It is a bad situation down there, and we would really be grateful if we could take a further look.”

“We’re going to look at it,” Mr. Taylor said.

East Hampton Village

Purchase for Park

The public purchase of three lots in East Hampton Village that could provide space for an expansion of Herrick Park will be the subject of a hearing before the East Hampton Town Board tonight at 6:30 at Town Hall.

The town is considering the acquisition from Ralph L. Dayton, as executor, for $4.6 million, of 2.3 acres of vacant land taking access from Pleasant Lane, and an adjacent parcel just shy of a half acre, across Muchmore Lane from the park. 

In a January letter to town officials, the village board urged the board to preserve the parcels using money from the community preservation fund, for the expansion of the park.

Southampton Town

P.D.D. and Traffic

A special Southampton Town Board meeting will be held at Town Hall today at 1 p.m. to consider an extension on the moratorium on all new planned development district applications for another three months.

The moratorium has been in place since last June while a committee reviewed the P.D.D. law. Supervisor Jay Schneiderman recently discussed the possibility of repealing the law altogether, but decided the moratorium should be extended while the board mulls the proposal. 

Next Thursday, the town board will take its weekly work session on the road, holding it at the Bridgehampton Community House, at the corner of School Street and Montauk Highway. The work session will begin at 10 a.m. On the agenda is a presentation on recommended pedestrian and traffic safety improvements in downtown Bridgehampton.

The situation at the East Hampton Airport last weekend, the first weekend of the 2017 high season following a court’s decision to strike down last summer’s overnight curfew on aircraft, was unremarkable, according to Jim Brundige, the airport manager.

In both traffic and complaints about aircraft noise, “it seemed to be a pretty normal weekend,” Mr. Brundige said on Tuesday. “It didn’t seem any busier than any other holiday weekend.”

There were two days of inclement weather over the weekend, he noted. While air traffic controllers are on hand to guide planes into and away from the airport, and pilots are asked to follow specific approach and departure routes to minimize noise, “all bets are off” in rain and fog, he said. In that case, pilots have the authority to choose the safest routes based on visibility. Complaints did come in from areas and individuals that often report noise and low-flying planes, Mr. Brundige said.

There was also “a little mishap” over the weekend, when a small plane cut a corner too tight and one of its wheels went off the pavement onto the grass. The plane had to be towed, Mr. Brundige said, but the incident did not shut down the airport.

East Hampton Town has petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to review its attempt to establish local regulations limiting airport use. Two overnight curfews enacted in 2015, including one with extended hours for “noisy” aircraft, were in effect until an appeals court ruled against them last fall in a challenge brought by aviation interests. A third law, which would have limited noisy aircraft to one takeoff and landing per week, was blocked from the outset and invalidated in last fall’s decision.

The town recently hired an international law firm, Morrison Foerster, to ask the Federal Aviation Adminis­tration’s permission to regulate the airport’s use. The firm recently convinced a court to allow the city of Santa Monica, Calif., to shut down its airport in 2028.

East Hampton Town Board members have said that while closing the airport is not a goal, it could be the ultimate result if the conflict between airport users and residents beset by noise from planes  cannot be resolved.

East Hampton Town’s hamlet studies will be discussed during a series of meetings beginning today with consultants who have drafted recommendations for the future of downtown areas based on previous public workshops and discussions. There will be separate presentations focusing on individual hamlets, as well as a presentation of the overall plan.

The first meeting, to go over draft plans for East Hampton and Springs, will take place at Town Hall this afternoon at 3. At a special town board meeting at 10 a.m. tomorrow at Town Hall, the consultants will discuss the overall planning process.

Montauk’s downtown and dock areas will be the topic at a meeting tomorrow night at 7 at the Montauk Firehouse, and the future of Wainscott will be discussed at 9 a.m. on Saturday at the LTV studios in that hamlet. Later on Saturday, at 1 p.m., the talk will turn to Amagansett during a meeting at the American Legion Hall.

The goal of the hamlet studies, according to town officials, is “to provide recommendations to the town board for the implementation of a plan to assure the harmonious development of nonresidential properties in a manner [that] complies with the town’s adopted 2005 comprehensive plan.”

The Southampton Town Independence Party has picked its slate for the November election. The choices are considered designations only, however, as the actual nomination is by petition, a process that starts today.

Supervisor Jay Schneiderman, a member of the Independence Party who has been endorsed by the Demo­crats, was picked over the Republican challenger, Ray Overton, a former town trustee. Mr. Schneiderman’s running mates, Tommy John Schiavoni, a member of the town’s zoning board of appeals, and Councilwoman Julie Lofstad, both Democrats, were also selected. Councilman Stan Glinka and Thea Dobrowski-Fry, a teaching assistant, are running on the Republican ticket.

The Independence Party also tapped Alex Gregor, the highway superintendent. He is a party member and also has the Democratic endorsement. The Republican challenger is Lance Aldrich, who used to work under Mr. Gregor in the department.

For town trustees, the party chose Bill Pell IV, a party member who has been cross-endorsed by the Republicans and Democrats, along with Edward J. Warner Jr., Scott Horowitz, Bruce Stafford, and Don Law, all of whom have Republican nods.

Cross-endorsed by the Republican and Democratic Parties, Town Justices Barbara Wilson and Deborah Kooperstein, and Sundy Schermeyer, the town clerk, also received the Independence Party’s stamp of approval.

The last day to file a petition is July 13, but those who are not members of the party would need permission from Frank MacKay, its county chairman, to run on the line by July 17, according to Fred W. Thiele Jr., the chairman of the Southampton Town Independence Party. The primary vote will take place on Sept. 12.

Southampton Town

Bridgehampton Traffic on Agenda

The Southampton Town Board is meeting this morning at the Bridgehampton Community House, instead of at Town Hall, at 10. Its agenda includes discussion of pedestrian and traffic safety in downtown Bridgehampton, and support of a bill under consideration in Albany to establish a Southampton Community Development Agency.

P.D.D. Moratorium

A special Southampton Town Board meeting was held last Thursday to consider extending the current moratorium on new planned development districts. No vote was taken, as the board is waiting to hear from the Suffolk County Planning Commission.

The moratorium has been in place since last June. Supervisor Jay Schneiderman, who has proposed repealing the P.D.D. law, sought to extend the moratorium by three months to ensure no such applications would be received while the board debates.

A public hearing on the extension, which elicited comments from the East Quogue and Hampton Bays Citizens Advisory Committees in favor of the extension, has been closed. Written comments will be accepted until next Thursday, while the board waits to hear from the county.

Rabbi Steven Moss, the chairman of the Suffolk County Human Rights Commission, will lead a community conversation about issues of bias in East Hampton and throughout the county at a meeting at East Hampton Town Hall on Wednesday at 4 p.m.

Rabbi Moss has served on the county commission since 1992. He chairs the Suffolk County Inter-Faith Anti-Bias Task Force, is chief of the chaplains for the county police department and other organizations, and serves as a chaplain at a number of hospitals and facilities for senior citizens.

He has been the spiritual leader of the B’nai Israel Reform Temple in Oakdale since 1972. In 2003, he was appointed to the board of the Center for Social Justice and Human Understanding at Suffolk County Community College. He is the longest sitting member of the Islip Town Board of Ethics, and is chairman of the Town of Islip Anti-Bias Task Force.

The discussion has been organized by East Hampton Town’s Anti-Bias Task Force. All have been invited to attend. Refreshments will be served.

After a brief ribbon-cutting ceremony Monday evening to inaugurate Amagansett’s new privy in the parking lot behind Main Street, members of the hamlet’s citizens advisory committee repaired to the American Legion Hall for their monthly meeting. The meeting began after a moment of silence in memory of Herb Field, a longtime committee member who died recently.

The main topic of discussion was the former 555 property just east of the hamlet, 19 acres that the town bought with $10.1 million from the community preservation fund in 2014. East Hampton Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell, the town board’s liaison to the committee, asked the members how they might like to see the site used in the future.

The property has an existing barn on six separate acres in the middle of the larger parcel. The question was whether the barn would be torn down or leased for some use — horses, perhaps. The committee’s consensus was to take it away, though Tom Field said he hated to see it go. Mr. Cantwell remarked that while the town board has the final say, it does try to find out what residents want.

A motion was made to leave the acreage as open space, with a passive use such as walking. The property has a long circular driveway where cars could park. The motion passed with two abstentions.

Mr. Cantwell reminded the members that a portion of the property will remain available for emergency helicopters to land, and that the Wounded Warrior Project will still have use of it for its annual benefit.

The crosswalks at Hedges Lane, the Amagansett School, and St. Michael’s Lutheran Church are to be lighted, and the project is close to going out for bids, Mr. Cantwell said. A camera on a not-too-tall pole will automatically turn  the lights on when someone is about to cross and turn them off afterward. The work will be done with money from a state grant.

The hamlet studies that began last year are still in progress, and the consultants are meeting with community members in the coming weeks. Amagansett’s progress will be discussed on June 3, a Saturday, at 1 p.m. at the Legion Hall, the supervisor said.

Also at Scoville Hall, on Tuesday from 5 to 7 p.m., there will be a public forum, the first of several, on the coastal assessment resiliency plan, to review the possible impacts of sea level rise and coastal storms on the town, and suggest ways to prevent or mitigate damage. Residents of the hamlet and others will be welcomed to attend.

There was talk that the westbound Jitney stop, where the grass slopes down to the road, becomes flooded in heavy rains, making it hard to get on the bus. Mr. Cantwell said that the Jitney stop and others in the town were being looked at in the hamlet studies.

The evening’s other topics included the new parking regulations in the municipal parking lot, garbage at the train station, and the landscaping, or lack thereof, at the PSEG substation.

About a year after Southampton Town initiated a moratorium on any new planned development district applications and an official review of the existing legislation began, Supervisor Jay Schneiderman has proposed wiping the law off the books.

Southampton enacted the law in 1995 as a way to create flexibility in planning and development, Mr. Schneiderman said. He has been critical of the law since he campaigned for supervisor two years ago, in large part because of its “community benefit” components, which allowed developers to offer benefits that have nothing to do with the project — money for a fire truck or the establishment of a scholarship fund, for example — in exchange for friendlier zoning.

“Zoning is not for sale,” Councilman John Bouvier said in the press release. “It is time to pull the plug on P.D.D.s.”

“The law is unfixable and needs to be repealed,” Supervisor Schneiderman said in the release. “The P.D.D. law is a wildcard. It creates the potential that any parcel of land can be developed in any way a developer envisions. Our community deserves predictability in planning its future.”

With several controversial P.D.D. proposals in recent years, including the Bridgehampton Gateway project, which would have had mixed commercial and residential zoning but has since been abandoned, Mr. Bouvier, who was elected with Mr. Schneiderman on the Democratic slate almost two years ago, proposed a one-year moratorium on new applications last spring. A committee to review the law and make recommendations to the town board was formed. The moratorium expires June 1.

While the supervisor proposes repealing the law, he has scheduled a public hearing to extend the moratorium for three months, saying that the extra time is needed to consider the repeal. The hearing is slated for June 13 at 1 p.m. at Southampton Town Hall.

The only remaining active P.D.D. being considered is The Hills, a resort golf course development in East Quogue.

Councilman Stan Glinka and Councilwoman Christine Scalera, Republicans, expressed dismay during a meeting last week that they had not been kept informed about the review committee’s work over the past year. Ms. Scalera noted that part of the Suffolk County Planning Commission’s approval of the moratorium called for written quarterly reports. James Burke, the town attorney, said he had provided mostly oral reports, but would provide whatever written correspondence there had been as well, by email.

With a vote at a board meeting tonight, East Hampton Town officials plan to hire a law firm that successfully represented the city of Santa Monica, Calif., in a fight to gain local control over its airport to advise the town as it pursues Federal Aviation Administration approval of restrictions on the use of East Hampton Airport in order to control noise.

Morrison Foerster “has unique experience and expertise in advising publicly owned airports on protecting residents from aircraft noise, garnered over decades of devising and defending a variety of such noise mitigation measures,” according to the board resolution.

The town’s position has been that it holds legal authority to enact local airport use restrictions, such as an overnight curfew, without asking for the F.A.A.’s okay.

But three local laws adopted by East Hampton in 2015 that restricted takeoffs and landings at the airport were struck down by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals last fall in a judgment on a lawsuit filed by aviation interests. The town has filed a petition for a Supreme Court ruling on that matter and is waiting to hear whether the case will be reviewed.

In the meantime, officials intend to begin following the procedures outlined by the F.A.A. to apply for the federal agency’s approval.

According to a resolution to be offered by Councilwoman Kathee Burke-Gonzalez tonight, “the town wishes to exhaust all options to protect residents from excessive aircraft noise, including pursuing a noise control ordinance through the F.A.A. Part 161 process under the Airport Noise and Capacity Act of 1990.”

Over several seasons, consultants for the town have been collecting and collating the data on East Hampton Airport flights and noise complaints that will be needed for submission to the F.A.A.

Like East Hampton, Santa Monica has a long history of airport-related litigation and community complaints over aircraft noise. Represented by Morrison Foerster, the city came to an agreement early this year with the F.A.A. that allows it to close its airport after 2028. The agreement also recognizes Santa Monica’s authority to make decisions over land use, allowing it to shorten its airport runway in the interim.

According to the resolution that the board is expected to approve tonight, legal fees of up to $50,000 will be paid to Morrison Foerster from the airport budget account.