Several baymen insisted before the East Hampton Town Trustees on Monday, often loudly, that Accabonac Harbor must be dredged, and quickly, to allow them to maintain their livelihood.

A plan to widen the channel where it opens to Gardiner’s Bay — the fishermen said shoaling has narrowed it to a width of around 10 feet and will soon close it entirely — would take some time to develop, the trustees said. The next day, however, Bill Taylor, a trustee and the town’s waterways management supervisor, said that a valid State Department of Environmental Conservation permit has been found to be in hand, and dredging is planned for mid-March. The permit expires in January 2022.

The night before, however, the discussion was often contentious, touching on frustration with the pace of both the D.E.C.’s and Suffolk County’s dredging activity; the November 2016 referendum that allows up to 20 percent of the Peconic Bay Region Community Preservation Fund to be used for water quality initiatives, and the ecological health of many town waterways.

Dredging the harbor is on the county’s schedule, said Francis Bock, the trustees’ clerk, but would not happen until 2018. That wasn’t good enough, the baymen said. “Every time we get east wind,” said Mike Havens, “it’s filling the harbor in.”

“The water is so shoaled there now,” said Steve Gauger, “that for the last two years I’ve had to add rope to my mooring to get it farther out so that at low tide the boat’s not sitting on the bottom . . . It’s really turning into a safety issue at this point.”

Rachel Gruzen, an environmental planner, summarized the baymen’s position. “We have a very narrow entrance right now, 10 feet,” she said. “You can get through when there’s no wind. You get 15 knots of wind and you’re coming in with a boatload of fish and nets, etc., you’re up on the sand. So this has to happen now.”

The town had once planned to purchase a dredge, said Diane McNally, a trustee, but the idea was abandoned in the wake of the financial crisis that led to the 2009 resignation of Supervisor Bill McGintee. “I think at the time it was $600,000, and we would get reimbursement for at least half of that,” she said. “The town said we don’t have that much to put out of pocket. It was a no-go.”

“A number of people on this board still have an interest in a town-owned dredge,” Mr. Bock said. “I don’t think we have the support of the town board. You guys should be having this conversation with them also.”

Trustee Rick Drew told the baymen he is updating the trustees’ dredging plan and asked for their input. “We are trying to get real aggressive here, trying to get some of the C.P.F. money to be allocated for dredging,” he said. “There’s a lot of work that needs to be done, we realize it. We want to embrace you on this and do the right thing.”

Mr. Taylor said that community preservation fund money should be allocated to dredging projects, to improve water quality. “We’re surrounded by clean water,” he said. “If we dredge properly . . . it’s going to clean our water quickly.”

Mr. Bock told the baymen that the town board had convened a committee to decide how to use the 20 percent of C.P.F. money. “Bill [Taylor] is on that committee, so he’s going to be advocating for these type of projects,” he said.

The 2016 pilot program in which individuals and families participated in a community oyster garden in Three Mile Harbor should be expanded to Hog Creek, the director of East Hampton Town’s shellfish hatchery told the town trustees on Monday.

Barley Dunne, who heads the hatchery, which seeds town waterways with juvenile oysters, clams, and scallops each year, suggested expanding the program, which was considered successful last year. Known as the East Hampton Shellfish Education Enhancement Directive, or EHSEED, it is modeled on Cornell Cooperative Extension’s Southold Projects in Aquaculture Training (SPAT) on the North Fork.

Under New York State guidelines, participants are limited to 1,000 oysters and can harvest half that number. Residents of the town would be given priority to take part, Mr. Dunne said. The cost, approximately $250 per individual or family, would include oysters, gear, and instruction. The program encourages residents to be stewards of the environment while enhancing shellfish stocks. A single adult oyster can filter up to 50 gallons of water a day, while the gear provides habitat for crabs, nursery fish, and other marine life.

It could begin as early as this month, with lectures at the hatchery, in Montauk, that would cover topics including biology, spawning, proper handling, diseases, and predators. In the summer, grow units, which Mr. Dunne described as floating cages, would be seeded.

A party to launch the effort is tentatively planned for June 3, Mr. Dunne said.

Alex Miller, who took part last year in Three Mile Harbor, spoke in favor of expanding the work. “I found my experience of this past year to be one of the most exciting and wonderful programs that I’ve ever been involved in,” he told the trustees. “I look forward to the kickoff of the season ahead.”

Mr. Miller, who said that he has noted a degradation of Hog Creek’s water quality since the 1970s, told the trustees that enthusiasm for a second oyster garden is strong among his friends, family, and co-workers.

Mr. Dunne said that one of the waterfront properties acquired by the town using community preservation fund money might be used as an access point to the oyster garden, the site of which has yet to be determined.

Trustee Diane McNally expressed support for the program, “but there’s always been a part of me that weighs that with privatizing of the public bottomlands.” She also cautioned her colleagues to ensure that baymen, “who are relying on their harvest of shellfish for their livelihood,” would not be adversely impacted by a community oyster garden.

Over all, however, the trustees were supportive of the program’s expansion.

Two small lots with summer houses on them were before the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals on Tuesday. One, a 16,978-square-foot lot at the intersection of Bay View Avenue and Lazy Point Road in Amagansett, has an accessory building that was the subject of a public hearing. The other, at the end of South Edison Street in Montauk, is 4,738 square feet of dunes, and apparently one of the tiniest lots in town.

The late John Easevoli and his wife, Paula Easevoli, bought the Lazy Point property in April 1971. It contains a two-story house with three living units, which was not the subject of Tuesday’s hearing. The building being scrutinized is a second structure on the property. The question before the zoning board was whether its kitchen was legal.

In late 1971, the Easevolis asked the board to legalize the structure as a cottage with a bathroom. The request was granted with the stipulation that there be no kitchen. On Tuesday, Ms. Easevoli asked the board to remove that prohibition.

Arguing on her behalf was Richard E. Whalen of Land Marks, who explained that the kitchen had come to the town’s attention when the Easevolis took part in the town’s rental registry program.

Mr. Whalen said the kitchen had always been in the structure and that the property supplied needed affordable housing. He also said removing the kitchen could be dangerous because tenants would use hot plates for cooking. In the audience were about a dozen supporters of Ms. Easevoli’s request, including the couple’s son, Vince Easevoli, who told the board that everyone in the audience could testify that there always had been a kitchen in the building.

As the board examined the history of the property, they learned that in 1971 the town’s building inspector ruled that the structure was only supposed to be a garage. Board members wrestled with the conflict between the 1971 approval of a bathroom and the evidence that the building also contained a kitchen. John Whelan, the board’s chairman, said that he had not been able to obtain the file on the 1971 proceeding.

At that point, David Buda, a Springs resident who frequently weighs in before various boards, announced that he had documents from the 1971 Z.B.A. file. Mr. Buda, who had done his own research, held correspondence from the town from 1971 citing the late Mr. Easevoli for illegally converting a garage into living quarters. He also had in hand a copy of a notarized 1971 statement from Ms. Easevoli to the board, in which she wrote, “We wish to maintain this as a cottage without a kitchen. No structural changes are being made.”

This triggered an outburst from Mr. Whalen, the attorney for the applicant. In a raised voice, he said it was disgusting that he should learn about these documents during the public hearing after having been told the file couldn’t be found. The town was woefully behind in digitalizing its records, he said.

The board found that the circumstances warranted another, separate hearing and agreed to schedule it as soon as possible.

The small Montauk property before the board on Tuesday is on one of only two lots with private residences along the beach in downtown Montauk. The land is zoned for resort use.

The house sits entirely on the dunes, with the popular summer nightclub Sloppy Tuna to its north. Frans H. and Dalal Preidel, who own the property, want to enlarge a shed there and need a permit because of the dunes as well as variances for height and coverage. It has been noted that the couple also own a small, 800-square-foot studio in the Kips Bay area of Manhattan, which was featured in The New York Times in December.

Eric Schantz, a senior town planner, told the board that the proposed shed, though larger than the one it would replace, would actually reduce lot coverage, due to the removal of an outdoor shower and deck. When the Reidels bought the property in 2010, the nearby Sloppy Tuna was a different, much quieter establishment. The rowdy nature of the bar recently led the Reidels to try to mitigate the noise and debris from the club, and Mr. Reidel explained that when he wanted to build a fence he was told he had to use shrubbery, and planted bamboo, which also prompted board discussion. As for losing the shower and the deck, he said, “As you can tell, there is no privacy, anyway.”

The applicant and Mr. Schantz were uncertain if the work required approval by the State Department of Environmental Conservation, and the record was kept open for one week to find out.

East Hampton Town

Launch-Site Parking at Issue

Parking along Landing Lane in Springs, which leads to an Accabonac Harbor access used by paddleboarding and kayaking businesses, could be restricted to those with town parking permits, both resident and nonresident, according to an East Hampton Town Board discussion this week. The restriction, board members explained, is designed to balance the rights of the businesses issued town permits to use the site and residents who might seek to use it for water access themselves and need a place to park.

David Lys, the proprietor of Weekend Warrior Tours and Outfitters, who is also a member of the town planning board, raised questions about the need for the restriction and said it would negatively impact his business if out-of-town clients were unable to park at the launch site. The topic will be taken up again at a future meeting.

Eye Photo-Shoot Permits

A town board discussion on Tuesday of legislation that would require town permits for film and photography shoots on private property in East Hampton, which are currently exempt from the permit requirement for shoots on public property, drew comments from two East Hampton business owners who arrange and produce still-photography sessions.

Jenny Landey and Holly Li, who each have 25 years in the business, told the board that the permit requirement and fees would be onerous and hurt their businesses. As still-photography shoots are typically smaller, with less potential for neighborhood disruption, than film or TV sessions, the women suggested the board establish separate categories of permit requirements. A proposed requirement that permit applications be submitted at least 14 days in advance would also present difficulties, they said, as they are often not given that much lead time by clients.

At present, shoots involving six people or fewer are exempt from getting permits; the draft legislation would include even those smaller shoots in the permit requirement. The proposed law changes, Supervisor Larry Cantwell said, would provide a way for officials to track when a private property might be too often used for commercial activities such as filming. The board will discuss the issue further. J.P.

Federal

Aid Request for Sag Harbor

Representative Lee Zeldin has issued a statement of support to grant federal aid for Sag Harbor Village through the Small Business Administration Disaster Recovery Program following the Dec. 16 fire that affected many businesses there. Other businesses are also suffering from the ongoing limitations imposed by the subsequent demolition and cleanup efforts.

State Senator Kenneth P. LaValle and Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. have led the effort to secure a disaster declaration through the S.B.A. A request from Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo is also required. 

The owners of a 2,529-square-foot vacation house on Cranberry Hole Road in Amagansett, which is on a lot identified by the East Hampton Town Planning Department as “pristine dune land,” sought a permit Tuesday before the town’s Zoning Board of Appeals to add another 1,464 square feet plus decking.

The board was told that Bernal J. Vargas III, a British national, and his wife, Alexandra, who bought the property in 2009, need more room for their two young boys. Their architect, Bailey Heck of BHH, a Brooklyn firm that has designed a number of South Fork residences, told board members that the couple also want a garage to protect their cars. They propose to move and replace their septic system, which is currently located where the expansion would take place, he said.

Laurie Wiltshire of Land Planning Services also addressed the board in support of the project.

The house was built in the 1980s, on just under an acre of land that borders Napeague State Park. Mr. Heck told board members that 61 percent of the property was not buildable.

Brian Frank, East Hampton Town’s chief environmentalist, described the lot as “characterized by pristine, secondary dune land beyond the existing clearing limits.” If the application is granted, he said, it would increase building coverage on the property by 68 percent.

“The board should note that existing clearing limits and area calculations do not appear to be accurate,” he wrote in a memo. He told the board it was impossible to recreate the undulating dune through landscaping, adding that the only way to protect it was to “limit land clearing to the minimum area practical.” Should the board grant the requested approval, he said, it should do so only with extensive mitigation attached. “I would describe this redevelopment as aggressive,” he said.

Ms. Wiltshire argued that the clearing proposed was minimal, and compared the proposal to development on neighboring properties. She pointed out that the applicants were not asking for variances, only a permit to build the extension.

Mr. Frank, in turn, advised the board to consider the town code’s section regarding “natural resources special permits,” stressing that dunes are considered a protected resource.

David Lys, a board member, questioned the location and amount of clearing. John Whelan agreed, saying that the survey submitted for consideration was unclear as to the exact location of the clearing. He asked that an updated survey be presented before any deliberations are held, and the board agreed to keep the record open for that purpose.

Several applicants cancelled their public hearings before the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals on Tuesday, resulting in an abbreviated meeting that proved time well spent for one applicant.

Dana Termini owns a 1,203-square-foot residence at 116 West Lake Drive in Montauk with a finished basement of 746 square feet that lacks access from the interior of the house, a violation of town code. The error, the board was told, was an oversight, and would cost $35,000 to correct.

Although the plans submitted to the Building Department reflected what was built, and the town had inspected the house several times, the error was never noticed until the final inspection before a certificate of occupancy was granted. Only then was it caught.

Tyler Borsack, a town planner, pointed out that the board had granted a similar application in 2012, submitted by Glen Pushelberg and George Yabu of 90 Shore Road in Amagansett. Their house was built with all needed approvals, but the final inspection found a code violation, in that the second floor had an exterior staircase only.

When the hearing was over, the board’s business was as well, until members decided to look at the issue they had just discussed. Their attorney, Elizabeth Baldwin, assured them that quick action was allowable if they so decided.

“It was done in good faith,” Theresa Berger told her fellow board members as they began to deliberate. All agreed with the goal of the town code, which is to prevent illegal apartments from being created. However, they determined that in this case, it was the town that had erred.

With the caveat that no kitchen ever be added, the board voted 5-0 to approve the application. Mr. Termini can keep his basement as is.

The fight over whether PSEG-Long Island, the utility that provides electric service here, should be subject to East Hampton Town’s zoning laws — particularly whether the company’s reconstruction of a substation on Old Stone Highway in Amagansett should have been reviewed by the town planning board — will continue in a Brooklyn courtroom on Monday.

The case goes back to 2014, when town officials issued a stop-work order after PSEG began revamping the substation without having submitted plans to the planning board for site-plan approval or obtained a building permit. Vegetation around the site, which borders the Long Island Rail Road tracks near the Montauk Highway, was cleared, a building erected, and a chain-link fence installed.

The substation upgrade was the culmination of a controversial project — the installation of a six-mile, high-voltage electric line from the Buell Lane, East Hampton, electric substation to the Amagansett site. Two-hundred sixty-seven replacement poles were installed and 23 and 33-kilovolt lines strung. Once the work at the substation was completed, the system was put on line.

The town argued that site plan approval and a building permit were needed, while PSEG claimed that the company, a service provider for the Long Island Power Authority, was exempt from those requirements. The stop-work order was overturned in April 2015 by State Supreme Court Justice Thomas F. Whelan, who agreed that LIPA and PSEG are exempt from local zoning and other laws. The town appealed.

According to Michael Sendlenski, the East Hampton Town attorney, oral arguments before the Appellate Division of State Supreme Court will begin on Monday.

The controversial high-voltage lines, which run along residential streets to the Amagansett substation on poles larger than those they replaced, caused an outcry from residents concerned about safety and aesthetics. They asked to have the lines installed underground.

  PSEG had said the new lines were needed to upgrade service and help avoid outages. It refused, however, to carry the higher cost of underground installation. Subsequent discussions between the company and East End local and state officials about cost-sharing did not bear fruit.

Meanwhile, community groups prevailed on town officials to ask the utility to put plantings around the substation to soften its look, as well as a line of trees and shrubs. This was accomplished, but some Amagansett residents say the work falls short.

In the wake of yet another coastal storm, repairs will again be needed to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers project on the downtown Montauk beach.

Waves and wind from the northeaster earlier this week exposed sections of the sandbag seawall installed by contractors for the Army Corps last year as part of an $8.4-million beach stabilization project. Designed to keep waves from undermining shorefront hotels, the seawall has performed its function during several storms but has sustained damage and required rehabilitation each time.

After being re-covered with sand following a previous storm, the sandbag pile was again exposed this week. According to project specifications, it is supposed to have three feet of sand over it. The surf reached the sandbags, leaving no passable beach.

According to an agreement among the sponsors of the project — the Army Corps, New York State, Suffolk County, and East Hampton Town — maintaining sand atop the sandbag pile will become the responsibility, both financial and otherwise, of the town and the county once the project is deemed complete and is handed off by the federal agency, which bore the entire construction cost.

However, a final walk-through has not yet occurred, nor is there a final agreement on ongoing operation and maintenance.

Damages from a fall storm required the Army Corps contractors to reinstall fencing and beach grass, and there were several other outstanding items, including re-covering a mat of concrete blocks at the South Edison Street beach-vehicle access. The concrete remains exposed after this week’s storm.

Town officials also have questions about a 50-foot berm of sand that had been installed in front of the sandbags as part of the project; it was washed away in the earlier storm and has not been replaced.

Besides exposing the sandbags in particularly vulnerable spots along the downtown beach, this week’s rain and storm-surge waves took out the sand fencing along the entire length of the project.

A 3,100-foot-long sandbag sea wall installed last year by the Army Corps of Engineers on the downtown Montauk beach is included in the latest edition of “Wastebook,” an annual survey of “government pork and boondoggles” by Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona. Environmental activists here were critical of the seawall from the start and it has now, through erosion of sand seaward of it, narrowed the beach at times to a wet, impassable strip.

“Dirtbag Beach,” as it is called in Mr. Flake’s report, is among projects he identifies as having frittered away federal dollars that could be better spent on “true national priorities,” such as infrastructure repair and critical health research.

“We can do more without spending more by simply making better sense out of how we spend every cent,” Mr. Flake writes in the introduction.

This year’s version, with a comic book-illustrated cover blaring “Senator Jeff Flake Presents: Wastebook PORKémon Go,” lists 50 projects the lawmaker considers a waste of federal money and an example of “upside down spending priorities.” Montauk’s “Dirtbag Beach” is number 17.

“Wastebook PORKémon Go” provides an index of just some of the questionable expenses lurking throughout the federal budget that collectively cost taxpayers more than $5 billion,” the report alleges.

“Just like the monsters in the Pokémon Go game that took America by storm this past year, government boondoggles come in all shapes and sizes and pop up just about everywhere.”

The $8.4-million Montauk installation is listed in the “Wastebook” table of contents along with other projects and their dollar amounts, including a “High- Speed Train Going Nowhere Fast” ($3.1 billion); a “Giant Glow-in-the-Dark Doobie” ($35,000), a 28-foot-tall billboard against driving while high; a $1.7 million “Hologram Comedy Club Laughing All the Way to the Bank,” at which resurrected dead comedians are brought back through technology to do their shtick; a $460,000 project in which “Computers Try to Learn Human Behavior by Binge Watching ‘Desperate Housewives’ ” and other shows, and a $3.4 million “Hamster Cage Match” using Syrian hamsters in a study of aggression and anxiety.

A four-page entry details the history, status, and local responses to the Montauk Army Corps project, and includes photos, including an aerial of protestors who tried to stop the installation.

“Is an unwanted government project the end of the world for the beach in Montauk, New York, the self-described ‘end of the world?’ ” the “Wastebook” asks in the entry. “The once pristine beach, known for its natural landscape and lack of development in the tiny hamlet at the tip of Long Island is now being derided as dirtbag beach.”

“The U.S. Corps of Engineers plowed away the beach’s natural dunes and constructed a wall made up of 14,000 1.7-ton geotextile bags holding orange non-beach sand topped with three feet of whiter beach sand. The sandbag wall stretches along more than a half-mile of shoreline and is surrounded by fences. The beach is now only accessible via four narrow, elevated walkways,” the Wastebook states.

“The unsightly barrier, however, has residents and visitors ‘wondering if the town has destroyed the shore in order to save it.’ ” Local coverage in The Star proved “an invaluable resource” for examination of the issue,” according to Roland Foster, a senior policy advisor for Senator Flake.

Meanwhile, contractors for the Army Corps have come and gone but the project is still not ready to be declared finished and handed over to the town, which, along with Suffolk County, is to be responsible for ongoing maintenance, town officials said this week.

According to Alex Walter, an assistant to Supervisor Larry Cantwell, the contractors last visited early last month to make some fixes after storms damaged sandbags and wiped out fencing around the buried seawall. New fencing was installed and beach grass replanted, he said, and an outflow pipe on the beach near Lowenstein Court was repositioned after it was found to have been installed in a way that caused water to undermine the footings of one of the new wooden stairways leading over the seawall onto the beach.

More work is also expected to be done at the South Edison Street vehicle access to the beach, where interlocking hollowed concrete blocks were laid to create a “drainage mat.” Specifications called for the blocks to be buried, filled with stones, and covered with sand, Mr. Walter said at a town board meeting on Tuesday. But the sand put on top of them was quickly washed away, and they remain exposed.

Further causing dismay, Mr. Walter reported that a 50-foot-long protective sand berm installed seaward of the buried sandbag wall has also washed away and not been replaced. The beach now drops to a lower level right along the piled sandbags, with a gap at the bottom of exposed wooden stairs.

The berm is mentioned in a State Department of Environmental Conservation document that outlines the maintenance responsibilities that are to fall to the town, but “we don’t want to be responsible for maintaining a berm that doesn’t exist,” Mr. Cantwell said Tuesday. The Army Corps had proposed doing a final walk-through during the first two weeks of this month, he said, before turning over maintenance responsibility, but has not been in touch. The estimated costs of maintenance remain uncertain given the effects of recent tidal action.

 

East Hampton Town

Building Code Revisions

After holding hearings on changes to the town building code, the East Hampton Town Board last Thursday approved several revisions, including one that would reduce the size of houses that can be built throughout the town.

The maximum gross floor area of a residence will be reduced to 10 percent of its lot area, plus 1,600 square feet. Current law allows houses to be as large as 12 percent, plus 1,600 square feet, of the size of the parcels they are on. A provision that precludes any house from being larger than 20,000 square feet, regardless of its property size, will remain in place.

The board also adopted a law that restricts the size of cellars, limiting how far they can extend beyond the exterior wall of a first story to 10 percent of the first floor’s gross floor area. The law will also prohibit cellars from being more than 12 feet below ground.

Another law approved last week will revise the town code’s definition of gross floor area, calling for measurement to be taken to the exterior face of the frame or masonry wall. It will exclude cellars, attics, or spaces with ceilings lower than five feet and calls for stairwells and interior spaces where ceilings are higher than 15 feet to be counted twice.

Also approved were changes to the town code governing home contractors’ licenses, allowing companies to designate one person to complete required continuing education training.

Regarding a C.P.F. Purchase

The town board will take comments next Thursday on the purchase of a .81-acre property at 142 Waterhole Road in Springs for $900,000 from the community preservation fund. Owned by the Hamilton Family Trust, the parcel has a house and outbuildings on it; they would be removed at the seller’s expense before the property changes hands. The land would be returned to a natural state. The hearing will begin at 6:30 p.m. at Town Hall.

Four Merit-Based Raises

After recently instituting a system through which town employees can be granted merit-based salary increases, the town board last Thursday approved the first of those pay hikes for four union employees. The board awarded raises ranging from $2,104 to $2,832 to Andrew Gaites, an environmental analyst in the Department of Land Acquisitions and Management, Rosemary Berti, a Finance Department clerk, Evelyn Calderon, a clerk in the Building Department, and Cindy Graboski, who is a clerk at the Highway Department. J.P.

New York State

For Ag Property Tax Help

Legislation recently introduced by Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. would free agricultural property owners from paying state estate tax, as long as their land is protected by an easement, covenant, or other legal restriction that limits its use to farming and bars its development.

Current estate tax policy, which levies taxes based on the “highest and best use” of land rather than its current use, “results in the conversion of valuable farmland to development” when property owners are faced with a need to raise money to pay the tax, Mr. Thiele said in a press release.

“The high value of real estate in places like Long Island, the Hudson Valley, and other agricultural areas near urban fringes and metropolitan areas threatens the future economic viability of agriculture. This legislation instead would make state tax policy an incentive promoting secure regional sources of food as well as protecting our rural quality of life and economic traditions,” he said in the release.