The federal Environmental Protection Agency has honored Christopher Gobler of Stony Brook University’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences for his research on Long Island’s water quality problems. On Friday Dr. Gobler received an Environmental Champion award, which recognizes individuals dedicated to protecting public health and the environment in New York, New Jersey, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand nominated Dr. Gobler for the award.

A marine biologist and leading researcher on the harmful algal blooms that have become common in Long Island’s coastal waters, Dr. Gobler was enlisted by the East Hampton Town Trustees in 2013 to perform water quality testing of waterways under trustee jurisdiction. More recently, the Friends of Georgica Pond foundation, a group of property owners at the East Hampton pond that experienced dense outbreaks of cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae, in 2014 and ’15, hired Dr. Gobler to assist in their efforts to restore the pond’s ecological health.

Dr. Gobler runs a research lab at Stony Brook’s Southampton campus, where he and his colleagues investigate brown tides, fishery collapse, and the impacts of climate change on marine ecosystems. He also helped to develop the Long Island Nitrogen Action Plan and is working with Suffolk County to address how septic systems and cesspools are contributing to the area’s nitrogen pollution problem.

East Hampton Town officials are discussing changes to the town code aimed at encouraging homeowners to create rental apartments to add to the town’s stock of affordable housing.

A 2007 law that allowed homeowners to attach an accessory apartment to a house, provided it is registered with the town and offered year-round at a capped maximum rent, has resulted in only about 15 new apartments throughout East Hampton. The law allows permits to be issued for up to 20 accessory apartments in each of the town’s five school districts.

A revision suggested by the town’s community housing committee and being discussed by the town board would allow apartments to be created in detached outbuildings. Whether new buildings could be put up for that purpose is being discussed, as is the size of lots where they could be built.

The amended law would allow more flexibility for homeowners, who are required at present to be living in the primary residence if an affordable apartment is to be rented. The code change would allow the property owner to take the apartment and rent the house to tenants.

The town board will schedule a public hearing on the proposed changes after finalizing a draft law.

A State Supreme Court Justice has rejected a lawsuit brought by the owners of a Montauk Shores Condominium trailer against the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals.

Tim and Peggy Dempsey had sought to replace their 570-square-foot residence “with an 870-square-foot mobile home with 280 square feet of decking, or a 51 percent increase in size,” Justice Joseph Farneti wrote in his May 2 decision, which was received by the town on Monday. The tiny plot on which the trailer sits is 1,160 square feet.

The decision comes almost exactly a year after the zoning board, in a split 3-2 vote, turned down the Dempseys’ application. The site is one of several in a row of trailers landward of a seawall that separates the trailer park from the ocean. The Dempseys had needed a special permit because of the structure’s proximity to the ocean, as well as several variances.

The couple’s lawyers, the firm of Tarbet & Lester, argued that the Z.B.A. had “failed to adhere to its own precedent,” citing three approvals issued by the board in 2013 and 2014 for houses in the same oceanfront row. The three, however, were for smaller houses, two being 765 square feet and the other 610, Justice Farneti said in his four-page decision.

The court cited the town code regarding special permits, noting that one yardstick is “the lessening of danger to life and property caused by coastal flooding and storms.” During the zoning board’s deliberations on the application, David Lys, a member, said that the proposed structure “would produce more damage. Is this the right design for a home in this location?”

Justice Farneti concluded that the board was not acting in an arbitrary or capricious manner. “The Z.B.A. could rationally conclude that the detriment the proposed development posed to the neighborhood outweighed the benefit sought by the petitioners.”

The town was represented in the case by John Jilnicki, a town attorney.

Even had Justice Farneti sided with the Dempseys, it was not clear that the new structure could have been installed as proposed. During its deliberations, the board did not take into account that the land in question is in a designated Federal Emergency Management Agency flood zone. In a more recent application, that of Mike Lukacs for Unit 22, which is in the same row of trailers, the Z.B.A. approved a structure raised 22 feet above grade, as called for by FEMA. The elevations for the trailers in the oceanfront row vary, but some elevation is required, which was not mentioned in the Dempseys’ proposal.

Ann Glennon, East Hampton’s head building inspector, said last year that the department would no longer issue building permits for structures non-compliant with FEMA.

A jury in East Hampton Town Justice Court on Friday found the corporation run by Cyril Fitzsimons, the namesake of Cyril’s Fish House, guilty of 45 misdemeanors related to the illegal expansion of the popular roadside Napeague bar and restaurant.

Each charge is punishable by a fine of up to $1,000.

The charges, which were brought in March 2014 by the town’s code enforcement bureau, involved a brick patio, roadside bar, and front awning, as well as several other structures on the property. Before the four-day trial began on May 3, the town’s attorney’s office agreed to a stipulation with the owners of the land itself, Michael Dioguardi, Debra Laikind Dioguardi, and Robert Dioguardi, co-defendants with Mr. Fitzsimons, in which they agreed to dismantle the violating structures.

By Monday, the site was being transformed. A stockade fence had been erected separating the establishment from Montauk Highway, as per the agreement with the town, and a large dumpster was already filled with pieces of the offending structures. According to Michael Sendlenski, the East Hampton Town attorney for the town, the two sides agreed that permits for demolition of the various structures would be issued retroactively once the East Hampton Town Planning Board approves the overall site plan.

According to a memo to that board by Eric Schantz, a senior planner for the town, a complete site plan, along with an updated survey, was to be ready for the planning board’s meeting last night. In his memo to the board, Mr. Schantz described some small adjustments the applicants have made in the site plan. A new bar on the west side of the building, which replaces the iconic roadside bar, has been expanded from 10 feet long to 14 feet. Also, Mr. Schantz said, between the stockade fence that now faces the highway and the building itself there will be a fixed seating area with 20 chairs. This change will not alter the total number of seats on the premises, which is limited to 62, nor the establishment’s total capacity, which is capped at 150, including employees, at any one time.

“There is going to be an appeal,” said John T. Powers Jr., Mr. Fitzsimons’s attorney, about the guilty verdict turned in by the three-man, three-woman jury on Friday. He said that Mr. Fitzsimons’s corporation Clan-Fitz was offered a deal before the trial similar to the one brokered by Christopher Kelley, the legal representative for the landowners. The landowners’ deal included payment of a $60,000 fine, as well as an agreement to adjourn the case against the Dioguardis, contemplating dismissal after six months.

Mr. Powers said the stipulation offered by the town attorney’s office was “unconscionable.” As an example, he cited one clause in the proposed stipulation under which Clan-Fitz would be fined $100 per person for every person over a total of 150 people, the establishment’s legal occupancy, at any time. In addition, he said, the corporation would be fined $100 each time an individual was found with a beverage or food outside of a new, 900-square-foot outdoor serving area. He gave as an example a patron who arrives by car and gets out of the vehicle holding a bottle of water. Under the stipulation, he said, that bottle of water could be classified as a beverage, incurring a $100 fine.

The stipulations, “together with the 45 convictions by the jurors, validated the town’s commitment to enforcing our public safety and zoning laws. We are serious about code enforcement,” East Hampton Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell said after the trial. While Mr. Fitzsimons, as a member of the corporation Clan-Fitz, founded in 1990, cannot be sentenced to jail as a result of the criminal convictions, he could be in jeopardy of losing his liquor license, according to William Crowley, director of public and legislative affairs for the New York State Liquor Authority. Mr. Crowley said last month that even one misdemeanor conviction of operating without a certificate of occupancy could trigger a reconsideration of the temporary license issued to Clan-Fitz earlier this year. Clan-Fitz was found guilty of 12 counts of lacking appropriate occupancy certificates, covering 12 structures on the property. The authority permanently revoked the establishment’s license in 2014, but that action is on appeal and has been stayed.

The jury found Clan-Fitz not guilty of two charges: failing to get approval from the town’s architectural review board before putting up two stockade fences on the half-acre property.

A key moment during the jurors’ deliberations came when they received a read-back of testimony from Scott Rodriguez, the code enforcement officer who visited the site on March 17, 2014, and upon whose observations most of the charges were based. “The attorney for the defense had said there was no hard file,” the jury’s forewoman, Joyce Marino, said after the trial ended. However, when the testimony was read back, it was revealed that Mr. Rodriguez had compared the computer printout from the Building Department to what was in the hard file itself.

Mr. Powers had tried to argue during his final summation that the records of the town were murky and could easily be lost in a bureaucracy. It was an argument that the jurors bought, but only to an extent. The question confronting the jurors, Ms. Marino said, was “could we trust what was written on the land file,” the property’s printed history of the town’s various agencies’ interactions with the site over the years.

“Our main issue was accuracy,” said Mary-Anne Mango, another juror. Jurors were open to the argument that a permit or two could have fallen through the cracks. “But 47 times?” she asked.

Joseph Prokop, a special counsel to the town who has been handling the case for the past four years, was clearly happy as he left the courthouse, but would not comment on the record. Also prosecuting the case with Mr. Prokop for the town was NancyLynn Thiele. Joining Mr. Powers, who specializes in criminal matters, for the defense was Harold A. Steuerwald, who specializes in zoning and land use law.

Southampton Town

C.S.E.A. Grievance

 The Civil Service Employees Association has filed a grievance to try to force the town to uphold a contract agreement despite the fact that Alex Gregor, the highway superintendent, has refused to sign it. The matter is headed toward binding arbitration. The question for arbitration is whether the contract needs Mr. Gregor’s approval before it can be made official or whether Supervisor Jay Schneiderman’s signature would suffice. The agreement was the result of a complaint filed by the C.S.E.A. with the Public Employees Relations Board late last year over the current contract’s exclusion from the bargaining unit of certain employees, mainly supervisory or clerical. The new contract added new titles and approved accelerated pay raises, among other provisions, but Mr. Gregor said these provisions should have been dealt with in formal re-negotiations.

County Road 39

The possibility of higher speed limits on County Road 39 is under consideration. The idea is to see fewer brake lights and logjams along a stretch of the road, which has a 35-mile-an-hour limit.

A few weeks ago, the county and town tested whether turning the traffic light at the intersection of Route 39 and Tuckahoe Road into a blinking yellow light during peak morning hours would help cut down on the logjam. Supervisor Schneiderman said he had received anecdotal information that it was a success but hasn’t heard that the data showed a significant difference in traffic flow. One reason may be that people seemed to slow down as they approached the light; the supervisor said he even saw someone stop at the light completely. The county has suggested that making it a steady green light, instead of a blinking yellow, may help.

Traffic also backs up as Sunrise Highway converges onto County Road 39, where the speed limit decreases from 55 to 35 m.p.h. “We need to have a conversation about that,” the supervisor said.

Mr. Schneiderman, a former county legislator who was instrumental in having an extra lane added to County Road 39, said he thinks the speed limit was set at 35 out of concern about the effects of the extra lane. He said he would speak with the town Police Department and traffic safety engineers to see if increasing the limit would have support. “I know some people are going to love it; some people are going to hate it,” he told the town board at a recent meeting.

Development Rights

The Town of Southampton has purchased what are called enhanced development rights on some Water Mill fields that are currently farmed by the Green Thumb, an organic farm and farm stand in that hamlet, for $1.9 million. The 17-acre property on Halsey Lane already had been preserved through the purchase of development rights in 2006, along with 64 acres of contiguous farmland. Enhanced development rights are meant to guarantee that a property will continue to be used for food farming and remain affordable for future farmers.

 The owner of the property is Alice Topping L.L.C. The money for the purchase will come from the community preservation fund. At a public hearing on the purchase Tuesday, Melanie Cirillo, the director of conservation at the Peconic Land Trust, spoke on behalf of the Green Thumb family and called the purchase an “integral piece of their overall operation.”

P.D.D. Moratorium

Despite some concern that the town wouldn’t work swiftly enough to review existing legislation that allows planned development districts, the Suffolk County Planning Commission has agreed with the town’s proposed moratorium on new applications. Councilman John Bouvier, who sponsored the moratorium, and the supervisor attended a county meeting on May 4 at which they committed to providing progress reports every three months. The supervisor said he assured the commission that property owners could continue to develop properties during the moratorium under ordinary zoning or by applying for a zone change.

A committee to review the law and make recommendations to the town board is to be formed. Mr. Schneiderman said it was important the “blue ribbon panel” include people involved in the original writing and revisions of the law, as well as those with environmental, civic, and development interests. “I do think there is a place for them,” he said of P.D.D.s.

Suffolk County

County Begins Vector Control

The vector control division of the Suffolk Department of Public Works has begun its annual aerial spraying to control mosquitoes on the South Fork. In East Hampton, Salt marsh areas at Napeague and Beach Hampton in Amagansett and Accabonac Harbor in Springs were to be treated yesterday and today with Bacillus thuringiensis israelensis, or Bti, an insecticide. In Southampton, marsh areas at Jagger Lane and in North Sea were also to be treated. Helicopters are to fly at low altitude and apply the insecticide between 5 a.m. and 8 p.m. In an email, the vector division said no precautions were recommended prior to the application as the helicopters would be at a low level above marshes and would control drift into inhabited areas. “Human exposure from this operation is unlikely and the products involved have no significant human toxicity,” according to the email. The division is also asking property owners to eliminate standing water and dispose of tires, trash, and anything that can catch and hold water, to drill drainage holes in garbage receptacles, and to ensure that roof gutters drain properly. Water in birdbaths should be changed at least weekly, shrubs and grass should be trimmed, and vegetation and debris should be cleaned from the edges of backyard ponds and the water circulated. Mosquito repellent should be used when outdoors, the email added, and all windows and doors should have screens in good repair.

New York State

Lighthouse Protection Bill Advances

The New York State Senate has approved legislation sponsored by Senator Kenneth P. LaValle to protect national historic landmarks, including the Montauk Lighthouse, from erosion. The legislation has now been transferred to the Assembly for consideration, where Assemblyman Fred Thiele is the bill’s sponsor.

The bill would enable the State Department of Environmental Conservation to take action to protect the sites. “Currently, the D.E.C. cannot enter into financially obligated agreements with nonprofit organizations to halt erosion,” Senator LaValle said. The nonprofit Montauk Historical Society manages the Montauk Lighthouse. The legislation, Mr. LaValle said, “provides a solution to the issue.”

Four days of what are expected to be intensive public sessions, called charettes, will get underway in earnest next week in each of East Hampton Town’s hamlets in a process intended to result in plans for the business centers of each hamlet. Planning consultants will be on hand, and each hamlet will eventually be the focus of a separate two-day planning and design session.

Residents have been invited to attend the sessions in order to help shape the questions and concerns to be examined by the planners, and then to vet ideas and possible future changes.

According to a flyer, the consultants, who are representatives of Dodson and Flinker, a Massachusetts firm, need residents’ “input to better understand how homes, businesses, recreation, and community work today, and how they can function better in the future.”

The sessions will begin with three meetings focusing on Springs. On Wednesday at 2:30 p.m., a walking and auto tour of the hamlet will launch from Ashawagh Hall in Springs. The tour will be followed by a workshop at Ashawagh Hall at 6:30 p.m., offering a chance, the consultants have said, to share “ideas and opinions about what’s working well and what needs to be fixed to make Springs a better place to live and work.”

That information will be used to craft “ideas and alternative scenarios” that will be presented to the public by the consultants at Ashawagh Hall next Thursday at 6:30 p.m. The team will listen to comments from the public.

The process will be repeated with a focus on Wainscott, beginning on Friday, May 20. A walking tour will leave from in front of the HomeGoods store at 10:30 a.m., and be followed by a workshop at 6:30 p.m. at the LTV Studios on Industrial Road. The discussion will again center on problems and on what’s working, and also on “how best to foster a vibrant commercial center in Wainscott,” according to a statement.

To piggyback on that session, there will be a public workshop on Saturday from 9 a.m. to noon at LTV, at which participants can “explore ideas for traffic, parking, sidewalks, open space, and mixed-use redevelopment in the center of Wainscott.”

Members of the public are welcome to attend any of the meetings, but they have been asked to send an email to [email protected] to indicate they plan to attend.

The hamlet centers of East Hampton and Amagansett will be the subject of meetings from June 1 through 4; Montauk’s downtown and dock area will be discussed at similar sessions in the fall. 

The East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals turned down three applications on Tuesday.

Carter Burwell, a composer of cinema scores, and his wife, Christine Sciulli, an artist, were rejected for the second time since 2013 in an attempt to expand their house at 39 Marine Boulevard in Amagansett and to add an accessory structure to the property as a working studio for Mr. Burwell.

The problem was not so much the accessory structure, which might well have passed on its own, but the 971-square-foot addition. A special permit was needed to allow the work to be done on land adjacent to bluffs and the beach. The difficulty for the board was that the house, on a three-quarter acre property, is not so much adjacent to the bluff as on it. “It is built on a primary dune,” David Lys said. “It is a large dwelling,” Cate Rogers said of the 3,149-square foot three-story residence. “If we were looking at it as a new application, we would pull the whole thing closer to Marine Boulevard,” Roy Dalene said.

The house’s history also troubled Mr. Dalene, particularly the presence of a third floor, normally illegal in East Hampton, which was legalized through a certificate of occupancy in 2000. Though the proposed addition was smaller than the 1,191 square feet requested in 2013, members agreed, by a 5-0 vote, that the plan was still too aggressive.

Another third floor, this time on a West Lake Drive, Montauk, house owned by Michael Walrath, was the topic of the next discussion. The property, a parcel of a little under five acres, was approved in 2012 for an 8,423-square-foot house with a mezzanine, which at some point became a full third floor. Mr. Walrath, an Internet entrepreneur who sold Right Media to Yahoo for $850 million in 2007, was hoping to use the floor as a gym.

Interviewed earlier this year, he said that his builders had followed approvals from the town’s Building Department. John Whelan, chairman of the zoning board, agreed, but not happily. “They had a building permit. It clearly should never have been permitted,” Mr. Whelan said. “This whole building should never have gotten a building permit. I hope this sort of thing doesn’t happen again. Under the current Building Department, I don’t think it will.”

Mr. Dalene said that the builder should, and probably did, know that the third floor was illegal. The attitude seemed to be, “We’ll build it first, then go for approval,” he said.

Members expressed concern about setting a precedent if they allowed a third floor to be legalized.

The board recognized that Mr. Walrath was offering the town a lot in return for the third floor, as well as promising not to split the property in half, as he could by right do since it was previously subdivided. Members also noted that the architectural review board had approved the height of the house. None of that, however, was enough to forestall a 5-0 vote against okaying a third-floor addition.

The final denial also involved something already built, a 714-square-foot slate patio and walkway installed without special permit approval at 95 Northwest Landing Road in East Hampton. The parcel is about a third of an acre and has a recently built 1,528-square-foot house on it. A permit for the patio was required because the site is adjacent to wetlands. A variance of 83 feet to allow the patio and walkway to remain just 17 feet from wetlands, when 100 feet are required, was also requested.

The patio was built over the septic system, board members noted.

This property had the board divided. In the end, members voted 3-2 to deny the request for the permit. Mr. Lys called it a “slippery slope” for the board to start allowing structures over septic systems. “I don’t want to make this property any more nonconforming,” he said. Ms. Rogers cautioned against creating situations where “hard surface runoff” flows into wetlands, and in this case, ultimately, Northwest Creek.

Both voted with Mr. Whelan against the application. Mr. Dalene and Lee White were in the minority as it was turned down.

A sign erected on the beach at Barnes Landing in Amagansett is misleading, the East Hampton Town Trustees agreed at their meeting on Monday, and should be modified. 

In addition to designating the beach private, the sign asserts a prohibition on vehicles, driving, fires, and fishing. It emphasizes that walking on the beach is the public’s sole right. 

In March 1931, the trustees deeded land to Dennistoun Bell, who owned land that is now the Broadview Property Owners Association, in exchange for Fresh Pond and adjacent uplands. Nonetheless, “From what I understand, we still have the right to traverse to the high-water mark, if you’re going to stand on the beach and cast a rod,” said Francis Bock, the trustees’ clerk.

“Or walk your dog, or walk yourself,” Diane McNally added. The sign, she said, was “a little misleading” and “took some people by surprise.” 

Mr. Bock said yesterday that, “Typically, below the high-water mark anywhere is public, whether it’s a private beach or not. If you’re below high-water casting a rod into the water, I don’t think they have a right to object.” 

The trustees had taken no action as of yesterday, but the Broadview Property Owners Association was likely to hear from them. “I suspect they’re going to be getting a letter,” Mr. Bock said on Monday.

With little fanfare, the Sag Harbor Village Board approved long-discussed, highly controversial revisions to the village’s residential zone code last Thursday. The move follows a moratorium on major building in the village instituted last year after the board put the brakes on a trend toward larger houses on relatively small lots, particularly in the historic district.

Mayor Sandra Schroeder said she had received more than 100 letters or emails in support of the amendments, which include the introduction of maximum gross square footage laws in the village. 

The size of a house in the village will now be tied to the size of the property, though the new law will only affect lots 6,250 square feet or more. When the amendments were first proposed in December, properties over 5,000 square feet would have been impacted, but after feedback from the community, the board decided to scale back the proposal and allow houses to be about 400 square feet larger than the initial legislation allowed. 

Now, smaller properties will be governed by the existing 20-percent-coverage rule, and houses on properties 6,250 square feet or less are capped at 2,500 square feet. The maximum house size on a 25,000-square-foot lot will be 4,000 square feet. A house any bigger would require a special permit. 

Allowable house sizes on properties between 6,250 square feet and 25,000 square feet will be determined on a sliding scale. On a property that is 12,906 square feet, the median lot size in the village, a house can now be no larger than 3,032 square feet. Under former laws, the house could have been as big as 5,164 square feet.

Other amendments were also made to the residential zoning code. After a wave of small-house tear-downs in favor of larger houses, the code will now include a clearer definition of what constitutes a demolition. It will also prohibit solar and alternative energy systems from being visible from an adjacent street or property. In a separate resolution, the board approved changes that affect pools, one of which will require drywells and chlorine-reduction systems.  

A hearing was held on the amendments on April 12, with few raising concerns, a stark contrast to a January meeting in which many expressed outrage over the proposals. The hearing was held open for written comment, and only one was received during that time frame, the mayor said. A scaled-back moratorium expires on Saturday.

Ed Deyermond, a village board member who had been away during the hearings, thanked the mayor for waiting for him before taking a vote. A former mayor himself, he said he understood the amount of work that had gone into the effort, particularly by Rich Warren of Inter-Science Research Associates, the village consultant, and Fred W. Thiele Jr., who was the village attorney until earlier this month. “I really regret that as a result of these we’ve lost two really outstanding people,” Mr. Deyermond said. 

Mr. Thiele and Mr. Warren had come under fire for some of the amendments as they were originally proposed. 

Mr. Thiele, who is also a state assemblyman, resigned hastily on April 11, just one day before the village board held a hearing on the amendments; a week earlier Mr. Warren announced he would be leaving at the end of the fiscal year next month. Mr. Warren, who has worked for the village for 11 years, cited health concerns. Mr. Thiele said he had intended to resign after the completion of the revisions, but decided to do so earlier for personal reasons and the legislative session.

Mr. Thiele said Tuesday that he appreciated Mr. Deyermond’s kind words, but declined to comment further. 

Mayor Schroeder said that the board was “just trying to do something really good for our village.” 

Correction: The village board approved the revisions on April 21, a Thursday, not a Friday, as was originally reported.

The East Hampton Business Alliance will host a breakfast and symposium on affordable housing and implications for the business community at Cittanuova restaurant in East Hampton on Wednesday at 8:30 a.m.

Panelists will include Tom Ruhle, the director of East Hampton Town’s office of housing and community development, Katy Casey, the executive director of the East Hampton Housing Authority, and Paul Monte, president of the Montauk Chamber of Commerce. According to the business alliance, “work force housing and retention of our local working population are critical issues today for local businesses on the East End.”

Tickets to the event are $20 in advance; they will be $25 at the door. Inquiries can be directed to the executive director of the business alliance, Jeffrey Freireich, at [email protected].