Editorials

Locals here, as in similar places like Cape Cod or Nantucket, often view visitors “from away” with dread or derision, but this year we have been grateful that several South Fork cultural institutions have highlighted the work of artists from very far away indeed.

There are some places that people just shouldn’t go. This notion came to mind as we read about one man’s quest to assert public access on Cartwright Island, a low sliver of sand at the southern extremis of Gardiner’s Island.

Southampton Supervisor Jay Schneiderman had seen enough. According to a press release, he was fed up with the proliferation of signs illegally posted along roads in Bridgehampton and Water Mill and ordered town workers to remove them.

A striking image of Montauk in the year 2100 made the online rounds this week. Produced by Scott Bluedorn, an artist and thinker, it showed the easternmost portion of the South Fork as it might appear after the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s worst-case projections for climate change-driven sea level rise. The image is stark and drew a lot of attention.

While not traditionally thought of as a flash point between conservationists and conservatives over threatened and endangered plants and animals, the East End has its own deep connections to the 1973 act of Congress that President Trump and his allies now seek to undermine.

East Hampton Town officials, having pulled a bait-and-switch on unsuspecting buyers of nonresident beach parking permits at Ditch Plain in Montauk now need to do the right thing and waive at least the first offense of anyone ticketed for using the main lot.

Word was out. More than 100 boats rocked on the water east and north of Montauk Point on Saturday morning, most, as best we could tell, seeking the trophy-size striped bass that suddenly appeared here in the preceding days.

On a recent evening drive on Scuttlehole Road in Bridgehampton, we noticed a woman in an imported sedan drop what appeared to be a cigarette butt out of her car window.

In the sterile, dry gulch of corporate retail that has become the East Hampton Village business district, the East Hampton Chamber of Commerce’s ongoing push for a once-a-week farmers and makers market should be a priority, if for only one reason: It would provide a valuable outlet for local residents, whether in agriculture, handcrafts, or wellness products, to sell to their friends and neighbors while bettering their bottom lines.

These are the times that try drivers’ souls. July on the South Fork brings far too many vehicles onto roads not configured to handle so much traffic, and ordinary, minor transgressions can end in white-knuckle rage — or at least unreasonable delays.

On the surface, the $1.3 million state environmental grant for the Springs School to install an up-to-date septic system appears to be an important step toward improving the quality of nearby Accabonac Harbor. The school has long struggled with an old-fashioned and partially failed wastewater system. Recently, it has had to do costly pumping as often as every 10 days during the school year. There is no argument against updating the wastewater system. What is not entirely clear is whether newer technology will work at a school-size scale and if it will lead demonstrably to a cleaner harbor.

The recent attack at The Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Md., in which a man who had been nursing a grudge against the newspaper shot and killed two reporters, an editor, an editorial writer, and a young sales assistant, struck close to home in more ways than one. Several years ago, on a freezing winter’s night, somebody broke most of The Star’s front windows.

Following a June 26 victory by Perry Gershon in the Democratic primary, the question in New York’s First Congressional District is how to find the right way forward. The issue crosses party lines: Representative Lee Zeldin, seeking a third term in the House, is an eager surrogate for President Trump, a fact that may turn off moderate Republican and Conservative Party voters. He has accepted the support of both Steve Bannon and Sebastian Gorka, dangerous extremist ideologues from the far right.

We were all thankful when we learned that a pedestrian who was struck by a car on Saturday morning just before 9 on Pantigo Road in East Hampton Village would be okay. However, the circumstances of the accident should serve as a reminder to both drivers and walkers about how fine the line is between safety and tragedy.

A fuss that, on the surface, has to do with the East Hampton Library’s request to hold its Authors Night fund-raiser and children’s fair on town-owned land in Amagansett has riled a certain subset of old line Democrats. But the ire may be payback directed at Town Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc, who the objectors see as the main force behind the nomination of David Lys, a former registered Republican, to fill a town board seat and run for election as a Democrat in November.

It’s that time of the year again. With schools finally out and kids with summer energy to burn, the East Hampton Town Junior Lifeguard and Nipper Guard programs started up this week.

For all its popularity and spectacular shoreline, Montauk has inadequate beach parking. This is most acutely the case at Ditch Plain, which is both a well-known surf mecca and a sunbathers’ favorite. Parking there seemed almost an afterthought until recently, when East Hampton Town undertook small-scale expansions at so-called Dirt Lot and Otis Road, and the reconfiguration of the main lot closest to the lifeguards.

Even as the Trump administration sides with big internet service providers in setting the stage for major changes in the way consumers are billed for going online, New York is among a handful of states actively fighting back.

Rarely, it seems, does an experiment involving South Fork roads produce changes for the better, but this is the case with a trial just ended in Water Mill, which temporarily eliminated a stoplight at Montauk Highway and Station Road and, instead, set it to blinking while the U.S. Open was underway at the Shinnecock Hills Golf Club. Anecdotally, the test appears to have been a smashing success.

There is not a whole lot of daylight, at least on the surface, among the three candidates for East Hampton Village trustee whose names will be on Tuesday’s ballot. Rose Brown, Arthur Graham, and Bruce Siska are facing off, with the top two vote-getters winning seats. Mr. Graham and Mr. Siska are incumbents; Ms. Brown is taking her first shot at elected office. Narrowing the choice from three to two is difficult; all of the candidates are able and qualified.

A cold calculus has dominated the unusual multi-candidate Democratic primary in New York’s First Congressional District this year. Of seemingly more concern to many active party members is who stands the best chance of defeating the incumbent, Representative Lee Zeldin, rather than determining who may be the most qualified.

A report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last month suggested that the United States is virtually awash in ticks — and the illnesses they can spread. Here, they include Lyme disease, a debilitating condition marked by lethargy and aching joints, among other symptoms.

If there is a single measure of how insane the absence of meaningful gun regulation in this country has become, it can be found in certain schools that are equipping students with bulletproof shields to carry in their backpacks.

East Hampton has not suffered so shocking a loss in modern times as the deaths on Saturday of four people when a small plane crashed into the Atlantic Ocean. Ben Krupinski and his wife, Bonnie, both 70, were influential members of the South Fork community, as builders, restaurateurs, and quiet philanthropists.

Sag Harbor’s already stunning waterfront will be even more beautiful once a deal is completed to expand public access west of the bridge to North Haven. This is something many people feared would never happen after a corporate development firm acquired about an acre and a half of derelict property there with the intention of building a 13-unit luxury condominium complex. In a 2015 artist’s rendering, massive structures, designed in faux-Colonial style, virtually walled off the rest of the village from any view of Sag Harbor Cove and its spectacular sunsets.

A collective madness has gripped many in East Hampton over the proposed Deepwater Wind South Fork Wind Farm, and it has proved the near undoing of the town trustees. Things hit a low point during a May 17 hearing on the proposed landing site of an electric cable from the distant offshore turbines when an elected trustee tried to prevent someone with whom he disagreed from speaking.

In case you missed it, the Army Corps is headed back to Montauk in a big way. Work is to begin in late fall on an estimated 18-month project to replace the stone armor at Montauk Point, which the corps says could not withstand a major hurricane in the condition it is in now. Doubts, which have greeted Army Corps plans for a bigger seawall at the Point in the past, are beginning to re-emerge.

A letter to the editor from a reader and a message from our electric utility company this week reminded us that balloon season is once again upon us — and that does not bode well for wildlife, or for power lines, it turns out.

On this Memorial Day weekend, it is important to remember that East Hampton men and women have fought and died in this country’s wars since the American Revolution. Marches and other observances will take place on Monday, but reminders of their sacrifices can be seen year round in the many monuments and the Hook Mill Green war memorials.

To hear farmers and other purveyors describe it, a proposed Saturday morning market in East Hampton Village, possibly in Herrick Park, is a nonstarter. The problem is that East End growers, food producers, and craftspeople who take advantage of existing markets already have a full weekly schedule.