Editorials

    The commissioners of the Amagansett Fire District apparently believe they are in a race against time in seeking voter approval on Oct. 4 for buying a former restaurant property next door to the firehouse. Unfortunately, with a public meeting on the subject Tuesday and the balloting to follow only a week later, the district’s taxpayers will hardly have enough time to weigh the pros and cons of the plan. The process should be slowed down.

    Irene, the hurricane that became a tropical storm as it reached Long Island, did more than knock out power for days and topple rot-weakened trees. For many in the hospitality and retail trades here, its impact was a tough hit in an already tough year. Ask most any shopkeeper on the South Fork how their summer 2011 went and more times than not they will say it was okay until the storm warnings came. Then, as one in Montauk told us this week, things just dropped off a cliff. Customers left as the forecast worsened, he said, and just didn’t come back.

Meaningful recommendations in an outside consultant’s report have been overshadowed by implications of wrongdoing

The United States Census Bureau this week confirmed what many indicators have already shown

    It comes as no surprise that the Long Island Power Authority can be criticized for what appeared to be a slow and noncoummunicative response to Hurricane, or, Tropical Storm Irene. In the aftermath of what was a relatively mild blow, few LIPA crews were seen on the South Fork, and for many, electricity was not restored for up to a week. A reasonable worry is how LIPA and its partner, National Grid, would perform in a real catastrophe.

    Erosion is an issue on the bay beaches as well as on the ocean, for example, where Mulford Lane meets Gardiner’s Bay in Amagansett. Three houses there are either in the water or about to be. One, on stilts, is not habitable. The owners of another want to replace it with a somewhat larger house and to protect it with a stone revetment.

    To the unfamiliar eye, metal pipes driven into the sand and tied together with rope in a rough rectangle at Georgica Beach in East Hampton might not look like much, but they represent a new and aggressive front in the war over control of the ocean shoreline, creating another big headache for town and village officials who are supposed to be looking out for the interests of the community as a whole.

    For Long Islanders, Irene was the hurricane that wasn’t, thanks to a last-moment change of course, faster-than-expected weakening, and a downgrade to tropical-storm status. Still, in its wake, the storm left some 40 people dead across the Eastern Seaboard, with horrendous inland flooding, property damage that is still being tallied, and as many as 750,000 utility customers without electricity in New York alone as of press time.

    Late Sunday afternoon, amid all the talk about the flooding, downed trees, eroded beaches, and the loss of electricity by thousands in East Hampton Town, someone nailed it: “This was a miss,” he said.

    East Hampton Town may well be on its way to revisiting a lengthy discussion about the outdoor lighting code, but just why is the first question the members of the town board — and the public — should be asking.

    As expected, samples taken at South Lake Beach in Montauk after Monday’s rain showed the presence of human waste. The water would be clean enough to swim in by Thursday, at least according to Suffolk Health Department standards, but, frankly, we doubt many people — if they knew about the test results — would want to. The question for East Hampton Town is how officials should respond now that they have been reminded of the problem.

    If buck-passing were an Olympic sport, East Hampton Town would get the gold. That, at least, is the consensus of an increasing number of Montauk residents and others irked by the wild popularity of several restaurants and watering holes and all that comes along with them.

    The joint East Hampton Town and Village Disabilities Advisory Board has issued a call for the public to help it develop a list of spots where access by the disabled is a problem. Civic-minded citizens and officials should make it a priority. The committee has only met irregularly, but its chairman, Glenn Hall of Amagansett, is eager to take problems with accessibility, whether to public or business places, to the right officials.

    East Hampton Village took a small but significant step late last month in banning the use of certain plastic bags by retailers and restaurants. It is only the second local government in the State of New York to enact such a measure, after Southampton Village. Following the village board’s sensible decision, we hope that the Town of East Hampton will put similar restrictions in place.

    A war for the future of Lake Montauk is on, and the battle going on right now is about docks. No sooner did the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals allow one property owner to extend his pier farther into the lake, than another decided to take his chance. If this second applicant manages to convince the Z.B.A. of his case, expect more to follow.

    The sperm whale calf that died on a rocky Montauk beach on July 30 did more than tell darkly of the mysteries of the deep. It brought to mind the awful time in April 2010, when a young humpback whale languished in the East Hampton surf. This time, the Montauk calf died relatively quickly, unlike 2010 when the larger humpback hung on for the better part of three days before succumbing to a shot from a high-powered rifle and a dose of phenobarbital.

    Tucked away in a recent report on the quality of Suffolk’s water is a striking image: a map showing in years how much time it takes for rainwater to get in the ground and reach eastern Long Island’s bays, streams, and harbors. The graphic is meaningful in that it illustrates just how long it takes for contaminants to move from one point to another, as well as the time it takes for pollution-reduction efforts to be reflected in surface water quality.

    The Napeague homeowners who sued the East Hampton Town Trustees and Town Board, claiming they own the beach in front of their houses from the high tide line down to the surf, and that they can, therefore, deny its use by the public, have incited an opinion hurricane, as might have been expected. They also seem to have raised more legal questions than they might have anticipated.

    Eighteen years ago, a few months after my grandmother on my father’s side celebrated a milestone birthday, she and my stepgrandfather, Milt, took the entire family on a weekend getaway to the Catskills.

    There were 16 of us then and our destination was the Concord, the largest resort in the Borscht Belt, and at the time one of the last of its kind. According to Wikipedia, it had some 1,500 rooms and a dining room that seated 3,000. The food was kosher, to cater to what had historically been a Jewish clientele.

    In the early 1980s, the East Hampton Town Board disbanded the Planning Department. While that does not seem to be the goal of today’s Town Hall leaders, a continued push to change the way the department operates should have those who favor environmental protection and solid land-use management concerned.

    Composting household kitchen waste is among the easiest of the so-called green measures that ordinary citizens can undertake, and it requires the least investment of time and cash. For East Hampton residents, there is an added incentive — helping the town save money. Gardeners have long known the advantages of compost as a soil conditioner and source of nutrients for vegetables and flowers, but there is a compelling dollars-and-cents reason why more of us should compost.

    East Hampton Town Planning Board members could make no mistake about where Supervisor Bill Wilkinson and Councilwoman Theresa Quigley, the deputy supervisor, stood when they walked into the meeting room on July 13 and sat down in the audience next to the applicant in a matter before the board. In past practice, there has been a studious separation between the appointed boards and the elected officials who appoint them; this should be maintained.    

    No one would have designed it this way — 100 trucks lined up on the beach at Napeague. But they are there now, and figuring out what to do about it is the difficult question.    

The easternmost hamlet in town has had a half-score years of favorable publicity and, as a result, has gotten what seems to be a little too popular for some longtime residents’ tastes.

According to documents obtained from the Suffolk Water Authority, the top South Fork water user was the Ocean Road, Bridgehampton, vacation house owned by Millard Drexler.

Perhaps it was the high-pressure zone this week or, more likely, that my husband was about to head back to work five days a week in the city after months of recuperation from surgery here, but the sort-it-out, throw-it-away, reorganize-it bug hit me bad this week.

    While others who find themselves with a little time to spare on glorious summer days might head for the beach or hop on the bike, I take pleasure in straightening my nest.

Right now, the much-ballyhooed New York property tax cap appears to be much ado about very little. Under the terms of a bill passed last week, which the governor is expected to sign shortly, tax increases would be held to 2 percent annually or the rate of inflation, whichever is less. But the cap has a significant hole in it, particularly where local government is concerned.

    About a year ago, an outcry greeted a proposal to erect a wind turbine on a tree farm off Long Lane in East Hampton. Now, a second property owner has plans to build one nearby, but this time it is unlikely to spark the same degree of opposition.

    Come summer, access to South Fork beaches becomes a sore point for those without requisite parking permits. As in past years, East Hampton taxpayers and those who spend big bucks for summer rentals cannot obtain the coveted passes if they drive rented vehicles; the town assigns them only to vehicles registered at local addresses. These residents believe they should be able to park at the beaches, just like those of us who own our vehicles. It is difficult to think of a reason they are wrong. The question is how to accommodate them.