Government

Polling stations during the early voting period and on Election Day will be populated only by staff, poll inspectors, and, of course, voters, an official at the Suffolk Board of Elections said this week. "You cannot interfere" with voting, a Suffolk County Board of Elections official said, and the county will "have police cars with a bipartisan team of board of elections employees in every town if there's a problem."

Every major bay and estuary on Long Island was afflicted this summer by toxic algae blooms, oxygen-starved waters, or fish kills, all caused primarily by high levels of nitrogen from household sewage, according to a recent water quality report by Stony Brook University scientists.

As a campaign season characterized by mudslinging and often outright mendacity draws to a close, it was unusual to see the two candidates vying to represent the New York State Senate's First District engaged in a civilized discussion of the issues.

The southern pine beetle, an invasive pest now considered by the D.E.C. to be an established species on the South Fork, has made a comeback in East Hampton Town and regions of the Central Pine Barrens, town and state officials said this week.

The distribution of money that the developers of the South Fork Wind farm will allocate to East Hampton Town in exchange for easements allowing the landing of the installation's export cable was the subject of a long discussion by the town trustees on Friday, with several of them expressing acute disappointment with their counterparts on the town board.

Nancy Goroff, the Democratic candidate to represent New York’s First Congressional District, has picked up the endorsement of two prominent Democrats in the state, Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo. 

Jerry Larsen started putting his stamp on village government last week by hiring a new village administrator, choosing new chairs for appointed boards, and laying the groundwork to create a new office of business and tourism, and to bring the code enforcement office under the oversight of the Police Department.

East Hampton Village's nonresident beach permits and the cost of daily parking at Main Beach and Two Mile Hollow Beach will both increase for the 2021 summer season — permits by 25 percent and daily passes by nearly 70 percent.

New York State has set Nov. 2 as the opening of scallop season in state waters. But the trustees have traditionally opened waterways under their jurisdiction for scalloping shortly after the opening of state waters to allow additional time for scallops to spawn.

The 314 Action Fund, which works to elect scientists, doctors, and professionals in the STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics), issued results of a poll on Tuesday showing a tight race between Representative Lee Zeldin and Nancy Goroff, who is on leave from her position as chairwoman of Stony Brook University's chemistry department. 

Representative Lee Zeldin and his challenger, Nancy Goroff, answered questions posed by climate and environmental activists in an online forum on Tuesday night, three weeks before Election Day and 11 days before the start of New York State's early voting period. 

After demolishing a house, garage, and sewage systems on a property on Hook Pond in East Hampton Village that was purchased last year with community preservation money, the town and village may restore it to natural meadow and use it, in part, to show waterfront homeowners how wetland buffers can be used to stop nitrogen from running into water.