Government

A new downsized plan for an emergency room annex Stony Brook Southampton Hospital will build in East Hampton received a mixed reaction from East Hampton Town Planning Board members, who expressed concern about traffic snarls the facility could create.

The long-running dispute between East Hampton Town and the owner of Duryea's Lobster Deck on Fort Pond Bay in Montauk continues, with the most recent focus an effort to expand a dock and a contract with a boat share company.

Two lawsuits involving local sand mines, one in Noyac and one in East Hampton, are making their way through the state court system, with two recent rulings appearing to conflict with each other.

The East Hampton Town Trustees approved a special season and designated areas for harvesting soft clams by a technique known as powering, or churning, last month.

Anna Throne-Holst, a former Southampton Town supervisor and the Democratic Party's 2016 candidate to represent New York's First Congressional District, has endorsed Suffolk County Legislator Kara Hahn in a bid for the Democratic nomination in 2022.

A notice from Eversource Energy, which is developing the wind farm with Orsted U.S. Offshore Wind, said that 23 test borings will be made using a track-mounted drill rig at locations along the Long Island Rail Road right of way between Wainscott Northwest Road and Cove Hollow Road.

East Hampton Town has gotten a $5,600 grant from the Preservation League of New York State to fund a cultural resource survey of cemeteries. 

Sag Harbor Village Mayor James Larocca announced an initiative to develop affordable housing on Tuesday. "Preserving, protecting, and nourishing the community requires making it possible for our young to be able to afford to live and prosper here," he said in a statement. 

Following a public hearing last month, the board voted to acquire three parcels on Gardiner's Bay near Albert's Landing in Amagansett, together comprising about five acres of vacant waterfront property. Two were bought with community preservation fund money; the third was donated by its owner, who has also pledged a sizable amount toward the purchase of the other two. 

It seemed that few, if any, were happy when the East Hampton Town Board finally concluded a six-hour meeting that saw scathing criticism from residents on a proposal to erect a 185-foot emergency and cellphone communication tower on a wooded parcel in a residential area in Springs.

Nighttime paving of Springs-Fireplace Road in East Hampton and Springs will begin next week, the Suffolk County Department of Public Works announced this week. 

An overhaul of East Hampton Town's emergency communications system is well underway, but additional towers are still needed for it to achieve comprehensive coverage. Meanwhile, the town's overtaxed wireless communications infrastructure is causing poor-to-nonexistent cellphone service in Springs and other areas.