Government

The first of four public workshops on a re-envisioning of East Hampton Airport will be held tonight at 7. It will be a virtual workshop, held via Zoom video conference, rather than in person at the LTV Media Center in Wainscott, as initially planned. Owing to a significant uptick in the rate of positive Covid-19 tests at the testing sites at the East Hampton Town Hall campus and in Montauk, the town board and other boards and committees have reverted to virtual meetings.

Citing the highly transmissible Delta variant of Covid-19, East Hampton Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc announced Thursday that the town board will return to virtual meetings as of Tuesday. The variant "is significant within the community at this time. It’s spreading rapidly, and people need to really take this seriously,” he said.

A toxic blue-green algal bloom prompted the East Hampton Town Trustees to close Georgica Pond to swimming and shellfishing in mid-August, but signs warning that crabbing is currently prohibited haven't stopped several people from trying.

East Hampton Town's first solar-plus-battery storage system is being installed on the roof of the Parks Department building at the Town Hall campus. The 75-kilowatt solar photovoltaic system will generate clean, renewable power and charge a 137-kilowatt-hour battery that will allow the town to sell excess power to the grid when demand and prices are at their peak.

The Springs Fire District has reiterated its offer to the town to install a 100-foot communications tower at the Fort Pond Boulevard firehouse to improve wireless coverage. And a spokeswoman for the Girl Scouts of Nassau County said the company handling a tower application for Camp Blue Bay is negotiating with the town "to increase the size of the tower to provide space for emergency services equipment."

The federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has issued a notice of intent for Sunrise Wind, a 924-megawatt wind farm proposed by the developers Orsted and Eversource to be situated in federal waters adjacent to the South Fork Wind farm, which they are also developing. 

East Hampton Town Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc has come out in support of state legislation that would pave the way for a dedicated affordable housing fund, according to a statement from Town Hall. 

Lee Zeldin, eastern Long Island's four-term representative in Congress, has begun his New York gubernatorial campaign strong, raising over $4 million in all, with over a third of the total coming from out-of-state donors.

The Army Corps of Engineers has awarded the first contract of the Fire Island to Montauk Point reformulation project (FIMP), to Great Lakes Dredge and Dock Company, for nearly $47.5 million, a milestone toward getting the long-delayed project under way.

In a unanimous vote, the Suffolk Legislature has passed a local law to preserve honeybee colonies in the county. The resolution is expected to take effect in a few weeks, according to Bridget Fleming, its co-sponsor with Al Krupski of the North Fork.

East Hampton Fire Department Chief Gerard Turza Jr. appealed to the village board on Friday for approximately $4.5 million, to replace an aging fleet of vehicles and other equipment. 

In the ongoing fight between Sand Land and its opponents over operations at the Noyac mine, a new court decision announced on Monday upholds a previous ruling that voided a permit awarded by the State Department of Environmental Conservation.