Concerned Citizens of Montauk has warned people to avoid contact with the water in Fort Pond after samples taken at two sites on the pond earlier this week showed a certified harmful blue-green algal bloom, which can post a threat to human and animal health.

Neil deGrasse Tyson, the decorated astrophysicist, author, and host of television shows and podcasts, has been credited with sparking public interest in science — and keeping people’s attention on it — over the last few decades. He will speak at the Spur in East Hampton Friday night.

Visitors to the Montauk Lighthouse may not notice it yet, but a tower restoration expected to cost just shy of $1.1 million is in its early stages this summer, as the Montauk Historical Society committee that oversees the national historic landmark works to raise the money to complete the project by 2021.

The newly restored Dominy family woodworking and clock shops will return to their original site on North Main Street soon after Labor Day, said Robert Hefner, East Hampton Village’s director of historic services, who is supervising their restoration, as well as the reconstruction of the Dominys’ timber-frame house, which will serve as an adjacent exhibition space.

Farmers, shocked that proposed legislation requiring the planting of a cover crop on agricultural fields includes jail time as a potential punishment for failing to do so, pushed back at a public hearing during the East Hampton Town Board’s meeting last Thursday.

Members of the East Hampton Group for Wildlife renewed a push for the town board to ban hunting on one weekend day during hunting season at the board’s meeting last Thursday, with the submission of a petition bearing 601 signatures, nearly all of them residents.

Gordian Raacke, the executive director of the East Hampton advocacy organization Renewable Energy Long Island, has been appointed to Suffolk County’s Community Choice Aggregation Task Force.

It now appears that the Springs General Store is not covered after all by a facade easement, which, according to a 2015 report in The Star, would have precluded the addition of new structures to the site, protected the store, the gas pumps, and existing outbuildings from external change, and preserved the view of the property.

It now appears that the Springs General Store is not covered after all by a facade easement, which, according to a 2015 report in The Star, would have precluded the addition of new structures to the site, protected the store, the gas pumps, and existing outbuildings from external change, and preserved the view of the property.

Fire departments and emergency medical service agencies across the South Fork were kept busy over the weekend in less than ideal weather conditions.

East Hampton Town police said a 39-year-old Springs man beat a child with a leather belt and a cow-tail whip.

Eighty acres of Lake Montauk will see a seasonal shellfishing closure extended by 60 days, and 21 acres in Sag Harbor’s Little Northwest Creek will be permanently closed to shellfishing, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation announced last week.

Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone, PSEG Long Island, and the Long Island Power Authority have announced a partnership that will be included in the county’s 2020 shared services plan to assist local governments with energy efficiency projects, reduce carbon emissions, and reduce electricity bills.

A practical move to consolidate the East Hampton Town Shellfish Hatchery, or an ill-advised and unseemly rush to do the wrong thing? The town board debated the question anew last Thursday, much of its four-hour meeting devoted to a heated debate pitting the board’s majority against one member and two residents.

New York State Health Department Commissioner Howard Zucker has accepted the State Drinking Water Quality Council’s recommendations for maximum contaminant levels in drinking water for PFOA, PFOS, and 1,4-dioxane, which have been found in water deemed potable.

The Danish energy company Orsted, which acquired Deepwater Wind last year, announced on Tuesday that Jeffrey Grybowski is stepping down as co-chief executive officer of Orsted U.S. Offshore Wind.

Susan McGraw Keber, an East Hampton Town Trustee, urged the Suffolk County Legislature at its July 16 general meeting to pass legislation that would prohibit the intentional release of balloons, a move intended to protect wildlife and the environment.

Parents who previously opted their children out of routine vaccinations for religious reasons will no longer be able to claim that exemption for school enrollment purposes come September.

The Sag Harbor and Sagaponack School Districts have renewed a contract to share busing services again come September, but the agreement looks a bit different from the one signed about a year ago.

Bay Street Theater’s summer programs for kids in the coming weeks include a puppet camp for little ones, musical theater, Shakespeare workshops, and master classes and musical immersion for teens.