Villages

    At 6 a.m. Sunday, Hurricane Irene's top sustained winds had decreased to near 75 miles per hour, according to the National Hurricane Center.

    As the leading edge of the huge storm reached eastern Long Island during the night, a little drizzle gave way to heavier rain, and wind that was beginning to bend the oaks in the woods between Sag Harbor and East Hampton. Lightning could be seen coming from the upper cloud layers. Trees were beginning to fall, with a report of a tree down in Noyac that cut power to some residents.

    Tests conducted twice last week at the south end of Lake Montauk by the Suffolk County Department of Health Services revealed a brief but heavy influx of enterococcus bacteria following heavy rain, but an almost total absence of the potentially harmful pollutant two days later.

    Reached yesterday morning, East Hampton Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson said the test results “speak for a retention pond in that area. In the meantime, the south end should be closed to bathing for a time after heavy rains. We will benefit from the new data.”

    While cities and states across the country are struggling financially or on the verge of default, East Hampton Village — through careful budgeting and a few unexpected windfalls — ended up with around $700,000 more than expected when the fiscal books closed at the end of July.

    Once a year, the staff at the Montauk Lighthouse presents Lighthouse Weekend, which offers an opportunity to take a step back in time and learn the ways of colonial people. The event will take place on Saturday from 10:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. and on Sunday from 10:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.

    Lawrence Cooke of Montauk is on a one-man mission to get a Montauk Indian museum built in the hamlet. He has the collection, which includes several of his own pieces as well as some from the collections of others, but he needs money to get the job done, about $500,000.

    A local storeowner donated $1,000 to the cause, which helped Mr. Cooke get T-shirts made and fliers printed. “I wish there were 4,999 more people like him,” he said this week in his front yard, where chickens clucked, tomatoes grew in tubs, and kayaks were scattered about.

    The Montauk Village Association, the group responsible for beautifying the hamlet with trees and pots of flowers, is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year and will party down on Friday, Aug. 19, from 6 to 9 p.m. at the Montauk Yacht Club.

    The annual Fisherman’s Fair takes over the Ashawagh Hall green in Springs on Saturday, offering fun, fare, shopping, crafts, and camaraderie for the 79th year.

    From 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. the grounds surrounding the hall, the Springs Library, and the Parsons Blacksmith Shop will be full, rain or shine.

    It’s time to whip out those sculpting tools, and whatever else is needed to carve out those bas-reliefs, creatures, and cities from the sand.

    The Clamshell Foundation’s 20th East Hampton SandCastle Contest will take place on Saturday at Atlantic Avenue Beach in Amagansett from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. The rain date is Sunday.

    While thunder and a little lightning were frequent occurrences last month, on the whole, July was free of severe thunder and lightning as well as ocean storms, according to Richard G. Hendrickson, the United States Cooperative weather observer in Bridgehampton.

    It seems like Dina Merrill — the actress and arts benefactor who has lived on West Dune Lane for over 50 years — will still be able to see the sea she loves.    Her husband, Ted Hartley, chairman of R.K.O. Pictures, sat in the second row at the East Hampton Village Zoning Board of Appeals meeting on Friday while his attorney, Rick Whalen, laid out plans to rework an existing walkway and platform in the dunes outside the couple’s house to accommodate Ms. Merrill’s wheelchair.

    According to the 1967 film “The Graduate,” plastics were poised to be the next big thing. 

    They sure were.

    Now, due to the prevalence of discarded plastic bags in the local landscape, the East Hampton Village Board has proposed banning their use for goods purchased at retail. The ban would not affect bags larger than 28-by-36 inches, however.    

    The June weather report from Richard G. Hendrickson, the United States Cooperative weather observer in Bridgehampton, arrived this week — a little late but nevertheless still of interest to other South Fork weather watchers.

    The East Hampton Village Planning Board, at a meeting last Thursday, asked its planning consultant to draw up an alternate plan for clustering houses on property at the corner of Newtown and Race Lanes.

    The 5.68-acre property, known as the Martha Greene estate, is north of the Osborne Lane traffic light, and backs up on the railroad tracks. It contains an old two-story residence and two other buildings, which would be razed.

    A motion by the Town of East Hampton to throw out a case filed against it by the Ellis family over establishing further access to Lake Montauk was dismissed by New York State Supreme Court Justice W. Gerard Asher on June 28.

    Harry Ellis sued after the town attempted to clear a parcel just south of his house on East Lake Drive in Montauk and open it to the public. “I didn’t want to file a suit against the town that would cost the taxpayers money, but the gun was put to my head,” he said.

    David Paton, the author of “Second Sight: Views from an Eye Doctor’s Odyssey,” will speak at the East Hampton Library on Saturday in an author’s talk to begin at 1 p.m.

    The Great Bonac Fireworks will light up the sky over Three Mile Harbor on Saturday night, getting under way at 9:15 p.m. The extravaganza can be seen from beaches and other locations ringing the harbor, and will of course be viewed by hundreds on boats moored right in the harbor, under the firework lights.

Fireworks by Grucci will present the show, which has been a midsummer tradition, on or about Bastille Day, since it was inaugurated by George Plimpton in the early 1970s, continuing for decades as a fund-raiser for the former Boys and Girls Harbor camp.

   The East Hampton Board of Education heard Tuesday from a promoter of a two-day August rock festival hoping to use school district property for parking.

­    The Home, Sweet Home Museum is showing lithographs and watercolors by Gustav H. Buek, who owned the James Lane house from 1907 to 1927. Etchings by Frederick Childe Hassam and Charles H. Miller are on view as well, through Sept. 30.

    The hours are Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and Sunday from 2 to 4 p.m.

    Looking up East Hampton Village property records, especially those that pertained to permits, design review, zoning, planning, and building inspection, may have been a lengthy, costly paper chore — until recently. But now, “with a few keystrokes,” Larry Cantwell, the village administrator, said, the data on a particular property can show up in one neat, tidy place: the village’s computer system.

    “Here endeth the lesson,” said Joan Denny, acting chairwoman of the East Hampton Village Zoning Board of Appeals, using the traditional liturgical wrap-up after the board read aloud its draft approval of the East Hampton Library’s proposed expansion.

The death on June 17 of a Montauk man who had become infected with the hantavirus has shaken the man’s next-door neighbor, who narrowly escaped death two years ago from a similarly virulent respiratory infection.

    Weather-wise, June has been an odd month so far, and May was unusual too, according to Richard G. Hendrickson, the United States Cooperative weather observer in Bridgehampton.

    “May warms up slowly some years, not this year though,” Mr. Hendrickson wrote in his monthly weather report for May. “Plant and flower growth were over one week ahead of average,” he said, and the lilacs “were faded long before Decoration Day.”

The village zoning board of appeals discussed the East Hampton Library’s expansion for the first time since the State Supreme Court overruled the board’s 2010 denial of a special permit.

Montauk’s commercial and recreational boats will be blessed and the community will honor the watermen who passed over the bar during the year on Sunday during the traditional Blessing of the Fleet in Montauk Harbor. It starts at 5 p.m.

East Hampton Town Councilwoman Julia Prince lashed out on Monday about the protest several weeks ago regarding food vendors at town-owned beaches.

“It was three plastic bags in tree branches in the water that put me over the edge,” East Hampton Village Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr. said at a village board meeting last Thursday, while discussing a possible prohibition on plastic bags in the village.

The team representing Nick Capstick-Dale at the East Hampton Village Zoning Board of Appeals meeting on Friday may have been ...

Deer was killed by a car, but her unborn offspring survived.

The possibility that the Montauk Harbor Inlet will get an emergency dredging this year moved closer to reality this week.

Residents of Newtown Lane and nearby streets packed the room during an East Hampton Village Zoning Board of Appeals meeting Friday to hear...