Montauk’s Ditch Plain, where the future of what had been the East Deck Motel stirred recent interest in preserving its oceanfront tract, was before the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals on March 3 when applications to replace two mobile homes on the ocean at Montauk Shores Condominiums with two that would be larger came up for public hearing.

On the eastern side of Ditch Plain, Montauk Shores Condominiums is an unusual trailer park, with some of the 29 oceanfront units there reportedly valued in the neighborhood of $1 million.

The applicants who want larger mobile homes are Tom and Peggy Dempsey and the Neubert Trust, who were represented at the hearing by George B. Thansen II, who would install them. They would each contain 870 square feet and be placed one foot farther seaward than the existing ones.

“I’m in favor of larger homes, but where is the limit,” Richard Carvell, a Montauk Shores resident, asked the board. He was the lone speaker in opposition to the applications at the hearing, but a flurry of letters opposing them have since been received, including three from organizations active in Montauk affairs, the Ditch Plains Association, Concerned Citizens of Montauk, and the Surfrider Foundation.

The Dempseys need two variances from required setbacks from the bluff crest, while the Neubert Trust is asking for three similar variances.

Lisa D’Andrea of the town’s Planning Department, noted, in her memo on the application, “This is one of the most erosive areas along Montauk’s oceanfront, therefore the bluff crest is always subject to being located further landward over time. The risk from coastal storm events to the applicant’s property and to surrounding properties from displaced materials is also a legitimate concern.”

Mr. Carvell said he was concerned by what could happen during a major storm. He pointed out that the coverage on the Neubert property would be more than double what is currently there, and that the Dempsey trailer, the one closest to his own, was almost double.

He expressed the belief that the board that runs the condominiums is more concerned with the oceanfront units than the bulk of the trailers at the site. It is a view shared by another owner in the park, Dr. Daniel Hannigan. “I have no faith in the board to do the right thing,” he wrote in a letter to the zoning board. “If the board continues to approve this huge mess, it won’t be long before we look like Rockaway Beach,” he said.

Mr. Thansen was supposed to deliver updated plans for one of the applicants by the zoning board’s March 10 work session, but brought it in after the deadline. The board discussed the application that night, considering whether to hold a second public hearing. The members decided, however, to table the applications, and “and see what is coming in,” as John Whelan, the board’s chairman, put it. Yesterday, Mr. Whelan said the board would discuss Mr. Thansen’s late submission on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, a renovation project at 11 Ditch Plain Road being done by Sean MacPherson, a well-known hotel and restaurant owner who has several other properties at Ditch, is expected to eventually land in the zoning board’s hands.

Originally zoned for hotel use, the site contains several rental cottages, which were allowed to remain after the area was rezoned for residences. The renovation was begun last year, after which the Building Department received several affidavits from neighbors claiming that use had been abandoned. They argued that the Building Department erred when it issued a building permit allowing Mr. MacPherson, who also owns the Crow’s Nest restaurant and nearby Pharaoh’s Cottages, as well as a private residence in Ditch, to renovate the cottages.

The Ditch Plains Association took up the cause, bringing in an attorney, Christopher Kelley of Twomey, Latham, Shea, Kelley, Dubin & Quantarro. The department then turned, in January, to the zoning board for guidance.

However, Beth Baldwin, the zoning board attorney, told the board that the town attorney’s office had decided the matter should be sent back to the Building Department for a determination about whether cottages, with the work completed, should receive a certificate of occupancy. Those opposing the use could then appeal to the zoning board, she said.

With Mr. Kelley on one side, and another law firm, Esseks, Hefter & Angel, representing Mr. MacPherson, the odds are likely that the board will have to weigh in.

Repeated snowstorms this winter almost certainly have exacerbated the problem, but residents of East Hampton in the so-called urban renewal areas, many of which are in Springs, have been complaining for years about the state of their streets and the lack of town highway services for them, such as snow removal.

The roads in the urban renewal subdivisions are not part of the town’s public road system, and so tax money cannot be spent to repair, pave, or plow them, except in an emergency.

Although developers of the lots in those neighborhoods have been required to pay fees toward road construction and repair, many of the 40-some miles of streets have never gotten up to snuff and don’t meet the minimum standards for public roads.

The system of assigning “road improvement unit” fees has failed to achieve its goal of getting the subdivision streets into the town highway system, Supervisor Larry Cantwell said at a town board meeting on March 10.

While a lengthy effort to establish one road improvement district, through which property owners of a particular area would be taxed over 15 years for costs borne by the town to improve their roads to public standards, is under way in one East Hampton neighborhood, the town needs to address the situation in many other areas, Mr. Cantwell said, and it should not be done piecemeal.

“It involves a large portion of our population,” he said. He suggested hiring engineers who could assess the state of the roads, estimate the cost to improve them, and delineate how those costs would be apportioned among owners of developed and vacant properties.

Board members agreed. “Under the current system the roads are falling into disrepair before the next improvements can be made,” Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc said. He said he gets numerous calls from residents who ask, “I pay taxes to the highway, why aren’t my roads plowed?” But, he said, “We can’t contribute public funds to private roads. I think this is a way forward.”

“This is something that I think people will be excited about,” said Councilwoman Kathee Burke-Gonzalez, who lives on one of the roads in question. “There are drainage issues, there are potholes, there are branches” that obstruct the roads, she said. Mail deliveries are sometimes suspended after snow, she said, and children must go to bus stops on busier streets as the school buses won’t drive down the roads.

When instituted, officials believed that the road improvement unit system would result in subdivision roads being steadily improved as people developed their properties and paid in, so that they could, one by one, be taken into the public road system. Instead, with some lots remaining vacant, and work being done piecemeal, it has become somewhat of a never-ending process.

“Some of these roads are deteriorating faster than we can pave them,” Tom Talmage, the town engineer, said last week. “We’re losing ground; if we keep going like this, in 5 or 10 years, it’s going to be much more expensive.”

The system was enacted four decades ago as part of a townwide urban renewal plan designed to address subdivisions created prior to town zoning. Property had been divided into small, 20-by-100-foot plats. Under the urban renewal plan, the combination of certain lots was required in order to create minimum-size building lots that comply with zoning, and procedures put in place as to how that could occur. Those processes are still going on today.

The idea, Mr. Van Scoyoc said, was to preserve the rural character of the town — “because this was basically carved up into lots like you would expect brownstones in Brooklyn. It was a huge and important step,” he said, and successful in that regard.

The lore is, said Mr. Talmage, that in Albany, where lawmakers were asked to approve the town’s urban renewal plan — possibly the only such of its kind in the state — officials found it hard to believe that a town in the Hamptons was in need of an urban renewal plan.

Mr. Cantwell was a member of the town board that created it. “It was fairly cutting-edge stuff,” he said. But, he said, at this point “there’s probably little hope that those roads are ever going to be brought up to modern road standards and brought into the town road system.”

Town boards have struggled with the issue for years, he said. The establishment of any tax district for road improvement has to be approved by a majority of residents in the district, he pointed out. “We’re not going to force them — majority rules, and we’re going to work through the process.”

However, once a consultant does an assessment of all of the urban-renewal roads in town, “at least they’ll have the information,” Mr. Cantwell said. “As it is now we get the calls, and there is no long-term solution.”

Property owners in a road improvement district would be assessed for the cost of the roadwork over 15 years and could expect, in addition to town crews plowing, filling potholes, and repaving, to see their property values increase.

“Although they may be paying an additional increase in taxes, they’re more than getting their money back,” Mr. Van Scoyoc said.

An Army Corps of Engineers plan to build a sandbag-reinforced artificial dune along the downtown Montauk ocean beach will be challenged in court. Defend H2O, an environmental advocacy organization, along with four individual petitioners, announced that it had filed notice on Friday in State Supreme Court.

The group intends to file an Article 78 lawsuit next month against the East Hampton Town Board, Suffolk County, and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, along with the Army Corps, and seeks to overturn the approvals that have been granted.

East Hampton Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell said yesterday that the town had not received formal notice of the lawsuit, but, he said, the town will vigorously defend itself.

The specifications for the $8.4 million project, which would be paid for with federal money, call for installation of a 3,100-foot-long and 50-foot-wide revetment from the Atlantic Terrace motel to Emery Street made of 14,560 geotextile sandbags. These would be covered with three feet of sand, some stockpiled from an excavation of the beach and the rest trucked in from an off-site sand mine. The Army Corps formally awarded the job to H&L Contracting of Bay Shore on Friday.

The project has been cast as a temporary solution that would be removed when the Army Corps undertakes a more extensive project as part of its Fire Island to Montauk Point reformulation study. However, when that project might happen has been questioned.

According to a Defend H2O press release, the structure "will span the narrow beach creating an unnatural 'bump-out,' " and will result in "the inevitable loss of a coveted recreational beach" by inducing scouring and erosion. Risks of flooding will be increased, the group also says, because of the destruction of natural erosion-protective features.

The project, the court filing claims, will also "create a physical obstruction to public beach access, insufficiently contain and dispose of stormwater runoff," and destroy recreational opportunities and the commerce related to them.

The plan, called the Downtown Montauk Stabilization Project, the lawsuit says, conflicts with shoreline policies in the town's Local Waterfront Revitalization Plan that outlaw hard structures on the ocean beach.

"Sand-filled geotextile bags and tubes are hard structures," according to the press release. By authorizing permits and providing the federal funding for the project, the county, Army Corps, and state D.E.C. are complicit in "not adhering to town coastal policy," the release says.

The additional plaintiffs in the lawsuit are Rav Friedel and Jay Levine, both Montauk residents, Michael Bottini, and Thomas Muse, also of Montauk. Mr. Bottini, Mr. Muse, and Mr. Levine are affiliated with the Eastern Long Island Chapter of the Surfrider Foundation, which has spoken out vigorously against the project; Mr. Bottini is the group's volunteer chairman.

Also in the press release, Kevin McAllister, the founder of Defend H20, charged that officials "made a conscious decision to sacrifice a public beach in favor of private property interests."

The assertion, he said, that the sandbag installation "is not shoreline hardening, will have no adverse impacts to the beach," and can be seen as temporary, "is scientifically indefensible and fundamentally wrong," he said.

"If implemented, this project sets a terrible precedent for the Town of East Hampton, whose economy is largely driven by it natural beaches," Mr. Bottini said in the press release.

"Let it be known that nobody, not the Town of East Hampton, the Army Corps, Suffolk County or the DEC are going to ruin the Montauk beaches! Not without a knock-down, drag-out fight" said Mr. Freidel, a plaintiff in the action.

With barely a quorum on Feb. 25 (three of the seven members were absent) the East Hampton Town Planning Board ruled that the applicant who seeks to divide a house lot on Indian Wells Highway in Amagansett would not have to submit a full environment impact statement under the state’s Environmental Quality Review Act. Kathleen Cunningham, Diana Weir, Ian Calder-Piedmonte, and Reed Jones, the board’s chair, agreed that the proposed division of 38 Indian Wells Highway would have “no or small impact” on the area.

However, all four members expressed concern about the proposal. “I think it is a disturbing trend to create two nonconforming lots,” Ms. Cunningham had said before she voted. Ms. Weir was equally reluctant, questioning the findings of an impact assessment, but she agreed to allow the procedural action to go forward, not wanting “to gum up the works,” as she put it.

“This shouldn’t be construed as this being any kind of endorsement on this proposal. It is not,” Eric Schantz, a senior planner with the town’s Planning Department, assured the board members about the SEQRA declaration. Mr Calder-Piedmonte and Mr. Reed voiced reservations as well.

The vote was needed because the application is also in front of the town’s Zoning Board of Appeals, for variances to allow two parcels to be smaller than the zoning code calls for in that area. The Z.B.A. could not act until the SEQRA decision was made.

The property is a little over one acre, a narrow strip of land that runs east to west from Indian Wells Highway to Further Court. There are two houses on the property, one accessed by a driveway from Indian Wells Highway, the other from Further Court. A hedgerow separates the two houses. The area is zoned for at least one-acre house lots. Thomas Onisko, the property owner, wants to break the property into two roughly half-acre lots, and has told the board that he has already sold the property on the condition that it is divided.

Before the planning board’s vote on SEQRA, several neighbors addressed the board stating their opposition, much as they had at a public hearing before the Z.B.A. They also expressed concern with the complicated process, saying they did not know the planning board had already held two reviews of the proposal.

Mr. Jones reminded those in the room that a planning board hearing would be held if the Z.B.A. approves the requested variances, and that all adjacent neighbors would be notified.

“This has been slipping in under the radar,” Theodore Sklar, an attorney with Esseks, Hefter & Angel, said. He represents a couple who live adjacent to the property. He said he had watched recordings of the two previous planning board sessions concerning the proposal, noting that it was clear that the board was far from being in support of the proposal. “Exercise your statutory authority to let the Z.B.A. know how you feel about it,” Mr. Sklar urged. Mr. Jones agreed, and said he would ask the rest of the board to send comments to the Z.B.A.

Another controversial subdivision, that of 55 Wainscott Hollow, has already had two public hearings before the planning board. It was scheduled to be discussed again on Feb. 25, but Mary Jane Asato, an attorney representing the applicants, asked that it be tabled because Bob Schaeffer, a member of the board who has been an advocate for the proposal, could not be present. The plan calls for seven buildable lots on 40 acres of former farmland, and at least two of the four members present oppose the proposal as currently configured. Ms. Weir has repeatedly called the layout “bad planning.”

Mr. Schaeffer spoke on the phone Tuesday. He confirmed that he is undergoing chemotherapy and radiation for cancer. On Tuesday, he said, he underwent radiation treatment twice. He promised he would be in attendance at last night’s scheduled planning board meeting, at least when the 55 Wainscott Hollow Road proposal was discussed.

He also said he is very hopeful that the treatments will bring the cancer into remission.

East Hampton Town officials are bracing for a large turnout tonight at a hearing on four proposed regulations that would cut back on traffic to East Hampton Airport in order to reduce noise.

The proposed ban on helicopter use of the airport from Thursday through Monday in season — May 1 to Sept. 30 — accompanied by a once-a-week round-trip limit on other craft defined as noisy and a year-round mandatory overnight curfew with extended hours for noisy airplanes, has many seeking an opportunity to voice support and dissent.

At a work session on Tuesday, town board members heard a report on airport statistics for 2014 and a preliminary analysis of where else aircraft might land. The potential for increased traffic at the privately owned Montauk Airport is worrying many residents of that hamlet.

Potential responses to the proposed East Hampton Airport restrictions, said Marguerite Wolffsohn, the town’s planning director, include the use of quieter aircraft, switching from helicopters to fixed-wing planes, changing the timing of flights to comply with restrictions, reducing the number of trips here, coming by highway or rail instead, and diverting to another airport in the region. Those, besides Montauk, include Gabreski Airport in Westhampton Beach and a heliport in Southampton.

That choice, she said, will depend on variables such as passengers’ final destination, the amenities, including fuel, offered at various airports, and weather constraints.

The town board did not get a report on Tuesday, however, from a committee charged with evaluating the financial impact of the proposed regulations. That group was to address several questions. Could the airport be financially self-sustaining under the new rules, given an expected drop in revenue resulting from fewer landing fees? Would it have enough money coming in to cover not only operating expenses but an anticipated $7 million in needed capital improvements, as well as an estimated $3 million in legal fees resulting from lawsuits?

Aviation industry opponents have homed in on the landing-fee question as key, charging that the loss of income from those fees, along with the town’s decision not to accept any more Federal Aviation Administration airport grants, will spell the demise of the airport — which some say is the underlying motive of the new policies. (Refusing F.A.A. grants makes it easier for a town to assert its own authority over its airport.)

An airport finance committee had already unanimously concluded that even with a significant reduction in traffic and landing fees, the airport could be self-sustaining, and the cost of capital improvements covered. The town board requested a new look, however, taking into account the specifics of the proposed regulations. But a stalemate among members led this week to the committee’s making no new report at all.

“The committee has been unable to reach a consensus on a five-year earnings and cash flow forecast if the proposed rules are implemented,” Arthur Malman, the chair of the town’s budget and finance committee, wrote in a March 2 memo to the town board. While some committee members believed that a five-year financial forecast could be developed, others opposed trying, believing that should the new rules take effect, “the variables, especially after the 2015 summer season, are too great and/or further data, research, and perspectives from industry experts as well as experimentation with all or some of the proposed rules, is needed.”

In an effort to bring those of varying viewpoints to the table to hammer out an agreement on the long-simmering issues, Councilwoman Kathee Burke-Gonzalez, the town board’s airport liaison, had established two airport subcommittees, one representing aviation interests and the other concerned with noise abatement, to work in tandem with the airport finance committee, whose members represent diverse interests. The goal was to agree on a set of objective facts, in light of which the board could set airport policy. Only findings on which there was consensus were to be presented to the board.

That process resulted in an impasse. In an email to the town board, David Gruber, a committee member and chair of the noise subcommittee, used less measured terms than Mr. Malman in describing what had happened.

Various financial models, using different variables, all indicated that the airport could be financially independent and cover expected costs under the new regulations, he said. But “the aviation side,” he charged, was unhappy with that conclusion and requested models of other airport scenarios be tested, and caveats included in the report to the town board.

“When none of that succeeded in derailing the report,” he wrote, some committee members adopted the position that financial analysis of the airport after the imposition of rules restricting traffic there is currently impossible.

“This is, of course, absurd,” he wrote.

“In fact, almost every plausible (and implausible) outcome can easily be modeled for its financial effects. But the scenarios that would have shown the airport as not financially sustainable would have been so obviously outlandish as to defeat their purpose — to make the airport under the proposed rules appear unsustainable. Hence, they insisted upon no report at all.”

In a release on Tuesday, Loren Riegelhaupt, who heads an aviation group called Friends of the East Hampton Airport, cast the situation differently. “Ongoing concerns about the true economic impacts of these bans forced the committee to admit they could not reach consensus,” he said. He called the situation “a major blow to the town board’s plan to ban flights,” and called on the town board “to postpone any vote on these restrictions so the people of East Hampton can get a full and fair analysis of what these restrictions mean for our community, property taxes, local businesses, and economy.”

In the face of the stalemate, the noise-abatement subcommittee submitted its own findings to the board. “We believe the financial facts remain clear,” Mr. Gruber told the board in a submission accompanied by a spreadsheet.

The group “had previously opined that the airport can be self-sustaining without need of F.A.A. grants or taxpayer subsidies. That remains the case,” he wrote — even factoring in the capital improvement and litigation costs.

The rules as proposed, he said, would result in an approximately 43-percent decline in airport income, which could be made up in a variety of ways, among them raising landing fees and establishing new revenue sources such as paid airport parking and new leases of airport land.

With a 2014 total of 25,646 “operations” (takeoffs or landings), traffic at the airport increased by 23 percent over 2013, Jemille Charlton, its manager, told the board Tuesday. Helicopter traffic increased by 47 percent. Of the total number of operations, the majority, 18,820, involved transient aircraft rather than locally based planes.

Also this week, Congressman Lee Zeldin sent a letter to Michael P. Huerta, the F.A.A. administrator, asking the F.A.A. to immediately address “the pervasive problem of excessive helicopter noise” over the East End. The F.A.A., he said, should enforce minimum altitude rules and institute standards regarding the transition points where helicopters veer off a mandated over-water route along the North Shore toward their destinations.

Congressman Zeldin, vice chairman of the House subcommittee on aviation, also asked that the F.A.A. abide by a 2012 letter in which it promised former Congressman Tim Bishop that, for as long as East Hampton Town continued to decline F.A.A. grants, the federal agency would not, under particular circumstances, move against the town for instituting airport use restrictions designed to mitigate noise.

East Hampton Town

Contractor License Crackdown

A crackdown on unlicensed contractors working in East Hampton Town resulted in the arraignment on Monday of a dozen workers who had failed to obtain or carry with them the required town license.

Those who obtained the license after being cited were fined $350. Those who had licenses but not at the work site, as is required, got a $200 fine. The cases of several defendants were adjourned to a later court date, and those of others were transferred from the name of an employee that was cited to the business owner. Those who fail to rectify the situation face a $1,000 fine.

In a statement this week, Betsy Bambrick, the town’s director of ordinance enforcement, said that East Hampton’s home improvement contractors law and licensing requirement is designed to protect both homeowners and responsible contractors. The department will continue its focus on bringing unlicensed contractors into compliance, she said.

Septic Upgrade Incentives

Following a request to New York State by the East End Supervisors and Mayors Association for funding to help homeowners upgrade sub-par septic systems in order to better protect groundwater and surface water bodies, East Hampton Town’s attorneys are designing a septic upgrade incentive program.

Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell announced Tuesday that, though the source of funding is still unclear, the town is working out the details of the incentive program. It is likely to be similar to a successful program employed by East Hampton some years ago, which provided rebates to homeowners to help cover the cost of in-ground oil tank removal.

In a letter to state legislators last month, the group of East End elected officials said that water pollution from nitrogen in wastewater is at “near crisis” levels, and asked for $100 million to provide rebates and no-interest loans to help property owners install enhanced septic treatment systems that better reduce nitrogen emissions.

A lawsuit against East Hampton Town, filed a year ago by a privately held drug treatment program in the Northwest Woods neighborhood, was dismissed on March 2 by a federal court judge in Central Islip. The judge, Leonard D. Wexler, found that Safe Harbor Retreat L.L.C. should have undergone a permitting process outlined in the zoning code before bringing the suit.

Safe Harbor charged that the town had violated the Americans With Disabilities Act and the Fair Housing Act, in that it discriminated against patients in drug treatment. It also asserted that the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals had exceeded its authority in creating definitions for words like “clinic” and “transient,” which are not defined in the code; that board members had ignored submitted materials, had “denied Safe Harbor’s request for a reasonable accommodation,” and had “arbitrarily, capriciously, and illegally reclassified the premises.”

Safe Harbor was contesting a June 2013 decision by the appeals board upholding a building inspector’s determination that the facility, on a 3.9-acre former residence on Bull Run, was not being used as a family dwelling, but as a semi-public facility. The neighborhood is zoned for residential use.

In 2010, before it began operating and based on information given him by its founder, Joe McKinsey, and others, the inspector, Tom Preiato, had determined that the facility would function as “a family unit” under the code. That finding caused Safe Harbor “to have expended significant funds and effort to establish the premises as a community residence for individuals in recovery from drug and alcohol addiction,” the suit had claimed.

It opened for business Nov. 30, 2010. Three years later, the zoning board voted 4-1 to uphold Mr. Preiato’s new determination, in which he reversed his 2010 finding. The dissenting vote was cast by Don Cirillo. The majority agreed that “Safe Harbor’s use of the premises was not consistent with the use as a residence only,” and that it was being operated as a “short-term treatment facility and not as a residence, as was initially represented to the town.”

“Rather than seek a special permit, Safe Harbor filed this action,” Judge Wexler wrote. “Safe Harbor has not applied for a special permit, let alone received a final decision on that application.”

Joseph N. Campolo, a Ronkonkoma lawyer representing Safe Harbor, said his clients would appeal the decision “and are absolutely confident we will win.”

Since the lawsuit was filed, Safe Harbor has opened a second facility, on Fort Pond Boulevard in Springs.

Senator Charles Schumer spoke out this week about the utility poles installed by PSEG Long Island throughout East Hampton and across Long Island, calling a chemical used to treat the wooden poles “highly toxic” and “known to cause serious health issues,” and urging the federal Environmental Protection Agency to investigate its use immediately. He demanded that PSEG suspend the use of the chemical, penta, on utility poles, and halt further pole installation until the E.P.A. investigation is complete.

At least 95,000 utility poles on Long Island, he said, have been treated with the chemical, whose full name is pentachlorophenol. It has been banned in numerous countries worldwide but is still allowed for industrial applications in the United States.

Given the risks, Senator Schumer said in a written statement, “more caution and research is needed to ensure residents [and] children are not exposed to [the] highly toxic chemical,” which has been tied to neurological, respiratory, kidney, and immune system disorders. Because the treated poles “can be found in populated areas like yards, parks, around schools, and around local businesses, it is critical that they be free of toxins like penta,” which has caused “serious concern” that it could leach into groundwater.

Residents of East Hampton along a six-mile route from East Hampton Village to Amagansett, along which PSEG has installed new poles and high-voltage electricity transmission wires, have been raising the same concerns. Long Island Businesses for Responsible Energy, an East Hampton-based group, is suing PSEG over the installations. 

“East Hampton has been sitting with these toxic-laden pentachlorophenol poles less than 25 feet from children’s bedrooms for a year and two months now. These poles need to be pulled now at PSEG’s or the government’s expense,” Rebecca Singer and Helene Forst, two of LIBFRE’s principals, said in a statement this week.

They expressed dismay at the State Health Department’s response to letters outlining their concerns and other submissions, including expert testimony about the dangers of penta and the results of two separate soil tests around East Hampton Village poles that showed elevated chemical levels exceeding government environmental standards. The tests were commissioned privately by LIBFRE and by East Hampton Town and Village.

The state has found that “the elevated pentachlorophenol soil concentrations are localized in areas directly adjacent to the poles,” wrote Thomas B. Johnson, a Health Department scientist, “and that people are unlikely to contact substantial amounts of soil with sufficient duration and frequency to result in a significant risk for adverse health effects.” The new poles have been installed along narrow streets in close proximity to many houses, LIBFRE has pointed out.

Similar poles and lines have been installed in the Town of North Hempstead, also prompting an outcry. At a press conference Monday in Manhasset, Senator Schumer was joined by North Hempstead Town Supervisor Judi Bosworth and a number of Long Island residents.

“We need the E.P.A., which is the authority on testing chemicals and health risks they pose, to conduct a thorough and comprehensive federal study on penta’s long-term effects, and we don’t need any more delay. We need them to do it now,” Mr. Schumer said.

Recent studies on the effects of pentachlorophenol conducted by private firms have been “narrow in scope and insufficient,” he said. “We need a broad, public, and strong investigation.”

According to the E.P.A., said the senator, the short-term inhalation of penta, which is considered a carcinogen, has been known to have toxic effects.

“PSEG Long Island is relying on the current E.P.A. registration determination, which permits the use of penta in utility poles,” Jeffrey Weir, a company spokesman, said this week. “Penta-treated poles have a long, proven track record for withstanding the elements and protecting utility workers who work on these poles every day, and continue to be the preferred choice among utilities across the country. Utility poles are treated with preservatives so that they can withstand the elements and last for decades.”

  “If the E.P.A. issues a revised determination, of course we will respond and comply accordingly,” he said.

Months after blueprints were drawn and its proposed location delineated, and well over a decade after discussions began, construction of a public restroom in the municipal parking lot north of Main Street in Amagansett is once again on hold.

At a meeting of the hamlet’s citizens advisory committee on Monday, East Hampton Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell told the gathering that the town encountered a stumbling block when it was discovered that a septic system it had allowed a restaurant to build on town-owned property in 2009 is not far enough from a private well on an adjacent property.

‘If that well or septic is not moved, we have no bathroom.’

— Kieran Brew, ACAC Chairman

While the proposed restroom meets all of the Suffolk County Health Department’s requirements, Mr. Cantwell told the committee, the location of the restaurant’s septic system is in violation of those county regulations, precluding the Health Department from issuing a certificate of occupancy for a restroom on any part of the town-owned parking lot.

In 2009, Mr. Cantwell explained, the town board granted an easement over its property for installation of a septic system serving the restaurant at 231 Main Street, then called Mezzaluna. The septic system, whose location had already been approved by the Health Department, was installed in conjunction with interior renovations at the restaurant. However, Mr. Cantwell said Monday, the survey accompanying the restaurant’s application to the Health Department failed to disclose the existence of a well on the adjacent property at 247 Main Street owned by Tina Piette, an attorney whose office is located there. The restaurant’s septic system does not meet the required setback from the well.

The Health Department, he said, “will issue a permit to construct the restroom facility but not to occupy or use it” until Ms. Piette’s property is connected to the public water system, which, in the department’s view, is the town’s responsibility. “They have asserted that the town would be responsible for providing public water for her building in order for the restroom to be opened.”

That, he said, “is a major stumbling block. The town is not going to pay to connect private property to public water. In fact, we think it would be illegal.” He said that the town would revisit the easement granted to Mezzaluna to determine if any terms or conditions had been violated. Also to be reviewed, he said, is the 2014 site plan approval for an application submitted by Ms. Piette, who intends to redevelop her property with a two-story structure comprising commercial and residential space.

Ms. Piette, who opposes the restroom’s proposed location, directly behind the Amagansett Library, said she was surprised by the development. “I had no idea until just now that this was all connected to the bathroom,” she said at the meeting. “To hear at this meeting now, for the first time, that a C of O for the bathroom would be tied to my application for site plan review, which has already been granted but may now further be reviewed, is quite disconcerting at so many levels it’s not even funny.”

Should she tear down the existing structure on her property and construct a new one, she said, “I would hook up to the public’s water. But that’s not happening this summer or next year. It’s when and if I have an investor willing to come in and do this project.”

As to the restroom’s proposed location, that “was not discussed in any way until October of last year,” she said, pointing out that a 2009 County Health Department approval for a public restroom was for a different location than the one chosen last year by a subcommittee of the citizens group.

Mr. Cantwell expressed frustration over the latest obstacle to a project that he has been working on with the committee since he began attending its meetings in January 2014. The Health Department, he said, “issued a permit and authorized Mezzaluna to locate the septic where it is today. Yet they will not take any action with respect to that septic system.”

Alex Walter, Mr. Cantwell’s executive assistant, echoed that frustration on Tuesday. “Why Suffolk County is holding us responsible just because it’s our parking lot, after they gave the permit, and we didn’t issue the easement until after they gave the permit . . . . We’re struggling to figure out why they’re holding us responsible,” he said.

Ms. Piette has to abandon her well, Mr. Cantwell said, and connect to the public water supply for the restroom project to proceed. But that is a business decision that is hers to make, and it relates to the timeline of her construction project. “We can’t control that,” he said. Alternatively, he said, the restaurant’s septic system would have to be moved to a conforming location.

Kieran Brew, the committee’s chairman, suggested that all parties try to find an acceptable solution. He proposed relocating the restroom toward the rear of the lot, “and then, since it seems like the responsibility for this current situation was a faulty application — assuming it was an honest mistake by Mezzaluna — if they would pay to have Tina’s water line run . . . we might have a restroom.” The building housing the restaurant, now called Sotto Sopra, is owned by Randy Lerner, who holds several properties in Amagansett, including Amagansett Square.

“If that well or septic is not moved, we have no bathroom,” Mr. Brew summarized. “That’s the reality we’re dealing with, and it means we still have a problem that needs to be solved.” 

A lawsuit that challenged the adoption of a master plan for East Hampton Airport in 2010 has been dismissed by a federal appeals court. Brought by the Committee to Stop Airport Expansion, the suit centered on aircraft noise, which was the impetus for the four proposed airport use restrictions that drew a crowd to a town board hearing at LTV Studios in Wainscott last Thursday. The hearing is reported on separately.

The master plan, which is still in force, was adopted by the East Hampton Town Board during the administration of Supervisor Bill Wilkinson. It relied on a generic environmental impact statement, which found there was “no significant noise outside of the airport itself.” The lawsuit disputed that finding, claiming that the noise averaging system used to reach that conclusion was flawed and that the environmental assessment fell short of the requirements of town law and the State Environmental Quality Review Act.

With the court case pending, the current town administration undertook aircraft noise studies and the analysis needed to develop the proposed restrictions, which would limit takeoffs and landings by helicopters and other aircraft designated as “noisy” and impose a nighttime curfew.

Consequently, “. . . the fact is that the court’s decision has already been overtaken by events and is, as a practical matter, irrelevant,” Pat Trunzo III, the chairman of the Committee to Stop Airport Expansion, said in a press release. In any case, he noted, the town is no longer fully bound by F.A.A. airport regulations and its noise threshold.

In settlement of a prior lawsuit the committee had brought against the F.A.A., the agency agreed that after 2014 it would no longer enforce several “grant assurances,” or agreements binding East Hampton to particular airport mandates enacted when the town took federal grants.

“Having recovered control over its own airport due to the efforts of the Committee to Stop Airport Expansion, the Town of East Hampton is now poised to adopt meaningful airport access restrictions to control noise and for the first time in decades deliver substantial relief to the noise afflicted across the East End,” Mr. Trunzo wrote.