As fall semesters loom, the annual exodus of college students from the South Fork has begun. For the area’s businesses, particularly restaurants and resorts, this presents a yearly challenge, for which the timing could hardly be worse.    The three-plus months between the Memorial Day and Labor Day weekends constitute the span in which seasonal business owners earn a majority of their income. While many open before Memorial Day and stay open through Columbus Day or even Thanksgiving, July and August are crucial to a successful year, and the students’ mass departure leaves businesses shorthanded at the very time they are most needed.

    Service businesses, which are particularly reliant on college-age summer staff, are especially vulnerable. Some cope better than others.

    “It’s so standard and classic that I can predict it,” says Andrea Terry-Anthony, co-owner of the Lobster Roll (Lunch) on Napeague. “The faces change year to year, but the issues don’t.”

    “Pretty much the whole front-of-house staff” are college students or about to be, she said. “You just extend yourself into the positions,” she explained. She and two business partners  “try to fill in the positions that people leave by extending our responsibilities.”

    The restaurants at Gosman’s Dock in Montauk, which stay open through Columbus Day, have long relied on college students from this country and Ireland, and, in recent years, Central and Eastern European countries. Faced with the annual loss of staff in the weeks before Labor Day, management has adopted some new hiring policies.

    “One thing we’ve learned over the years when we’re hiring new staff is to really get a date of when their last day of work will be, because in years past we’ve ended up getting caught without any staff at all,” said Michael Gosman. “That can really hurt. So one thing that is a prerequisite to even working here is their going-back date. Particularly with Irish students — of course we love to hire them, but they seemingly go back earlier every season. You get to the second week of August and they start saying, ‘Today is my last day,’ or, ‘I want to travel before I go back.’ So we actually make them show us their itineraries and flight tickets, and will even make copies of them and say, ‘You said you’d be here until Labor Day.’ ”

    If necessary, said Mr. Gosman, “You just make do with less. You do whatever it takes to get through the day. If that means I’ve got to wait tables or bartend, that’s just par for the course.”

    Not everyone is honest about their plans. “We had two Irish students that started at the beginning of June and were supposed to stay until Sept. 10,” said Bozena Krasnicki, general manager of the Oceanside Beach Resort in Montauk. “That’s what they told us when we hired them. Near the end of July, they came to me on a Friday and told me they were leaving on Sunday. One of them said she had a school program in Paris and the other didn’t want to stay by herself.”

    “Actually, one customer, who stays with us often, said she saw them in New York City. It was a shock, at the beginning of August, a very busy month, and it was big trouble for us.”

    Finding people to fill the void can be difficult, Ms. Krasnicki said. “To find someone to work just for the month, there’s no students available because they already have a job. We have to cover their job and ours.”

    European students, however, can be a blessing for such businesses. The fall semester at Charles University in Prague begins nearer to October than August, and Theresa Prochazka, 21, and Michala Topalova, 24, have pledged to remain at Gosman’s Clam Bar through Sept. 10.

    The women came to Montauk and Gosman’s through Alternative Travel and Educational Products, a Prague-based agency that arranged, for a fee, both visas and employment. “You already have the contract before you come here,” Ms. Prochazka explained. “You’ve already written your signature.”

    Told that Gosman’s was lucky to have employees with such a convenient schedule, Ms. Topalova was quick to reply, “We know. It’s why we can work here, why we can stay here.”

    “It’s quite lucky for us,” said Ms. Prochazka, “that [American students] have to leave! That’s the reason we can come.”

    At the Montauk Yacht Club, Jamie Pollina, the assistant front office manager, estimated a loss of nearly one-fourth of the staff of about 200 as Labor Day nears. “Long hours” is the consequence, he said. Employees are often reassigned from other departments to cover the mass departure at the resort, which remains open until Thanksgiving.

    The Yacht Club management tries to accommodate students, at least when there’s a good reason. Jeff Boesse, 25, a front desk agent, will leave tomorrow and return to Johnson State College in Vermont, where he is a hospitality and tourism management major. When he was hired, he said, “they asked me to give them a timeframe. Like any seasonal employer, they would like you to stay through the season, but they understand that this is an internship for me. They’re willing to work with me, since this is school-related.”

    At East Hampton Point restaurant, the general manager, Jacqueline LaBorne, is proactive. With some 45 percent of the staff of college age — several of them already gone — and with weddings and other catered events booked well into fall, she started hiring and training new staff before the student exodus.

    “I’ve been doing this for a long time, so I know people from Westhampton, Southampton, East Hampton, Sag Harbor,” she said. “Among those I’m going to be using on the weekends [after Labor Day], a lot of them have other careers, yet weekends always seem to work out for them to do catering.”

    Also, she said, “We have a lot of good people that work here and live here locally. They have friends, and putting the word out through them has really been beneficial.”

    Ms. Terry-Anthony of the Lobster Roll appeals to employees for “friends, sisters, brothers, anybody that wants to pick up some shifts.” Ultimately, though, the annual back-to-college flight translates to more blood, sweat, and, perhaps, tears for those who remain.

    “It’s hard,” said Ms. Terry-Anthony, “because customers’ expectations don’t change. They’re not interested in the problems of running a restaurant, nor should they be. Not only are we short-staffed, but then you have the normal things that come up, like somebody calling in sick. It’s very stressful, but we somehow always get through. You have to rise to the occasion.”

 

    A sea of Nantucket red, frosted plum, and Tiffany blue funneled through the exit Friday after the East Hampton Village Zoning Board of Appeals adjourned its hearing on the Maidstone Club’s expanded golf course irrigation system. The club had half a dozen experts and engineers at the hearing with posters and documents detailing how the project will not harm Hook Pond or emit detectable noise from the correspondent pump house, but none of them spoke on Friday.

    “We weren’t aware that you were going to bring experts,” the board’s chairman, Andrew Goldstein, said when the club’s attorney, David Eagan, offered to have them speak. “It’s premature. Does anyone have any questions for the experts?” The other board members shook their heads and murmured in the negative.

    The Maidstone Club has two golf courses — an 18-hole west course and a 9-hole east course — whose tees and greens are watered by an irrigation system installed in 1979. The club would like to also add irrigation to all 27 fairways and is planning a complete overhaul of the existing irrigation system, which means installing new piping, adding a third well to the property, building a pump house, and creating a .65-acre holding pond, hidden from sight by trees and shrubs.

    While the board would not hear from the club’s experts on Friday, they did allow Mr. Eagan to introduce Emil Henry, the president of the Maidstone Club, who said there were misconceptions about the project that the club’s board wanted to address. The 121-year-old private club has 480 members.

    “I’m not a lawyer, or a scientist,” said Mr. Henry. “It is important to me to tell the board exactly why we’re irrigating, although most of it doesn’t relate to underlying legal issues.” He explained to the board that the Maidstone’s golf courses are links courses, which are typically hard and fast, and that their intention is not to create lush, unnatural conditions. He said that almost all courses of similar caliber to those at Maidstone are irrigated.

    He reminded the board that the Maidstone Club is consistently ranked in the 100 best golf courses in the world and that it would be in the club’s best interest, too, to preserve the pond. “The new irrigation system will reduce runoff risk,” Mr. Henry said. “The fertilizer we spread would be absorbed into the ground immediately, rather than run off into Hook Pond as it does during a heavy rain following a dry spell.”

    “We’ve been studying this for five to six years, and our board is satisfied that there will be no impact on the environment,” Mr. Henry said. “As far as the pump house goes, we are committed to ensuring that neighbors will see nothing and hear nothing.”

    After Mr. Henry finished, he gave the lectern to Greg Greenwald, an acoustics expert at SoundSense, who said that in his analysis, the three pumps would be inaudible from more than 100 feet away. (The nearest neighbors are 250 feet away.) Just for good measure, he said, SoundSense incorporated vinyl sound dampeners that would line the interior of the pump house.

    Despite its efforts, many residents are not assuaged by the Maidstone’s assertion that there will be little or no environmental consequence. Kathy Cunningham, executive director of the Village Preservation Society of East Hampton, spoke at both prior meetings on the application and again on Friday. “It takes 20 years to assess the pollutants in the aquifer,” she said, urging the zoning board to take a conservative approach in its decision.

    Linda James, who has lived on Hook Pond for several years, has called the club’s studies “dubious assumptions.” A member of the Maidstone Club, the Hook Pond Association, and conservationist groups, she said that the pond is already impaired, based on her observation of algae blooms, reduced water levels, and the fact that there are only carp and no bass remaining in it.

    Stephen Angel, an attorney for the Schulhof and Olshan families, who live closest to the proposed pumping station and are most worried about noise levels emanating from the pump house, asked on Friday that the board require detailed environmental review of the proposal, noting that it is not the club’s responsibility but the zoning board’s “to control the discourse in this application” — a statement that Mr. Eagan quickly refuted.

    Under state environmental law, the zoning board can mandate that the club prepare a draft environmental impact statement — a detailed analysis of effects on air, land, water, animals, plants, noise, and more. Conversely, if the zoning board is satisfied with the club’s record, it may decide that such detailed review is not required.

    According to Linda Riley, the village attorney, the state has decided against requiring an environmental impact statement. However, she said, “Our village code can be stricter.”

    The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation has already granted the Maidstone Club a Long Island well permit for its third well, which will source the new irrigation pond, and a freshwater wetlands permit, needed due to its close proximity to Hook Pond. In June, Evelyn Lipper, M.D., and her attorneys filed a petition with the D.E.C. to suspend both permits, asserting that the club made misstatements in its application to the D.E.C. for a diversion of water permit. That petition was recently denied, but on Friday, Mr. Goldstein and Mr. Eagan debated the point.

    “There is a box on the application that asked whether another government agency has approval authority in this matter,” Mr. Goldstein said. “You did not indicate that this board also has approval authority.” Mr. Eagan, eager to move on, said that the diversion of water “is not clearly a village issue, respectfully.”

    The question of whether the state or the village will lead review of the project remains to be answered. “We’ve sent a letter of coordination to the D.E.C.,” Mr. Goldstein said, referring to a July 31 correspondence requesting lead agency status in this matter. “They have 30 days to respond.” The body that assumes lead agency status would review an environmental impact statement, if one is required.

    “The D.E.C. has only about three staff members assigned to Suffolk County. It’s unlikely they would want lead agency over a project of this magnitude,” Ms. Riley said.

    Regardless of who takes the lead on environmental review, the club still needs land use permits and variances from the village before it can move forward. As Mr. Goldstein said during the second hearing on the project earlier this year, “This will be a lengthy process.”

    The hearing will continue on Sept. 14.

Gregg Saunders, a real estate entrepreneur who lived in Sagaponack, was killed in a head-on crash with a 2010 Audi station wagon that swerved into his lane on Montauk Highway, just east of Cove Hollow Road, shortly before noon Thursday.



East Hampton Village police said that Mr. Saunders, 55, was driving a 2012 Prius in the eastbound lane when a westbound Audi driven by Benjamin Rechler, 19, of Brookville, suddenly swerved into his path. According to East Hampton Village Police Chief Gerard Larsen, Mr. Rechler had reached into the rear of the Audi to adjust a surfboard that had shifted.



Firefighters from the East Hampton Fire Department's heavy rescue team had to cut Mr. Saunders' Prius open to allow medical workers to get to him. He was quickly transferred into an Amagansett ambulance and rushed to Southampton Hospital, where he was pronounced dead upon arrival.



Mr. Rechler and his passenger, Taylor Frank, 17, also of Brookville, suffered minor injuries and were taken in an East Hampton ambulance to Southampton Hospital, where they were treated and released, police said.



Two other vehicles collided when their drivers tried to avoid the crash in which Mr. Saunders was killed. A westbound van had braked suddenly to avoid the collision and was struck from behind by another car. The drivers and passengers of these vehicles were uninjured.



Mr. Saunders had been lauded earlier this year by the East Hampton Town Planning Board for his work on a 17,500-square-foot "hub" store that was scheduled to begin construction this fall on a Wainscott site occupied by a temporary Whole Foods market.



"It was an unfortunate accident," Chief Larsen said Friday. "The police, the ambulance crews, and the fire department did everything they could to save him."



The chief stressed that there was no alcohol or drugs involved and that no criminal charges have been filed.



Mr. Rechler was issued summonses for crossing over the double yellow line and failure to maintain his lane.

 

     A late-morning crash on Montauk Highway near Green Hollow Road in East Hampton Village Thursday left one man dead. According to East Hampton Village Police Chief Gerard Larsen, two vehicles struck head-on, with two other vehicles  colliding as they tried to avoid the crash.



Link: Police release additional details.



     One of the vehicles involved appeared to be a small sport-utility vehicle. Its two passengers suffered minor injuries. At least one of the S.U.V.'s occupants was taken by East Hampton ambulance to Southampton Hospital for examination.



   The other vehicle, which was a blue sedan, was so damaged it was difficult to tell what make it was. The driver of the second vehicle was alone in the car, and suffered severe injuries. According to East Hampton Fire Chief Tom Bono, the emergency workers had to cut him out of the car. He was taken by Amagansett ambulance to Southampton Hospital.



            Police closed Montauk Highway in both directions following the accident and expected to reopen the road around 5 p.m.



—



      On Friday morning, East Hampton Village police identified the man killed as Gregg Saunders, 55, of Sagaponack. Additional details will be forthcoming. (Updated Friday, Aug. 10, 10:53 a.m.)

    The East End Dunes Residents Association, which represents Napeague homeowners on land adjacent to a 38-acre oceanfront tract owned by the town, asked the East Hampton Town Board on Tuesday to designate most of the site as a nature preserve.

    In a formal application, the association nominated the property for the designation. Should that occur, a spokesman for the group said, the association would donate $25,000 to the town within five business days. The spokesman, Mike Sterlacci, said the money could go to the creation of a management plan for the preserve and to help pay the costs of stewardship, such as the clearing of invasive plants.

    With crowding at town beaches a topic this summer, Town Councilwoman Theresa Quigley has revived discussion of new, public bathing beaches. After Mr. Sterlacci made his presentation, Ms. Quigley said, “I personally have a problem with neighbors contributing money for an adjoining preserve to ensure that nobody else gets on it, because it smacks of exclusivity, It smacks of taking ownership of it in your heart.”

     The town bought the property, just west of the Lobster Roll restaurant, for approximately $8 million 12 years ago. At the time it also swapped some land with the restaurant’s owners, envisioning a parking area and wooden walkway leading over the dunes to the beach. The town has been unable, however, to get permission for that from the State Department of Environmental Conservation.

    The group had appeared before the board in October following a discussion about using part of the property for a parking lot for a new, lifeguarded beach. Members of the group voiced concerns about traffic and the potential for environmental damage.

    On Tuesday, however, Mr. Sterlacci told the board that the site meets seven of eight criteria listed in the town code for designation as a nature preserve. They include the existence of freshwater or saltwater wetlands or ponds, habitats for endangered, threatened, or rare species, geological features such as bluffs or dunes, or “outstanding examples of natural communities.” The code requires the Town Planning or Natural Resources Departments to determine if a property meets those criteria.

    If so, the town board must hold a public hearing on the designation within 45 days, and it may then dedicate “part, all, or none of the town-owned property discussed” as a nature preserve.

    Once declared a nature preserve, a property may not be cleared or improved without a public hearing first taking place, unless, according to the code, the work is to “enhance educational or wilderness experiences” or to “provide opportunities that facilitate the purposes” outlined in a management plan for the site. A majority-plus-one vote of the board is required to proceed with any work discussed at a hearing or to lease or sell nature preserve property.

    Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson asked Mr. Sterlacci at the meeting what the association envisions should the town make the nature preserve designation. “Does that in your mind preclude making it a public beach?” he asked. “And when we say it is a public beach, that means parking, lifeguards, bathrooms.” Mr. Sterlacci replied that the town would be free to pursue any allowable avenues.

    Later in the meeting, Mr. Sterlacci was asked by Mr. Wilkinson if the group would be willing to make the $25,000 donation if it were to be used at another town nature preserve. He said that was possible.

    The board also discussed the possibility of selling naming rights for town assets such as nature preserves after Mr. Wilkinson told the board that someone, whom he declined to name, had approached him about naming the Napeague site.

    Excavation for a stormwater drainage basin being built by the town off Route 114 in East Hampton to alleviate severe flooding in a nearby neighborhood was halted this week when it was discovered that the property is agricultural land for which the county owns the development rights.

    The project lacks Suffolk County and State Department of Environmental Conservation permits and should have been reviewed by the county farmland committee, which discussed the situation at a meeting on Tuesday night.

    A “big concern,” according to Katherine Stark, the chief of staff for Suffolk Legislator Jay Schneiderman, who attended the meeting, was the disposition of the topsoil being dug up — prime, highly rated agricultural soils, Mr. Schneiderman said Tuesday. Besides permission from the farmland committee, Ms. Stark said, the town should have obtained a D.E.C. mining permit for excavation of the amount of soil that has been removed. In addition, before approving such a project, the committee, which includes a member from the county soil and water conservation district, would have examined the proposed placement of the sump in terms of potential erosion.

    The county could assess penalties of up to $5,000 a day, but, Mr. Schneiderman said, “I don’t think that’s going to occur in this case.” County officials could, however, require the town to replace the soils and restore the property to its original condition or ask the town to deed an equivalent property to the county, “because you have an area that the taxpayers paid to preserve as farmland that’s not going to be used as farmland,” the legislator said.

    No determination was made at the committee meeting Monday night. Among those who attended were John Jilnicki, the town attorney, Tom Talmage, the town engineer, and representatives of Sidney B. Bowne and Son, an engineering company that was paid $35,100 to design the project, prepare and review bids, and obtain permits.

    The project was spearheaded by Councilwoman Theresa Quigley. Keith Grimes, the contracter hired by the town for the project, has been digging the hole at the site, which has now been abandoned.

    According to a May resolution hiring Mr. Grimes, he was to be paid $293,000 for the work. That bid, the lowest of “at least five” from different companies, according to the town purchasing agent, included Mr. Grimes taking the topsoil, and was chosen over a $321,000 option that called for spreading the excavated soil at the property.

    Last September, Elizabeth Fonseca granted the town a drainage easement on the property. However, Ms. Stark said that Real Property Tax Service Agency records show the owner of record as the Richard Cornuelle 2010 Marital Trust. Nonetheless, the previous property owner, J. Kaplan, had sold the development rights to the county in 1985, precluding any future grants of easements. The county has ordered an examination into the chain of title to the underlying ownership of the property, Ms. Stark said.

    “The homeowners in Hansom Hills have been suffering for years with the massive flooding destroying their homes, flooding their streets, basements and pools,” Ms. Quigley said in an e-mail yesterday. “The farmers have been losing prime agriculture soil as it has washed across the highway with the surging waters, and all of us who drive along Route 114 have been impacted by the hazardous conditions caused by the waters flooding the road.”

    “The recharge basin has been contemplated since at least 2001, and after all these years, it is finally almost a possibility due to the generosity of the landowner who unquestioningly signed off on allowing the town to install a recharge basin,” she wrote. “The fact that the process has been delayed yet again is disappointing, but I hope only a delay and not a permanent obstacle to seeing this much needed and long overdue fix to a hazardous and damaging situation,” Ms. Quigley said.

    Randy Parsons, a former town councilman, said Tuesday that he had noticed the excavation as he went to and from his office at the Nature Conservancy headquarters close to the site. “We drive by it every day,” he said. “The construction started, and in the back of my mind I was kind of thinking about the county agricultural review board.” He also thought, he said, about provisions in the town code requiring excavation permits and barring the removal of prime agricultural soils from farmland.

    “I saw huge quantities of topsoil being trucked away,” Mr. Parsons said. “They kept digging deeper, taking more topsoil out,” Mr. Parsons said.

    He said that in the course of other business with a county contact, he asked about the final design of the sump. “And that was when they said, ‘What sump?’ “ he said.

    “I think it’s important that these programs are respected,” Mr. Parsons said of the development rights purchase program, through which the county and other municipal entities pay property owners to eliminate the potential to develop agricultural land, preserving it as farmland. “It’s public money. It’s important that the public investment and development rights restrictions are respected,” he said.

    Mr. Schneiderman said Tuesday that he supports the idea of a sump to provide a solution to the flooding in the area, which regularly fills the Hansom Hills subdivision across Route 114 and surrounding areas with deep water, something he said he remembers well from his days as town supervisor. Officials have been seeking a solution to the problem since then.

    The water runs across the farm fields stretching all the way from Long Lane, he said. “I don’t think it’s a bad solution,” he said of a recharge basin at the site in question.

    Both Ms. Quigley and Mr. Schneiderman said that the recharge basin, by stemming flooding, would help to prevent runoff and soil loss.

    “At the end of the day I don’t think anyone’s acting in bad faith,” Mr. Schneiderman said. “They’re trying to solve a really perplexing drainage problem.”

    “The county was made aware of this issue last week and we are in the process of reviewing the details. We are working with members of the farmland committee to investigate this issue thoroughly,” Sarah Lansdale, the county director of planning, said through Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone’s press office. 

      The town has been asked to submit an application to the county farmland committee, which will then begin to address the issues raised by the project, Ms. Stark said. The subject will be on the agenda at the committee’s next meeting on Sept. 25.

    Beach driving, the East Hampton Town Trustees told the East Hampton Town Board on Tuesday in no uncertain terms, is in the trustees’ jurisdiction, and, on bay beaches where it is now allowed, it will continue.

    The board’s talk of curtailing beach driving at a July 10 meeting in Montauk, following complaints about vehicles clogging some beaches, alarmed the trustees as well as members of the Montauk Surfcasting Association, who also attended Tuesday’s meeting.

    Stephanie Forsberg, the trustees’ assistant clerk, said the ancient body “hope the board will honor the trustees’ jurisdiction . . .” and not incur the cost to taxpayers of litigation.

    Jay Blatt, representing the surfcasters, said that 30 to 40 members of the group regularly drive onto the beach to fish at the Three Mile Harbor channel at Maidstone Park in Springs, an area that was cited as a problem by those concerned about the number of vehicles there.

    “We know what this is about,” Mr. Blatt said. “They don’t want to see trucks on the beach. Ninety-nine percent of the time, that’s what this is about.”

    Some members of Citizens for Access Rights, the beach-driving advocacy group, were also in attendance on Tuesday. The town trustees and the town board are fighting a lawsuit by homeowners prompted by cars and trucks driving along a stretch of ocean beach on Napeague; that suit turns on ownership of a stretch of beach.

    “Personally, I think it’s time for balancing better,” said Councilwoman Theresa Quigley. “Unlimited access for every user group at every time doesn’t work on certain beaches.” However, she said, it was an “error” for the town board to take up “a trustee issue.”

    Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc wondered whether “we have gotten to the point in time where we need to look closely to see if additional regulations need to be put in place.” The complaints about Maidstone, he said, were about the number of vehicles on the inlet beach “during peak bathing hours, [so] that it was detracting from the overall enjoyment of that beach.”

    “We are at a point,” Mr. Van Scoyoc said, “when every summer we have more and more people. They overwhelm some places.”

    “People who fish . . . the people I know are saying that the board right now is trying to fix something that isn’t broke,” Mr. Blatt said. “Where’s the problem?” He said there had been no problems or accidents.

    “There’s still a question, is a particular spot so sensitive . . . that it has nothing to do with driving on the beach,” Supervisor Bill Wilkinson said, adding, as he has before, that he himself is a habitual beach driver and fisherman. But, he said, there are some places that it’s unnecessary to drive, unless one is handicapped.

    “The Maidstone thing is not beach driving,” he had said on July 10. “It’s beach parking.”

    “At what point does a beach become so crowded with vehicles that people can’t enjoy it anymore?” was Mr. Van Scoyoc’s question.

    The trustees, Ms. McNally said Tuesday, “support residents’ privilege to access this beach, including vehicular access.” She noted that the trustees spent $102,000 on dredging the channel there, and used the sand to build up the beach. Because of the compact nature of the sand, she said, it is one of the few places where people in a wheelchair or using walkers can get out of cars and move across the sand.

    “As with other non-bathing beaches, some people choose to use this beach,” she said. “For those who do not want to share the beach with vehicles, we encourage the use of many designated areas where vehicles are not allowed during certain hours during the day.”

    Ed Michels, the head of Harbor Patrol, said at the Montauk meeting that certain beaches, such as a stretch along the bay at the end of Flaggy Hole Road in Springs, where beach driving has prompted complaints, do not have lifeguards and are not designated bathing beaches, though people do swim and sun there. Technically, he said, officers could ticket swimmers there. Board members blanched at that prospect.

    Debra Foster, a former town councilwoman who attended Tuesday’s meeting, pointed to the beach-use issue as one of a number that should be further examined, and repeated her call to the board to hold a public forum on planning topics.

    “We have a beautiful place at the tip of an island only 90 miles from the biggest metropolitan area, maybe, in the world,” she said, “and we have a balance problem, a space problem.”

    “Some decisions are going to have to be made,” she continued. “Everybody who wants to be here and do what they want to do when they want to do it. . . . You have a responsibility to represent us and our health, safety, and welfare.” She called for a long-range planning forum as a good way for officials to hear from the people. “You’ve done it with sensitive topics, and you’ve done it well,” she told the board, referring to forums in the last several years on deer management, septic waste issues, and the economy.

    “I think we’re ready for this conversation,” Ms. Foster said, “rather than having these bursts of staccato concerns about what is generically a sustainability problem.”

 

    “You know the old predicament where it’s gorgeous beach weather, but you just want to post up at a bar and drink? There’s a little secret hidden in Amagansett that solves this age old issue. Drive on Route 27 through Amagansett town and turn right on Indian Wells Highway, park your car when the street ends and hang a right on the beach. Oh, whatever you do, don’t forget to bring a 30-rack of beer. You’re going to need it.”

    Kieran Brew didn’t have to read that post on GuestofaGuest.com to know there would be fireworks at Monday night’s Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee meeting. Mr. Brew, the committee’s new chairman, had seen for himself the recent goings-on at Indian Wells, a residents-parking-only beach that has apparently been taken over on weekends since mid-June by happy hordes of beer-chugging partyers in their late 20s and early 30s.

     Councilwoman Sylvia Overby, the town board liaison to the citizens committee, spoke first, summing up the tenor of the phone complaints she’s been getting: More than 300 people arriving at the beach in buses, vans, and taxicabs, having parked their cars on small streets with no prohibitive signs (Further Court, Gansett and Melissa Lanes), whose residents don’t know what’s hit them. Loud amplified music. Bud Light beer everywhere. Drunken races in the water. Men relieving themselves in the dunes. “It’s no longer a family and locals beach,” one mournful woman told Ms. Overby.

    Some members of the committee were hearing of the issue for the first time, and there were open mouths and audible gasps as the councilwoman spoke. “Don’t they need a mass-gathering permit?” Sheila Okin asked her. The answer was no; no organization, so far as is known, is behind this informal meetup of individuals.

    What about drinking in public? was the next question. Isn’t there a law against it? (To quote Guest of a Guest, “Most partyers on the beach have barely even given their hangover a chance to settle in before cracking open a cold one and beginning the drinking festivities of yet another day.”)

    Yes, there is a law against open containers, said Ms. Overby, “but the police don’t . . . on beaches . . . you know.” She trailed off. “I like to have a glass of wine late in the day with my husband on the beach,” she finished, to knowing nods.

    In fact, the town has no law against drinking on its beaches.

    “They had to put another lifeguard stand [at Indian Wells],” said Joan Tulp, because of the crowds in the water and also because lifeguards have to leave their posts to shoo people away from the dunes.

    “Marine patrol wrote 10 summonses last weekend for urinating in the dunes and said, ‘You’ll get another summons if all the beer cans aren’t gone at the end of the day,’ ” said Mr. Brew, “and they pretty much were. They do appear to clean it up at the end of the day,” he said, around 4:30 p.m.

    He himself may have helped with that, having taken pictures of neglected litter the week before and sent them to Curbed Hamptons, another popular Web site among young summer visitors. Curbed Hamptons posted one of his photos the next day, with a comment: “Friendly reminder: Clean up after yourselves.”

    As to who or what to hold accountable for the invasion, almost everyone in the room had an opinion. Jody Flynn said the taxis were to blame. “They’re all Moonlight taxis from Riverhead,” she said. “They had a bus and two taxis blocking the handicapped access last week. Parking on both sides of Further Court and dripping beer cans as they go.” The Moonlight Taxi and Limo Company in Riverhead is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

    Mr. Brew said he’d talked with Marine Patrol and with Lt. Tom Grenci of the town police about the taxis, “and Tom said he wouldn’t allow them. He chased them off.” One of the worst offenders, Mr. Brew said, was “a silver van with a pirate flag.”

    “It’s bigger than a county bus,” fumed Ms. Flynn.

    Rona Klopman thought a renaissance in share houses, Amagansett’s bete noire all the way back to the ’60s, was the culprit. “There are a lot in my area [Beach Hampton],” she said. “You call code enforcement, they don’t come. They don’t have enough people.”

    Ms. Tulp agreed. “The problem is the share houses,” she said. “I think they know the rules and regulations. Why do you think they take those buses? They know it’s a residents-only beach.”

    Mr. Brew, for his part, credited the Internet for spreading the word. “It went viral,” he said shortly. “Twitter.”

    Michael Cinque, whose son is a lifeguard, suggested that police “start writing open-container tickets, and then it will get on Twitter.” But beer cans are allowed on town beaches, though, perversely, not glasses containing wine or hard liquor.

    Tom Field dissented from the back row, where he always sits, in rumbling bass tones. “Backlash can be a real problem,” he said. “Wouldn’t it be better to go online and say, ‘Hey, guys, here’s what’s going to happen’ ?” Dismissing the idea that share houses were to blame, he added, “We’ve had group houses for years and very rarely have a problem. I’m worried about a blanket cure for everything when 99 out of 100 are not a problem. Don’t tie group homes into this.”

    Mr. Brew was of the same mind. “I would rather not use a shotgun,” he said. “Better catch flies with honey.” Elaborating a few minutes later, he said, “These are mostly Wall Street people, they’ve got the money and they’re spending it here. We need this. You don’t want to shoot a mosquito with a shotgun.”

    “I don’t think it’s a mosquito, I think it’s a giant scorpion,” said Ms. Flynn.

    “I think a lot of homeowners are in situations where they need the money,” said Mr. Brew, who is a real estate agent. “There’s so much inventory in rental houses available just now.” Of the crowds at Indian Wells, he added, “We’d like to think they’re all here to meet somebody. We’d like to think they will, and marry and come back here in five years. I’d like to be friendly.”

    But Ms. Okin persisted. “It feels like Amagansett is under siege. Can’t you just . . . ”

    Mr. Brew interrupted. “We’ll win the battle, but we’ll lose the war,” he said.

    It was unanimously decided after an hour and a half’s back-and-forth that Mr. Brew, as the committee’s chairman, would advise the town board by letter that the committee has “serious concerns about health and safety” at Indian Wells, citing taxis and buses, open containers, parking on nearby streets, and beer bottles underfoot. Mr. Brew also promised to go on Twitter and spread a friendly message about how to behave. “Sending pictures worked,” he said. “There’s no fights.”

    “Not yet,” came a voice.

    “The last thing we want to do is make these people unhappy,” said Mr. Field. “We want to share the place.”

    Councilwoman Overby had the last word. “There’s got to be balance,” she said. “ ‘We want you here, but we want you to care as much as we do.’ ”    

    Indian Wells Beach was also front and center on the agenda when the town board convened the next day for a work session in Montauk. The town’s chief lifeguard, John Ryan Jr., was there; so was Capt. Mike Sarlo of the town police, John Jilnicki, the town attorney, and Ed Michels, chief of Marine Patrol.

    Mr. Jilnicki made it clear that the section of the town code outlawing open alcohol containers in public exempts “any beach not posted by the town as a place where alcoholic consumption is prohibited.” (All the East Hampton Village beaches are so posted, said Larry Cantwell, the village manager.)

    Captain Sarlo said that while the code prohibits the sale of beer on the beach, there is no indication that has been happening. Also, he said, glasses containing alcohol are prohibited, but the code makes no mention of beer cans.

    Mr. Ryan said that one of his biggest concerns was “the music, because it does interfere with the safety of the beach. Lifeguards communicate from stand to stand with whistles or by radio,” he explained, and may not hear each other, or hear someone yelling for help, over the amplified music.

    Mr. Ryan and Councilwoman Theresa Quigley suggested that the town might ban amplified music in “protected areas” (50 yards around the lifeguard stands), but Captain Sarlo and Mr. Michels said existing laws about noise on the beach leave that to the discretion of police. For example, said Mr. Michels, people had come to Indian Wells at first with a generator for music, and Marine Patrol had them put it back in the bus.

    The board briefly discussed the question of buses pulling up and discharging passengers, but agreed that the buses have been using an unloading zone and that they move on when asked to.

    Mr. Michels said the crowds were not “just a bunch of kids running wild” but “New York City stockbrokers” and other professionals who are reasonable at first when asked to comply with the rules, but “two or three beers into diving for the beer can and whatnot,” they are intoxicated and less reasonable. He argued for increased enforcement, saying the situation could not be left to the lifeguards. The Marine Patrol chief said he has two officers on beach duty, one of whom, on an all-terrain vehicle, is assigned to the “western sector” of beaches, which includes Indian Wells, and the other to the eastern sector, from Hither Hills to Montauk. He said the western officer stays around Indian Wells if not dispatched on a call to somewhere else in the sector.

    “We are there as much as we can be there,” Mr. Michels said.

    Captain Sarlo told the board Mr. Michels “cannot just assign someone to Indian Wells Beach eight hours a day, but when they are there, it is improving.”

    “The only way to go beyond what’s being done is to authorize more overtime hours or more staff,” the police captain added.

    Ms. Quigley said she would support hiring one or two additional full-time Marine Patrol officers for Indian Wells, “because that’s where the problem is,” whereupon Supervisor Bill Wilkinson asked Mr. Michels to prepare a proposal for additional staffing and present it to the board, “so we can address it this year.”

    When the East Hampton Town Trustees met later in the day on Tuesday, they too took up the case of the beach blanketeers.

    “The issue is rude behavior, and you can’t legislate against it,” said Diane McNally, the trustee clerk. But public intoxication, urination, and blaring music were another story, trustees agreed. 

    Ms. McNally reminded the board of its most troublesome shortcoming: The trustees manage the beaches, but they have no authority to enforce either their own regulations or those created jointly with the town board. Members complained again that the town board continues to ignore the fact that the trustees have legislative authority over the beaches, under the colonial Dongan patent.

    Deborah Klughers, a trustee who attended the town board session in Montauk earlier in the day, complained that the trustees were not even invited to it, although Indian Wells Beach was on the agenda.

    Joe Bloecker, another trustee, said it was time to bring back elected bay constables who would do nothing other than enforce trustee regulations. The board agreed, and asked John Courtney, their attorney, to draft a referendum to that effect. However, Mr. Michels, the town’s senior harbormaster, said yesterday there was no going back.

With Reporting by Joanne Pilgrim

    The phrase “end of an era” is often heard, but it’s a rare thing to realize through the fog of day-to-day that an era really is gasping its last. The fog clears with time.

    In East Hampton 20 years ago, it was nearly impossible not to see and hear that a significant part of our local heritage was going by the board — not without a fight, and not without great pain.

    In October 1992, Tom Lester, a lifelong bayman and the husband of Town Councilwoman Cathy Lester, died of a heart attack. A week later, his daughter Della Lester received an anonymous letter.

    It read: “Your father was punished for killing bass. Good riddance! He was a pig to slaughter. Billy Joel should join him in hell.”

    She received more hate mail in the weeks that followed. The letters were postmarked Nassau County and bore commemorative sportfishing stamps.

    Hostility between baymen and sportfishermen had been building up for close to 10 years at that point, beginning in 1985, when striped bass were banned from the marketplace after bass spawned in the Hudson River were found to contain dangerous levels of polychlorinated biphenyls. Stripers were declared safe to eat again in 1990, but that same year the haul seine, a semi-circle of net paid off the transom of a dory launched from the ocean beaches, was banned.

    To baymen, the old haul seine, which in early days was hauled back to shore by horses, was the most efficient method of catching striped bass, the “money fish.” But to the ever-growing number of sportfishermen, it had become the engine of anti-conservation, although “conservation” by then was really a code word for getting a larger slice of the state’s striped bass quota.

    The discord between sporties and commercial fishermen. Statistics showed that sportfishermen had landed a half-million pounds of legal-size bass (over 36 inches) the year before, not including another quarter-million pounds that died after being caught and released. By contrast, commercial netters and market hook-and-line fishermen actually harvested less than their 128,000-pound quota that same year, 1989.

    In 1992, the year Tom Lester died, the New York Sportfishing Federation was pushing hard for the state to make striped bass a gamefish only, with the support of Owen Johnson, a state senator from Babylon. In the Town of East Hampton, the fight over striped bass became a civil war that pitted some of Montauk’s charter fishing fleet against their baymen neighbors. It was an angry time.  

    Against this backdrop, the East Hampton Town Baymen’s Association organized a civil disobedience protest, with the enthusiastic support of the town supervisor, Tony Bullock, Councilwoman Lester, East Hampton Village Administrator Larry Cantwell, and State Assemblyman John Behan of Montauk. Billy Joel, whose 1989 hit “Downeaster Alexa” told the story of a bayman regulated out of his inshore bass fishery, raised the profile of the protest.  

    “This stinks out loud. This situation is a product of rank politics and corruption,” Supervisor Bullock said of the ’92 bass laws that continued to ban the haul seine while giving the recreational fishery the lion’s share of the annual bass quota.

    On July 28, 1992, supporters and reporters gathered at Indian Wells Beach in Amagansett to watch Dan King launch his red, white, and blue flag dory into the surf and return with a haul seine containing a number of striped bass. As the protesters, including the participating officials and Mr. Joel, picked bass from the net, state police arrested them.

    The following day, Joe Pintauro’s play “Men’s Lives” opened at the Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor. It was the theater’s very first production and a smash hit. The play was a loose adaptation of Peter Matthiessen’s book of the same name, a history of East Hampton fishing families and their fight to survive. The title was plucked from Sir Walter Scott’s “The Antiquary”: “It’s no fish ye’re buyin’, it’s men’s lives.” On opening night, truer words were never spoken, and tears could not be contained.

    Mr. Pintauro, whose play is being revived at Bay Street starting on Tuesday night, coinciding with the 20th anniversary of the protest, said yesterday that while the real drama and angst of 1992 is gone, the loss of self the baymen felt at the time is being experienced by many today.

    “The present time has entered into the play. The economy, what’s happening to people losing their jobs, their vocation, what they have to offer to the rest of the world, what gave them their sense of being, who they were. Some economic fumble has left many — carpenters, policemen, people facing global change — in an empty state.” 

The ban on haulseining continues to this day. While striped bass are still the money fish, they are taken nowadays in traps, gillnets, or by hook-and-line. The number of full-time baymen remaining in East Hampton Town has shrunk dramatically.

    The East Hampton Town Planning Board held a public hearing June 13 on Ronald Webb’s plan to divide a piece of wooded land on Oakview Highway, East Hampton, just under nine acres in size, and divide it into eight house lots.

    Three neighbors spoke in opposition. One was Steve Cohen, a teacher at East  Hampton High School, who has lived next to the land for 39 years. “I’ve watched this property go from a beautiful, untouched property when Carl Hettiger owned it, now we’ve watched Mr. Webb put his piles of dirt and his piles of rock on the land,” said Mr. Cohen. “It is sad to see what happens to a beautiful piece of property that is really necessary to the community. The public needs this property as an open space. This is probably the most densely populated area in East Hampton. There are so many people, so many kids.”

    Mr. Cohen went on to say that he uses well water, as do many of his neighbors, and that the proposed development would have a major impact on the area’s fresh water, as well as the town’s drinking water.

    “I think the town would love having this property,” he concluded.

    “We, the planning board, have asked the town to look into acquiring this property,” responded Patrick Schutte, a board member. “Where it goes from there is out of our hands.”

     “I cannot speak so beautifully,” said the next speaker, Regina Whitney, in accented English, going on to say that “this property should belong to the town. It is the last piece of land where you can walk.” She mentioned the proximity of the trailer park on Oakview Higway, which is only yards away, as well as the plethora of wildlife on the land, as had Mr. Cohen.

    Ms. Whitney was followed to the podium by Dana Kalbacher. “This has been going on for five years now,” she said. “We started with preservation, the neighbors. We would love the town to preserve this. I would love for you to come down and take a walk with us.”

    Over the five years, she said, the project has been whittled down from a much larger proposal to the current eight units, but even that, said Ms. Kalbacher, would be a mistake. “We are over the top with congestion and traffic. Please take a good look at this.”

    Laurie Wiltshire of Land Planning Services spoke in favor of the project, telling the board there had been negotiations with the town regarding acquisition, but that the figures “weren’t even close.” She said the applicant had responded to previous board comments and requests by modifying his proposal, including ample screening, and providing, among the eight lots, one equal-size one for affordable housing. She encouraged the board to grant preliminary approval within its next two meetings.

    When Ms. Wiltshire finished her brief presentation, Ms. Whitney returned to the podium and questioned the amount of money Mr. Webb was seeking for acquisition. She said he had acquired the land from an aging Mrs. Hettiger at below-market price.

    “I agree with making money, but how greedy does he have to be?” she asked.

    On Saturday, seven opponents of the plan, all neighbors, met outside the property. Checking to make sure that No Trespassing signs were absent, they walked up the path into the woods that cover much of the acreage.

    Three large wild turkeys were seen walking through the woods. Deer cut across the path. The woods were quite thick, blocking out the sun.

    They left quietly, walking back toward Oakview Highway as the sun set.