Jon Robin Baitz's new play, "Mizlansky/Zilinsky," subtitled "Schmucks," has more than one plot twist in its bag of dirty tricks.

Both a celebration and a censure of the art of the deal, this soiree of sleaze, now at Manhattan Theatre Club's City Center Stage I, delights and appalls with complete even-handedness.

Just when we think it has come down firmly on the side of rectitude it veers off into some sordid scam we can't help applauding for its sheer rottenness, despite the mutterings from our better selves.

Ethical Reappraisal

Mr. Baitz, known for the high moral ground of such earlier works as "Substance of Fire," "Three Hotels" (produced at the Bay Street Theatre in 1992), and "A Fair Country," has expanded an early one-acter into this riotously agonizing reappraisal of the ethical stance.

The action takes place over the Christmas holidays in 1984, mostly in a pretentious house on a hill above Los Angeles that Davis Mizlansky (Nathan Lane), a schlock film producer, acquired in better days.

Featuring a panoramic vista of a smog bank and a Christmas tree that might have been lifted from some Hollywood motel lobby, in Santo Loquasto's telling set design and Brian MacDevitt's bleak lighting, it offers little homeyness.

Mizlansky, in Mr. Lane's compelling performance, is in what might be described as an agitated depression. He's down but not out, just "out of gas," he claims - although he has been overheard in an elevator trying to sell his desk.

In the past, he and his partner, Sam Zilinsky (the ingenious Lewis J. Stadlen), perpetrated such B-movies as "LSD Mama" and "Hitler's Niece" for big bucks, but that market is now history.

Desperate for cash, Mizlansky is gearing up for one last killing, and, with the Internal Revenue Service sniffing around, he needs Zilinsky's more presentable persona to put it across. (Mizlansky himself has such gross tastes he sports a polyester tigerskin shirt and compulsively discerns great porn titles in the most innocent remarks of others.)

Last-Ditch Scam

The target of his last-ditch scam is a consortium of Oklahoma dentists led by Horton De Vries (the fabulous Larry Pine). The ploy is a tax-shelter operation that will produce children's recordings of Bible stories, "from both Testaments, the first and the second," as Mizlansky pitches it.

With titles like "Sodom and Gomorrah: The True Story," and "The Last Supper, with the voice of Flip Wilson," this family fare will be marketed strictly "through poor people's retail outlets . . . to ghetto kids."

When Zilinsky understandably phones with ethical objections, it triggers Mizlansky's manic set of defense mechanisms.

"Don't talk about value systems in this area code!" he yells into the receiver.

Zanax/Lomotil

Then Lionel Hart (the touching Paul Sand), an alcoholic television actor who peaked long ago in "Tintoretto, Art Detective," but whose name Mizlansky unaccountably wants on his letterhead, wonders if the deal might be illegal, and Mizlansky really blows his top.

"Is it illegal?" he roars. "Who gives a . . . How much more of this life can you take?" Then "I'm so tired," he trails off.

He keeps Zanax in his bathroom in a vial labelled "Lomotil" for people whose scruples may be rising to the surface, including himself.

Beneath The Sleaze

As the play unfolds, Mizlansky recruiting Zilinsky, Zilinsky holding out for a bigger slice of the pie, the I.R.S. closing in, the double-crosses mounting, and the dentists getting restless, Mr. Baitz treats us to some wondrously hilarious moments, but always with an eye on the humanity of his cheesy characters.

They may have soft, rotten underbellies and crawl through slime, but they also have hearts. Such a high-wire act - finding the need beneath the sleaze - is what distinguishes this brilliant young playwright's work.

Mr. Baitz shares a house in Sag Harbor with Joe Mantello, who directed this play as well as Terrence McNally's "Love! Valour! Compassion!" and Mr. Baitz's "Three Hotels," among other triumphs.

Energizer Lane

He has drawn deeply layered performances from his actors: Mr. Stadlen as the fastidious Zilinsky, Lee Wilkof as Mizlansky's lawyer, Mark Blum as a screenwriter, and Glenn Fitzgerald as Paul Trecker, Mizlansky's go-fer and allegedly a stand-in for Mr. Baitz's younger Hollywood self.

The one weak showing comes from Jennifer Albano, who rather drably plays Mizlansky's New-Age masseuse Dusty Fink, a part whose possibilities remain unexplored.

Making fully realized recorded appearances berating Mizlansky on his Speakerphone are the wonderful Christine Baranski as Sylvia Zilinsky, and the fabulous Julie Kavner as Mizlansky's long-suffering ex-wife, Esther.

But it's Mr. Lane who carries the day. He's not just funny ha-ha here, as he was in "Love! Valour! Compassion!" and "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum." He's a disaster who keeps going and going, like the Energizer Bunny, and that's his fascination.

AMAGANSETT

Goodman to Joseph Magliocco, Hand Lane, $445,000.

McMahon to Robert McCreary and Peter Coquillard, Abrahams Landing Road, $365,000.

Lutzen to Robert and Elizabeth Mancini, Miankoma Lane, $500,000.

BRIDGEHAMPTON

Vanderveer 3d estate to Hempstead Tire Service Inc., Day Lily Lane, $700,000.

Brezin to Robert and Anne Marshall, Worchester Court, $380,000.

Reich to Andre Sassoon, Bay Lane, $2,200,000.

Woodridge Homes Bldrs. to Robert and Karen Powers, Becky's Path, $295,000.

Kardovich to Robert and Penny Lieberberg, Ocean Road, $800,000.

EAST HAMPTON

Bell estate to Robert, Rosemarie, and Rosemary Grau and Gregory Brown, Meadow Way, $350,000.

Haussman estate to Helene Murphy, Town Lane, $235,000.

Brown to Ruth Legon, Gould Street, $675,000.

Renco Const. to Robert and Cynthia Koch, Edwards Avenue, $220,000.

MONTAUK

Rado and Rafter Ltd. to Brian Crawford, Fairview Avenue, $325,000.

NORTH HAVEN

Dollmark Ltd. to Loren Plotkin (trustee), Bay View Court, $700,000.

Dauk to Pearl Gordon, Gardiners Path, $890,000.

DC Partners to Loren Plotkin (trustee), Bay View Court, $192,000.

Gramlich to Loren Plotkin (trustee), Bay View Court, $775,000.

NORTHWEST

Forst and Silverblank Inc. to Steven and Amy Shachat, Long Hill Road, $565,000.

Goodwin to George Tasolides and Beth Jurewicz, Chatfields Lane, $380,000.

Hands Creek Road Assoc. to Oceanview Farms Ltd., Long Hill Road, $172,000.

National Brand Licensing to Barry Miske and Richard Moger, Bull Run, $235,000.

Harvest Moon Assoc. to Richard and Christine Knight, Harvest Lane, $325,000.

Shepherd to Kevin MacFarlane and Sheldon Barkoff, Two Holes of Water Road, $210,000.

SAG HARBOR

Kaplan to Randolph and Linda Schwartz, Cedar Point Lane, $250,000.

Haerter to Mary Boylan, Robeson Boulevard, $239,000.

SAGAPONACK

Vassel to Douglas and Jill Andrea, Sagaponack Road, $1,500,000.

SPRINGS

Saad to Martin Liu, Kings Point Road, $765,000.

WATER MILL

Hoak to Stuart Boesky, Flying Point Road, $1,640,000.

Michna estate to Charles Gushee, Head of the Pond Road, $350,000.

Whether a Springs woman who was unaware of a 1972 upzoning should now be able to split her property in two was a matter before the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals last week. The Town Planning Department recommended its answer be "no."

Leonard Ackerman, an East Hampton attorney speaking on behalf of Janet Norton, told the board at a Feb. 24 hearing that his client should be able to split her property, once two separate lots but since merged into one.

At the corner of Three Mile Harbor Road and Woodbine Drive, the parcel is 44,740-square-feet, roughly an acre, in an area now zoned for one-acre lots.

Fell Between Cracks

"The Nortons basically fell between the cracks," Mr. Ackerman said, and were the only ones of about a dozen property owners in the neighborhood who were affected by the town's upzoning 16 years ago.

Today the neighborhood consists of half-acre lots, Mr. Ackerman said, arguing that allowing Mrs. Norton to split her property would have no undesirable effect.

Mrs. Norton is seeking 16,995-square-foot and 18,265-square-foot lot-area variances, as well as a 66-foot lot-width variance. The proposed parcels would measure 23,005 and 21,735 square feet.

More Requests Feared

Mrs. Norton and her late husband, Willard, put the two properties in the same name at the request of their bank for financing purposes, although to this day Mrs. Norton still receives separate tax bills for each half, Mr. Ackerman told the board. When the town held well-publicized and well-attended hearings on the 1972 upzoning of the area, the Nortons were unaware of it or its effect on their property, the attorney added.

Speaking on behalf of the Town Planning Department was Brian Frank, who recommended the board deny Mrs. Norton's request. The variances are roughly half of the town's requirement and therefore substantial in size, Mr. Frank argued.

Granting Mrs. Norton her request could open up similar requests from other property owners, not only in Springs but around town, Mr. Frank added, to the disagreement of Mr. Ackerman.

"The purpose of upzoning was to reduce the density of new building lots," Mr. Frank reminded the board.

In The Dark

Despite the fact that the upzoning was well-publicized, Mr. Ackerman added, his client was "not sophisticated" enough to understand its impact.

Mrs. Norton told the Zoning Board that her previous attorney never mentioned upzoning to her, and that she never read the local newspaper or was aware of the Town Board's actions that affected her property. Mr. Ackerman added that the Nortons were never sent a notice from the town that these proceedings were taking place.

"Ignorance is one thing, not getting The Star is another," one board member, Heather Anderson, commented.

Again, Concerns

"Twenty-six years ago the town literally took away the Nortons' right to" maintain two separate lots, Mr. Ackerman said. "Ignorance of the law is no excuse," Mr. Ackerman admitted, but had his clients been aware, they could have put the lots into separate ownership before the upzoning took place.

Mr. Ackerman raised concerns about the effect of the upzoning on local Springs residents who might be forced out, unable to afford homes there, concerns he said were expressed at the time of the town hearings. "Local people are the backbone of Springs. Local people were the backbone of East Hampton in 1972."

In addition to variances from the Zoning Board, Mrs. Norton will also have to get subdivision approval from the Town Planning Board.

Three East Hampton Town officials, past and present, were charged last week with conspiring to cover up the improper diversion of $1 million in Housing Authority funds.

In papers served late last week by Carriage Hill Associates, a former contractor on the authority's Accabonac Highway affordable housing complex, Town Supervisor Cathy Lester, former Councilman Thomas Knobel, and a former town attorney, Robert Savage, are named as conspirators.

The allegations appear in a notice of claim, which is preliminary to a lawsuit. They are that those officials violated the Federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act through "unlawful participation in and support of [a] fraudulent scheme. . . ."

"Diverted" Funds

The notice states that authority funds were "diverted to individuals or entities whose names are not yet known" by Carriage Hill, but who are known by Margaret deRouleaux, the authority chairwoman at the time, by Maureen Murphy, the chairwoman now, and by Robert Brach, the treasurer.

Cynthia Ahlgren Shea, the present town attorney, called the idea of Supervisor Lester, Mr. Knobel, and Mr. Savage conspiring "ridiculous," noting that the Supervisor was a political foe of the two Republicans and did battle with them over a variety of matters during the time the Republicans held a Town Board majority.

Ms. Shea also debunked the claim that $1 million meant for construction of its 50-unit complex on Accabonac Highway had been diverted illegally.

To Cite Authority

"We have evidence that, in August of 1996, the town was on notice there were serious financial misrepresentations in the authority records and there was no follow-up or investigation of that," said John Bermingham, the lawyer for Carriage Hill. Mr. Bermingham said the evidence was in the form of a memo from then-Councilman Knobel to the rest of the Town Board. He added that the Housing Authority also would be named as a defendant in Carriage Hill's forthcoming suit.

"The town knowingly sat by when it had full authority to investigate and remove improperly acting authority members. They did nothing. The taxpayers along with Carriage Hill have been ripped off," he said.

Although the authority is autonomous, its members are appointed by the Town Board and the Accabonac construction has been funded principally by loans that the town guaranteed.

Two Attorneys

On Tuesday, the Town Board agreed to hired two outside lawyers, one to oppose the RICO claim and another to provide advice on the larger matter of the town's role in the authority's complicated legal and financial troubles. That afternoon, Councilman Job Potter, liaison between the board and the authority, again urged the authority to speed up the process of resolving its problems.

His suggestions for doing so met with a lukewarm reception and with the surprising announcement that the authority may forgo the Federal housing subsidy available for all 50 apartments that would be the project's only guaranteed source of revenue.

Fair-Market Rents?

Mr. Brach, the treasurer, said the rents allowed under the Section Eight program were not high enough to cover the project's operating expenses and that offering the apartments at "fair market value" to low-income families would bring in more money.

Mr. Brach and other authority members appeared unswayed by arguments against the idea. Councilman Potter said the $3 million contribution to the project that was to come from the Bank of New York, via the sale of Federal tax credits, was contingent on a Section Eight guarantee. And, Nina Stewart, the town housing director, advised that low-income families, many of whom work only seasonally, would not be able to pay "$1,100 or $1,200 in rent a month in the winter when they're not working."

"You need a guaranteed income stream. . . . You're going to be, excuse me, screwed come December, January, and February," said Ms. Stewart.

Subsidy Expires

The authority's contract with the Community Development Corporation, which administers the Section Eight program in Suffolk County, expires at the end of this month.

For the contract to be renewed, the authority would have to submit a fine-tuned budget before its expiration and to ask for any increases in its subsidy. However, its members were not planning to meet again until March 24.

Meanwhile, Mr. Bermingham said he would continue to investigate "where the money went." More than $4 million has been spent on construction so far. As reported here previously, the authority's 1996 audit remains incomplete after its auditor said it could not sort out its complicated finances.

Nothing Happened

The project originally was estimated to cost $4.5 million; it is now projected to cost more than $7 million.

Under both the former Democratic Town Board administration and after the Republicans took over the majority in 1995, little was accomplished in answer to criticism of how the authority was handling the project. Only in the last few months, and only after its own credit rating was threatened, has the Town Board, now Democratically-controlled again, seemed ready to step in.

Separately, Carriage Hill sued the authority after it was locked off the construction site last year; that case remains in arbitration.

Carriage Hill, based in Hicksville, was hired in 1995 with a contract for $3.7 million. The lockout came after Republican appointees to the authority said that they had uncovered over-billings and faulty construction.

"The authority threw Carriage Hill off the job because it was running out of money and the town knew that. This was a cash cow for the Housing Authority and their pals," charged Mr. Bermingham.

The East Hampton Town Board is expected to vote in favor of emergency dredging of the Lake Montauk inlet tomorrow and of placing the dredged material on the beach in front of Soundview Drive, which faces Block Island Sound just to the west. Who would wind up paying for the work, however, remained unclear.

The Town Board vote follows an aerial inspection by Federal officials on Friday, pleas from Soundview residents, and partisan arguments among Town Board members on how to proceed.

Soundview residents, supported by Town Councilwoman Pat Mansir and Councilman Len Bernard, who are Republicans, have asked for quick action, even if the town has to foot the bill. Supervisor Cathy Lester, a Democrat, has insisted that the cost of protecting the beach and bulkheads at Soundview should be shared by Washington and Albany.

Republican Effort

Noting that a bulkhead had collapsed, Councilwoman Mansir said that it had taken a collaborative effort by herself, Councilman Bernard, and James Greenbaum, a Soundview resident and attorney for the Save Our Beaches Association, to convince Representative Michael P. Forbes, who also is a Republican, to come to Montauk Friday to see at first hand the damage Soundview Drive had suffered after the latest northeast storm. He arrived by helicopter with Joseph Vietri of the Army Corps of Engineers.

The inlet to Lake Montauk was last dredged with Federal funds in 1995 and a preliminary study of long-term solutions for shoaling problems was completed subsequently by the Army Corps. The study called for widening the inlet and extending it as far into the harbor as Coonsfoot Cove. It also called for a sand-bypass system to solve erosion problems at Soundview, which the corps said were primarily the result of downdrift scouring from the inlet's jetties and the effects of erosion-control structures along the Soundview beach.

Support Local Funding

At a meeting on Monday of the Montauk Citizens Advisory Committee Town Councilman Peter Hammerle, a Democrat who serves as the Town Board's liaison to the committee, told its members that the board would support emergency dredging of the inlet and placing the sand dredged up at Soundview Drive.

"The immediate issue is the erosion situation," Councilman Bernard said Tuesday, adding that the town should move forward with the project as a short-term solution, even if it has to be funded locally.

For the most part Mr. Bernard agreed with Councilman Hammerle's suggestions of the previous night, saying the emergency work would help Soundview residents get through this season, but then the town would have to turn its attention to the longer term.

Called "Useless"

Also on Tuesday, however, Supervisor Lester called the corps' study "basically useless" because it called for changes within the harbor that the Town Board could not support. Ms. Lester said that she supported the idea of a bypass system, but did not believe town taxpayers should have to pay for it by themselves.

"The beach in front of your home doesn't benefit general taxpayers," Ms. Lester told Mr. Greenbaum and other Soundview residents who attended a Town Board meeting on Tuesday.

They, in turn, accused her of standing in the way of a solution to a manmade problem caused by the Montauk Harbor jetties. Whatever the cause, she maintained that funds to solve the problem had to come from state and Federal sources as well as the town. Typically, that would mean 50 percent in Federal funding, 35 percent from the state, and 15 from the town.

Data Needed

Although her response frustrated Soundview residents, who have been appealing to the town for help since last summer and fear further damage from more storms, it was noted that Mr. Forbes had warned on Friday that before the Federal Government would commit funds it needed supporting data from the Coast Guard on the shoaling in the inlet.

He said that when he last checked only two boats had reported navigational problems there. "We need to hear from more fishermen," he said, calling the Montauk Harbor an "important waterway."

The Town Board agreed to ask dragger captains to report to the Coast Guard each time their boats hit bottom or have problems in the channel. Such documentation will help prove to Federal authorities that the shoaling in the channel as well as erosion on Soundview Drive deserve emergency attention and emergency funding.

Before reboarding for his return trip on Friday Mr. Forbes told the Soundview Drive group that it would take a collaborative effort by the town, state, and Federal Government to solve the shoaling and erosion problems, and added that funding for the project was beginning to take shape.

"The magnitude of the problem is one that the local community and the township cannot take on," the Supervisor said Tuesday, arguing that such funding "isn't something the state or Federal Government can move to act on overnight."

Meanwhile, in a recent press release Mr. Forbes has pointed out that as a member of the House Appropriations Committee he has helped secure $4.8 million for the Army Engineers Fire Island to Montauk Point Study Project for 1998, $200,000 to protect the Montauk Lighthouse, and $90,000 for a detailed study of the Sag Harbor breakwater.

Mr. Forbes also noted that an additional $2.8 million had been put into the 1997 and 1998 appropriations bills for a five-year monitoring program and $450,000 to study the impact of the Army Corps' projects on ecosystems, habitats, and water quality of the South Shore's back bay areas.

"History involves a lot of ordinary people," Bob Zellner told the Bridgehampton students who heard him on Friday recount his unlikely role in the civil rights movement in the 1960s.

The son of a Methodist minister and former member of the Ku Klux Klan, Mr. Zellner's life changed when, as a senior at Huntington College in Montgomery, Ala., he was assigned to study "the race issue" in a sociology class.

He and four classmates, as part of their project, decided to meet with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Integrated meetings were against the law, and by the time the gathering at Dr. King's church broke up, police were waiting outside.

Asked To Leave

The students told Dr. King, "We're ready to be arrested. We're ready to go to jail," Mr. Zellner recalled. "But we think we owe it to our parents and our college to try to escape."

Dr. King provided cover by leaving from the front door, while his associate, the Rev. Ralph Abernathy, led the five students to safety out the rear.

The triumph was short-lived, however. Before the students returned to their campus, the police had called the college president.

"The five of us, because we went to church with Martin Luther King, were asked to resign from our college."

The Klan soon paid a visit and left burning crosses outside the students' dormitory.

Despite being ostracized and threatened by fellow students, Mr. Zellner decided to make the ending of segregation his life's work. He became one of the first white members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

His journey soon took him to Macomb, Miss., where he took part in a protest march and was beaten and nearly hanged.

Having his life threatened and spending time in jail would become commonplace. By his own count, Mr. Zellner was arrested 25 times in five different states during the '60s.

"Acts Of War"

He was once charged under the "John Brown statute" in Virginia "for inciting the black population to acts of war against the white population," which, had he been convicted, could have resulted in a death sentence.

"I had to make the decision time and time again to give up my life," he told the Bridgehampton students.

Once, he admitted, he offered to put "nonviolence aside" when confronted by a group of students at Huntington College. "I'll take you on one at a time," he told his tormenters. He had no takers.

"In a mob, you can get together and beat someone to death," he said. "But most members of a mob - and members of the Klan - are really cowards."

Despite his family's involvement in the Klan, Mr. Zellner said his parents gave him a proper upbringing. "I believed in the Bible," he said. "I believed what I was taught in school, that we live in a democracy."

His family also had the strength to change. Before Mr. Zellner became an activist, his father had quit the Klan - "My mother cut up his Klan robes and made shirts for us" - and softened, and eventually abandoned, his segregationist stance.

But Mr. Zellner's grandfather and many of his uncles were still members. "They thought I disgraced the whole family," he said.

"Four Little Girls"

The family's ties to the Klan filled Mr. Zellner with a deep sense of guilt in 1963, he said, when four black children attending Sunday school were killed in the bombing of their church. "I had a feeling some of my kin knew the people who put the dynamite under those stairs," he said.

The church bombing has been back in the spotlight of late with the release of Spike Lee's documentary "Four Little Girls." Mr. Zellner has spent much of his time participating in panel discussions at openings of the film in various cities.

"History is not that long ago," he told the students. "It took place 35 years ago, when I was 21 and right out of college."

Commitment

"Every person made an individual decision to get involved," said Mr. Zellner, an Alabama native who now lives in North Sea and is a founder of the National Civil Rights Coordinating Committee. "I would never have amounted to anything if I had not made that commitment."

Mr. Zellner spoke at the school as a guest of the Parent Teacher Organization on the last day of Black History Month. He met with grade school students in the morning and high school students in the afternoon, with each session running well overtime as he fielded questions.

While many battles have been won, Mr. Zellner told students discrimination against blacks, other minorities, and women continue.

"Stand up for what's right," he urged his young audience.

It's microbes, stupid! That was the consensus among scientists, "green guerrillas," and manufacturers of "microbial inoculants" who attended a seminar at the Southampton Publick House on Tuesday. The seminar concerned non-chemical alternatives to controlling pests and diseases in vegetation - golf course grasses, specifically.

The seminar was organized by Bob Ratcliffe, owner of The Hole Nine Yards, a Bridgehampton company that specializes in golf course maintenance. The superintendents of three area links were present.

Pete Smith of Shinnecock Hills Golf Club said he was not attending "to endorse, or not to endorse" the organic approach to controlling golf course blights.

For Coexistence

Carl Olsen of the National Golf Links of America, also in Southampton, said his links had been working "to coexist with the environment for over 11 years."

"We're on the edge of the bays in Noyac and we've made buffer zones around the ponds, and we want to [protect] people and animals," he said. "We work with the soil and its chemistry in order to reduce the amount of pesticides."

Bob Ranum of the Atlantic Golf Club in Bridgehampton also spoke of a commitment to "do everything we can to not use pesticides. We don't want to stock chemicals on the premises. We want to be curative, not just preventative."

Difficult Alternatives

Scientists, including Dr. Eric Nelson of Cornell University and Dr. Thomas Yamashita of the Sunburst Plant Disease Clinic of California, agreed that alternatives to the "silver bullet" fertilizers and pesticides developed after World War II were not easy to use, required a knowledge of biology, and did not achieve results overnight.

Not discussed outright during the lunch and seminar was the growing concern among environmentalists that golf course chemicals contributed to increased cancer rates. Neal Lewis of the Long Island Neighborhood Network, a consortium of environmental and cancer-prevention advocates, came to support the trend toward chemical alternatives.

Holistic Revolution

Bill Myers of the Florida-based company Green Releaf likened the revolution in links care to the holistic approach to medicine, one which aimed at precluding the need for powerful medicines with side effects.

Cornell's Dr. Nelson said that the "explosion" in the bio-control ap proach began early this decade when, for one thing, it was realized that the growing of turf, as in golf courses, represented the greatest use of fungicides, followed by peanut and orange growing.

Dr. Nelson said experiments showed that weaning away from fungicide use required soil that not only contained the right nutrients, but, more importantly, was rich in microbial activity.

The key to assuring such activitywas to manage the environment so it favored good microbes over pathogens, and this was helped by the use of microbial inoculants, the introduction into soil of helpful microbes.

Watch For Snake Oil

"There are many good [products] but there is snake oil, too," he warned. "You have to be biologists, and you have to ask good questions" of the suppliers, he said. Dr. Nelson said composts (mixtures of plant and leaf cuttings and manures) were also effective "biological amendments."

Dr. Yamashita, who said his interest in the bio-control field began on his family fruit farm, said current approaches to farming would not be able to support the 117- million-person increase in the human population each year.

But, he added, microbial technology would go a long way toward preventing the 40-percent loss in crops to disease each season. Creating strong soil was the best prevention, he said, adding that what made a soil healthy in one place was not what worked in another. "You must mount specific programs."

A Tree-Hugger

Mr. Myers of Green Releaf characterized himself as one who had never been environmentally conscious, but had grown "passionate" about the bio-control revolution. The 50 or so attendees laughed when he said, "I'm getting to be a tree-hugger."

He added that more companies like his were coming. He welcomed them, he said, because there was plenty of room. "Thirty-five billion dollars-worth of chemical control products are sold each year."

A new whistleblower emerged this week to charge Brookhaven National Laboratory with polluting the environment and being unconcerned about what was happening. His charges came as a new contractor began managing the facility for the U.S. Department of Energy.

Robert Ramirez, a former hydrogeologist at B.N.L., charged at a press conference Monday that B.N.L. has threatened the underground water table by draining 1.5 million gallons of water every day for decades from an atomic accelerator into a basin 200 feet from an area at B.N.L. that contains soil contaminated with radioactive toxins, including cesium-137, strontium-90, and plutonium, considered the most deadly radioactive substance.

Resigned In 1996

The press conference was organized by the East Hampton-based group Standing for Truth About Radiation.

Mr. Ramirez, who worked at B.N.L. from 1988 until he resigned in 1996 out of frustration over its cleanup program, the radioactive toxins may have penetrated the water table and had an impact on adjacent neighborhoods.

He said officials at B.N.L. "overlooked and ignored" the threat of the radioactive substances being flushed into the water table through the years and "squashed" his concerns. "Management was not responsive," said Mr. Ramirez.

William Gunther, who had been manager of the Office of Environmental Restoration at B.N.L. - for which Mr. Ramirez worked - said in an interview Tuesday that Mr. Ramirez's "theory is a valid one but so far we don't see that it has come to be."

Although test wells in the 90-by-90-foot area that contains radioactive substances have shown radionuclides in the groundwater, said Mr. Gunther, "no effect" has been found beyond the area nor any impacts discerned in groundwater in communities near B.N.L. Also, said Mr. Gunther, B.N.L. "addressed the concern" of Mr. Ramirez "through the installation of additional monitoring wells."

New Management

As Mr. Ramirez leveled his charges Monday, a new B.N.L. contractor, Brookhaven Science Associates - a partnership between the State University at Stony Brook and Battelle Memorial Institute of Columbus, Ohio - took over management of the facility.

Dr. John Marburger, B.N.L.'s new director, a physicist and former president of the State University at Stony Brook, conducted what B.N.L. in a press release described as a "labwide van tour."

"Hope And Optimism"

He was accompanied by the two men who will be his top deputies: Peter Paul, chairman of the physics department at Stony Brook, the new B.N.L. deputy director for science the technology, and Thomas Sheridan, a Battelle executive and former adviser to the Department of Energy on radioactive waste, the new deputy director for operations.

Dr. Marburger addressed some of B.N.L.'s 3,000 employees at stops during the tour, said the release, quoting him as declaring: "This is a day of hope and optimism. Today we look forward to the task of integrating Brookhaven's world-class science with a respect for the environment and involvement by our local community."

Last year, D.O.E. Secretary Federico Pena terminated the contract his agency had with Associated Universities Inc. to run B.N.L., charging that the way the facility had been managed was "unacceptable, inexcusable, and flat-out wrong."

Pollution Disclosures

A.U.I., a group of nine universities - including Harvard, Columbia, Princeton, Cornell, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology - had run B.N.L. since it was set up in 1947 on what had been an Army base on Long Island.

"Brookhaven National Lab has lost the public trust from the citizens of Long Island," said Mr. Pena in announcing the termination of A.U.I. "The combination of confusion and mismanagement that has been going on here for years is going to end."

Mr. Pena's action came after disclosures about pollution caused by B.N.L., including leakage of radioactive tritium into the water table over a 12-year period from the spent fuel pool of one of B.N.L.'s two nuclear reactors, its high flux beam reactor.

"Shelved" A Report

Mr. Ramirez said after leaving B.N.L. he went to the office of U.S. Senator Alfonse D'Amato about his concerns and was referred to the office of New York Attorney General Dennis Vacco. Mr. Vacco's office, complained Mr. Ramirez, put together "a six or seven-page report and shelved it."

Two months ago, he said his wife viewed a Montel Williams television show about B.N.L., "taped it and said, 'You have to see this.' I watched the program, which had all these people from the community with sick children. I recognized a lot of them," said Mr. Ramirez of Mastic Beach. "Some of the kids had died."

"I decided I had to try one more time to get the information out," he recounted. He said he was impressed by the STAR representatives who appeared on the program. "It seemed like a group I could trust."

Radioactive Water

He called the STAR office, met with Dr. Helen Caldicott, its vice president, who felt that "people should know" about his experiences, and agreed to go public.

The 90-by-90-foot area, called the Building 650 Stump Area Outfall by B.N.L. and for the past three years surrounded by an eight-foot-high barbed wire fence and signs warning people to keep out, is highly contaminated with radioactive substances because, Mr. Ramirez said, cleaning of contaminated equipment was done nearby and waste water laced with radioactivity went to the area.

'I decided I had to try one more time to get the information out.'

Robert Ramirez

The 1.5 million gallons of water from the accelerator, called an alternating gradient synchrotron, which B.N.L. has drained daily into a basin close to the hot spot, has been treated with chelating agents, he said. These have been used because they "keep ambient iron in solution" so the iron in the water used in the accelerator would not "foul up its heat exchangers."

"Overlooked, Ignored"

However, in the same way the chelating agents keep iron in solution, they also cause radioactive substances lodged in soil to leach into the aquifer below, he said. Much of the accelerator water flows through the sandy soil and around and under the 90-by-90-foot area.

"It is quite possible that a lot" of the "whole slew of radionuclides" in the area "made it" out of the soil and into the groundwater due to the flushing action of the accelerator water, said Mr. Ramirez.

But for years this was "totally overlooked and ignored" by B.N.L. officials, he said. And when he and two associates raised the issue in 1995, "management didn't want to hear of it." Having gone to work at B.N.L. "to do public service" but finding that the cleanup at B.N.L. was aimed at "generating paper instead of doing good," he resigned.

Underground Leak

Mr. Gunther agreed with Mr. Ramirez about the 90-by-90-foot area, which is at the center of B.N.L.'s 5,300 acres, becoming polluted with radioactive substances because of radionuclides that migrated from the "decontamination pad at Building 650. There was a concrete pad, and equipment that was radioactive was brought to it to be cleaned," starting in the 1950s. The waste water from that process was supposed to go to underground tanks and then to B.N.L.'s sewage treatment plant.

But, said Mr. Gunther, in the late 1960s, it was found that waste water had been leaking from an underground pipe into the 90-by-90-foot area. He agreed, too, that the accelerator water going into "a recharge basin" close by could have carried radionuclides into the groundwater, but insisted that this does not appear to have been the case.

Elevated Levels

However, Mr. Ramirez said that a 1994 reading at a test well at B.N.L.'s southern boundary - next to North Shirley, a community toward which the water in the aquifer below B.N.L. flows - that showed elevated levels of radiation, might be connected to radionuclides from the 90-by-90-foot area.

But Mr. Gunther, who since the management change at B.N.L. has been shifted to become manager of the Office of Environmental Monitoring, and a B.N.L. spokeswoman, Mona Rowe, denied any connection.

Disturbing Situation

Meanwhile, Dr. Marburger said Monday that the contaminated 90-by-90-foot area will most likely be dealt with by having the soil dug up and transported off Long Island. B.N.L. has been aware, he said, that the area is contaminated, and now, he said, it was "my job to clean it up."

"This situation is truly disturbing because the proper investigatory steps were never taken to insure that the public was not in danger," said David Friedson, president of STAR. "The reason that STAR and Mr. Ramirez choose to bring these claims to light on the day that the new contractor officially takes over management of the facility is because we are hoping to see a new attitude at B.N.L."

A stolen car recovered in New York City, a $16,000 trail of forged checks, and a pilfered credit card with as much as $5,000 in fraudulent charges.

These are among the factors in an East Hampton Village Police investigation that was still unfolding yesterday as The Star went to press.

The case began last Thursday when Mary Ellen Kay, a senior vice president at Prudential Securities' East Hampton office, told police an employee at her Woods Lane residence had stolen a book of blank checks and a credit card from her.

Police said the man, 50-year-old Peter Jung, had been forging checks around town and using the card since Feb. 20.

Hide-And-Seek

Less than an hour after an officer took Ms. Kay's complaint, the broker called police again to report Mr. Jung had just attempted to steal her Jeep from the driveway, but had run away after being scared off by workers at the house.

A "game of hide-and-seek" ensued, said East Hampton Village Police Chief Glen Stonemetz. As patrols began searching for him, Mr. Jung telephoned Ms. Kay, stating that he was at the Red Horse Market.

Police rushed to the complex, but found no sign of Mr. Jung. East Hampton Bowl was checked, too, with negative results.

Stolen Car

Meanwhile, police called all the taxi companies in town, asking them to be on the lookout for the man.

About an hour after Mr. Jung's phone call, Pete Degenaro, an employee at the Georgica Getty station on Woods Lane, called police to report his car possibly stolen. Mr. Jung had asked to borrow it for 10 or 15 minutes, he said, but had not returned in the past hour and a half.

"We didn't know where he was going," admitted Chief Stonemetz. Police put out a "file one" notice to Suffolk County police and other agencies, alerting them of the stolen car, and even notified authorities at MacArthur Airport in case Mr. Jung should turn up there.

Trailed To N.Y.C.

A few days later, on Monday, police got a break: Mr. Degenaro's car, a 1986 Chevrolet Spectrum, had been recovered on West 88th Street in Manhattan. Its owner was to have gone in to pick it up a day or two later.

Mr. Jung was still at large as of yesterday. Chief Stonemetz said Dets. Gerard Larsen and Margaret Dunn were working actively with New York City police on the case.

The two traveled to New York yesterday, the chief said. They were still there as of press time.

The village detectives had spent several days checking with banks and tracking the forged checks. "We're up to 16 grand and counting," said Chief Stonemetz of the checks.

Tennis Pro

Ms. Kay reported as much as $5,000 in new charges had been put on her missing card. Police have not determined what was allegedly purchased.

Mr. Jung was employed by Ms. Kay as "live-in help," she said yesterday. He had worked at the house for the past year, and also as a tennis pro at Green Hollow Tennis Club on Green Hollow Road, East Hampton.

Ms. Kay declined yesterday to discuss further details of the case, saying she wanted police to make an arrest first.

"It's been a pretty traumatic experience, to say the least," she sighed.

Anyone with pertinent information has been asked to contact village detectives at 324-0777.

Disturbing Findings

East Hampton

February 28, 1998

Dear Helen Rattray,

Leon Jaroff's latest letter of Feb. 23 asks, "Why is STAR silent on the issue" raised by Dr. Roger Grimson that the recent updated findings that the East End has the highest age-adjusted breast and prostate cancer rates in the county mean that Brookhaven could not be responsible.

He is evidently unaware that I dealt with this issue in some detail at the Guild Hall meeting held on Dec. 5 to discuss the significance of these disturbing new findings for residents of the East End, which apparently are of little concern to Jaroff.

He is not even disturbed by the latest official report that young women on the South Fork have breast cancer rates that are 60 percent higher than the Suffolk County average, in his eagerness to defend Brookhaven National Laboratory.

Last year, with the help of Suffolk County Legislator George Guldi, Dr. Helen Caldicott and I had been asking the New York State Health Department to update the age-adjusted breast cancer incidence rates previously published for each town for the period 1978-87. We described our unsuccessful efforts in an op-ed piece that was printed last summer in all regional editions of Suffolk Life, after being rejected by Newsday, another passionate B.N.L. supporter.

We were especially interested in getting the new data for the years 1988-93 for the nine census tracts that define the adjoining towns of Brookhaven, Bellport, Shirley, Yaphank, and Medford, because the combined rate for these towns had been 30 percent higher than the county average.

Residents of these towns include most of the nine families with children who have been diagnosed (since 1993) with the extremely rare form of soft tissue cancer called rhabdomyosarcoma, and include many families now suing B.N.L. after B.N.L. admitted that groundwater flows from the lab may have contaminated private wells in those towns.

Also, this is the area where we are getting most of Suffolk County baby teeth from concerned families eager to have them tested in our Canadian laboratory for their radioactivity levels.

We had calculated that the updated age-adjusted breast cancer incidence rate for these five towns would probably exceed 140 cases per 100,000 women if we had been able to secure the data for the nine census tracts in question.

Since the data given to the task force included the one unpopulated census tract in which the lab itself was located, it suggests that officials appear reluctant to release detailed census tract data that may prove embarrassing to B.N.L.

However, I must admit that I found the newly released East End breast cancer rate of 129 cases per 100,000 shockingly high, and it is no consolation that it may be lower than other areas in Suffolk County, which has itself registered the greatest single county increases in breast cancer mortality since the lab began operating in 1950.

It should force us to rethink our strategy in establishing the true local levels of radioactivity, and I would welcome hearing from Star readers on this important issue.

JAY M. GOULD

On The Alert

East Hampton

February 26, 1998

Dear Helen,

It reminds me of a children's book. See Jay Gould make pronouncements about Brookhaven. See Jay Gould bristle when his oddball views are challenged. See Jay Gould squirm out of answering direct questions. That's precisely what Gould did in his rambling Feb. 20 letter.

Let's go again to the subject of AIDS, one of the many unfortunate human maladies that Gould blatantly, and without documentation, attributes to low-level radiation. He cites 1980 as a year when he says that homosexuals "aged 35" began dying of AIDS, and he blames fallout from earlier nuclear bomb tests for compromising their immune systems "at birth." That, he says, made them vulnerable to diseases like AIDS, "where rapid mutation rates made them increasingly resistant to traditional antibiotics."

Gotta hand it to Gould. He can pack more misinformation into a paragraph than Saddam Hussein's best spokesman. In the first place, it's not diseases that have become increasingly resistant to antibiotics, it's the bacteria causing the disease that have become resistant. And the bacteria have become resistant largely because of ordinary Darwinian selection and the overuse of antibiotics, not because of low-level radiation.

Next, as any high school biology student - but apparently not Jay Gould - also knows, antibiotics have no effect on viruses, which after all are the cause of AIDS.

I can predict Gould's response: "Well, harrumpf, low-level radiation also mutated the AIDS virus and made it lethal." Let me shoot that one down. The AIDS virus seems to have mutated and become lethal to humans in Africa, and claimed some victims there as early as the 1960s. Fallout from bomb tests, largely conducted in the Northern Hemisphere, was negligible in Africa and almost certainly was not responsible for that mutation.

Now, about statistician Gould's fixation on 1980: Haitians visiting their ancestral African homelands in the 1960s and 1970s contracted AIDS, came home and, in turn, infected members of the large American community in Haiti.

And these Americans, returning home, brought the disease to these shores, where doctors first identified it in late 1979 or 1980. Air travel, not low-level radiation, was involved. Furthermore, most victims of the disease have healthy immune systems when they're infected. It's the AIDS virus, not low-level radiation or Brookhaven, that wrecks immune systems and make its victims vulnerable to the diseases that eventually kill them. Ask your doctor, Jay Gould.

Gould goes on to boast that he "predicted" that the AIDS epidemic would taper off in 1998, "when men reaching the age of 35 would be born after the cessation of above ground tests in 1963." Gosh, Jay, that's really impressive. I hate to mention it, but do you think that better knowledge of the disease and the "safe sex" campaign just might have something to do with any decline?

I'm sure that Jay Gould is a nice man, and I regret having to attack his credibility. But Jay, Helen Caldicott, Karl Grossman, and other STAR activists will no longer have a monopoly on columns and letters in The Star and on local TV shows.

Several of us in East Hampton (none connected in any way with Brookhaven) are now on the alert for any disingenuous and ill-informed STAR charges and will promptly respond with the facts. Keep tuned.

Sincerely yours,

LEON JAROFF

'Damn Yankees'

East Hampton

March 2, 1998

Dear Helen:

I write to compliment the astounding performance of East Hampton High School students in their tremendous performance last weekend of "Damn Yankees."

Accolades to all the fine actors and actresses and techies. Also deserving of praise are the faculty, staff, and friends who assisted the students in this fine production. The music and singing were great, as were the production values. The theater at the high school has certainly come a long way since I was a student there 25 years ago. Special congratulations to my niece, Annabel Raebeck. The East Hampton community can take pride in the hard work and artistic success of our high school students.

Sincerely,

CHRISTOPHER KELLEY

Please address correspondence to [email protected]

Please include your full name, address and daytime telephone number for purposes of verification.