South Fork fire departments were mobilized to fight two fires on Tuesday — one in Springs that destroyed a house in the afternoon and another on Sag Harbor’s Main Street that night, where disaster was averted thanks to firefighters and a quick-thinking chef. 

The Springs Fire Department had help from the East Hampton and Amagansett departments as it battled the fire at 4 Deer Path, off Three Mile Harbor-Hog Creek Road, but the house was a total loss. 

East Hampton was also called to assist the Sag Harbor Fire Department as it fought a fire in ductwork at the Lulu Kitchen and Bar building at 126 Main Street. There, “the chef saved that whole building,” said East Hampton Town’s chief fire marshal, David Browne. “He got up on the roof with a fire extinguisher. He did a great job.” 

Firefighters were able to quickly locate and contain the fire, Sag Harbor’s chief, Bruce Schiavoni, said yesterday morning. Nevertheless, the incident struck a nerve in a village still rebuilding after the devastating December 2016 blaze that destroyed the cinema. 

The fire in Springs was reported by a neighbor across the street shortly before 4 p.m. By the time firefighters arrived, the blaze was fairly advanced, said Dwayne Denton, another East Hampton fire marshal. “It got a good head start.”

There was no one home at the time of the fire. 

Four or five trucks from the Springs department were on hand along with a tanker and an engine from East Hampton and an engine from Amagansett. The fire burned through much of the house’s roof. 

Mr. Denton praised the Springs firefighters’ rapid response, and said they were able to contain and suppress the fire fairly rapidly, despite its intensity. 

The house is in a heavily wooded area, and the situation could have been much worse, but luck was on the side of the firefighters, in that the winds were light that afternoon. “There were a lot of trees. Any kind of wind” might have led to a different result, Mr. Denton said. 

The cause is still under investigation. 

In the case of the Sag Harbor fire, Mr. Browne said that it may have started as a fire in the hood over the stove and traveled to the roof through the ductwork, which had just been cleaned in March, alhough the cause is still under investigation.

“We had to cut some holes in the roof to get at the vent,” Chief Schiavoni said. 

The building has two offices on the second floor. The front office was unscathed, but in the back one, walls had to be cut open to get at the ductwork. That office and the restaurant’s kitchen sustained water damage, as well. There was also minor smoke damage to the second story of the adjoining In Home building at 132 Main Street. 

A peek through the front window at Lulu Kitchen and Bar revealed little obvious damage to the bar and dining area yesterday morning, yet when the fire was first reported the night before at about 9:25, smoke and flames could be seen coming from the building’s roof. 

The department requested a ladder truck and rapid intervention team from East Hampton to assist, while the Bridgehampton Fire Department stood by at the Sag Harbor Firehouse to answer other 911 calls. 

No injuries were reported in either fire.

Ill will and accusations of manipulation among members of the East Hampton Town Democratic Committee have led the committee to ask the Suffolk County Democratic Committee’s legal department to review the town committee’s conduct, according to Jeanne Frankl, the chairwoman of the East Hampton committee.

The infighting comes as local Democrats face a campaign to replace Lee Zeldin as the First Congressional District’s representative and are trying to settle on a new leader.

In a Feb. 2 email, Ms. Frankl had formally announced her retirement effective Feb. 21 and an election to choose her successor was to take place that night. The committee had by then elected Ilissa Loewenstein Meyer to be co-chairwoman, and Ms. Meyer said she would seek the chairwoman’s position after her term expired at the end of last year. 

Ms. Frankl had asked that members interested in succeeding her inform her by Feb. 8. Five minutes after Ms. Frankl’s email was sent, Cate Rogers, who had recently resigned from the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals, sent an email announcing her candidacy for chairwoman.

Nominations and seconds were to be taken from the floor on Feb. 21, followed by voting. Subsequent to Ms. Rogers’s announcement, however, Ms. Meyer wrote to the committee on Feb. 20 by email, stating that she would no longer seek to lead the committee. The Feb. 21 meeting was canceled without explanation, Ms. Meyer said, and Ms. Frankl rescinded her resignation. Ms. Meyer also took the opportunity to criticize the leadership. 

“I worked tirelessly to try to bring transparency to our committee but was met with resistance at every turn,” she wrote. As co-chairwoman, “I looked forward to being mentored and guided by our leaders, both the public and private ones. Instead I was repeatedly rejected, excluded, and bullied.” She charged that leaders had “continuously” accused her of being divisive.

For the sake of unity, she said, she would not seek election. “We as a committee still do not even know how this election will be conducted,” she wrote. 

These developments, some committee members charge, indicated collusion between Ms. Frankl and Ms. Rogers. Ms. Frankl emphatically denied the charge at a committee meeting on March 21. The meeting was acrimonious, with multiple members complaining that they or others had been transferred from the election district to which they had been assigned. The implication was that Ms. Frankl was attempting to manipulate the vote by giving greater weight to some committee members and less to others.

 “A transparent process is essential so that the old and new committee members understand why they were suddenly gerrymandered,” Ms. Meyer wrote in her email. “Although the leadership of the committee knew I was interested in running for the chair position, I was never contacted, never notified, never emailed or phoned about what was taking place” before receiving Ms. Frankl’s Feb. 2 email. Ms. Rogers’s subsequent email, five minutes later, “sounds like collusion,” she wrote. 

After Ms. Frankl had announced that she would step down, Rona Klopman, a committee member and former candidate for town trustee, announced her intention to succeed her, and Ms. Meyer urged colleagues to support Ms. Klopman. 

At the committee’s March 21 meeting, Ms. Frankl denied that she was attempting to manipulate district assignments or was otherwise seeking to influence the election, referring to a “nasty email” that included that accusation. She criticized those “casting aspersions on a committee that had built a strong reputation in the community.” Democrats were particularly successful in last November’s elections, with many of their candidates besting their Republican challengers by wide margins. 

“The most absurd charge,” Ms. Frankl said, was that Ms. Rogers’s prompt response to her Feb. 2 email demonstrated collusion. Ms. Rogers had been unable to declare her candidacy sooner, Ms. Frankl said, because she was under consideration to fill the vacant seat on the town board following Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc’s election as supervisor, or to be appointed chairwoman of the zoning board. (Mr. Van Scoyoc and his colleagues ultimately chose David Lys to fill the seat, a move that Jim MacMillan, a member of the committee, repeatedly denounced at the March 21 meeting, prompting several heated exchanges.) 

“I can’t see why it wasn’t okay to wait a couple of weeks” to see if Ms. Rogers was available to seek the position, Ms. Frankl said. Having failed to be appointed to the town board, Ms. Rogers was eager to run to lead the committee, Ms. Frankl said. 

The matter had been referred to the Suffolk County Democratic Committee’s legal department “to address the legality of the town committee’s conduct,” she said. “The election must pass muster.” 

On April 2, Ms. Frankl said that, “We have an election between two people, that’s the way it should be. . . . It’s, in a sense, been resolved by the fact that there are two candidates and we’ll have an election.” 

She would not comment on a question as to whether she had problems with Ms. Meyer’s tenure, but did profess a preference for Ms. Rogers rather than Ms. Klopman to lead the committee. “Having worked with Cate for a long time, I have seen that she’s a person who handles disagreements with a lot of sympathy for both sides of an issue,” she said. “She brings people together. Leading a committee of over 30 people, all of whom have very passionate views on political issues, and getting them all to work together for the main agenda of getting a good government in town takes a lot of diplomacy and a lot of time.”

At the March 21 meeting, Ms. Frankl said that she expected to reinstate her resignation this month, with a vote for the party’s leadership to take place next month. The committee is scheduled to meet on Wednesday. 

Not all committee members are satisfied. “They pre-selected somebody themselves and assumed nobody would object to them doing so,” Mr. MacMillan said on Tuesday of the committee’s leadership. Ms. Frankl, he said, “has always done a great job. Lately, everything fell apart. I don’t know what happened.”

“At this point, I think I am the only Ph.D. scientist of any kind” in Congress, Representative Bill Foster of Illinois told Public Radio International in January. “We have some political scientists, I think a mathematician, but it feels sort of lonely.” 

Elaine DiMasi, who spent 21 years as a physicist and project manager at Brookhaven National Laboratory, would like to join Mr. Foster in Congress. One of six candidates vying for the Democratic nomination to challenge Representative Lee Zeldin to represent New York’s First Congressional District, Ms. DiMasi said this week that physicists like Mr. Foster and the former Representatives Vern Ehlers and Rush Holt Jr. were sorely needed in government.

“There are people there who will not look at all the facts before making their decisions,” Ms. DiMasi said of Congress. “I spend time finding out what the problems we have to solve are.” 

Ms. DiMasi said that she was not affiliated with the Democrats, or any party, until recently. “That changed when Bernie Sanders entered the race in 2016,” she said, “and I registered as a Democrat instead of a blank.” President Trump’s election coincided, she said, with her completion of a five-year project management role at Brookhaven. “I could see the writing on the wall, what this administration was going to do,” she said, recalling some climate scientists’ rush to copy and preserve federal climate data before the Trump administration, which has proven hostile to climate science, took office.

The candidate grew up in suburban Pittsburgh, graduated from Penn State University, and earned a doctorate from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. After graduate school, she came to Long Island.

Ms. DiMasi has made renewable energy a central theme of her campaign. “It’s such a focus because I can see the urgency to take a specific action that dovetails so well with the skills and knowledge already here on Long Island,” she said. “We need something we build on Long Island and export to other regions. That’s how this district can have an economic base, a tax base. All other businesses need a foundation like that.”

The district has Brookhaven National Lab and several universities, which Ms. DiMasi called “a technology incubator, but not quite the runway of a technology corridor to get new discoveries, new prototypes to market.” Factor in the South Fork’s demand for electricity and the state’s Clean Energy Standard, which requires that 50 percent of electricity come from renewable sources by 2030, and an emerging renewable energy industry is a good fit for the First District, she said. 

“Let’s have something Long Island is about, that makes sense with our sensibilities. We need to not be polluting our oceans — we know the inevitability of an oil spill.”

Mr. Zeldin, she said, “does not seem to have any new ideas, and does not seem to understand what it takes to protect the environment or invigorate the economy.” The congressman opposes the Trump administration’s plan to open the outer continental shelf to oil exploration and drilling off Long Island, but “the right answer is to take all of America’s outer continental shelf off the plan,” she said. “It’s all one ocean. But that’s shown throughout Lee Zeldin’s whole tenure there: He will talk about cleaning up an estuary or saving Plum Island, but will vote with the administration to defund the E.P.A.” The League of Conservation voters awarded Mr. Zeldin a score of 9 percent for 2017. 

On other issues, Mr. Zeldin is “quite out of touch with civil liberties and the state of equality we’ve come to expect,” Ms. DiMasi said. “He’s on record opposing marriage equality, defeating a measure that would allow women’s reproductive health to be taken care of properly by medical insurance.” (As a state senator in 2011, Mr. Zeldin voted against legalizing same-sex marriage, and last year voted for the American Health Care Act, which would partially repeal the Affordable Care Act.) 

“He’s tone-deaf to the gun violence issue,” Ms. DiMasi continued. “I don’t see any acknowledgment of the damaging fear of a student who can’t go to school without worrying about this.” But young people can look to the students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, who have launched a movement to demand gun control in the wake of the mass shooting at their school, and see that change is possible, she said. 

“I tell the young not to give up, to vote. Social change is impossible to detect when you’re in the middle of it. There’s not a slow ramp, it’s a sea change, where suddenly everybody’s not ignoring this anymore. . . . Young people need to hear us saying, ‘Keep your optimism, keep working.’ We can be looking back 50 years from now saying we did everything right: offshore wind, gun laws, health care the way it should be.”

Ms. DiMasi demurred on impeachment of the president, should she be part of a Democratic majority in the House of Representatives next year. “The bigger enemy is all the big money, the way lobbyists have a stranglehold on Congress,” she said. “When lobbyists are writing laws, and Congress is spending three-quarters of its time on the phone asking for money, they can’t read the laws the lobbyists wrote. This is dangerous.” 

Instead, Congress needs the pragmatic, evidence-based approach of a scientist, Ms. DiMasi said. “Without people trained to look at the results of research, we’ll never know, and there will be never-ending arguments,” she said. “Neither government nor science should be in the business of never-ending arguments.” 

This, she said, sets her apart from her competitors in the race for the nomination. “I’m making a pitch that doesn’t have to change in the general election, talking about energy, the environment, work force development, what we can do. I will go to the general with the exact same platform — I don’t have to pivot to the center.”

“I’m not defined by being a Democrat,” she said. “I’m defined by being a problem solver.”

This is part of a series of profiles of Democrats vying to challenge Lee Zeldin in the lead-up to the June 26 Democratic primary.

A forum hosted by the East Hampton Group for Good Government drew an overflow crowd to the Baldwin Family Lecture Room at the East Hampton Library on Saturday, where proponents and opponents of Deepwater Wind’s proposed South Fork Wind Farm were unable to agree on pertinent facts and largely unwilling to countenance rival viewpoints. 

As the Rhode Island wind farm developer prepares to apply to multiple federal and state agencies for the 15-turbine wind farm it wants to construct some 35 miles east of Montauk, its officials are hoping the commercial fishing industry, which has hardened in its opposition to the project, does not blow its plans off course. 

Those arguing for the East Hampton Town Board and trustees to delay or deny the granting of required easements for the landing of a transmission cable and its path to a Long Island Power Authority substation were confronted with the fact that local control over the project is limited, despite the wind farm developer’s ongoing solicitation of public opinion. 

Rick Drew, a town trustee and member of its harbor management committee, has grown increasingly frustrated at what he described as Deepwater Wind’s unwillingness to provide adequate information. “I’ve asked for an energy flow diagram from the Deepwater Wind team three or four times,” he said on Saturday, but he has yet to receive one. 

“How do we make a decision when we don’t have a diagram?” he asked. “I’ve asked for cost information and was told it’s not available” due to a nondisclosure agreement between Deepwater Wind and LIPA, Mr. Drew said. Estimated construction costs have apparently ranged from $750 million to $1.5 billion. Deepwater Wind officials have said the projected cost to ratepayers will be only $1.19 per month. 

Mr. Drew referred to Bloomberg New Energy Finance’s Outlook 2017 report, which concluded that offshore wind costs would fall by 71 percent by 2040. “In an era of declining wind energy production costs, we’re looking at an expensive project.”  

East Hampton Town’s government and residents, he said, should instead focus on deploying photovoltaic panels to harness solar energy. “We’re lacking a lot of advanced modeling on these subjects. It’s time that we have the open, honest conversation of doing a systems analysis and system design.” 

Thomas Bjurlof, who founded a consultancy specializing in regulatory and technological change and is working on an assessment of transmission grid alternatives for offshore wind in the Northeast, agreed with Mr. Drew, calling for an analysis akin to a 2014 study in Europe in which Greenpeace concluded that a new approach to grids would allow far greater penetration of renewable energy generation. The existing grid, he said, prevents East Hampton from reaching its goal of achieving all of its energy needs from renewable sources; 20 percent from renewables is realistic, he said. 

But Gordian Raacke of East Hampton, who represents Renewable Energy Long Island and has long been a supporter of the South Fork Wind Farm, sounded as frustrated as Mr. Drew in his defense of LIPA and Deepwater Wind’s plan. “It’s not that complicated,” he said, referring to the urgency for new, green electricity generation. The fossil fuel-powered peak generator at the LIPA substation exists, he said, “because there’s peak demand in the summer — they can’t bring in enough power from UpIsland.” Whereas, “the wind farm generates slightly more electricity than we are using on an annual basis here in the Town of East Hampton, as an entire community.” 

Decrying what he called a proliferation of misinformation, Mr. Raacke invited the assembled to refer to LIPA’s 2015 request for proposals to meet the South Fork’s needs. The utility “got 21 proposals, evaluated them, vetted them, screened them for over a year, and made a selection of three projects as part of a package because it was the most cost effective of all the ones received.” The utility consulted with the Towns of East Hampton and Southampton, he said, and the state attorney general and state comptroller reviewed the contract. “Look this up!” he said. 

Jennifer McCann of the University of Rhode Island’s Coastal Resources Center at the Graduate School of Oceanography, told the gathering that the center is a neutral facilitator of ongoing studies of the nation’s first offshore wind farm, the five-turbine Block Island Wind Farm that Deepwater Wind constructed and operates. Among the conclusions to date, she said, are that the wind farm operates quietly. Underwater, it produces about 100 decibels at a range of 50 meters, she said, contrasting that with fin-whale vocalizations recorded in the area, which she said can exceed 140 decibels at 500 meters. The wind farm is “quieter than boats, quieter than rain,” she said.

Another concern of offshore wind’s opponents is the electromagnetic field that would emanate from transmission cables, and the field’s potential to alter the distribution and migratory path of commercially viable species. According to researchers, “there’s not a significant amount of impact” from the Block Island Wind Farm, Ms. McCann said, “but there is some.” She said more research was needed. “There is a cumulative effect” of placing more turbines in the ocean, Ms. McCann added. “We need to make sure the community is involved in the process and the research.”

Bob DeLuca, president of the Group for the East End, said that although growing demand for electricity may be leveling off, “the peak curve continues to spike. . . . If we’re going to address that, do we want to address that from a fossil-fuel standpoint or a renewable standpoint?” He called for “scrutiny, transparency, and accountability at the end,” and said that the town board was “starting to put the right pressure in the right place,” by asking pointed questions of Deepwater Wind. 

“There is a limited role that this town plays, but it can ignore its potential or can maximize its potential,” he said. Both the town and state want to realize a greater share of their electricity from renewable sources, he said, “and most of us environmental people feel the same.” 

Andrew Brosnan of the Eastern Long Island chapter of the Surfrider Foundation agreed. “One thing that I hope we don’t lose sight of is the need for additional power generation here on Long Island, and that we need to look to alternative energy for that power generation.” If rooftop solar can achieve that, “then by all means,” he said. 

Toward the end of the two-hour meeting, Mr. Brosnan confronted what mostly had been left unsaid. Referring to ocean acidification resulting from carbon dioxide emissions, which researchers postulate could greatly harm shellfish and other marine life, he said, “We are concerned about the environment, the continuation of the livelihoods of the people that live on eastern Long Island year  round, who work hard to make a living and need the ocean, need the waters, and need them to be clean. If we continue to rely on fossil fuels, that won’t exist.” 

Asked what approvals Deepwater Wind believes it needs from the trustees and town board, Jennifer Garvey, the company’s Long Island development manager, referred to easements for bringing the transmission cable to the company’s preferred site, the end of Beach Lane in Wainscott, and within town roadways. Should the trustees deny permission to land at the ocean beach, which is under their jurisdiction, the cable could make landfall on state-owned land at Napeague.

 “There wouldn’t be the same opportunity for the town to have a reason to give or not give us a real-estate right,” she said. “It’s not as though the town can’t participate in the process. . . . But you can exert the most control over the way this project comes ashore . . . and the conditions you can impose on it if we land at a local beach

Luis Marin-Castro, a 31-year-old man who was born in Ecuador and has lived in East Hampton for about 20 years, was arrested on Monday morning by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers outside Wainscott Main Wine and Spirits, where he was employed.

Mr. Marin-Castro’s family said they had received a phone call telling them he had been put on an ICE plane; its destination was not shared. They have been advised by a lawyer not to discuss the situation with anyone, they said.

Mr. Marin-Castro attended East Hampton High School. Meredith Thompson, a friend, has started an online GoFundMe page “to raise money to help support Luis’s legal expenses, while his friends and legal team fight to bring him home to his wife, two younger sisters, father, and mother.” 

“Luis has been a community member of East Hampton since he arrived with his family from Ecuador in 1997. Attending East Hampton High School and going on to graduate from Suffolk County Community College,” the online page says. In addition to working at Wainscott Main Wine and Spirits, he was employed at Nick and Toni’s restaurant in East Hampton, where, according to Ms. Thompson, he had worked his way up from bus boy to sommelier.  

How ICE deals with Mr. Marin-Castro, who is undocumented, may be impacted by his having been charged about three years ago with driving while intoxicated after crashing a 2009 Toyota through a fence on Three Mile Harbor-Hog Creek Road in front of East Hampton Town Justice Lisa R. Rana’s house.

As reported in The Star at the time, Mr. Marin-Castro, then 28, was alleged to have put his car in reverse and sped away, leaving a trail of debris.

The police report said he headed south on Three Mile Harbor Road, moving at 77 miles per hour in a 40 m.p.h. zone, and passed a patrol car headed to the scene of the crash. The police officer did a U-turn and pulled him over.

At police headquarters, a breath test was said to have produced a reading of .23 of 1 percent alcohol in his blood, well over the .18 that triggers a raised charge of aggravated drunken driving. He ultimately pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of drunken driving as well as leaving the scene of an accident, and was fined over $1,500. 

Though a spokesperson for ICE was not available yesterday, the policy of both ICE and the immigration courts is to pursue undocumented individuals based on criminal charges. An aggravated drunken driving charge reportedly crosses a threshold in terms of deportation.

With additional reporting by T.E. McMorrow

Sag Harbor’s Main Street, which has been the site of ongoing real estate drama — including the fall and impending rise of the village’s cinema, the passing of the Conca D’Oro pizza parlor, and a rash of construction projects — has yet another issue to contend with: a near half-acre of commercial and residential property between Main and Division Streets has been listed for sale for just shy of $12 million.

Officially listed as 83 Main Street, the assemblage of three contiguous properties contains six retail stores, including the Country Lane gift shop and the Adornments jewelry store, four second-floor apartments or office spaces with a shared roof deck, two single family residences on Division Street (one of which currently houses the Scarlett Rose salon), and a vacant lot on Washington Street that can be developed for commercial use.

Julia Hyman, the owner of the properties, said that she had purchased 83 Main Street 40 years ago. “I bought the corner building and created apartments upstairs,” recalled Ms. Hyman, who lives in Venice, Fla. As she expanded her holdings over the years, she grew attached to her tenants, she said, but decided to put the properties on the market “because of my age and because I no longer live in Sag Harbor.”

Lee Minetree, a broker from Saunders Realty who is Ms. Hyman’s agent, said that he had received offers on the properties, but that no deal was in place.  He said he has also reached out to the village to see if it was interested in purchasing the vacant lot, but has received no response. 

“The village has so much on its plate right now,” said Aidan Corish, a Sag Harbor Village Board member, citing the plans to rebuild Long Wharf and the need to address the parking situation. Given that the properties up for sale lie in the heart of the business district, Mr. Corish said that the village is extremely interested in watching what happens to the parcels, but at this point it had to let the private transaction play out. Ultimately, Mr. Corish added, the village has faith that its building code and its planning and zoning boards would prevent whoever buys the property from developing it in a way that would bring any major disruption to Main Street.

Update, April 11, 10:15 a.m.: Sag Harbor firefighters were able to quickly locate and contain a fire Tuesday night in the Lulu Kitchen and Bar building at 126 Main Street, the department's chief, Bruce Schiavoni, said Wednesday morning. 

The fire "made it up into the ducts of the stove's exhaust," he said, and traveled through the ducts to the roof of the building. "We had to cut some holes in the roof to get at the vent," Chief Schiavoni said.

The building has two offices on the second floor. The front office was fine, the chief said, but in the back one "we had to cut the wall open to get at the ductwork." There was water damage to that office, and in the restaurant kitchen, as well as "very minor smoke and water damage" to the second story of the adjoining In Home store at 132 Main Street.

Original, April 10, 10:22 p.m.: Sag Harbor firefighters were on the scene Tuesday night of a fire in the Main Street building that houses Lulu Kitchen and Bar. 

Smoke and flames could be seen coming from the roof of the building at 126 Main Street, but it was not immediately clear if more than one building was involved. Light smoke was reported in the In Home building at 132 Main Street, as well. East Hampton has sent a ladder truck to assist the Sag Harbor department and the East Hampton Town fire marshal is headed there to investigate. 

Although firefighters reported earlier that the fire was under control and that they believed it was in the ductwork of the building, they continued to search for its source as of 10 p.m. Tuesday.

Check back for more information as it becomes available. 

Opponents and advocates of the proposed South Fork Wind Farm, a 15-turbine, 90-megawatt installation planned approximately 30 miles east of Montauk, spoke for more than three hours at Tuesday’s meeting of the East Hampton Town Board, as commercial fishermen and their supporters railed at a project they fear would result in making fertile fishing grounds off limits. 

Deepwater Wind, a Rhode Island company, is seeking easements from the town and trustees to land the wind farm’s transmission cable at the ocean beach in Wainscott. Deepwater would bury the cable along public roads and the Long Island Rail Road tracks to reach a Long Island Power Authority substation. Tuesday’s presentation was meant to update the board on the package of community benefits the company has proposed and its environmental and permitting assessments. But the meeting was dominated by denunciations from many members of the public and accusations that the board has not adequately vetted its impact on marine life and those who make their living on the waters.

The purpose of the proposed installation is renewable energy for the South Fork that would preclude LIPA’s need for new fossil fuel-derived generation or transmission infrastructure, which the utility determined would be the least expensive of 21 responses to a request for proposals. But more than two hours passed before fossil fuels were implicated and the words “climate change” uttered. When they were, it was a former member of the town’s energy sustainability advisory committee who provided that context, along with a stark warning about what a business-as-usual approach to meeting electricity demand might mean to this coastal community. 

Deepwater Wind needs the easements before it can submit permit applications to the more than 20 federal and state entities involved, which will trigger a review process lasting 18 to 24 months. “We’re very close to being ready to submit our permit applications,” said Aileen Kenney, a Deepwater Wind vice president. Should the company meet its permitting and construction schedule, the wind farm is to begin generating electricity in 2022 and provide power to some 50,000 residences on the South Fork, according to company officials. 

The South Fork Wind Farm, said Clint Plummer, Deepwater Wind’s vice president of development, is the first phase in developing the 256-square-mile site it has leased from the federal government. Tuesday was the 17th public meeting on the wind farm since March 2017, and the project, Mr. Plummer said, has improved based on community feedback. 

He described the horizontal directional drilling process by which a conduit would be laid under the ocean floor, starting some 2,000 feet offshore, and under the beach at the end of Beach Lane in Wainscott, before continuing to the substation. The transmission cable would then be pulled through the conduit to the substation. There would be no construction on the beach itself, Mr. Plummer said. All onshore work would take place after Labor Day and before Memorial Day weekend, with drilling confined to a Nov. 1 to March 31 window and likely limited to 12 hours a day. Burying the conduit along roads and the railroad tracks would be done in 500 to 1,000 feet sections, and roads would be temporarily patched through the summer and repaved in the following season, he said.

Ms. Kenney pointed out that all stakeholders would have opportunity for further comment during the permitting process. She also said that once permits were in place, the company would conduct multiple studies of the site and marine life. On and offshore field studies by third-party entities have already taken place, she said. 

Councilman Jeff Bragman told the Deepwater Wind officials that he was still seeking “a clear idea of the scale” of the project. “This is some major activity going on,” he said, “on a small, pristine beach.” He asked that Deepwater Wind provide details of its drilling methodology, the transmission cable’s capacity, and a more substantial assessment of impacts on the near-shore environment and species that migrate and spawn there.

“Many of us are enthusiastic about wind power,” he said, and therefore inclined to support the project, but he harbored “a serious concern that East Hampton retain control over its destiny. This is a start, but don’t think it’s the end.”

Mr. Bragman “gave us a long list of things to address,” Mr. Plummer said. “We will respond in writing within the next few days. As a general posture on this, we want this dialogue.” 

“This project is being specifically designed to not result in a lack of access for fishing,” Ms. Kenney said, but her statement did nothing to alleviate many ongoing concerns. References to an “industrial complex” in the ocean, suggestions that land-based wind farms would pose fewer uncertainties, fears of higher electricity rates, and concern that the South Fork Wind Farm represents but a fraction of what is to come were voiced over the next hour. 

“There is no amount of research that you’ve done that I would ever consider adequate,” Alice Wainwright said. “There is no amount of community benefits that could equal the incredible resource we have,” she said, referring to the ocean and beaches. 

“As a commercial fisherman, we are looking at the industrialization of our oceans,” said Dan Farnham Jr. of Montauk, referring to the hundreds or even thousands of turbines he expects to follow the South Fork Wind Farm. Information he has sought from Deepwater Wind since December has not been provided, he said, nor has his request to be taken on a trawl survey been honored. The trawl nets of Rhode Island fishermen, he said, have snagged on the concrete mattresses covering sections of the cables serving the Block Island Wind Farm, the nation’s first offshore wind installation, which was constructed and is operated by Deepwater Wind. 

The easement the town would grant Deepwater Wind “is our last bargaining chip,” Mr. Farnham said. The federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the lead permitting agency, could not be expected to apply the same rigorous community standards as the board would, he said. 

Bob Valenti of the town’s fisheries advisory committee complained that Deepwater Wind has yet to sit down with Julie Evans, whom the committee selected last month as its representative, and he suggested that the board was rushing its review. Damage to fisheries and higher electricity bills may negate the community benefits package, he said. 

But proponents of offshore wind were also outspoken, with one saying opponents should see it in a larger context. Renewable energy projects have “to be weighed against what would happen if we don’t do that project,” said Gordian Raacke of the advocacy group Renewable Energy Long Island. If the town is to rely on transmission of electricity from UpIsland, “that would mean we continue to emit greenhouse gases, continue to emit air pollution. That makes people sick, it leads to premature fatalities, it leads to climate change. We have waited for far too long,” he said, adding that anthropogenic climate change has been understood since the 1950s. Regarding efforts to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions, he said, “We have delayed and delayed, again and again.”  

Mr. Raacke, a former member of the town’s energy sustainability committee, recalled a 1999 study published jointly by the Pace Law School Energy Project and the Citizens Advisory Panel in which he and his co-authors estimated the potential of renewable energy technologies and recommended that LIPA initiate a wind resource assessment. LIPA had commissioned a study that found significant offshore wind potential off the Atlantic coast, but the utility’s intention to build a wind farm off Jones Beach, announced in 2002, was ultimately canceled. 

“Here we are, it’s about 20 years later,” Mr. Raacke said. “The Europeans have constructed offshore wind for the last 25 years,” with close to 4,000 turbines operating today, he said. “They’re serious about implementing solutions to climate change. . . . We’ve got to realize, when we say ‘let’s delay, pause, consider more,’ after 20 years or so it may be time to move forward. Nature does not negotiate timelines or deadlines. Nature just keeps going.” 

The town could negotiate a community benefits package with Deepwater Wind, Mr. Raacke said, but “the big community benefits package that we’ll be getting is that we’ll have clean air, a healthy climate, and we’ll begin the transition that’s been overdue for many, many decades now, from dirty, dangerous fossil fuel and nuclear energy.” 

But Dan Farnham Sr., who like his son is a Montauk fisherman, said, “We all want to have alternative energy sources, renewable sources, but we don’t want to be thrown underneath the bus for the benefit of the rest of the country or community.” He said that in waters off Europe trawl fishing between wind turbines is either prohibited or too dangerous. 

“We really appreciate the effort the town board is taking,” the senior Mr. Farnham said, “but I want to emphasize, we are setting a precedent here.”

The owners of Gurney’s Montauk Resort and Seawater Spa last Thursday approved a plan to buy out the inn’s timeshare owners and take full control of the property. During a shareholders meeting at Gurney’s that was depicted as contentious by those in attendance, George Filopoulos, the head of 290 Old Montauk Highway Associates, the company that purchased the oceanfront resort in 2013 and holds the majority of its shares, presented a plan that officially merges Gurney’s with his company.

Mr. Filopoulos, the president of Metrovest Equities in Manhattan, a real estate development firm, described the meeting as merely a procedural event, since it followed a decision earlier last month by Gurney’s board of directors to proceed with the merger and the buyout. 

According to documents sent to timeshare owners, Mr. Filopoulos’s company had received an appraisal from CBRE, a commercial real estate services firm, in February that valued the 11-acre property at $84 million. Using that figure to calculate payouts to shareholders, the company determined that for every 100 shares, which amount to a week’s stay at the property, the shareholder would receive $11,881. 

Pat Boffa, who represents the timeshare owners on the Gurney’s board, deemed the deal a victory. “I’m very happy with the money that we got,” she said. “The majority of people were quite happy; they were thanking me.” 

Mike Azzara, a one-week shareholder, echoed Ms. Boffa’s assessment. “The business was headed to liquidation,” he said, referring to the years when Gurney’s was operated by the family of Nick Monte, the founder of the resort. Prior to Gurney’s sale to Mr. Filopoulos’s company, the resort was plagued by high maintenance costs and special assessment fees, which led to a shareholder lawsuit against management. At the time, many owners decided to give up their units, leaving those who remained burdened with an ever-burgeoning share of the upkeep. 

“It took intellect, vision, and cash to turn it around,” said Mr. Azzara.

The shareholders who were adamantly opposed to the buyout included those who have a history with the resort and want to maintain a connection to it at any cost. Patricia Frank, who received her two weeks of timeshares as a gift from her late husband, said she promised him before he died last year that she would fight to hang on to her shares. 

“He is not getting back my shares until I say so,” Ms. Frank said of Mr. Filopoulos. “As I told George at the end of the meeting, ‘I kind of like the way you are running the joint around here, and I am more than happy to stay on as your partner.’ ”

Lee Squitieri, a Manhattan lawyer and part-time Montauk resident, has filed a class-action suit on behalf of Alan Sparks, an Arizona resident who is a Gurney’s timeshare owner. The lawsuit asserts that the $84 million appraisal “preposterously undervalues” Gurney’s and therefore shortchanges the shareholders.

Mr. Squitieri also said he believes he has a legal path to undo the 2013 agreement that 290 Old Montauk Associates struck with shareholders after its purchase of Gurney’s; the deal provided incentives for owners to relinquish their shares. 

At the time, Mr. Filopoulos’s company gave timeshare owners the option to either sell their shares immediately and receive reductions in maintenance fees or hang on to their units until the end of 2017 and take a chance that the inn would then be resold at a profit. Eighty-seven percent of owners handed over their shares. 

Last week, it was the ones who refused that initial deal who were faced with the company’s final offer, though some intend to remain holdouts for as long as possible. 

“Under New York law there are still claims that can be asserted that can undo the merger,” Mr. Squitieri said. “Many shareholders want to do just that."

Rose Brown, a member of the East Hampton Village design review board and the former chairwoman of the planning board, has declared her intention to run for one of the two village board seats up for a vote in the June 19 election.

The seats are currently held by Arthur Graham and Bruce Siska. Mr. Graham will make a bid for re-election with Ms. Brown as his running mate, and Mr. Siska will also seek re-election. 

In order to get on the ballot, candidates must submit a petition signed by at least 50 residents by May 15.

As the only newcomer to declare a candidacy in the trustee race thus far, Ms. Brown said she is running with Mr. Graham because they share the same determination to find ways to revitalize the village. “The village is known as the village of ‘no’ and we have to move away from that and become the village of ‘yes’ when possible,” she said. She and Mr. Graham will run as members of the Fish Hooks Party, named after Capt. Samuel (Fishhooks) Mulford, an East Hampton whaler and New York assemblyman who, in the early 1700s, traveled to England to take a stand against the British imposition of a tax on whale oil.

Ms. Brown was born and raised in East Hampton, and she and her husband, Greg Brown, a detective sergeant in the village police force, have three children, one in high school, one in middle school, and one in elementary school. A certified social worker, Ms. Brown has worked at the Child Development Center of the Hamptons, and later as director of development at the East Hampton Day Care Learning Center.

Mr. Siska was first appointed to the board in 2011, filling out the term of David Brown, who resigned after an 18-year tenure. He was re-elected in 2012 to fill out the remainder of Mr. Brown’s term and, in 2014, he was elected to a full four-year term. Mr. Graham, who is known as Tiger, won his seat last June in the village’s first contested election in more than a decade. He defeated Philip O’Connell, an incumbent who had been appointed in November 2016 following the death of Elbert Edwards. The two were vying to fill out the final year of Mr. Edwards’s term.

In an email on Tuesday requesting a signature for his nominating petition, Mr. Graham laid out the reasons he thinks his running mate would be a better fit for the board than Mr. Siska. “Bruce is a good guy and a friend, but  he addition of Rose, who has 20 years serving in village government, brings youth and another independent woman’s voice to the issues we face in the village to bring more transparency to the governing process.” 

Ms. Brown touted her governing experience, including her work as a member of the planning board during the time when the village crafted its Comprehensive Plan, as a vital credential for her candidacy. That plan, adopted in 2002, placed “primary importance upon preserving and protecting the village’s residential neighborhoods.” 

Ms. Brown said she still agrees with that premise, but thinks the plan needs updating, particularly in regard to the current state of the commercial district, which she said had “lost its vibrancy.” She said the village board should consider options to bolster businesses, including extending the parking times on Main Street and Newtown Lane to three-hour time frames. Given the current one-hour limit, she said, “You can’t see a movie and get back to your car in that time.” 

She believes more “wet uses” or food-focused shops such as a frozen yogurt store should be allowed in the business district as long as they do not impact water quality or create sanitation issues. 

Her experience as a working mother, said Ms. Brown, makes her attuned to the struggle that young families face in trying to build a life in the village, particularly when it comes to finding affordable housing. “When Greg and I started out, a local resident rented us an apartment at a reduced rate, and I don’t think there’s that same opportunity now,” said Ms. Brown, who believes the village should encourage the creation of more second-story apartments in the business district. 

“I want this to be a place for my kids as well, and not just a resort,” said Ms. Brown, adding that she thought Herrick Park was in dire need of sprucing up, both in terms of landscaping and repairing the tennis courts. Although she described the current village board as a “well-oiled machine,” she said it would benefit from including someone with fresh ideas. “They are doing a good job, but they don’t utilize the village the way that many younger families do.”