Try as one might, it is almost impossible to find any substantial, factual basis in the recent statements withdrawing support for the Orsted-Deepwater Wind South Fork Wind Farm by State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. His central argument, that the increased potential output of the turbines is “a classic bait and switch,” is wrong on its face: The company that proposed the project no longer exists, having been absorbed by a Danish wind-power firm. New corporate entities are entitled to change the direction or scale of the companies they take over — that is a central idea in an open economy like ours. Consider the epic success of Southampton’s Tate’s Cookies, whose home-style, number-one favorite chocolate chip cookie now can be found coast to coast.

Similarly, opposition to a planned cable-landing site in Wainscott from the ocean beach has appeared almost entirely speculative, as have guesses about what the wind farm’s impact would be on electric rates. Somewhat more pertinent, but unspecific nonetheless, are concerns from some in the commercial fishing industry who fear the loss of productive grounds as offshore wind projects eventually multiply. 

There are any number of strange aspects to the no-Deepwater mania. One is that the site of the turbines, about 35 miles east of Montauk Point, is actually closer to Rhode Island than Long Island, that only the electricity produced and a cable will come here. In addition, some among the project’s ill-wishers seem to come from a perspective that not only is renewable energy better, but that Orsted-Deepwater expects to produce far more power than had been anticipated when the project was first discussed. The complaint that the wind farm will benefit consumers beyond the South Fork is a hard criticism to fathom when our region has been silent while using the often-dirty watts produced in other ways. It is not clear how a market-based green energy contribution to reducing global warming is a bad thing.

Of course, they could be right. The hardware associated with the cable under Beach Lane in Wainscott might be an eyesore. Electricity prices might rise. Commercial fishing might be affected. But these costs pale in comparison with the myriad negative impacts of climate change, some of which are already being felt here.

There could be a savvy endgame to Mr. Thiele’s opposition, however. He has long pressed for the disclosure of the Long Island Power Authority’s deal with Deepwater and its successor, to no avail. A bill he plans to introduce in the State Assembly would force the utility to release its contract with Orsted-Deepwater. By adding his high-profile voice, Mr. Thiele may be able to shake the company’s confidence and compel it to come clean on an arrangement with LIPA that should never have been kept secret.

More people are growing oysters these days, and that’s a good thing. Oysters can filter massive amounts of nitrogen from seawater. And with nitrogen a central focus of environmental protection efforts, the tenacious shellfish’s help is welcome. In New York Harbor, the Billion Oyster Project aims to use adult volunteer and student muscle to rebuild oyster reefs that once ringed the estuary. In East Hampton, the town trustees, after years of looking askance at any form of aquaculture, has now jumped on board. 

Since 2016, the trustees have supported the town shellfish hatchery effort to get the public involved in oyster growing. From a modest beginning in Three Mile Harbor with a handful of participants, the program expanded to Hog Creek and Accabonac Harbor, and now Napeague Harbor in 2019. A for-profit oyster-growing operation has been in Lake Montauk, which is not in trustee jurisdiction, for several years and is going strong, too. On the North Fork, the Southold Project in Aquaculture Training has been a success.

There is a delightful Johnny Appleseed quality to the oyster-farming boom. In East Hampton’s program, participants get 1,000 seed from the hatchery. They get to keep half the oysters that make it to edible size, with the other half distributed in public waters. Behind the scenes, or more accurately, underwater, the oysters, protected in cages, spawn each spring, with at least some spat surviving to grow naturally attached to rocks or other substrates to their liking. The proof of the concept is already here: “Wild” oysters can now be found in places where they had been missing for decades.

Unlike Suffolk officials who stumbled into a confrontation with residents of Amagansett and Lazy Point over the location of commercial oyster-growing plots in Gardiner’s Bay, the trustees have been careful in placing the recreational oyster plots where they will create the least disturbance. This is a terrific program, and we hope that many more people get involved.

A decision last month by the East Hampton Town Board to toughen the rules about outdoor lighting, in particular to end the use of strings of bulbs to create outdoor gathering spaces at restaurants and nightclubs, is a good one. But whether it will be enforced is another question.

Officials have found it very difficult to limit the spread of bars and other establishments onto their lawns for crowds that can often number in the hundreds. By cutting the lights, so to speak, the town could tamp down on the party scene. As written in the new law, “The need for clarification has arisen as commercial properties are more frequently utilizing string lighting to delineate new, unapproved, outdoor areas for commercial use.” (Holiday lights will continue to be allowed, but limited to between Nov. 15 and Jan. 15.)

The effectiveness of the new rules will, once again, come down to how the Ordinance Enforcement Department performs. This is questionable, since it has for a long time had a near-perfect blind spot about lighting. This page has for years complained that a section of the East Hampton Town code prohibiting “internally illuminated” signs is essentially ignored. So, too, are many aspects of the more recent lighting rules. 

Yes, the Planning and Building Departments, as well as the appointed boards, follow the rules, but once something is built it seems anything goes. To some degree, string lights with visible filaments are already prohibited under the town’s dark-sky regulations; why no one in authority has noticed is a mystery.

We hope that the town’s code enforcers begin paying more attention. If there is one thing that should be easy to police it is the lighting law.

East Hampton is far from alone in dealing with the emerging health threat from a class of industrial chemicals used in firefighting and many other projects. Groundwater south and east of the town airport was found to be contaminated by perfluorooctane sulfonate, or PFOS, and perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA. The compounds also have been found near MacArthur Airport in the Town of Islip and near Gabreski Airport in Westhampton Beach. These chemicals are persistent and toxic at very low concentrations, but the Environmental Protection Agency has issued only an unenforceable health advisory about the safe level in drinking water. 

Since PFOS and PFOA were identified here, the Suffolk County Water Authority has installed more than eight miles of water mains in Wainscott in a massive joint project with East Hampton Town. State inspectors from the Department of Environmental Conservation got involved, as well, identifying four possible sources of the dangerous groundwater pollution. 

Federal agencies are notably absent from the PFOS and PFOA problem, and Washington has not offered help to the dozens, if not hundreds of communities affected by potentially harmful drinking water. A so-called action plan released by the E.P.A. late last week did not promise any help with remediation and failed to set a hard and fast rule for maximum exposure. As a result, state and local governments and water authorities have had to go it alone.

Meanwhile, a House of Representatives committee is looking into whether the federal Centers for Disease Control might have quashed a report that indicated that some classes of the chemicals could be harmful at levels well below the E.P.A.’s current advisory level of 70 parts per trillion.

PFOS and PFOA are a national problem. Michigan began statewide testing last year and discovered that nearly 19 million residents have been drinking water with measurable levels of the chemicals, reaching 540 times higher than the E.P.A.’s safety advisory level in one community. Other contaminated sites have been found in Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, West Virginia, and upstate New York. Gov. Andrew Cuomo is said to be considering setting an aggressive state limit of 10 parts per trillion.

The chemicals’ effects in humans are not as well understood, though in 2005 an E.P.A. panel concluded that PFOA was a likely carcinogen. Other studies have indicated possible thyroid effects and suspicions about the chemicals’ role in heart disease and cancers of the prostate and pancreas.

Despite the known and suspected risks, Washington has not set any enforceable regulations for the entire class of chemicals. The prospect for action is dimmed by the appointment of Andrew Wheeler, a climate change denier and former coal lobbyist, to lead the E.P.A. Mr. Wheeler has been the acting head of the agency since Scott Pruitt stepped down. In the last half-year, he has weakened emissions rules for coal plants, taken on federal regulations protecting streams and wetlands, and he wants to roll back clean-air regulations for cars and trucks. Observers of the E.P.A. say they have their doubts that PFOS/PFOA will be regulated at all during the Trump administration.

Relying on the states to act is a pig in a poke. Only a handful so far have set drinking water standards for human exposure. This means that without federal limits, millions of Americans have no protections at all.

Creating affordable housing and providing financial help for first-time homebuyers have been among the major goals of leaders on the East End for decades. Results have been mixed. East Hampton Town has led the way in efforts to make units available, but has never been able to keep up with the demand. The pressure on modest-income families has been made worse by a shift among property owners away from year-round rentals and into the lucrative short-term-stay market.

Now, Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. has introduced a bill in the New York Legislature that would impose an additional half-point tax on real estate transactions, to help spur development of new housing initiatives. Like the community preservation fund’s 2-percent transfer tax, this proposed housing tax would be set aside for new low-income developments and town-managed loans. Mr. Thiele has estimated that the housing tax could bring in up to $13 million annually in both East Hampton and Southampton Towns.

The greatest obstacle facing the new tax is likely to be the real estate industry. Considering that it took about a decade to get the community preservation fund approved, adding another half-percent fee might be a hard sell. And, even if the objectives are unimpeachable, some might say it would not be quite fair to go back and again single out one sector of the local economy. 

But there are other potential ways to support affordable housing.

On Martha’s Vineyard, activists are hopeful that a new state tax on short-term rentals could fund a housing “bank.” As of July 1, Massachusetts will collect a 5.7 percent tax on rentals of fewer than 31 days, matching the tax applied to hotel rooms. (Property owners who rent for a total of 14 days or fewer a year are exempt, mirroring a federal tax rule.) 

One of the main concerns driving the Massachusetts law was that the rise of short-term rental services such as Airbnb was depleting housing stock that otherwise might be occupied by lower-income members of the work force, and others for whom home ownership is out of reach. It is much the same story here.

Though Airbnb, for example, collects hotel-occupancy taxes for a number of New York counties, Suffolk is not among them. This means that short-term hosts here are getting a free ride when it comes to sharing the cost of services their paying guests require. If visitors in other areas are already paying into their county coffers, it is hard to argue that extending such a tax to Suffolk would impose an undue burden.

Back on Martha’s Vineyard, they are saying that the rooms tax could bring as much as $4 million a year into the planned housing bank. On the East End, a similar rate might net significantly more. 

Mr. Thiele’s bill is worthwhile and should be pursued. But if it fails to get enough support to reach the governor’s desk, a high-turnover-rental tax would be a worthwhile alternative to explore.

Well, well. If nothing else, the 2019 campaign season will be lively. Thank the East Hampton Town Republican Committee for stirring things up with an announcement this week of its candidates for town board, supervisor, and trustees. The top of the ticket has Richard P. Myers Jr. seeking the supervisor’s seat. The hard-nosed Mr. Myers runs a luxury travel service and is the chairman of the town’s architectural review board and former chairman of the Wainscott Citizens Advisory Committee. He has been an effective advocate for Wainscott over the years. For at least 20 years, he has contributed to local Democratic Party campaigns, often from his Park Avenue address, and he even gave money to Peter Van Scoyoc’s race for East Hampton Town supervisor in 2017, when he was facing the man now head of Mr. Myers’s party, Manny Vilar. 

Bonnie Brady of Montauk, the fireball director of the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association who has become an outspoken opponent of offshore wind farm development, will run on the Republican ticket for town board. Ms. Brady’s sole political contribution that we know of went to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo last year. She will be joined on the ticket by Betsy Bambrick, a retired town animal control officer who finished her career as head of the Ordinance Enforcement Department during a period of upheaval in which a subordinate was fired for destroying paperwork about violations, and then lying about it.

Among the trustee candidates backed by the Republicans are Dell Cullum, a nuisance wildlife handler who ran as a Democrat two years ago, and Rona Klopman, a gadfly Amagansett resident who was a die-hard local Democrat until she was not.

The Democratic Committee has offered few surprises in its choices for November. The three incumbents whose terms are ending, Mr. Van Scoyoc, David Lys, and Sylvia Overby, are seeking re-election. For town justice, the committee has put forth Andrew Strong, a Springs resident who works as the in-house lawyer for Organizacion Latino-Americana of Eastern Long Island; his challenge to Justice Lisa R. Rana could prove the most interesting of the cycle, given his closeness to issues involving Spanish-speaking residents of the South Fork.

Critics of the current five-Democrat town board have complained about one-party rule, which seems an oversimplification. Councilman Jeff Bragman has differed from the general flow on more than a few occasions since he was elected, and Councilman David Lys, to us, seems about as apolitical as it gets. 

That said, outlooks from across the spectrum should be represented on the town board; we would like to see more Green Party-aligned candidates, for example, as well as fiscal and social conservatives. Instead, what the East Hampton Republican Party stands for at this point is murky. At best, its guiding principle might be boiled down to “none of the above.” The head-scratching choices for top-of-the-ballot local candidates have made its views even less clear to voters.

How longtime Democrats, like Ms. Brady and Ms. Klopman, square their politics with their new friends in the party of Trump is not at all obvious. And how Mr. Cullum and Mr. Drew, both of whom must consider themselves environmentalists, can sign on with the party responsible for the methodical dismantling of the Environmental Protection Agency and the abandonment of international climate agreements defies understanding. That any of the lot of them can countenance Mr. Trump’s racist, no-nothing piggery and lack of respect for the other branches of government is beyond belief. 

Try as they might to distance themselves from the president, he will be the baggage they carry into the election. As we said, November 2019 will be lively.

Like Gov. Ralph Northam’s racial insensitivity in Virginia, an elected official in upstate New York was recently caught using slurs. Mark McGrath resigned from the Troy City Council on Monday, after a three-year-old voice-mail message that contained two highly offensive anti-black terms was reported in The Albany Times-Union. 

Mr. McGrath, a six-term Conservative Party member, did not apologize. Instead, he acted the part of a victim, saying, “It’s hard for us to fathom what kind of person would hang on to a voice mail I clearly didn’t know existed just to release it to the press more than three years later in an effort to hurt me and my reputation.” 

When he was first contacted by The Times-Union, he denied the recorded voice was his and refused to step down. Four days later, as pressure increased within the City Council and elsewhere in Troy, he admitted the voice was his and left office.

Mr. Northam first said he was one of two people on his page in a 1984 Eastern Virginia Medical School yearbook, one in blackface, the other in a Ku Klux Klan hood, then changed his story, saying he had once darkened his face to dress as the late pop singer Michael Jackson for a Halloween party, as if somehow that was okay. Neither explanation should have been acceptable even in the 1980s. 

It is unfathomable that when slurs of this kind come to light any politician would expect to stay on in his or her elected post any longer than a minute. As Senator Elizabeth Warren said this week, Mr. Northam admitted to enough involvement with racial stereotypes to disqualify himself as governor. That he remained in office as of yesterday shows there is still very far to go before racism is truly a thing of the past.

East Hampton Town, having made its bed as far as overdevelopment of Montauk is concerned, will now have to sleep in it. After looking away as the hamlet’s small resort operators bent laws, the town is finding it very difficult to enforce discipline in the face of big money. 

Just one of the current challenges is the Duryea’s complex of white-clad buildings on the shore of Fort Pond Bay. Marc Rowan owns the place now and in a legal settlement quietly negotiated with the town attorneys last month, appears to have gotten just about everything he wants to do with the property, including opening a full-service restaurant. Odd, too, is that the town’s unauthorized capitulation came stunningly swiftly — less than a year from the date Mr. Rowan indicated his intention to sue the town in this matter.

Among the expected changes is a newly built restaurant, where up till now only outdoor window service with table runners on demand was allowed. Sure, the town will say the deal is a one-off, but there is the matter of precedent, or, as some might call it, a domino effect. Most dangerous is that in giving in to Mr. Rowan, the town attorneys on their own overturned a 1997 decision by the zoning board of appeals that prohibited a full, sit-down restaurant at Duryea’s.

There is plenty more weirdness surrounding the settlement. During a Feb. 21 town board meeting when the subject came up, the town’s top attorney, Michael Sendlenski, stood up and issued a highly unusual, shouted self-defense, answering criticism from Councilman Jeff Bragman, edging close to resigning then and there as the cameras rolled. Town Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc visibly took Mr. Sendlenski’s side, nodding vigorously as the attorney spoke, as if coaching from the sidelines, and directing negative comments toward Mr. Bragman. 

Mr. Bragman had clearly hit the wrong (or right) nerve when he criticized the closed-door meetings that led to the settlement and characterized the deal as better for Mr. Rowan than for the town. One point not to be forgotten is that three of the five town attorneys could not work on the Duryea’s matter, apparently for having done business with or for Mr. Rowan previously. However, during his tirade, for all the noise he made, Mr. Sendlenski did not disprove any of Mr. Bragman’s accusations.

In one of the weaker aspects of an already weak settlement, the town will allow tenders to take Duryea’s guests to and from vessels anchored in Fort Pond Bay. This goes along with a prohibition on cruise liners at the Duryea’s pier, but the agreement was notably silent on whether the liners’ passengers might one day make landings via these tenders, as cruise lines do in many destinations around the world. 

Mr. Sendlenski’s office also wrongly agreed to an accelerated timetable for Mr. Rowan’s permit process, making several commitments that appear to force the planning board, Planning Department, and Building Department into an unreasonably fast-paced schedule. What’s more, the agreement narrowly and improperly limited the scope of planning board review, meanwhile overturning a 1997 zoning board decision with paper-thin justification.

Okay, okay, we get it. It is tough to go to court with a well-funded adversary. And in the end, Mr. Rowan’s property appears to be a legal site for a full-blown Hamptons high-end restaurant. But this doesn’t mean the town had to rush to settle the matter. Mr. Bragman and others, like David Buda, a habitual board watcher, have been right to raise questions. Most important at this point is why Mr. Sendlenski signed the deal without prior approval by the entire town board. This is a big deal, and we expect residents will learn a lot more before it is all over.

What to do about weekend hunting? A citizens group recently asked the East Hampton Town Board to ban shooting on town properties on either Saturdays or Sundays over concerns about safety and noise. Also implied, if not stated outright, is the group’s general opposition to hunting, which it has made clear on other occasions: There is no way the town board is going that far at this time.

Weekend hunting had been prohibited for a long time. New York State allowed it again about four years ago, and the town followed. Though only a small portion of the population hunts, it seemed unfair to force them to take off from work to do so while every other form of recreation we can think of is allowed seven days a week.

The wrinkle on the South Fork is that a significant portion of the taxpaying population is here only on weekends. Some among them believe that they have a right to feel safe on public lands and free of the sound of gunfire. Wrapped within the issue of weekend hunting is the question of whose interests town officials should consider — the year-rounders, a few of whom might hunt, or part-timers, who keep the local economy humming and are less interested in shooting sports.

Rather than limiting hunting in East Hampton to one weekend day on town lands, an alternative could be crafted to accommodate both sides. In our vision, hunting would be allowed annually on a rotating basis, setting certain locations aside for weekend gunning, and then letting them lie fallow, so to speak, the following year. The state and county, which own huge tracts here where hunting is allowed, might be asked to do the same.

Because the tick-borne disease epidemic has made woodland walks less appealing most of the year, more people, hunters and hikers alike, are now competing for space during the cold months when the blood- thirsty pests are less active. Finding a way to provide for both should be possible.

The State of New York is barreling fast toward the anticipated legalization of the sale and possession of marijuana as a way to increase tax receipts and reduce the impact of arrests for possession and sale, which fall disproportionately on people of color and the poor. Whether legalization would be statewide is an open question; the draft under consideration in Albany would allow cities and counties to retain current prohibitions. 

The Suffolk Legislature is considering its own “opt-out” bill, sponsored by Legislator Rob Trotta of Fort Salonga, a retired county police detective. Mr. Trotta’s view is that marijuana can lead to the use of more dangerous addictive drugs. This was echoed by several speakers at a Feb. 25 hearing in Hauppauge. The link between pot and opioid addiction, however, is not clear-cut.

Numerous studies have shown that, contrary to Mr. Trotta’s opinion, marijuana legalization is associated with lower rates of opioid use.

In the Journal of General Internal Medicine recently an analysis of an insurance database of more than 4.8 million medical marijuana users showed the rate of prescriptions for high-risk opioids, as well as the chronic use of all opioids, was “modestly lower.” According to another study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, prescriptions for all opioids decreased by 3.7 million doses a day after medical marijuana dispensaries opened in the United States. Other studies have demonstrated a reduction in the use of other pain medicines, as well as in alcohol and tobacco consumption. Certainly there is room for more research, but the overwhelming evidence is that marijuana is less of a gateway drug than some fear.

Mr. Trotta’s stance against legalized marijuana is likely to have more to do with his bid for the Republican Suffolk executive nomination than anything else. He announced his candidacy last month and would need to get past County Comptroller John Kennedy, the other major G.O.P. hopeful according to Newsday, to appear on the ballot in November. Whipping up fears about drug-crazed abusers could play well among those voters Mr. Trotta would need to succeed. 

Make no mistake, there is a disturbing subtext to Mr. Trotta’s bill, namely the disproportionate number of marijuana arrests of people of color, who are significantly more often to be in trouble with the law for possession than whites. Start Smart NY, a group in favor of legalization, presented a report this week indicating that blacks and Latinos accounted for between 60 and 66 percent of marijuana possession arrests in Nassau and Suffolk Counties while being only about 30 percent of the population. Within the white population, the reverse is true: In Suffolk, whites are 69 percent of the population but accounted for just 32 percent of marijuana arrests. The arrest rate for whites was slightly more equitable in Nassau County, but only by about 8 percent, which is still a massive imbalance.

As objectionable a strategy as Mr. Trotta’s approach might be, it could be smart politics for him and other county Republicans. In 2016, Donald Trump won Suffolk by a healthy margin over Hillary Clinton in a presidential campaign in which the eventual winner’s opening shots were at people of color, and he has continued to fan racial divisions in the two years since taking office. A key portion of the state measure would allow low-level marijuana arrest and conviction records to be sealed, an issue that now can make it difficult for some New Yorkers to find or retain jobs. 

We hope the Legislature votes down Mr. Trotta’s bill. Access to marijuana will continue to be easy whether or not it is legalized in Suffolk. But if it is not made legal the unfair effect of its prohibition on people of color will certainly continue.