When a tree falls in the woods, does it make a sound? You bet it does, when it happens in environmentally friendly Montauk.

       PSEG Long Island, the company that took over from the Long Island Power Authority on Jan. 1, has started what it calls an “aggressive” project to remove trees and branches that could obstruct power lines across 2,600 miles of Long Island.

       Sue Farnham, a Montauk resident who walks several times a week through the park at Camp Hero, said she couldn’t believe what she was seeing there. “I was shocked when I saw them cutting down the trees. I just don’t understand the severity of it,” she said. “Did they even consult with arborists?”

       “Absolutely,” said Jeffrey Weir, a PSEG spokesman. Power outages are more often caused by tree and branch interference than anything else, he said, and PSEG has made it its mission in 2014 to take an aggressive approach to trim and sometimes cut to the ground what it considers to be “at risk” trees.

       “I think it’s horrible,” said a state park employee at Camp Hero, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak. “But I know they got permission. We checked it all out.”

       The electric utility is trying to create a buffer to prevent limbs from falling on the lines, said Mr. Weir. It is increasing the current 6-foot clearance to 8 feet from the power lines, 12 feet above them, and 10 feet below, which is PSEG’s current standard level, said Mr. Weir.

       The work in Montauk, which will continue through the next couple of weeks, will also include neighborhood trees. Mr. Weir said the company has taken steps to alert homeowners by sending out letters, directing people to its website, pseglinycom, and leaving notifications on front doors.

       “It’s a major change for our customers and may take some time to get used to, but it’s all about improving the system and keeping the power lines clear, said Mr. Weir.

       The companies doing the work, all licensed contractors, include Asplundh Tree Trimming, Harder Services, IPC Contracting, and Lewis Tree Service.

       Plans to renovate and expand the Harbor Heights service station on Route 114 in Sag Harbor were dealt a blow by the village zoning board of appeals last Thursday when its members, in a straw poll, said they would deny three of the four variances the project in its current configuration requires.

       The Z.B.A. had planned to issue a written decision on the application of John Leonard’s Petroleum Ventures L.L.C. on Tuesday night, but the meeting was postponed until next month because of the snowstorm that hit the East End that afternoon and evening.

       The Z.B.A. said it would reject a request to allow the gas station to convert a portion of its existing building into a 718-square-foot convenience store. The village code limits the size to 600 square feet.

       Another variance, seeking a reduction in the 30-foot required buffered side yard setbacks, to 10.5 feet and 21 feet, was also rejected.

       A variance seeking a determination as to whether the renovation project, which includes the addition of gas pumps and a canopy to cover them, was an intensification of a pre-existing, nonconforming use, was rendered moot once the Z.B.A. decided to not approve the variance for the size of the store.

       The sole variance the board approved was for a 15.5-foot front yard setback, where 50 feet is required, because that coincides with the placement of the existing building.

       Anthony Hagen, the Z.B.A.’s chairman, said the board was concerned that the plans, which in one form or another have been before the village’s planning board and Z.B.A. for several years, were an attempt to create “a highway type gas station” that he said would clash too much with the surrounding residential area.

       He defended the time it took the Z.B.A. to come up with its decision, stating that commercial applications in residential zones are by their nature more complicated than the typical residential applications the board reviews.

       That the decision will most likely end up in the courts was driven home by the presence of the village’s attorney, Fred. W. Thiele Jr., along with the Z.B.A.’s lawyer, Denise Schoen.

       Dennis Downes, the attorney representing Petroleum Ventures, did not return a call seeking commen

       Money that will be earmarked to provide work force housing for Sag Harbor residents can now be deposited with the Sag Harbor Community Housing Trust. The village board took the necessary steps on Tuesday to allow the trust to receive money now that substantial progress is being made on the transformation of the former Bulova building into upscale condominiums.

       As part of the review process, Watchcase Associates, the developers of the Bulova property, agreed to donate up to $2.5 million to a village fund for affordable housing instead of setting aside a percentage of the project’s 64 units as affordable housing.

       The developers have agreed to make payments to the village each time they close on the sale of a unit rather than make the payment in one lump sum.

       “We started this housing trust fund a few years ago,” said Mayor Brian Gilbride on Wednesday. “Instead of the money sitting in an account and us fumbling around, there will be a committee that will oversee it.” That committee is chaired by Greg Ferraris, a former mayor and an accountant.

       The money can be used to buy or renovate property and even to help qualified buyers make down payments, although Mr. Gilbride said the village has yet to determine if the money could be used outside the village limits.

       The board also received a report on traffic calming measures from Susan Mead of Serve Sag Harbor, an offshoot of the preservationist group Save Sag Harbor.

       Ms. Mead told the board that her organization had raised $13,000 to pay for engineers to produce plans for improving up to 23 intersections in the village. She said the group expected to have detailed plans available for four intersections — Main and Union Streets, Main and Glover Streets, Main Street and Jermain Avenue at Mashashimuet Park, and Jermain Avenue and Oakland Street — as early as February.

       “We’re told that if the engineering is done and there is local interest, the chances of getting a grant goes way up,” Ms. Mead told the board.

       Mr. Gilbride said the board would review the plans and proceed from there. “Let’s see what they come up with,” he said. “We may do some of them and we may not do others.”

       Pierce Hance, a former mayor and board member, also addressed the board, suggesting that it prepare a priority list for capital projects. Before the village signs off on replacing the aging bulkhead of Long Wharf, it should also review the condition of bulkheads at Marine Park, he said, so it might save money by having all the work done at the same time.

       He also asked about plans for the renovation of the Municipal Building. “Is it worth it to renovate the fourth floor, so you can go up to see the antique pistol range?” he asked.

       Nada Barry, the owner of the Wharf Shop, citing the early January blizzard, asked if residents and merchants who do not clean their sidewalks are going to be ticketed. The board agreed that it needs to come up with a plan for addressing the issue, but took no action.

       At the top of Tuesday’s meeting, the board honored outgoing Southampton Trustee Jon Semlear, who did not seek re-election this year, with a proclamation thanking him for his work in helping improve the water quality in Sag Harbor Cove and the surrounding area.

       Renee Ann Forsberg and Roberto Angel Salomon were married on Sept. 15 at the Montauk Point Lighthouse. Former East Hampton Town Justice James R. Ketcham performed the ceremony, and a reception followed at the Navy Beach restaurant in Montauk.

       The bride is the daughter of Jon Forsberg of Montauk and Janet Forsberg of Sarasota, Fla. She graduated from Florida State University in Tallahassee with a bachelor’s degree in criminology and earned a degree in culinary arts from the Institute of Culinary Education in New York. She has worked for the chef and restaurateur Bobby Flay 11 years and is now his culinary director.

       Mr. Salomon, a New York City fireman for the past eight years, holds a bachelor’s degree in business from Villanova University in Pennsylvania. His parents are Linda Boggio of Manorville and Robert Salomon of Staten Island.

       The couple met at a bar in New York City almost four years ago. “We saw each other from across the room, but never spoke,” the bride wrote. “After we both left that bar, and several hours later, we ended up seeing each other again at a different location 20 blocks away. We spoke the rest of the night and started dating immediately.”

       The bride wore a textured floral strapless gown with an elbow-length veil and carried a bouquet of ivory roses. Her best friend of 35 years, Taryn Philley Masi of Springs, was her matron of honor.

       Following a wedding trip to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, the couple is living in Manhattan.

    Jeanie and David Stiles of Albertine’s Lane, East Hampton, and New York City have announced the marriage of their daughter, Lief Anne Stiles, to Thomas Yates Catlett, a son of Richard and Barbara Catlett of Richmond, Va.

    They were married in a civil ceremony on Nov. 21 in Manhattan. The bride wore an ivory-colored Valentino gown and carried matching roses.

    The bride has a degree in art history from Duke University and a master’s degree from Columbia Teachers College. She works as a private reading specialist in Manhattan and Southampton.

    The bridegroom received an M.B.A. from the University of Virginia and is a financial consultant with Morgan Stanley in New York.

    The couple will be dividing their time between Richmond and New York and spending the summer in East Hampton. Their wedding trip was to St. Barthelemy.

       Bengt Hokanson and Trefny Dix, glass artists who recently moved back to East Hampton after several years in Durango, Colo., have launched a Kickstarter project to raise the money they need to move their glass studio from Colorado to East Hampton.

       The couple make art glass pieces and one-of-a-kind glass sculptures under the name Hokanson Dix Glass. Through Kickstarter, they have until Wednesday to raise the $8,500 they have estimated it will cost to turn the Northwest Woods art studio of Mr. Hokanson’s late father, Hans Hokanson, into a space that can accommodate their glass-blowing equipment. The move itself accounts for the bulk of the costs, $5,500, but they are also looking to raise money for a new cement floor for the studio space and the building materials to enclose it. As of yesterday, they were $5,573 toward their goal, but if they do not raise the full amount by Wednesday, they will forfeit those pledges.

       Those who wish to contribute to the effort can find details by searching Hokanson Dix Glass at kickstarter.com. Examples of their work can be seen on their own website, boarglass.com

       As boulders were transported to the beach in front of 11 West End Road in East Hampton on Monday, an attorney for the East Hampton Town Trustees continued an urgent legal effort to stop construction of a rock revetment.

       Mollie Zweig’s application to remove a rock groin, build a rock revetment, restore an eroded dune with 4,000 cubic yards of sand, plant beach grass, and install sand fencing was granted by the East Hampton Village Zoning Board of Appeals on Oct. 11.

       The Z.B.A.’s decision was controversial, with impassioned opposition from the trustees, whose clerk, Diane McNally, asserted that the land in question was under trustee jurisdiction. She implored the board to consider alternatives.

       At the same Sept. 27 hearing, Ms. Zweig’s attorney, Stephen Angel of Esseks, Hefter and Angel, angrily cited a United States Supreme Court decision in support of his client’s cause.

       Construction commenced on Monday, Veterans Day, when courts were closed. David Eagan of Eagan and Matthews, representing the trustees, traveled to State Supreme Court in Riverhead on Tuesday, where he spent 90 minutes in a judge’s chamber seeking a temporary restraining order to halt the project. Yesterday morning, he said, he was due back in court for the same purpose, even as work continued in front of the Zweig property.

       Last Thursday, Mr. Eagan filed a request for judicial intervention on behalf of the trustees against Ms. Zweig, East Hampton Village, the village Z.B.A. and Department of Code Enforcement, the Town of East Hampton, and the town Z.B.A. The petition seeks to nullify the Oct. 11 decision via an Article 78 proceeding, which is used to challenge the activities of an administrative body.

       The Z.B.A.’s Oct. 11 decision, the trustees assert, was “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion and contrary to law.”

       The action follows letters sent to the village’s Department of Code Enforcement. The first, dated Oct. 25, demanded that a building permit not be issued.

       “Our request is being made in an effort to avoid embroiling the Village of East Hampton in litigation that the Trustees have authorized this office to commence against Ms. Zweig,” the letter read, “based primarily upon her continued failure to recognize the Trustees’ jurisdiction with respect to the proposed revetment project, and to make a proper application to the trustees for their approval thereof.”

       Informed that code enforcement had already issued a building permit prior to the Oct. 25 letter, Mr. Eagan again contacted the department, on Oct. 29, requesting that the permit be rescinded “until such time as the issues raised in our October 25, 2013 letter can be satisfactorily addressed.”

       The trustees maintain that most if not all of the proposed revetment is situated on trustee-owned land. The existing stone groin to be removed, part of the project, is seaward of Ms. Zweig’s property line, the request for intervention states, and therefore under trustee jurisdiction.

       The trustees further assert that the Z.B.A.’s very jurisdiction over the land in question is fraught with “substantial uncertainty.”

       “Like the southern boundary of the premises,” the request for intervention reads, “the southern boundary line between the [village] and the [town] in the vicinity of the Premises is an ambulatory line defined by the location of the southerly line of beach grass along the Atlantic Ocean.” Most of the proposed project “will be located south of that ‘line of beach grass,’ and is therefore outside of the jurisdiction of both the village and the village Z.B.A. (and within the town’s and trustees’ concurrent jurisdiction). . . .” Based on these assertions, Ms. Zweig must obtain a permit from the trustees in order for her project to proceed, the petition argues.

       Frank Newbold, chairman of the village Z.B.A., would not comment on the case yesterday, citing the litigation in progress.

       In an interview on Monday, Mr. Eagan disputed all of Mr. Angel’s assertions, calling them both illogical and disingenuous. “Zweig is completely incorrect when her lawyer takes a position on two points,” Mr. Eagan said. “One, that Zweig owns metes and bounds [a legal description of land measurements] out into the beach area. That’s false: if you look at the chain of title, from the time that property was first conveyed to a private owner in 1902, the southern boundary concept was ‘edge of the beach grass line.’ It stayed that way through four or five conveyances, when someone put metes and bounds in, and that stayed through the current deed.”

       Mr. Angel’s claim, made at the Sept. 27 hearing, that a consequence of Hurricane Sandy was “avulsion,” which does not change title to a property, does not withstand scrutiny, Mr. Eagan said. Mr. Angel had said that “the only property you lose along the shoreline is property that’s eroded.”

       “No court has ever found the doctrine of avulsion applied to a single residential lot on the south shore of Long Island,” Mr. Eagan said. Avulsion, he said, “is a major cataclysmic change in water course, and it usually results in rivers changing courses and big streams where land that once was not covered with water becomes so.” At issue, he said, is whether property owners lose title to land when it floods. Avulsion, he said, holds that they do not, but “what’s happening here is erosion. Under the doctrine of erosion, it’s simple: if you lose it, you lose it; if you gain it, you win it.”

       Six lots to the west on West End Road is the house of Lloyd and Barbara Macklowe, who recently prevailed over the trustees in State Supreme Court. On Oct. 23, the appellate division upheld a March 2012 decision that the Macklowes’ property line extended to the beach grass line, which was determined to be movable.

       The Macklowes, too, were represented by Esseks, Hefter and Angel. Anthony Pasca, an attorney with that firm, wrote of the decision that “New York has long recognized that the boundary is ambulatory and can change based on gradual long-term erosion or accretion, though it would not change based on avulsion, which is the sudden loss of land from storm events.”

       The “erosion doctrine,” Mr. Eagan said on Monday, “is what was found to be controlling in [the Macklowe decision]. . . . It seems illogical for someone to claim the doctrine of erosion controls one lot, but conveniently doesn’t six lots to the east because the legal conclusions don’t support them. I don’t know how you can claim one natural process on one lot on West End, and six lots down claim a completely different one. We think it’s a bogus theory and the courts will reject it.”

       Mr. Angel did not return a call requesting comment.

       On Tuesday night, the trustees’ attorney in the Macklowe matter, Anthony B. Tohill, addressed them in an executive session during their regular meeting. In another executive session at the same meeting, John Courtney, the trustees’ attorney, spoke with them about Mr. Eagan’s efforts to halt Ms. Zweig’s construction project.

       Awaiting word from Mr. Eagan yesterday, Ms. McNally repeated her assertion that Ms. Zweig’s house was not in imminent danger and called the action of the contractor, First Coastal Corporation, reprehensible. “To have them start on Monday, a holiday, is the worst of human nature,” she said. “All these entities keep saying that their opinion — that we don’t have jurisdiction — counts more than ours. It puts the trustees in a bad position, and it’s really a shame.”

    The East Hampton Town Trustees will hold the 23rd Largest Clam Contest on Sunday at noon at the Donald Lamb Building in Amagansett.

    The annual event will include a clam chowder competition, judged by writers from The Star and featuring both Manhattan and New England-style variations on the delicacy, chowder and clams on the half shell for all, and a display of the Dongan Patent, the 1686 document that created the trustees and granted them authority over the Town of East Hampton.

    A prize will be awarded to both the adult and child submitting the largest clam dug from each of four waterways — Lake Montauk, Accabonac Harbor, Three Mile Harbor, and Napeague Harbor. An additional prize awaits the holder of the largest overall specimen.

    Through Saturday, contestants can take their entry to the Seafood Shop in Wainscott, Stuart’s Fish Market in Amagansett, or Gosman’s Fish Market in Montauk. Documentation including their name and the date and waterway from which the clam was harvested will be recorded. On Sunday, the trustees will weigh and measure each quahog. Following the competition, the bivalves will be returned to the waters whence they came.

    The competition’s intent, said Diane McNally, the trustees’ clerk, “is to promote local shellfish and encourage the next generation to go shellfishing.” The trustees will take a moment before the winners are announced, Ms. McNally said, to introduce themselves and explain their role in the town’s governance.

    Will a larger quahog than last year’s winner, the two-pound-nine-ounce behemoth dug from Napeague Harbor by Linda Calder, be unearthed? The answer will be known on Sunday.   

    The Springs Fisherman’s Fair is taking place Saturday on the grounds of Ashawagh Hall and the nearby library and Parson’s Blacksmith Shop.

The longstanding annual event will offer food booths, with homemade jams and jellies, a bake sale, hot dogs and corn on the cob, and seafood delicacies including mussels and clam pies, as well an opportunity to buy produce and other items from Springs Farmers Market vendors.

There will be a crafts fair featuring jewelry, pottery, and more, and a sale of flowers and plants. In a children’s area there will be games of skill and chance, face painting, and fish printing.

Inside Ashawagh Hall, the Springs Invitational art show will be on view, and representatives of local organizations, such as the East Hampton Trails Preservation Society, will be on hand.

The fun takes place from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.  The event is a fund-raiser for the Springs Improvement Society, which owns and maintains Ashawagh Hall.

    The Amagansett Presbyterian Church, founded in 1860, will hold its 100th annual summer fair on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on the church grounds.

    Pony rides, a petting zoo, a magic show, clowns, and more kids stuff is in store, as is the “super raffle,” which will offer hundreds of items for those purchasing winning tickets. The Ron Fleming Plant Table, named for a congregant who ran that event for many years until his death last month, will have plants and shrubbery, as well as hanging baskets, for sale. Also offered will be baked goods, stainless-steel cutlery, books, bric-a-brac, handcrafted garden signs, handmade items from developing countries, and farm-fresh vegetables from the Balsam farm stand.

    The refreshments section will be open all day, offering hot dogs, hamburgers, veggie burgers, sodas, lemonade, and, back by popular demand, chocolate-covered bananas.

    Donations of jewelry can be left on the bench of the manse, on Meeting House Lane. All other donated items can be dropped off on the morning of the fair.

    First held in 1913, the fair illustrates both the changes and the continuity that occur across a century, said the Rev. Steven E. Howarth, the church’s pastor. “Part of the charm of the fair today is it really does have a small-town, slice-of-Americana feel to it. As an example, children’s games have always been a significant part of the fair. Some have certainly evolved over time, but some haven’t and are still operated by the same church families who have been operating them for generations. I’ve had the experience of listening as parents have told their children, ‘This was a favorite of mine when I was a child.’ ”

    In the past, Mr. Howarth said, the East Hampton Town Highway Department took leaved branches to the church, and members would weave them into booths for the fair. “Today, we use canvas and pop-up tents,” he said. “In the past, men were in suits and ties, ladies were in dresses.”

    The super raffle, Mr. Howarth said, is another indication of change, “where we tend to see what’s current and hot. This year one prize will be an iPad Mini.”

    The “tea table” once offered classic sandwiches and tea, Mr. Howarth said. A lobster salad dinner used to be held in Scoville Hall at the fair’s conclusion.

    Scoville Hall, owned by the church, was demolished in the spring after an October 2011 fire destroyed it, its foundation and first level now covered by a tarp and the property encircled by a chain-link fence. An update as to future plans for the site is expected soon, Mr. Howarth said.