Drivers on Montauk Highway from Bridgehampton to East Hampton Village began to experience delays Wednesday as roadwork got underway. The New York State Department of Transportation announced Tuesday that a 2.3-mile section of the heavily used road between Stephen Hand's Path and the Route 114-Main Street intersection in East Hampton Village would be resurfaced.

Crews are expected to close lanes between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. while the work is ongoing, Eileen W. Peters, a D.O.T. spokeswoman, said in a press release. However, as of 8 a.m. Thursday morning, an eastbound tie-up extended all the way to Poxabogue Lane in Sagaponack.

Initial work to remove the cracked and potholed surface layer meant that crews stopped traffic frequently to load and move large trucks filled with ground asphalt. Both the eastbound and westbound lanes were left rough with traffic diverted to the shoulders by plastic cones.

Ms. Peters said that work was expected to continue for about three weeks.

    The Montauk Lake Club and Marina on East Lake Drive in Montauk and the club’s contractor, Seacoast Marine Construction of Sayville, have been fined $50,000 by the State Department of Environmental Conservation for exceeding the permitted limits of the dredging project earlier this year.

    The club and marina are owned and operated by a holding corporation called Star Development Realty. The D.E.C. permit for the project, issued in October 2011, allowed the boat basin there to be dredged to a depth of six feet and approximately 4,000 cubic yards of material to be removed.

    After the work was done, however, and following a complaint by the Concerned Citizens of Montauk, an environmental group, the D.E.C. found that the dredging had occurred outside the designated area and that dredged material was stored at the site instead of being trucked to a disposal area.

    The state has agreed to allow the Montauk Lake Club and Marina and Seacoast Marine to pay a reduced fine of $20,000. The $30,000 balance will be suspended provided they strictly adhere to the terms and conditions of environmental conservation law in the future.

    The agreement requires the parties to remove the dredged material once it is tested, restore the spoil storage area, conduct a survey to determine the new depth of the area that was dredged illegally, create a restoration plan, and restore the disturbed shoreline.

Two events, one planned for Sunday, the other postponed a day because of Friday and Saturday's blizzard, will take place today.

Empty Bowls, a fund-raiser for Project MOST's Springs Seedlings project, will be held at the American Legion Hall in Amagansett Sunday from noon to 3 p.m. The cost to try a range of soups and stews prepared by local restaurants is $12 for adults and $5 for children, with those under 5 free. Takeout quarts of soup cost $12.

Springs Seedlings is a several-years-old effort to incorporate growing and harvesting food into the Springs School curriculum. More than $50,000 was raised through donations to build a greenhouse on the school grounds that students and volunteers maintain. Quail Hill Farm in Amagansett, part of the Peconic Land Trust, has provided guidance and technical know-how.

Joe Realmuto, the executive chef of the Honest Man restaurant group, including Nick and Toni's, Rowdy Hall, La Fondita, and Townline BBQ, helps coordinate the Empty Bowls event, for which many local restaurants donate soup. Guests have been asked to take their own bowls from home and join the meal. There will be baked goods on sale, student art to view, music, and a 50-50 cash raffle.

On Sunday's menu are shrimp bisque, Thai peanut with cherries, matzo ball, cream of roasted cauliflower, New England clam chowder, split pea, vegetarian minestrone, white bean escarole, garbure (a French ham and cabbage stew), and smoked-pork posole.

HarborFrost Is On

After a white-out Saturday, Sag Harbor's HarborFrost activities have been rescheduled to Sunday. According to a schedule published by The Sag Harbor Express, there will be live music from noon to 5 p.m. at several Main Street and nearby businesses. Most HarborFrost events are free or at reduced cost.

A 1:30 plunge into the Sag Harbor bayfront was reportedly canceled due to ice.

Events begin with a pancake breakfast served through noon that includes eggs, bacon, sausage, home fries, orange juice, and coffee to support the Sag Harbor Junior Fire Department. It will be held at the firehouse on Brick Kiln Road, and a donation of $10 adults and $5 for kids will be collected.

An easy-paced, two-mile hike at 10 a.m. follows the old Railroad Spur trail used long ago to transport ice from the ponds to New York City. Scheduled from 10 to 11 a.m., the meeting point is at Mashashimuet Park, with views of Round Pond and Fore and Aft Pond promised by Dai Dayton, the hike leader and president of Friends of the Long Pond Greenbelt.

Free live music begins at noon with Leroy Klavis on acoustic guitar at the Corner Bar. At 1 p.m., there will be jazz by Ada Rovatti at the American Hotel. At 2 p.m., Sara Hartman will sing originals at the Grenning Gallery on Washington Street. Bryan Duffy will play at the Sag Harbor Fine Arts Center at 3:30, followed by Mariann Megna with acoustic guitar at 4:30 p.m.

At noon on Long Wharf, Fear No Ice will carve an ice sculpture. Ice-carving will be demonstrated at 2 p.m. at the Civil War monument at Main and Madison Streets as well.

A free Coast Guard film and discussion followed by a question-and-answer session will go from 10 a.m. to noon at the Bay Street Theatre.

An "icebreaker" Laser sailboat regatta will be run from the Breakwater Yacht Club at 1 p.m. Several races can be viewed from Long Wharf or Windmill Beach.

A culinary stroll has been planned by the Hysterical Society, with small bites and a cash bar accompanied by live music by the New Dawn Trio. The $40 tour will begin at 1 p.m. at Il Capuccino with stops at LT Burger, Page, and Muse in the Harbor. Proceeds from the event will benefit a seriously injured Sag Harbor resident.

Participants in "Zima: A Treasure Hunt," a mystery to be solved by all ages, will set out from the Civil War monument at the intersection of Main and Madison Streets, presented by Kate Mueth and the Neo-Political Cowgirls. Start times are 2, 2:30, and 3 p.m., and a $10 donation has been suggested.

A highly anticipated art walk of the village's galleries will begin with hot cider and a brief talk at the Grenning Gallery, at 17 Washington Street, and continue to the Monika Olko Gallery, Christie's Building Art Center, Hooke Sculpture Gallery, Richard J. Demato Fine Arts Gallery, Tulla Booth Gallery, and Romany Kramoris Gallery and end with the grand opening of the Sag Harbor Fine Arts Center, with a marshmallow roast and live music.

At 5:30 p.m., the Fiery Sensations will give a free performance on Long Wharf.

Grucci company fireworks are scheduled for 6:15 p.m.

—

Note: This story has been revised to include a corrected list of HarborFrost events.

A modest snowfall overnight left about three inches of accumulation on the South Fork Tuesday morning. Most schools were opening on schedule. Montauk was the only district announcing a delayed opening — of two hours.

A representative of the Montauk Public School told WLNG radio that bus transportation to East Hampton High School would also be delayed two hours.

Monday night's snow showers were the harbinger of a cold snap forecast for the week ahead. The National Weather Service outlook showed below-average temperatures as an arctic air mass moves east. Relentlessly blustery winds from the northwest were predicted through Thursday.

Tuesday's predicted high temperature is 27 degrees. The low point for the week is expected Thursday night, when the mercury is forecast to dip to a pipe-bursting 10 degrees.

    Members of the Montauk Citizens Advisory Committee had an emotional exchange on Monday night about their hamlet’s future amid global warming and recent climate change, wondering what would happen if Montauk became an island and lost its beaches and economy.

    Some members wondered if anything could be done right now to stave off disaster and save the beaches, motels, Ditch Plain area, and the entire downtown.

    Chip Duryea remembered watching the sea rise when Hurricane Carol hit in the 1950s. He said he and his mother watched as a wave rolled right into the IGA parking lot, and pointed out that the mean tide is even higher now. He warned that another storm could hit Montauk even harder than Superstorm Sandy, which didn’t produce heavy winds so far east. “I say to all of you, it can and will happen again,” said Mr. Duryea. “The Ditch Plain beach and downtown Montauk will be gone. My business will be eradicated.”

    So what’s the plan, members wanted to know. East Hampton Town Councilman Dominick Stanzione, the committee’s town board liaison, answered that an erosion control advisory committee has been created and will report back to the town board as soon as possible.

    Ray Cortell, an advisory committee member, wondered why there were no homeowners on the erosion committee, which, he said, is made up of motel owners and others who are directly in the line of the ocean. “They should know what’s happening, it’s their property values that will be affected,” he said.

    “That’s an excellent point,” replied the councilman, who said he would reach out and get some homeowners on the committee.

    Dan Stavola, another member, raised questions about the current state of affairs. He and his wife have walked the beach, he said, and most of it is gone, even staircases leading to it. The haggling should be over, said Mr. Stavola, and plans should be implemented. “It’s only January,” he remarked, and there could be worse storms ahead. “If it’s not rectified in the next year, we won’t have a beach left. Everything is going to be washed away. You’re talking about property values — soon there will be no properties,” he said.

    The discussion moved on to oceanfront motels falling into the water. Some believe local environmentalists are all for that, saying motels should never have been built so close to begin with. But several members of the Concerned Citizens of Montauk who were at the meeting said they’ve never advocated that.

    Lisa Grenci, the former chairwoman of the committee, said East Hampton Town should follow Southampton’s lead in restoring its dunes and beaches with the help of the Army Corps of Engineers. She also suggested plans be put in place now for evacuation, including by boat and helicopter. Food, medical assistance, and other emergency items should be considered, she said.

    The committee passed a resolution to support a tax district on downtown property owners. But Steve Kalimnios, an owner of the Royal Atlantic Motel, which is dangling precariously over the beach, said the tax district should include the entire hamlet; that it was not just the downtown area that would be affected but the entire Ditch Plain neighborhood.

    The motel owner told the gathering he was heavily insured, and if he should decide not to continue repairing the Royal Atlantic, he would take the money and move with his family. Saving the motel is more about saving the community than just his place of business, he added. “Let’s all jump in this boat together and save the town,” said Mr. Kalimnios.

    Before the meeting turned volatile, the committee discussed whether to take on Town Councilwoman Theresa Quigley’s proposal to get more input on the town comprehensive plan from the various citizens advisory committees. Diane Hausman, the committee’s chairwoman, read from Ms. Quigley’s letter to the committee, in which she stated that she came up with the idea when the Wainscott C.A.C. called for action on its hamlet study.

    Ms. Quigley wrote that the Town Planning Department had not had time to focus on the study properly, so she thought the advisories might begin the work and see how far they got. The advisory committees can choose whether or not to participate.

    Some, however, at the Montauk meeting didn’t agree with Ms. Quigley’s proposal and took it as a personal affront to the Planning Department. “I have a feeling this is being done backwards,” said Richard Kahn, a member of both the advisory committee and the Concerned Citizens. “The Planning Department has spent months studying this, and there are very specific studies from the Planning Department. We’re not professional. They need professional planners’ input. It should then come to the citizens advisory committees.”

    “I feel I’m being used to justify a lack of progress,” Mr. Kahn said later.

    Other members said Montauk already has a study in place that just needs to be implemented. “We don’t need to revisit this. The data’s there, the focus hasn’t  changed, everything’s been done. We just need to implement it now,” said Ms. Grenci.

    Cristina Elsa Maria Filippelli and Ryan Houldsworth Dempsey of Durham, N.H., were married on Oct. 7 on the Devon Yacht Club dock in Amagansett.

    The ceremony was performed by John Hossenlopp, a reverend in the Universal Life Church, a former commodore of Devon, and a family friend. A reception followed at the club.

    The bride, who will keep her name, is a daughter of Birgitta and Donald Filippelli of New York and Amagansett. She received a doctorate in clinical psychology in 2011 from Antioch University New England in Keene, N.H. She is practicing in Manchester, N.H.

    She was attended by her sister, Alexandra Filippelli, of Dallas.

    The bridegroom is a son of Robert H. Dempsey Jr. of Wayne, Pa. and JoAnne G. Dempsey of Wolfboro, N.H.

    Mr. Dempsey is a doctoral candidate in clinical psychology at Antioch University New England and coaches sailing at the University of New Hampshire. The couple met in September of 2006 on the first day of graduate school.

    Mr. Dempsey’s best man was his brother, Kyle Dempsey of Wayne, Pa., who himself married two weeks earlier in Philadelphia.

    The couple are passionate sailboat racers, racing on their own J80, Gallant Fox, on Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire and on the Filippelli’s J109, Caminos, out of the Devon Yacht Club.

    The bride wore a simple J. Crew gown of silk radzimir and carried a bouquet of hot pink ranunculus, yellow billy buttons, and orange dahlias. Her maid of honor, her sister, wore navy blue and carried the same flowers.

    The bride’s godmother, Holly Whewell, and the groom’s grandfather, Robert H. Dempsey, read passages during the ceremony, which was written by the couple.

    After a honeymoon to Jost Van Dyke, the couple has returned to live in New Hampshire with their two English setters, J.R. and Hank.

    The Amagansett Presbyterian Church’s Scoville Hall looks very much as it has since a fire destroyed the building on Oct. 15. As the one-year anniversary of the fire approaches, the charred husk of the building, dedicated as the church’s parish house in 1925, remains boarded up and partially surrounded by temporary fencing.

    A sign posted in front of the building appeals for donations to finance reconstruction, listing a PayPal address and post office box in Amagansett.

    The delay in reconstruction, says the church’s pastor, the Rev. Steve Howarth, is due to ongoing negotiations with the church’s insurer, Peerless Insurance.

    “We have been going back and forth with the insurance company,” Mr. Howarth said. “They offered us a settlement price that we thought was way too low and didn’t reflect the actual cost of rebuilding the structure as it was. We’ve been in negotiations with them. We think we’re making some progress. We have hopes that we will reach a settlement within a month or two.”

    The church, says Mr. Howarth, hired local contractors to assess the damage and determine the cost of reconstruction, while the insurer hired contractors from Ronkonkoma and Westchester County to do the same. The numbers, says Mr. Howarth, “were vastly different.”

    Church officials do not believe the settlement, when it is issued, will be sufficient to restore Scoville Hall to its previous status, “but we’ve concluded that the settlement we are moving toward is the best we can hope for,” Mr. Howarth said. The Peerless Insurance official assigned to the case, Jonathan Lawlee, did not return multiple calls from The Star.

    Starting in the early morning hours of Oct. 15, more than 100 firefighters from five districts fought the blaze for three hours. The structure was engulfed in flames when they arrived.

    Mr. Howarth, who serves in the Amagansett Fire Department as chaplain and firefighter, was in Stonington, Conn. with his wife, Nancy, when the fire occurred. They were on their way to Massachusetts and a vacation when he received a text message about a fire on Meeting House Lane. He returned to Amagansett the next morning, by which time the building had been destroyed.

    As church officials discuss the rebuilding process, says Mr. Howarth, “a question we get asked frequently is ‘What will the future bring?’ Our intention is that we will certainly rebuild the building, [and] it will be brought up to modern code, including fire suppression. We’ve already had consultations with a number of groups that have a vested interest in how the building is designed.” Scoville Hall had been home to the Amagansett food pantry and served as a meeting place for Alcoholics Anonymous, the Masons, and the Church of the Nazarene.

    “The church can get by without it,” said Mr. Howarth, “but the community can’t. They’ve all found temporary housing, and they’re all eager to get back. So we will be rebuilding with the community in mind.”

    “We very much appreciate all the support from the community,” Mr. Howarth added. “Folks have been asking and offering. We’re very grateful.”

    A 10-foot wall collapsed last week during the restoration of a four-story section within the former Bulova watchcase factory.        

    “Nobody was hurt,” said David Kronman, the property manager, on Tuesday. A team of structural engineers retained by Sag Development Partners and Racanelli Construction are assessing the scene. “A third-party safety monitoring process and a site-safety plan is in place,” Mr. Kronman said. “It’s a complicated project. We’re taking safety very seriously.”

    The small section within the interior courtyard side of the building was slated to come down anyway, he said, and stabilization work “will move full steam ahead,” when engineers deem it appropriate.

    “To put it in perspective,” Mr. Kronman said, “eighty percent of the timber and brick restoration is complete. It was a small section.” Work continues on the south side of the site, he said, on the underground garage and the foundation of newly constructed townhomes.

    The developers have made some modifications to their 2008 landscape plan, including the repositioning of the fence along Washington Street, Mr. Kronman said, which will be presented to the village planning board at its Sept. 25 meeting. 

    The flower garden at the Montauk Community Garden on the grounds of St. Therese of Lisieux Catholic Church was dedicated in the memory of Sally Martin at a ceremony on Saturday. A parishioner, Mrs. Martin, who died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 65 on Dec. 16, was an ardent supporter of the garden and an active volunteer, another volunteer, Bill Becker, said.

    Amid tall strands of bright-colored flowers, the Rev. Mike Rieder started the ceremony by telling the small crowd how he is often thanked for the garden. He pointed out that all he had done was say okay to the organizers when they asked if they could break ground.

    He then proceeded to sprinkle holy water on a white mosaic plaque with a pink rose that was based on a design by Melissa Berman, also a volunteer. The plaque is embedded on a rock and surrounded by spires of lavender, white and yellow daisies, and salvia. He then sprinkled more blessed water on Gregory Donohue, Mr. Becker, Cheryl Erb, Jennie Baker, Susan Vitale, and Emily Nagle, the gardening crew.

    He introduced Mrs. Martin’s husband, Thomas, and son, Thomas B. Martin, who thanked the group for the dedication. “My Sally would have loved this,” the elder Mr. Martin said. The garden is open for picking on Saturdays and Wednesdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Memberships are available for $50 for the season. For that fee, members get orange tote bags that they can fill on “orange tote Wednesdays” with flowers, vegetables, and herbs at a reduced rate.

    The Department of the Treasury’s assistant secretary for financial institutions asserted at a forum at Guild Hall on Sunday that the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which became law in July 2010, is making significant progress toward curtailing the excessive risk-taking that brought on the financial crisis of 2008.

    Speaking at one of the programs sponsored by the Hamptons Institute over two days last weekend, Cyrus Amir-Mokri defended the act, while Joe Nocera, a columnist for The New York Times, Ken Miller of Ken Miller Capital, which invests in both private and publicly held businesses, and Joseph Perrella, chairman and C.E.O. of Perella Wieinberg Partners, an asset management firm, were less convinced that it was doing what it was intended to do.

    “We needed to strengthen the financial institutions, reform our regulatory structure, put in place reforms to improve some of the shadow banking system and how it works, bring the derivatives market into the light of day,” Mr. Amir-Mokri said.

    The cascade of financial-institution failures in 2008, the subsequent bailouts, and firms deemed “too big to fail” were soberly discussed by the panel.

    Mr. Perella, who said he believed in regulation, nevertheless took a skeptical view of regulation’s efficacy. “It raises a question in my mind, and that is whether or not the creativity and ingenuity and, in some cases, diabolical nature of certain kinds of individuals that exist in all walks of life can be kept up with by regulators. I come from the school that says these people are so smart and crafty and creative — many times in a very positive way — that it’s very hard for people that are sitting in a building reading e-mails and looking at charts to know what’s really going on and to prevent the next debacle.” He noted that he agreed with those who have said Dodd-Frank “enshrined ‘too big to fail.’ ”

    The problem with regulation, Mr. Miller said, “is that, as Joe said, it enshrines a certain protocol, and then people make it their job to get around that. But my basic problem with Dodd-Frank, and on balance I agree that it is a good step forward that it’s not going to solve the cycle problem. There will be additional panics, because it’s in the nature of banking to run businesses on leverage, which means they borrow 10 to 30 dollars for every dollar of equity that they can rely on.”

    While it is impossible to regulate greed, or to micromanage every firm, a change in Wall Street’s incentive structure would foster stability, Mr. Miller said. “In Dodd-Frank, there’s a clawback provision. That’s not quite enough to discourage risky behavior. The real problem is ‘short-term-ism,’ an excessive emphasis on speed. The culture of Wall Street needs to change.”

    But, Mr. Perella insisted, regulators will never keep pace with fast-evolving financial institutions. “I agree, you need to have rules of the road and then try and police them as well as you can. But ultimately, let there be a high price for failure. It ought to be a price that the managements pay, the boards of directors pay, the owners — shareholders — pay because that should modify or at least mold their behavior to achieving the objectives that policy makers want to achieve.”

    The Dodd-Frank act, named for Senator Christopher J. Dodd and Representative Barney Frank, established a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau within the Federal Reserve. Elizabeth Warren, who is now running for the Senate, was instrumental in establishing it.

    Other programs over the weekend included one on politics with Steve Kroft of “60 Minutes” interviewing New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a panel with Paul Goldberger and others on New York City in the 21st century, and another on the status of women around the world. In a lecture sponsored in part by the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center, Francis V. O’Connor spoke about the process and difficulties of authenticating fine art.