A lawsuit filed by former East Hampton Village Police Chief Jerry Larsen against the village, Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr., and Richard Lawler, a village board member, was dealt a setback by the New York State Supreme Court late last month.

The suit, which was initiated in federal court in August of last year, claims that the mayor, who is a retired East Hampton Village police officer, and Mr. Lawler, also the village's police commissioner, abused their positions and violated the village's ethics code by prohibiting Mr. Larsen from taking outside security work in the village, while they were engaged in businesses that provided similar services. He is seeking damages and attorney's fees.

As part of that suit, Mr. Larsen's attorneys filed a Freedom of Information Law request seeking documents relating to an investigation conducted in 2009 by the village board into the non-village employment and business activities of village employees. They were looking for communications from the board to employees, meeting minutes, and records of the outside employment of board members.

It was in 2009, Mr. Larsen's suit alleges, that the mayor and the board directed the then-police chief to divest ownership in his security company, Protec, to refrain from doing business within the village or hiring any village employees, and to shut down the blood and alcohol-testing division of his company. The suit claims that between 2009 and 2010, Protec's gross profit decreased approximately 76 percent as a direct result of the restriction against doing business in the village.

In response to the FOIL request, the village provided an array of documents, but omitted police officers' personnel records in accordance with a state law that requires that a police officer consent to or that a judge mandate such a release.

Last September, Mr. Larsen's lawyers filed a petition known as an Article 78 proceeding to compel the release of the personnel files and it was that petition that was dismissed by Acting State Supreme Court Justice Court Martha Luft on April 26.

Although the federal lawsuit is ongoing, the mayor on Friday released a pointed statement on the State Supreme Court's decision. "This was simply an attempt by a disgruntled and litigious former employee to discredit the policies and procedures that the village and every other municipality must adhere to when it comes to police personnel records," the statement read in part.

James Wicks, an attorney for Mr. Larsen, also released a statement declaring that "this is a complex matter being litigated in both state and federal courts made necessary by Paul Rickenbach's pervasive conflict of interest." He added that in spite of the court's decision, "the village ultimately produced most of the records we sought."

 

A path for pedestrians and cyclists along an approximately one-mile stretch of Edgemere Street in Montauk, connecting the Long Island Rail Road station with the downtown area, is a viable possibility as the Town of East Hampton seeks to take advantage of a program under which it would be designed and financed by Suffolk County.

A sidewalk now runs along the southern extent of Edgemere Street, a county roadway, but terminates well short of the train station. Pedestrians commonly walk on the road’s shoulder between the train station and downtown, a span that includes the Surf Lodge, a popular nightclub between the road and Fort Pond to which patrons must walk from offsite parking. 

“People coming from the train station to downtown right now walk along the road for most of the way, in the road right of way,” Marguerite Wolffsohn, the town’s director of planning, told the East Hampton Town Board on Tuesday. “It’s dangerous and not a walkable Montauk, like we’re trying to get in our plans,” she said, a reference to one of the recent hamlet studies, which also were discussed at the board meeting. 

Ms. Wolffsohn described the county’s Jumpstart program, which she said was created to “encourage, foster, and enhance” the planning and development of regionally significant projects in Suffolk’s downtowns. County engineers would design the multiuse path, which would fall within the right of way on the west side of the road.

 “They may need to shift the actual travel surface of the road to accommodate this,” Ms.   Wolffsohn said, explaining that a multiuse path is typically about 10 feet wide. “They do the design work, and then Jumpstart pays for the construction,” she said. There would be no cost to the town. 

Louis Bekofsky, the county’s commissioner of economic development and planning, was enthusiastic about the idea, Ms. Wolffsohn told the board, as it dovetails with both the Montauk hamlet study and the Jumpstart program emphasis this year on transportation and connectivity. 

Ms. Wolffsohn is preparing a negative declaration under the State Environmental Quality Review Act, a statement to the effect that the project would have no significant detrimental environmental impact, which the board could approve at its meeting this evening. “I’m going to write in there that the design has to take into consideration protecting Fort Pond” as well as the surrounding area, she said.  

The board was enthusiastic about the project. Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc told his colleagues that he had often discussed connecting the train station and downtown with the hamlet’s citizens advisory committee. “I’m glad we’re talking about this and the opportunity to have the county fund this project, which in my estimation is long overdue,” he said.

The crammed pews of Christ Episcopal Church in Sag Harbor one evening last week served as a reminder of the community's deep concern over current immigration policies, which has only heightened following the April 9 arrest of Luis Marin-Castro, a 31-year-old employee of Wainscott Main Wine and Spirits and a sommelier at Nick and Toni's restaurant who has lived in East Hampton for 20 years.

The particular issue that the public has come to focus on is the seemingly greater discretion now allocated to Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, raising questions about the extent of that agency's powers and the rights of its detainees.

To that end, Organizacion Latino-Americana, an advocacy group for the Latino community on the East End, hosted a part-instructional, part-rallying immigration forum at the church on April 25. Minerva Perez, the organization's executive director, presided at the gathering, which drew several South Fork activists, including April Gornik and Toni Ross.

President Trump has declared that anyone living in the country illegally is a target for arrest and deportation, and the number of immigration arrests has gone up by more than 40 percent this year. While the Obama administration deported record numbers of undocumented immigrants, federal agents at the time were ordered to focus on serious criminals and recent arrivals. The current administration has erased those guidelines, allowing ICE agents to arrest and deport anyone here illegally.

Freed of past legal constraints and bolstered by a stricter approach to immigration offenses, ICE is operating more like secret police, swooping down on deportees in unmarked cars, or knocking on doors of private homes while wearing civilian clothes, Ms. Perez said.

Christopher Worth, an immigration lawyer based in East Quogue, said at the meeting that the current tactics of "arrest everyone first, ask questions later" violate immigrants' constitutional rights and constitute racial profiling. Furthermore, unlike in criminal court, immigrants facing deportation are not appointed public defenders.

"They are using unscrupulous tactics," said Ms. Perez.

Mr. Worth offered some advice: Don't open the door to anyone you don't recognize, he said. "Once you open your door, it's an invitation." As such, law officials can say they were willingly invited in and therefore did not require a warrant.

Instead, he suggested, if a language barrier exists, "have a printed card ready that asks who they are, the reason for the visit, and if they possess a warrant. Simply slip it under the door."

He also stressed that no one can be randomly pulled over in his or her car without having committed an infraction or driving through a designated security checkpoint. "If they pull you over for no other reason than suspicion," he said, "they cannot make an arrest."

The use of ruses is nothing new to law enforcement, but it is problematic in areas that are heavily populated by immigrants, such as the East End, where police and elected officials have tried for decades to distinguish the local law enforcement officials from federal immigration agents. There has been a concerted effort to build trust among the immigrant community so that they can interact with police here without fear of deportation. That appears to have shifted, Ms. Perez said.

"We must insist that our local police disentangle themselves from ICE," she said at the meeting, drawing applause. "Citizens should speak out at local town board meetings."

She urged everyone to demand that town and village police officers build trust among residents so that anyone, regardless of immigration status, can feel safe in reporting a crime. Otherwise, as Charlie Beck, the chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, said in a Los Angeles Times interview, "a shadow population" that fears interaction with law enforcement is created, and it becomes an easy target for abuse or extortion because of a fear of contacting the police.

Putting pressure on local authorities was a major part of the meeting, and Ms. Perez circulated three petitions for those in attendance to sign and state that they "stand with OLA" on all three issues. She will present the signed petitions to local and state officials.

"My timeline is yesterday," she said during a phone conversation on Friday. "I want to get these in front of officials now."

The first petition, which she believes is paramount in protecting a person's constitutional rights, demands that ICE officials present a judicial warrant rather than an administrative one when making an arrest. The difference between warrants is significant, she said, as a judicial warrant is an official court document, usually with the designation of a specific court and signed by a judge. It serves as evidence that there has been due process backed by probable cause.

An administrative warrant, meanwhile, is simply a document signed by an ICE agent stating that a person is being designated for possible arrest and possible deportation proceedings. An administrative warrant is not signed by a judge, nor does it pass constitutional muster.

"An administrative warrant," she said, "is an absolute violation of our Fourth Amendment," which guarantees "the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures. . . ."

The second petition she circulated goes back to the point of demanding better communication and trust-building between local law enforcement and community members. It also insists that live translation services be available at all town and village offices.

The final petition is one that has been on the table for a while, asking that public transportation be improved so that working people, students, and the elderly, many of whom do not have the luxury of owning or leasing a car, can still be a vital part of the community.

Ms. Perez said that she is urgently pushing forward the petitions simply because "something's got to give. How can we continue to add fuel to the fire and then say, 'Oh, we have a fire?' " She referred to the fear and uncertainty that have spread among undocumented residents, many of whom have lived here for decades.

"They're messing up a beautiful thing," Ms. Perez said of the symbiosis that has existed for years in this community, which openly beckoned undocumented immigrants to work in the boomtown of construction and service jobs that have defined the South Fork, but which now, in the wake of suddenly more conservative politics and rewritten national policies, is penalizing them. For the very people who helped build this community, those policies, she said, have turned every waking day into a gamble.

"If I hear about an influx one more time," she said, "I'll scream. Immigrants have been coming out here for a very long time."

Underscoring her point is a recent statistic that emerged from an informal survey conducted by the Springs School: Ninety-nine percent of its current eighth graders, who will soon leave Springs for high school, were born in the United States.

 

Three East Hampton Village sites tested during the last week of April for waterborne bacteria showed medium to high levels of enterococcus, which originates in the fecal tracts of humans and animals. 

According to Concerned Citizens of Montauk and the Surfrider Blue Water Task Force, water samples taken behind the Methodist Church, at Town Pond, and at the Nature Trail on David’s Lane showed significant levels of the bacteria. 

The 563 viable enterococcus cells counted per sample at the Methodist Church site was the highest found in East Hampton Town during the period. The next highest sample was taken from Pussy’s Pond in Springs, where 324 colony-forming units were observed. Both ranked “high” on the C.C.O.M.-Surfrider scale.

Other sites rated “medium” in the tests were East Creek in Lake Montauk, the Surfside Place outfall pipe at the ocean in downtown Montauk, and the east side of Napeague Harbor. The Georgica Pond boat launch off Montauk Highway, a perennial hot spot, showed 20 colony-forming units, or C.F.U.s, placing it toward the bottom of the “low” category.

None of the 19 sites tested during the same period in Southampton Town rated high for enterococcus. The only medium-ranked locations were at the Stony Brook Southampton University boat ramp on Little Neck Road and at Ponquogue Bridge in Hampton Bays.

The East Hampton Village Board on Friday adopted a law setting strict guidelines for large gatherings at private residences and commercial properties. It will not go into effect until Oct. 1, and in the meantime, potential legal action is being considered. 

The statute, which had been the focus of months of debate and ongoing revisions, institutes a stringent permit process for any gathering of 50 or more people at a private residence, and prohibits the village’s hostelries, such as the Hedges Inn, from holding events outdoors even if under a tent.

The law, which is similar to one in East Hampton Town, replaces a more lenient policy, which necessitated permits only for events that would require public parking. 

After Oct. 1, a homeowner will have to provide a number of documents to receive a permit. They include a property survey, a list of on-site sanitary facilities, a parking management plan, and a description of any proposed use of outdoor speakers. The law also requires the homeowner to supply information about whether alcohol will be served and whether a security firm or a food vendor will be engaged.

After the board passed the law unanimously, Christopher Kelley, a lawyer representing the Hedges Inn, a popular wedding venue, said legal action was being considered. The inn would like to continue hosting tented events, he said, which it had been doing until March 15, when permit applications for six events scheduled for 2018 were denied.

On Friday, Mr. Kelley sent letters to Becky Molinaro Hansen, the village administrator, and Frank Newbold, the chairman of the zoning board of appeals, informing them that he would appeal the denials.

Board members made their opinion clear during the meeting that the law was the right thing to do. Barbara Borsack, a trustee, addressed what she described as the public’s misperception of its impact. “It’s really not that big of a change, and we’ll see that it’s not really going to affect our lives,” she said. “I’ve had three wedding receptions in my backyard, and I’ve had to fill out the paperwork. It’s not a terrible thing. It’s not difficult to do. So I think people should not be afraid of this.”

Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr. said, “We felt this was the right action to take. So be it.” 

At the end of the meeting, he invited the public to air opinions about the law or any other issue, but no one came forward. 

Later, Linda Margolin, a lawyer representing several private property owners who are opposed to the law, said the law unfairly infringes on homeowners’ property rights. Although she was pleased that the board had decided to exempt religious institutions from complying with the law and to remove a provision that allowed a warrantless search of a property granted a special events permit, she nevertheless said the law represented “overreaching by the village because there’s no public health and safety issue at stake.”

In other business, as expected, the board adopted a law that prohibits the use or sale of polystyrene containers by businesses in the village. It also scheduled a public hearing on May 18 on a proposed law that would allow takeout food businesses to operate in the commercial district.

The East Hampton Golf Club, on Accabonac Road and Abraham's Path, donated an electric golf cart to the Springs School on Friday for use in the event of school emergencies, said Debra Winter, the district's superintendent.

"This donation comes at a very important time to permit the district to respond more quickly to situations that arise on our property," she wrote in an email. "It will help transport sick or injured children from the [outer] building or our fields, be used by security and our athletic department, nurse, and custodians. We are extremely grateful to this generous donation."

Laura Foty, an administrative intern at the school, together with her colleague Rachael Cook, a special education teacher, facilitated the donation by contacting Tom Barnard, the general manager at the golf club and a parent of a Springs student, and Barry Bistrian, one of the original owners of the club.

As the cart was delivered to school, Chris Virga, the newly-hired security guard at the school, said, "This a proactive step the school has taken. The golf cart is a very good tool to have in the case of an emergency."

For Dr. James Meyer, a large-animal veterinarian in East Hampton, work is about to get a lot busier. Just as many residents escape the South Fork to Florida or other warmer climes in the winter, so do many of the horses that summer in the Hamptons. Soon, they will return to places like the Southampton Polo Club, private farms where polo matches are held, and many residential properties. 

Dr. Meyer and his wife, Ilissa Loewenstein Meyer, own and operate Equine Sport Science, a mobile equine practice. “I have an office in my house,” he said, “but the work is done like a doctor that makes house calls. I make barn calls.” His work takes him as far as Riverhead but is primarily based between Montauk and Southampton. Patients are “pleasure horses, jumping horses, and, in the summer, a lot of polo ponies,” he said. 

Dr. Meyer, the only veterinarian who is board certified in large-animal internal medicine in Suffolk County, will soon hold a new distinction: He is halfway to earning a Master of Science in medical statistics from the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at the University of Oxford in England. 

“I had taken an interest in decision making in the biomedical field,” said Dr. Meyer, who graduated from Ontario Veterinary College at the University of Guelph in Canada, the oldest veterinary college in North America. “I was in practice for a few years working with horses, then decided to do further training, and that’s when I specialized in large-animal internal medicine.” 

He received board certification at the University of Florida in Gainesville. “Essentially, you focus on almost any kind of medical issue that doesn’t involve surgery,” he said of large-animal internal medicine. “I did that, went back to practice for a while, then went to teach, though not as a full professor, at Texas A&M University” in College Station. 

His interest in research led to the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine. “Veterinary medicine frequently follows human medicine,” Dr. Meyer said. “Evidence-based medicine really came to the forefront in the 1990s. Some of the problems are that we don’t have the amount of clinical research that’s been done in human medicine. That limits it somewhat, but it’s about trying to use good research studies that have been validated, and applying it to your patients.”

“It’s being introduced,” he said of evidence-based medicine in the veterinary field, “but I would like it to be more a part of veterinary medicine. What helped it take off is the internet. With technology, you can search databases and get all this information much easier than 20 or 30 years ago.” 

To earn the degree, Dr. Meyer must complete six courses, of which he has taken and passed three. This is done both onsite and remotely, he explained. “There is one week of intensive classroom work at the school for the five days you’re there, 8 to 10 hours per day,” he said. “The week prior, you get your reading material online, and for six to seven weeks after you get assignments online.” Each course requires a final exam. “To get the degree, you have to write the dissertation,” he added. 

The Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine “is obviously not a veterinary school,” he said. “It’s open to anyone who does medical stuff, with physicians, nurses, dentists — there was even a midwife I met there.”

When he has earned his degree, his qualifications will be rare. At the center, “they told me there was another veterinarian who’d done the program. She worked in England at a university. But as far as I know, no other veterinarian is doing this program in the United States.” 

Flexibility in scheduling allows Dr. Meyer to concentrate on his summer and fall workload. “One of the big advantages is you can do it on a part-time basis,” he said. “You can still have your career and work on this degree.” He will return to Oxford in December. 

Until then, the imminent arrival of equine summer visitors will keep him occupied. Along with routine vaccinations, South Fork horses tend to experience maladies of the musculoskeletal or gastrointestinal variety, he said. “The horse’s value to a lot of people is in their ability to move, so limb problems is problem number one. Number two is colic, which is a general term for a painful abdomen.” 

A few disorders, while not unique to the South Fork, are more common here, he said, such as tick-borne Lyme disease and anaplasmosis. Another is endocrine laminitis, which Dr. Meyer likened to Type 2 diabetes, affecting the feet and potentially leading to an inability to walk. “The pastures are so lush here,” Dr. Meyer said, “and the animals are so well taken care of they can get overweight. It’s not only occurring here, but anecdotally I see it in higher numbers than anywhere else.” 

Between his work and his continuing education, there is no shortage of stimulation, the doctor observed. “Any job can get routine. But when I was living in Florida, a student from the Dominican Republic came to travel with me. He was a small-animal veterinarian but needed experience with large animals to get his license. He said, ‘You’re very lucky to spend the day with these regal animals.’ I should remember that.”

After losing a protracted legal battle, the children of the late John C. White Jr., a member of a Sagaponack farming family that dates back to the late-17th century, were forced to sell their father's farmhouse on Friday.

The house, which was built in the 1880s and is located on a nearly three-acre parcel of land on Sagg Main Street, became the latest focus of a 20-year contract dispute between the White family and Anthony Petrello, a Houston-based oil and gas company executive who purchased 9.56 acres of oceanfront property from the family in 1998.

As part of that deal, which went through a decade of litigation before being finalized, Mr. Petrello had negotiated a right of first refusal on any other parcels of land that the White family -- which, at one point, had been in possession of more than 50 acres -- intended to sell to anyone who was not a descendant of Mr. White.

That clause in the contract formed the basis for Mr. Petrello's claim against the current defendants in the court case, Jeffery G. White and Thomas D. White, Mr. White's sons and the co-executors of his estate. Mr. Petrello argued that the family had denied him the opportunity to purchase the farmhouse's parcel of land, referred to as "lot 1" in court proceedings, when they transferred ownership of it into a family trust in November of 2000. At the time, the value of the home had been appraised at $1.375 million.

Years of legal wrangling ensued, and then on March 8, Judge Denis R. Hurley of the eastern district of New York ruled that the Whites had indeed breached Mr. Petrello's right of first refusal and said that Mr. Petrello was entitled to buy the land at the value it had back in 2000. That price, of course, is a fraction of what the house is worth in today's real estate market. For instance, the current asking price for a 2.8-acre vacant lot on Sagg Main Street listed with Sotheby's International Realty is $9.6 million.

Although a gag order has reportedly been placed on all parties involved in the lawsuit, and attorneys for both sides did not return phone calls, the judge's decision reveals that the issue that tipped the case in Mr. Petrello's favor was the fact that the White family trust was ill-advisedly structured to include a class of "close friends." That meant that a third party, other than a White descendant or Mr. Petrello, had been granted rights to the property, thus triggering the right-of-first-refusal claim.

The latest court victory for Mr. Petrello does not bring his contractual dispute with the Whites to an end. Judge Hurley concluded his decision by pointing out that "there remain other claims pending in this matter."

There is no shortage of troubling news about the state of our environment as Earth Day approaches. 

A few examples: Global greenhouse gas emissions increased last year, while here in the United States, the Trump administration continued its efforts to roll back emissions standards. A study published last month in the journal Scientific Reports revealed that the Great Pacific Garbage Patch — a massive floating island of debris composed mostly of plastics — is 4 to 16 times larger than previously thought. And in Spain, the necropsy of a 33-foot sperm whale found dead off the coast in February revealed it had more than 60 pounds of trash clogging its digestive system. 

Against that backdrop, Earth Day efforts across the East End this weekend offer a chance to clean beaches, trails, and roadsides, recycle electronic waste, celebrate the planet through art and song, and consider lasting actions to protect it.

One way to do so is to see that all those old computers, wires, and electronic junk don’t end up in a landfill, and GeekHampton in Sag Harbor will make that easy by offering free e-waste recycling tomorrow and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., and again on Monday during the same hours. The shop on Bay Street will accept old laptop and desktop computers, printers, monitors, copiers, mobile and landline phones, networking equipment, cable and wiring, and power supplies, and promises that data will be destroyed securely and that nothing will end up in a landfill. Last year, according to GeekHampton, it recycled 1,977 pounds of electronic waste.

The Southampton Arts Center will host a full weekend of films, discussions, and activities, including a summit on Saturday and a celebration and fair on Sunday. The center’s Earth Days will kick off tomorrow with a screening of “An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power” at 7 p.m., in which Al Gore continues his campaign to educate people about climate change. Tickets cost $10. 

Registration for the summit on Saturday runs from 9 to 9:45 a.m., and programs will continue throughout the day. The cost is $25. The day’s events begin with a look at Paul Hawken’s book “Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reduce Global Warming” from 9:45 to 11:30 a.m. A panel discussion on energy and sustainability follows with Gordian Raacke of Renewable Energy Long Island, Jen Garvey of Deepwater Wind, and Andrew Smith of GreenLogic. 

The Golden Pear provides lunch at 12:40, and after that a land and water panel at 1:10 will feature Robert DeLuca of Group for the East End, Edwina von Gal of the Perfect Earth Project, Kevin McAllister of Defend H2O, Colleen Henn of the Surfrider Foundation’s eastern Long Island chapter, and Melanie Cirillo of the Peconic Land Trust. Participants will ponder personal action to help the environment in a session at 2:20 with Sarah Hunnewell, Bruce Humenik of Applied Energy Group, and Joe Densieski of Wastewater Works.

Government action will be the focus of a panel discussion at 3:30 p.m. moderated by the columnist Karl Grossman, with presentations by Southampton Town Supervisor Jay Schneiderman, County Legislator Bridget Fleming, Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr., and Southampton Village Mayor Michael Irving. 

The day concludes on a peaceful note, with sound meditation led by Daniel Lauter from 6:15 to 6:45 p.m.

On Sunday, there will be free music, face painting, art projects, children’s programs, food, and films and videos from 1 to 4 p.m. at the center. Local businesses and organizations will offer tips for lowering your carbon footprint and creating a cleaner East End. Visitors can test drive a Tesla, learn about raptors with a representative of the Evelyn Alexander Wildlife Rescue Center, and groove to the sounds of Son Mondial, a world music trio featuring Bill Smith, Steve Shaughnessy, and Rodney Harris.

A number of vendors will be on hand with their products, among them Mary Woltz and Bees’ Needs, the Green Thumb organic farm, Ahna Redfox Smith Essential Oils, and Union Cantina. 

People have been asked to take old fabric, wire, string, beads, and cardboard and plastic recyclables and other odds and ends for an upcycle art project with Lexy Ho-Tai, a 2017 artist in residence at the Watermill Center. 

A full list of activities for Saturday and Sunday can be found on the Southampton Arts Center’s website, where tickets can be purchased in advance for tomorrow night’s film and Saturday’s summit. 

The South Fork Natural History Museum in Bridgehampton is also ramping up its programming for Earth Day weekend, starting with a talk by John P. Cardone based on his book “The Healing Power of Nature” at 7 p.m. tomorrow. A book signing will follow. 

The museum will host a free open house all day on Saturday. Scheduled activities include family yoga with Laura Berland from 10:30 to 11 a.m. and a family walk in the Vineyard Field behind the museum at 11:30, weather permitting. Those who want to stick around for lunch can buy sandwiches and salads made by the folks at Bay Burger in Sag Harbor. 

On Saturday afternoon, the museum will host a nature scavenger hunt for kids 5 and older at 1:30, a tin-can planter workshop for families at the same time, and a discussion of tick-borne illnesses with a representative of the Stony Brook Southampton Hospital Resource Center at 2:45 p.m. There’s an astronomy lecture on Jupiter co-sponsored by the Montauk Observatory at 7 p.m., and star viewing to follow from 8 to 10. 

On Sunday, museum staff will hit the trails. Joe Giunta leads a birding session at 8 a.m. At 11, people will set off on a walk from the museum to Mashashimuet Park in Sag Harbor. A picnic lunch has been suggested. A bus will transport people back to the museum at 1 p.m., but heartier hikers can make the trek on foot starting at 2. That afternoon at 5 at the museum, Louie Psihoyos’s Emmy Award-winning documentary “Racing Extinction” will be shown. The cost is $7. 

On the Beaches

Cleanup efforts abound this weekend, from Montauk to Southampton to Shelter Island. The largest of these are Concerned Citizens of Montauk’s Great Montauk Cleanup and the Shoreline Sweep, an East Hampton Town-wide assault on beach litter organized by Dell Cullum. Both are on Saturday.

A host of Montauk businesses and environmental organizations have joined in sponsoring C.C.O.M.’s cleanup, which will start at 9 at its office on South Elmwood Avenue, where bags and gloves will be available along with hot cider and doughnuts. Participants will head out from there to roadsides, parks, the downtown, and bay and ocean beaches around the hamlet to gather trash that can be deposited in a big Dumpster near the C.C.O.M. office. The rain date is April 28.

The Shoreline Sweep will bring together more than half a dozen other groups to gather up trash from dozens of points around East Hampton Town from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Bags and gloves will be available at Main Beach in East Hampton and Indian Wells Beach in Amagansett. Volunteers will be dispatched to Beach Lane in Wainscott; Georgica, Main, Egypt, and Two Mile Hollow Beaches in East Hampton; Indian Wells, Atlantic Avenue, Napeague, and White Sands in Amagansett, and Hither Hills in Montauk on the ocean side. On the bay beaches, volunteers will hit the Walking Dunes, Napeague Harbor, Lazy Point, the Devon Yacht Club area, points around Accabonac and Three Mile Harbors, Northwest Landing and Harbor, and Gardiner’s Bay. Mr. Cullum has asked people to reach out to him with their destinations at [email protected].

He will provide more detailed instruction. Trash can be taken to town recycling centers or left bagged at designated beach heads, where Mr. Cullum and other volunteers will collect it after the sweep. Mr. Cullum will also organize for the mechanical removal of any larger debris that cannot be lifted. 

Among the many other cleanups this weekend, the South Fork Natural History Museum will tackle the beach at Sagg Main in Sagaponack on Saturday at 9 a.m. The East Hampton Trails Preservation Society will tidy up a Montauk section of the Paumanok Path on Saturday at 10 a.m. during a two-and-a-half-mile walk led by Eva Moore. Bags will be provided at the Montauk Library prior to the hike. Ms. Moore can be phoned at 631-238-5134 or on the day of the hike at 631-681-4774. The Southampton Trails Preservation Society will lead cleanups at various locations on Saturday. Those who wish to lend a hand have been asked to call 631-725-7503.

The Amagansett Village Improvement Society will spearhead a cleanup of the hamlet’s alleyways and Main Street on Saturday at 11 a.m. starting from Amagansett Wine and Spirits. Participants have been asked to take their own gloves and bags. 

At the Nature Conservancy’s Mashomack Preserve on Shelter Island,­ visitors have been invited to join in two hands-on projects on Saturday between 10 a.m. and noon: a beach cleanup on the preserve’s shores and an effort to cut invasive vines from trees. Those who plan to attend have been asked to take work gloves, hand pruners, and loppers if they have them, and to R.S.V.P. to 631-749-4219 or [email protected]. 

On Sunday, the Surfrider Foundation’s eastern Long Island chapter will clean the beach at Flying Point in Water Mill from 9:30 to 11:30 a.m.

--

Correction: An earlier version of this article mistakenly reported that GeekHampton in Sag Harbor would be collecting e-waste through Sunday. The shop is closed on Sundays. Its recycling effort took place on Friday and Saturday and will continue on Monday.

A $24 million project to replace a stone seawall protecting the Montauk Point Lighthouse will go forward, according to the office of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo.

The governor’s office on Tuesday announced that reconstruction of the roughly 840-foot-long boulder revetment would begin in December. The money is to come from a Hurricane Sandy relief bill approved by Congress in 2013, as well as state funding. The United States Army Corps of Engineers will oversee the project.

Work is expected to be completed by the summer of 2020. According to the Army Corps, the project is necessary to keep the 222-year-old lighthouse and associated structures from toppling into the Atlantic. Critics have said the new, larger seawall could harm sportfishing at the point. Surfers worry that it might diminish the quality of several much-loved breaks nearby.

The easternmost tip of Long Island now is owned by the Montauk Historical Society, which took it over from the U.S. Coast Guard in 1996. Its permission for the project, as well as that of the Town of East Hampton, is necessary.

The federal government and New York State would split the cost of the project, with Washington picking up 65 percent.

In a 2013 assessment, the Army Corps determined that the existing revetment under the lighthouse was deteriorating and did not ensure the long-term protection of the 65-foot-high bluff. Problems included the seawall’s partial collapse and the cracking of poor-quality stones.

The new revetment would be wider and lower, with better-constructed edges allowing for future maintenance, the Army Corps said. A flat promenade, or bench, on the existing wall would be replicated and improved, it said. In the plan, new 15-ton armor stones would be placed on top of the existing ones; these would be covered with one-to-two-ton stones to create a smoother surface than that now at the point.

Native vegetation would be planted on the bluff above, to help prevent erosion.

“We have serious concerns about the environmental impact,” said Andrew Brosnan, the chairman of the eastern Long Island chapter of the Surfrider Foundation and a research vessel captain. 

“None of us want to see anything happen to the lighthouse. It’s an icon,” he said, adding that Surfrider continues to favor moving it back and had commissioned a study some years ago that found it could be done. 

The Army Corps has said that moving the National Historic Landmark lighthouse back from the bluff, as has been done in a few places elsewhere, was not feasible. Among other problems, the topography of the site would require that the lighthouse be either dismantled or laid on its side to be hauled to a new location farther back from the ocean. In 2014, the Army Corps set the cost of moving the lighthouse to a safer location 800 feet back from the brink at $27 million.

Mr. Brosnan was unconvinced. “Just because it’s difficult, it doesn’t mean you should not do it,” he said.

In response to the concerns of surfers about damage to breaks there, the Army Corps said that the reduced slope of the seawall would refract less wave energy than the present one. 

Mr. Brosnan remained skeptical of that claim. As a boat captain, he said that the wave energy that bounced off sea walls was considerable and hard to predict. The Army Corps, he said, had only taken a cursory look at the Montauk Point proposal’s possible effects. He also questioned the corps’ assertion that the current revetment was failing.

“We are experiencing the rising of sea level. We have to make a conscious decision. Twenty-four million is a significant amount of money. Is this the best way to spend it?” Mr. Brosnan asked.

Mr. Brosnan also said he was concerned about the length of the 18-month project and whether it would block public access. Anglers could lose a season or two of striped bass fishing, he said.

Some respondents to a 2016 request for comments on the Montauk Point plan also questioned whether it was an appropriate use of Congress’s $3.4 billion Hurricane Sandy appropriation. According to the Army Corps proposal, resiliency and long-term sustainability of cultural features and economic resources were permitted uses of taxpayers’ money.

Specifically, the expanded seawall would protect the lighthouse against potential future storm damage and reduce the need for ongoing maintenance. The new design, with significantly larger stones, would be capable of resisting what the corps called 73-year hurricanes, for which there is a very low probability of a land strike at Montauk Point in any given year.

If no action is taken, the corps said, the existing bluff would continue to be eroded over time and eventually the lighthouse and other structures there would be lost. “Construction of a well-designed stone revetment is a proven method of eliminating erosion with a long history of success,” it said.

When the placement of the Montauk Lighthouse was determined by Ezra L’Hommedieu, a delegate to the Provincial Congress from Southold, in 1792, the site was 297 feet back from the edge of the bluff. By the time the United States entered World War II, that distance had shrunk by about half. 

Construction on the stone and brick lighthouse tower began in 1795. The cost was $22,500, about $400,000 in today’s dollars. Repairs were made in 1860. 

In a storm that blasted eastern Long Island in September 1869, the tops of three chimneys at the lighthouse keeper’s house blew off, a veranda was carried away, and a barn blew out to sea.

Rocks first were piled on the shore in front of the lighthouse in the 1940s then again about 50 years later.

Today a World War II-era coastal defense lookout tower stands between the lighthouse itself and the edge of the bluff. East Hampton Town recently granted AT&T permission to install cellphone antennas on it.

This article has been updated since it was published with the April 26, 2018, print version.