Government

East Hampton Town

A Place to Meditate in Eddie Ecker Park

A 50-foot-wide stone path in the shape of a labyrinth will be constructed in a section of the Eddie Ecker Park, on Fort Pond Bay in Montauk.

With a vote last Thursday night, the East Hampton Town Board agreed to accept a donation from Twelve Women, a local group, to fund the installation and maintenance of the labyrinth, a cobblestone path leading in concentric circles. Walking a labyrinth is a traditional spiritual and meditative practice.

A second round of bids by mobile food purveyors for the exclusive right to set up at prime East Hampton Town-owned sites, including the ocean beaches, will soon be considered.

A carry-in, carry-out policy aimed at keeping trash from piling up at East Hampton Town beaches could begin on a trial basis this summer, at a beach yet to be chosen.

At a town board discussion on Tuesday, members approved of the idea but said it would require extensive public education and a shift in the mindset of beachgoers accustomed to leaving their trash in the cans at beach road ends, or, worse, on the beach. The cans often overflow despite frequent pickups.

A weekend ban on helicopters at the East Hampton Airport will not be among the restrictions designed to reduce aircraft noise over East Hampton and the East End.

Changes to the East Hampton Town Code were on the town board’s agenda this week, and hearings will be scheduled soon to gauge public opinion on some of them.

In the face of widespread unhappiness with a plan to open some town launching ramps to use by personal watercraft such as Jet Skis, board members agreed it should not move forward.

A state Supreme Court judge ruled last Thursday that PSEG Long Island, an electrical energy provider, and the Long Island Power Authority, for which PSEG is a contractor, are not subject to local zoning and other laws.

Two controversial applications for subdivisions moved a step closer to a vote by the East Hampton Town Planning Board on April 1 after clearing a procedural hurdle.

The board concluded, after some contentious debate, that neither proposal, at 55 Wainscott Hollow Road in Wainscott and 38 Indian Wells Highway in Amagansett, required a lengthy evaluation under the State Environmental Quality Review Act.

The water quality in bodies overseen by the East Hampton Town Trustees is generally excellent, according to a presentation at Town Hall on Monday, but algal blooms that can be harmful to shellfish, finfish, and humans remain a concern.

While the East Hampton Town Trustees, who manage many of the town’s beaches and waterways on behalf of the public, have signaled grudging acceptance of the town board’s intention to ban alcohol at Indian Wells Beach in Amagansett during lifeguard-protected hours on weekends and holidays during the summer, they expressed greater enthusiasm at their meeting on March 25 for a pilot program aimed at reducing litter by removing trash receptacles and instituting a carry-in, carry-out policy there.

The future and dangers of former electrical generators and abandoned fuel tanks on Fort Pond on Industrial Road in Montauk were taken up by the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals Tuesday night.

Management goals, maintenance plans, and operating and capital budgets for the many historic properties and buildings owned by East Hampton Town are being developed for needed restoration and plans for public use.

At Louse Point in Springs four neighbors want to build a rock revetment that will connect to the two already in front of properties to the north, creating more than 900 continuous feet of armored shoreline.

A dozen new members were appointed to the Springs Citizens Advisory Committee by the East Hampton Town Board on March 19.

Councilman Fred Overton, who is the board’s liaison to the committee, declined to offer the resolution and voted against it; it was offered instead by Councilwoman Kathee Burke-Gonzalez, who, like Mr. Overton, is a resident of Springs.

The sense of place and time evoked by the Springs General Store, which sits along Accabonac Harbor and across from Pussy’s Pond in the Springs Historic District, will be further protected with the recently approved purchase by East Hampton Town of a facade easement that will assure that the property will continue to look as it has since the building was constructed in 1884.

East Hampton Town

C.P.F. on the Upswing

Opponents say Army Corps plan violates law.

Concerned Citizens of Montauk is arguing that the Army Corps of Engineers plan to build a seawall along the ocean beach in downtown Montauk, for which bids have now been awarded, is not “shovel ready.”

“There’s a long list of items that need to be addressed,” Jeremy Samuelson, the executive director of C.C.O.M., said at an East Hampton Town Board meeting last Thursday. Mr. Samuelson is also quoted in a separate story on C.C.O.M.’s stand on a lawsuit challenging the project.

The remainder of a $31 million bond issued by East Hampton Town in 2006 will be refinanced, enabling the town to save $1.76 million in interest while paying off the debt over the next 12 years.

The money was borrowed for land acquisitions ($25 million), for construction of the town justice court ($2 million), and for the rehabilitation and reconstruction of the Montauk Playhouse Community Center ($4 million).

Almost 10 years later, the town has paid off almost $10 million of that debt, with $22.12 million remaining.

Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr., who has been critical of PSEG-Long Island, the utility company that operates the Long Island Power Authority grid, for a number of its practices, is calling for a review of payments, including executive pay and fees to consultants and contractors, made by PSEG under its contract with LIPA.

A plan to build a 3,100-foot-long artificial dune along the downtown Montauk ocean beach will be challenged in court.

Repeated snowstorms this winter almost certainly have exacerbated the problem, but residents of East Hampton in the so-called urban renewal areas, many of which are in Springs, have been complaining for years about the state of their streets and the lack of town highway services for them, such as snow removal.

The roads in the urban renewal subdivisions are not part of the town’s public road system, and so tax money cannot be spent to repair, pave, or plow them, except in an emergency.

A lawsuit that challenged the adoption of a master plan for East Hampton Airport in 2010 has been dismissed by a federal appeals court. Brought by the Committee to Stop Airport Expansion, the suit centered on aircraft noise, which was the impetus for the four proposed airport use restrictions that drew a crowd to a town board hearing at LTV Studios in Wainscott last Thursday. The hearing is reported on separately.

Montauk’s Ditch Plain, where the future of what had been the East Deck Motel stirred recent interest in preserving its oceanfront tract, was before the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals on March 3 when applications to replace two mobile homes on the ocean at Montauk Shores Condominiums with two that would be larger came up for public hearing.

On the eastern side of Ditch Plain, Montauk Shores Condominiums is an unusual trailer park, with some of the 29 oceanfront units there reportedly valued in the neighborhood of $1 million.

A project to determine how much nitrogen is entering the Peconic Bay through groundwater and identify its specific sources, which has been under way since fall, will conclude next month. A joint venture of Cornell Cooperative Extension, the Peconic Land Trust, the Noank Aquaculture Cooperative, and the National Grid Foundation, the findings will be presented this summer.

Months after blueprints were drawn and its proposed location delineated, and well over a decade after discussions began, construction of a public restroom in the municipal parking lot north of Main Street in Amagansett is once again on hold.

A lawsuit against East Hampton Town, filed a year ago by a privately held drug treatment program in the Northwest Woods neighborhood, was dismissed on March 2 by a federal court judge in Central Islip. The judge, Leonard D. Wexler, found that Safe Harbor Retreat L.L.C. should have undergone a permitting process outlined in the zoning code before bringing the suit.

East Hampton Town

Contractor License Crackdown

A crackdown on unlicensed contractors working in East Hampton Town resulted in the arraignment on Monday of a dozen workers who had failed to obtain or carry with them the required town license.

Senator Charles Schumer spoke out this week about the utility poles installed by PSEG Long Island throughout East Hampton and across Long Island, calling a chemical used to treat the wooden poles “highly toxic” and “known to cause serious health issues,” and urging the federal Environmental Protection Agency to investigate its use immediately. He demanded that PSEG suspend the use of the chemical, penta, on utility poles, and halt further pole installation until the E.P.A. investigation is complete.

State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. has been unremittingly critical of PSEG Long Island and LIPA, both for the utility company’s reluctance to discuss burying the high-voltage lines with East Hampton Village and Town, and because of the state-sanctioned handoff of Long Island’s electricity supply responsibilities from LIPA, which still owns the delivery infrastructure, to PSEG. Last month, he introduced legislation designed, he said, “to restore some degree of transparency and oversight to the activities of LIPA and PSEG-LI.”

East Hampton Town officials are bracing for a large turnout tonight at a hearing on four proposed regulations that would cut back on traffic to East Hampton Airport in order to reduce noise.