Government

With a new hospital farther west set to eventually replace Stony Brook Southampton Hospital, the effort to clear the way for an emergency-care facility in East Hampton is “an emergency itself,” Councilwoman Sylvia Overby said on Tuesday.     

East Hampton Town officials obtained a temporary restraining order last week to stop parties, photo shoots, product launches, and other commercial activities at a 10,000-square-foot house in Springs.     

As a debate ensues over a septic system at the Montauk Shores Condominiums mobile home community, a county agency is reviewing applications for redevelopment of two units there.    

A proposal from AT&T to build a freestanding 50-foot-high structure at St. Peter’s Chapel on Old Stone Highway in Springs, to house cellphone antennas and associated equipment, was discussed at a meeting of the East Hampton Town Planning Board.

For years, drivers with handicapped placards have favored a space for easy access to the library and Guild Hall across the street. Now, suddenly, the Handicapped Parking sign was no longer there.

The environmental and traffic impacts of a proposed 27,000-square-foot fitness center across from Bridgehampton Commons on Montauk Highway were discussed last Thursday at a Southampton Town Planning Board public hearing.

Carol Konner, the principal owner of an eight-acre parcel, is seeking to subdivide the land into three lots. One lot, adjacent to Kellis Pond, would be in a residential zoning district, the other two  zoned for highway businesses.

New York State’s Department of Agriculture and Markets has issued a clarification of its rules pertaining to cannabidiol, or CBD, as a food, food additive, or ingredient — saying, specifically, that CBD cannot be used in those ways in New York.

An attorney who had threatened to sue the Town of East Hampton over its allowing the East Hampton Library’s Authors Night benefit to be held on an Amagansett field purchased with community preservation fund money, said yesterday that he has reached an agreement with the town, under which officials will adopt a “suitable” management plan for the 19-acre site, popularly known as 555 Montauk Highway, by the end of this year.

Suffolk County officials have unveiled a $4 billion, 50-year wastewater plan to rid the county of environmentally unfriendly cesspools and outmoded septic systems.

East Hampton Town announced that officials obtained a temporary restraining order to stop promoters' parties, photo shoots, product launches, and other commercial activities at a 10,000-square-foot house at 145 Neck Path in Springs.

Perry Gershon of East Hampton, who narrowly lost a challenge to Representative Lee Zeldin last year and hopes to be the Democratic Party’s nominee to challenge him in the 2020 race for New York’s First Congressional District, said that he had raised more than $400,000 in the second quarter.

Meanwhile, a rival for the Democrats’ nomination, Nancy Goroff, announced last Thursday that she had raised more than $200,000 in the 72 hours following the July 9 announcement of her candidacy.

New York State Health Department Commissioner Howard Zucker has accepted the State Drinking Water Quality Council’s recommendations for maximum contaminant levels in drinking water for PFOA, PFOS, and 1,4-dioxane, which have been found in water deemed potable.

Eighty acres of Lake Montauk will see a seasonal shellfishing closure extended by 60 days, and 21 acres in Sag Harbor’s Little Northwest Creek will be permanently closed to shellfishing, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation announced last week.

Members of the East Hampton Group for Wildlife renewed a push for the town board to ban hunting on one weekend day during hunting season at the board’s meeting last Thursday, with the submission of a petition bearing 601 signatures, nearly all of them residents.

Susan McGraw Keber, an East Hampton Town Trustee, urged the Suffolk County Legislature at its July 16 general meeting to pass legislation that would prohibit the intentional release of balloons, a move intended to protect wildlife and the environment.

A practical move to consolidate the East Hampton Town Shellfish Hatchery, or an ill-advised and unseemly rush to do the wrong thing? The town board debated the question anew last Thursday, much of its four-hour meeting devoted to a heated debate pitting the board’s majority against one member and two residents.

It now appears that the Springs General Store is not covered after all by a facade easement, which, according to a 2015 report in The Star, would have precluded the addition of new structures to the site, protected the store, the gas pumps, and existing outbuildings from external change, and preserved the view of the property.

Farmers, shocked that proposed legislation requiring the planting of a cover crop on agricultural fields includes jail time as a potential punishment for failing to do so, pushed back at a public hearing during the East Hampton Town Board’s meeting last Thursday.

The Danish energy company Orsted, which acquired Deepwater Wind last year, announced on Tuesday that Jeffrey Grybowski is stepping down as co-chief executive officer of Orsted U.S. Offshore Wind.

Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone, PSEG Long Island, and the Long Island Power Authority have announced a partnership that will be included in the county’s 2020 shared services plan to assist local governments with energy efficiency projects, reduce carbon emissions, and reduce electricity bills.

Gordian Raacke, the executive director of the East Hampton advocacy organization Renewable Energy Long Island, has been appointed to Suffolk County’s Community Choice Aggregation Task Force.

A three-year study of tick infections in Suffolk County's 10 townships showed them to be consistent with ranges of infection rates in New York State, county officials announced Monday.

The agency has identified several "deficiencies" — primarily regarding the effect on a variety of fish species — in the South Fork Wind Farm transmission cable plan.

The Town of Southampton is making significant progress on a range of sustainability initiatives to protect the environment, members of the town’s sustainability advisory committee told the town board last Thursday.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced on Thursday that Sunrise Wind, a joint venture of the Danish energy company Orsted and the Connecticut company Eversource, and Empire Wind, proposed by the Norwegian company Equinor, have each been awarded contracts to develop offshore wind farms — one of them some 30 miles east of Montauk.

“Airports, in particular, are very important refuges because of their continued grassland maintenance, and their exclusion of people and deer,” said Marguerite Wolffsohn, East Hampton Town’s planning director, and the town’s airport, “is a refuge for native plants.”

The East Hampton Town Board moved forward Tuesday on a plan to relocate the town’s shellfish hatchery from Fort Pond Bay in Montauk to a property at the corner of Gann Road and Babe’s Lane in Springs that was acquired for $2.1 million last year.

The East Hampton Town Republican Committee re-elected the group’s executive board to two-year terms at its 2019 organizational meeting on Friday. 

At the request of the East Hampton Town Trustees, the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has engaged consultants to evaluate existing studies of potential effects of electromagnetic fields on fish species as part of its environmental studies program. That evaluation could lead to a field study, a trustee reported to his colleagues on Monday. 

The East Hampton Town Board will hold a public hearing next Thursday on proposed legislation that would require the planting of a cover crop on agricultural fields.