News

Elections board cracks case of missing write-in vote.

Summer may be unofficially over, but the harmful algal blooms associated with the hottest months are proliferating across the South Fork and elsewhere on Long Island.

A preliminary plan to turn East Hampton Village property on Methodist Lane into a bioswale, a drainage system designed to reduce pollution from surface runoff water, was presented to the village board last Thursday. The board also discussed a separate project to rid Town Pond of accumulated sediment.

The long-awaited effort to alleviate traffic by adding Long Island Rail Road service between Speonk and Montauk in the morning and afternoon has taken a step closer to reality.

New blooms of cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae, have been confirmed in Poxabogue Pond in Sagaponack and Old Town Pond in Southampton, while harmful algal blooms have also re-emerged in Georgica Pond in East Hampton and in Wainscott Pond.

A motorcyclist who East Hampton Town police said was driving drunk is in critical condition after a crash in Springs on Sunday morning.

The East Hampton Town Police Department is investigating an accident near the East Hampton Town recycling center on Springs-Fireplace Road that left a 74-year-old man dead Sunday morning.

They were both Democratic hopefuls, after all, and the criticisms and ­policy differences were articulated gently when East Hampton Town Councilman David Lys and David Gruber, a former chairman of the town’s Democratic Committee who is challenging him in next Thursday’s Democratic primary, met Tuesday night in a debate hosted by the East Hampton Group for Good Government.

With just a few permits to secure, work on the long hoped for expansion of the Montauk Playhouse Community Center could begin this winter. The $8.5 million undertaking is to include two swimming pools, classrooms, and fitness and performance spaces.

Late last month, the East Hampton Library’s Long Island Collection acquired a curious item from an upstate antiques dealer.

“Which reminds me, I should check on the Twinkies,” I told Amy Zerner on Saturday. I was at an end-of-summer dinner party hosted by the glamorous grande dame of crime fiction, the English novelist and screenwriter Lynda La Plante.

After testing on Wednesday confirmed a blue-green algae bloom in the southern end of Fort Pond and an elevated risk of another in the pond's northern end, Concerned Citizens of Montauk is urging people to stay out of the pond and keep children and pets from coming in contact with the water.

It was a booming summer for East Hampton Village retail stores. According to shopkeepers and gallery owners, sales were strong even as soaring temperatures beckoned people to the beach.

Nearly two years after winning approval for a $24.7 million expansion and renovation project, the Bridgehampton School District will ask voters next Thursday for permission to borrow an additional $4.7 million to bring the project to fruition.

A teenager from Calverton was caught with a loaded handgun and two pounds of marijuana during a traffic stop in Sag Harbor Village on Monday evening, Chief Austin J. McGuire said.

A Mastic man was arrested Saturday night after a shooting on the Shinnecock Indian Reservation, which is holding its annual powwow this weekend. No one was injured in the gunfire, state police said.

A 36-year-old drunken driver dragged a police officer clinging to his vehicle after the officer stopped him in Montauk in the early morning hours Saturday, East Hampton Town police said.

One man is under arrest and another injured following what East Hampton Town police described as a "slashing" at the 7-Eleven in Montauk on Sunday morning.

Montauk Highway was closed for four hours Saturday morning near the Kirk Park parking lot in Montauk after sport utility vehicle rolled over there.

A horse stabled in Water Mill has died of the West Nile virus, Suffolk County Health Commissioner Dr. James Tomarken announced Friday evening. 

The 5-year-old mare was seen by a veterinarian on Aug. 20 and died the following day, the Health Department said, adding the mare had not been immunized. 

Starting tomorrow, the Shinnecock Indian Nation will host this year’s powwow on the Shinnecock Reservation in Southampton. The powwow has been held every year in the same location since 1946, with Shinnecock powwows dating to at least 1912.

While local races in the Sept. 13 Democratic primary are drawing most of the attention here, several other important contests will be on the ballot, including for governor and state attorney general.

In a confrontational matter that began the day after Memorial Day, a number of East Hampton Village’s female lifeguards have accused village beach managers of sexual harassment and the creation of a hostile work environment.

Plans to improve the crosswalks in Bridgehampton’s business district will include the addition of a stoplight in front of the Candy Kitchen, at the intersection of Main Street, Corwith Avenue, and School Street. That intersection currently features a flashing caution light.

The newly waxed floors glistened in the empty hallways of the Springs School on Friday as a handful of teachers readied classrooms for the start of the school year on Tuesday, when 681 kindergarten through eighth-grade students are expected back on campus, with another 39 set to attend the district’s prekindergarten program at the Eleanor Whitmore Early Childhood Center in East Hampton.

The men, who hail from Puerto Rico and were working seasonal jobs in Montauk restaurants, are accused of running the largest drug ring on the South Fork, making as much as $100,000 in three weeks, according to the D.A.

It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that Liz Soroka practically grew up at the Hampton Classic Horse Show.

I’ve always been fascinated by the mystique and history of Gardiner’s Island. The island has been owned by the Gardiner family and their descendants since 1639, when Lion Gardiner purchased it from the Montaukett chief Wyandanch.

The Town of East Hampton’s Natural Resources Department is overseeing a study of Hog Creek in Springs aimed at assessing nitrogen loading and identifying hot spots of nitrogen-rich groundwater intrusion so that mitigation measures can be implemented, the East Hampton Town Trustees were told on Monday.

In a way, history repeated itself on Saturday as a magic night unfolded at Montauk Point. The musician Paul Simon, who more than 30 years ago built a house on the bluff overlooking the Atlantic Ocean not too far away, performed four songs before an ecstatic crowd at Montauk Music Festival Rocks the Lighthouse.