Environment

Fed up with what he called lies, insults and misinformation, Sag Harbor Trustee James Larocca led a Village Board counter-offensive at Tuesday night’s monthly Village Board meeting against the Friends of the Long Pond Greenbelt and their campaign against the board’s plan to put a 40-by-80-foot paved and fenced vehicle impound lot at a former dump site on the Bridgehampton-Sag Harbor Turnpike.

East End native Peter Topping has been named the new “eyes and ears on the waters” of the north and south forks — the baykeeper — by the nonprofit organization Peconic Baykeeper.

A new committee held its first meeting last month in Sag Harbor Village Hall to begin exploring the idea of expanding the service area of the municipal sewage plant.

With the Village of Sag Harbor poised to ignore a chorus of critics and begin building a vehicle impound lot for the Village Police...

Birding, to those in the know, is more than just a hobby. “I call it a lifestyle,” said Frank Quevedo, executive director of the South Fork Natural History Museum and Nature Center.

The South Fork Natural History Museum Shark Research and Education Program will present a talk on Saturday, January 26, with Greg Metzger, the program’s Chief Field and Education Coordinator, at 10:30 a.m. at SOFO in Bridgehampton.

The dumping of gritty spoil full of rocks, iron, coal and artifacts on Havens Beach in 2017cast a dark shadow over an otherwise cheery “Field Trip to Havens Beach” slide show that the Friends of Havens Beach presented Sunday to a packed house at the John Jermain Library.

A news report in last week’s Expressthat the Village of Sag Harbor planned to enlarge the outflow pipe and remove invasive phragmites by this summer at the Havens Beach end of the municipal drainage swale prompted members of the Harbor Committee on Monday to wonder if they shouldn’t be asked to verify that the plan complies with the village’s Local Waterfront Revitalization Plan.

Town Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc said the evidence so far suggests there is no plume of PFOS pollution flowing with groundwater south from the East Hampton Airport property and that there instead probably have been multiple sources for the spotty, random pattern of pollution that has been found in the area

Despite a crowded sidewalk protest on Monday and a meeting room packed with opponents on Tuesday, the Sag Harbor Village Board voted 4-1 to proceed with plans to pave a 4,800-square-foot site on the east side of the Bridgehampton-Sag Harbor turnpike to serve as an impound lot for vehicles seized by Sag Harbor Village Police.

Ponding that occurs on Hempstead Street in heavy rains is the target of a drainage improvement project that the Village of Sag Harbor has been developing ever since a storm left the street flooded soon after a previous drainage project was completed in 2013.

East Hampton Town, itself a defendant in a lawsuit filed by a Wainscott resident over contaminated drinking water discovered in the hamlet, has filed a lawsuit of its own — against chemical manufacturing companies, a local mining operation and even some neighboring municipal entities.

The East Hampton Town Trustees will host a public meeting on Wednesday, January 9, at 6 p.m. at East Hampton Town Hall on Pantigo Road in East Hampton to present information on the Suffolk County Aquaculture Lease Program.

It looked as if the Southampton Town Board might delay a vote on a proposal to ban parking on the east side of a stretch of highway that the Reid Brothers garage uses to park overflow vehicles, blocking the Nancy Boyd Willey park from view. But in the end, the board voted 5-0 to impose the ban.

As commercial brush processing facilities have been closing due to tougher state waste-handling regulations imposed in 2017, the town’s three sites have all come under increasing pressure to handle rising amounts of leaves and brush. All that residential yard waste may be tainted with pesticides, herbicides and other chemicals.