27Speaks

The number of COVID cases has ticked up in recent weeks, just as flu and RSV seasons approach. To discuss what East End residents should be doing to protect themselves and others from communicable diseases this fall and winter, Melody Butler, the director of infection prevention and control at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital, joins the editors on the podcast this week.

East End Food, a nonprofit that exists to promote local growers and food producers, has grown by leaps and bounds in recent years and expanded its reach. This summer, it introduced the East End Food Passport, and work on the new East End Food Hub in Riverhead, with a commercial kitchen for producers and farmers market stalls for vendors, is underway. Kate Fullam, the executive director of East End Food, joins the editors on 27Speaks this week to discuss the organization's roots and its plans for the coming years.

On August 10, Water Mill resident Judith Sherman looked through her binoculars at a bird in a distant tree. The bird, an osprey, was in distress and hanging from a branch, its leg tangled in a mass of rope and fishing line. So Sherman called the Evelyn Alexander Wildlife Rescue Center in Hampton Bays, and before long, wildlife rescue volunteer Missy Hargraves was on the case and ready to help. In this week's podcast, the editors and reporter Tom Gogola talk with Hargraves about the harrowing scene, the effort it took to free the osprey, and the good work of the Evelyn Alexander Wildlife Rescue Center.

Each summer, The Express News Group brings interns into the fold to help produce the content that fills the newspapers' pages. As August winds down, we often like to get the perspective of interns and find out what they learned during their time with us, what stories they found most compelling to cover and if journalism might be a field they will pursue in the future. This week, 2023 Arts & Living intern Caitlyn Foley of Westhampton Beach, who will soon start her senior year at Villanova University, joined the editors to talk about her time at The Express News Group.

In recent weeks, developer Adam Potter announced new plans for a 1.4-acre site he owns in Sag Harbor Village, bounded by Rose and Bridge streets. Saying he had learned from criticisms of earlier proposals, Potter’s somewhat scaled-back plan includes retail space, 39 apartments, some of which would be designated as affordable housing, a community center, a performance venue, classrooms and a small park. This week, the editors and reporter Steve Kotz discuss the details of the new proposal and consider what might happen going forward.

The Suffolk County Water Authority has for years dubbed private properties that consume millions of gallons of water per year “superusers” and has tried appealing to owners and property managers to do more to reduce the amount of water they draw in through the SCWA mains, which taxes the authority’s ability to maintain water pressure at peak usage times, posing a threat to firefighting capabilities. The Express News Group has tracked the growth of superusers and how much water they draw from the SCWA wells since 2010, labeling top users as “the Water Hogs of the Hamptons.” Reporter Michael Wright and SCWA director of external affairs Dan Dubois join the editors on the podcast this week to discuss the concerns and what SCWA is doing to alleviate them.

Goats don't actually eat tin cans, as cartoons would have you believe, but they do have voracious appetites and eat plants that other ruminants leave alone — making goats excellent at controlling unwanted plants. East Hampton Town and the Concerned Citizens of Montauk are planning to use goats in their effort to restore the coastal shrublands along the southern edge of Old Montauk Highway just west of downtown Montauk, and in Southampton Town, the highway department is already employing goats to remove overgrowth and invasive plants on medians and road ends. Southampton Town Highway Superintendent Charlie McArdle and reporter Michael Wright join the editors on the podcast this week to discuss the many benefits of using goats for ecological management.

Fighting Chance, the Sag Harbor-based cancer support organization founded more than 20 years ago, recently distributed an educational insert in the Express News Group newspapers about living with cancer diagnoses, and it did so in collaboration with the American Cancer Society. This week, the editors and intern John Paul Ferrantino were joined by Duncan Darrow, founder of Fighting Chance, and Kathleen Mulcahy, its executive director, as well as Katie Goepfrich Schafer, executive director of American Cancer Society Long Island, to talk about the history of Fighting Chance and the new partnership between the two organizations.

This week, Westhampton Free Library adult reference librarian Sara Zarowin, who took the lead in the installation of a small pollinator garden in Glovers Lane Park in Westhampton Beach Village, joins the editors on the 27Speaks podcast. The garden, originally intended to be installed in 2020, was delayed for several years, first due to the pandemic, and then as the village worked on its Main Street revitalization project and sewer project, but finally came together on June 4. The library, in partnership with the village, hopes the garden will not only help improve the environment, but also be a model and educational tool for the community.

This week, the editors, Express News Group publisher Gavin Menu and director of events Ellen Dioguardi talk beer — the art of brewing it, the joy of drinking it. Kidd Squid Brewing Company, which opened just last year in Sag Harbor, is already a community institution. On Thursday, July 13, from 4 to 6 p.m. The Express Magazine will host “The Next Generation of Craft Beer,” an afternoon of beer tasting at Kidd Squid as part of its "Sips of Summer” series. Rory McEvoy, owner of Kidd Squid, will join representatives of Übergeek Brewing and the North Fork Brewing Company to explain how the brewers are using locally grown and made products to produce a new generation of craft beer.