The bay scallop harvest on the South Fork opened in Southampton and East Hampton waters this month to expectedly dark prospects in the wake of a seventh straight summer in which the vast majority of adult scallops died in most local bays. Michael Wright reports on 27east.com that East Hampton Town baymen say that they have found only the barest few scallops, and many said they have not bothered to even go in search after Monday’s opening day in East Hampton waters. Southampton Town baymen, who started fishing town waters on November 3, have found only marginally more uplifting results, in a stash of the famously delicious but notoriously unstable bivalves that survived the summer on the edge of a navigation channel in eastern Shinnecock Bay off the shoreline of Hampton Bays.

Hampton Bays bayman Edward Warner Jr., who is a Southampton Town Trustee, said that the area of the bay south of Cormorant Point has seen the return of dense eelgrass, the aquatic grass that once carpeted most of the region’s bay bottoms and was seen as critical habitat for scallops and many other marine species, and that has helped support the collection of scallops in the area this year.

The brightest ray of hope for the scallop fishery, and perhaps the stock as a whole itself, has been the waters of western Moriches Bay, which have again produced a relative bounty of bay scallops for Brookhaven Town baymen — who have been keeping many of the seafood cases at East End shops stocked with the glistening beige morsels.

Even with that resource, however, local seafood shops reported only taking in a few bushels every couple of days and they’re charging over-the-counter prices of $55 per pound, or higher.

Harrison Tobi, an aquaculture specialist for the Cornell Cooperative Extension, said his surveys last month of more than two dozen scallop survival test sites revealed only a handful of live adult scallops. “We only had three live adults — so we thought it was going to be another really bad year,” Tobi said. “So it’s encouraging to hear that some are being caught.”

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The South Country school district which includes Bellport High School, has suspended all discretionary spending for the remainder of the fiscal year, just weeks after officials acknowledged that the district overspent last school year's approved budget by $3.49 million. Darwin Yanes reports in NEWSDAY that in a Nov. 6 letter sent to South Country staff members, John Belmonte, the district’s newly-appointed acting assistant superintendent for finance and management services, said that due to "significant fiscal challenges," the district must prioritize "available resources" to pay for operational costs. He said the spending freeze will apply to all "nonessential purchases, travel, conferences and new initiatives."

He added, "Moving forward, only essential items absolutely necessary to operate your programs and buildings through the end of this fiscal year will be considered for approval. All purchase orders and expense requests must clearly demonstrate how they meet this critical need."

The spending freeze went into effect yesterday. School officials said programming, including fields trips, related to the core curriculum of a class will not be impacted, but other elective field trips will be approved on a case to case to basis.

Belmonte previously said that last school year's overspending was in part caused by treasurer's reports submitted to the school board two to three months late, which lead the board having to cover "unanticipated expenses." The acting assistant superintendent said he did not believe "that there was any fraud or there was any theft."

Belmonte was hired by the district last month.

The South Country Central School District is located on the south shore of Long Island, within the Town of Brookhaven in Suffolk County. The district includes the Village of Bellport and parts of hamlets like North Bellport, Brookhaven, East Patchogue, Shirley, Yaphank, and Medford.

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Last month, accompanied by Dr. Paul Rabito, Dr. Stephanie Forsberg and East Hampton High School Assistant Superintendent Timothy Fromm, two East Hampton High School students — Ginger Griffin and Sophie Lancashire — advanced from the New York State World Food Prize competition at Cornell University to the Global Youth Institute, an international summit held in Des Moines, Iowa. Melanie Vizcanio reports on 27east.com that inspired by Dr. Norman Borlaug, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate and founder of the Green Revolution, the event brought together students from around the world who are passionate about solving food insecurity and improving sustainable agriculture.

The atmosphere was both professional and inspiring, said Ginger and Sophie. They described it as initially intimidating because they were surrounded by so many bright and accomplished people, both their peers and professionals. Once they began to meet others and work in groups, the environment became more comfortable and collaborative. The event included about 190 students from nearly 10 countries, including the United States, Kenya, India, the Netherlands and Jamaica. Each student at the event presented research on a chosen country facing food insecurity. Ginger wrote about Madagascar, focusing on the country’s climate crisis and its connection to food scarcity. Sophie examined the effects of drought and proposed solutions using sustainable agriculture in Mali. At the global event, the students became Borlaug Scholars, a lifetime honor that recognizes their commitment to global food security.

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The Suffolk County Department of Public Works has begun repainting the traffic lane striping on County Road 39 west of North Sea Road this week as it prepares to implement new traffic patterns that Southampton officials hope will ease some of the traffic backups during the evening rush hours.

{Last evening's trade parade on 27 and 27A westbound between Water Mill and Hampton Bays was "brutally" congested.)

Michael Wright reports on 27east.com that the changes narrow County Road 39 to one lane between North Sea Road and Sandy Hollow Road, and eliminate the second lane on Sandy Hollow where it approaches County Road 39, allowing westbound traffic on both roads to merge into two westbound lanes from there on — eliminating the need for the Sandy Hollow traffic light to alternate to halt traffic on one or the other.

The traffic signals at the Sandy Hollow Road and Magee Street intersections will be synced to change from green to red at the same time, allowing eastbound traffic on County Road 39 to intermittently turn onto Sandy Hollow’s northbound lane.

The new patterns are expected to go into effect starting on Monday, November 17 — if the striping work has been completed.

Southampton Town Highway Superintendent Charles McArdle said the town will be stationing a police officer and Highway Department crews at the Sandy Hollow Road, Magee Street and Tuckahoe Road intersections for the early days of the new traffic patterns to observe how traffic flows — and potentially help it along where they can. (Motorists could have used such help yesterday from 4pm to 7pm.)

“We will be out there to push people through and keep everyone in motion,” McArdle said.

The new traffic patterns were spurred by an experimental two-week pilot program run by the town and county on County Road 39 in the spring that used cones to narrow the County Road 39 and Sandy Hollow Road lanes and bypassed all three traffic signals west of North Sea Road.

The experiment was widely hailed by local officials as a success that they said cut travel times to Sunrise Highway for cars leaving Southampton Village down to as little as seven minutes and eased the usual crush of traffic through the village’s downtown and on residential back roads both north and south of County Road 39.

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Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman is heading out of Long Island today to stump upstate as he weighs whether to jump into the race for governor. Carl Campanile reports in THE NY POST that Blakeman, who won re-election by a convincing 12 points last week, will start his tour on his home turf in Massapequa — where he kicked off his campaign for county executive — before heading up to the Hudson Valley and Albany. He’ll then leap to the North Country, the home turf of Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik, who has announced her bid to take on Democratic incumbent Gov. Kathy Hochul. “At the urging of many people around the state, I am heading up to the Hudson Valley, Capital District and North Country in order to gauge the level of support for a potential candidacy for governor,” Blakeman said in a statement to The Post. “I am looking forward to meeting a diverse group of people and hearing from them how we can best save New York.” Blakeman would be an underdog if he sought to challenge the better-known Stefanik in a Republican primary, according to a poll The Post published yesterday. Stefanik captured the support of 74% of Republican primary voters compared to 5% for the lesser known Blakeman, the survey conducted by J.L. Partners found. She’s also garnered a lot of support from GOP officials, activists and donors, including state Republican Party chairman Ed Cox.

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Firefighters battled a couple of massive barn fires at the Wells Farm on Sound Avenue in Riverhead last night. One barn was fully engulfed in flames when the alarm came in just before 5 p.m. yesterday. The farm is on the north side of Sound Avenue, opposite Phillips Lane. Sound Avenue was closed to traffic at West Lane and Church Lane. Denise Civiletti reports on Riverheadlocal.com that the blaze destroyed one barn and sent three people, including a Riverhead police officer, to the hospital for smoke inhalation. The other two were civilians, according to Riverhead Fire Department Chief Pete Kurzyna. The three individuals who needed treatment suffered smoke inhalation during their efforts to rescue pigs and chickens from one of the barns that caught fire on the Wells farm, the chief said. Two barns caught fire. Firefighters were able to save one, Kurzyna said. Ten departments responded to the alarm, he said. Firefighters relied on tanker trucks to supply water to fight the blaze, supplementing water that flowed from hydrants. The fire presented a number of challenges for firefighters, above and beyond water pressure issues. The barns housed animals, equipment and vehicles. Firefighters had to deal with a burning tank filled with diesel fuel and propane tanks in proximity to the flames, the chief said. Firefighters were on scene more than 3 1/2 hours, Kurzyna said. The cause of the blaze is as yet unknown and remains under investigation, the fire chief said.

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As residents of Southampton Town seek answers as to why federal immigration officials were deployed from Hampton Bays to Westhampton last Wednesday, November 5, apprehending Latino men from public locations, representatives from the Latino advocacy group OLA say parents are not sending their children to school, going to work or venturing out to shop for groceries in fear of what could happen to them. Beth Young reports in EAST END BEACON that OLA advocates and members of the community at large came to the Southampton Town Board’s meeting yesterday asking the board to take a stand on what happened last week.

“Your presence is an indication of how caring the people in our community are for others,” said Southampton Town Supervisor Maria Moore before taking more than an hour of public comment. “I understand the concerns and anxiety because of the ICE activity. The most difficult part is we have no clear accurate information coming our way.”

She said she plans to send a letter to federal representatives in Congress asking for more information about who has been taken from the community and why.

After the raid, ICE issued a rare press statement saying four of 12 people detained had criminal records, including DWI, larceny, robbery, illegally re-entering the country after being deported and endangering the welfare of a child. The agency gave no details about the other people detained.

Supervisor Moore told the crowd that Southampton Town Police Chief James Kiernan has told her that ICE doesn’t inform the town police before conducting these raids, and “if they did ask for our assistance, we would not help unless they provided us with a signed warrant from a judge.”

A protest is scheduled for across from the Westhampton Beach Fire Department this Friday, Nov. 14 from 8:30 to 10:30 a.m. Another protest had been held across the street from the Hampton Bays Fire Department on Friday, Nov. 7.

Southampton Town Councilwoman Cyndi McNamara said members of the volunteer fire department had felt hurt by the protest.

“They are volunteer first responders who are there to protect our community,” she said. “They had absolutely nothing to do with what happened. They were so upset the community came out to protest them. They cannot keep federal agents from public property.”

OLA Community Advocate Wally Ramirez said that “many community members detained have lived in and contributed to our community for years. Most are not criminals. Our community is terrified.”