The Suffolk County Legislature unanimously approved a resolution last week declaring May 18-24 Safe Boating Week as a part of a national program to promote boating safety, encourage boaters to take boating safety courses and raise awareness of the dangers of boating while intoxicated.

“Boating is one of the best parts of our centuries old tradition and culture in Suffolk County,” said Legis. Steve Stern (D-Huntington), who proposed the law.  “A day out on the water should be a pleasure, not one that ends in tragedy.”

The legislature also passed a law last year requiring that skippers in Suffolk take boater safety courses, but that doesn’t go into effect until November.

Both bills were proposed after three children drowned when their boat capsized in Cold Spring Harbor on July 4 and a fisherman was killed by a drunken boater in the Great South Bay days prior.

The Greater Huntington Council of Yacht and Boating Clubs, the Town of Huntington, U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary and the Neptune Sail and Power Squadron will be offering free New York State Boating Courses for the week.  For more information about these classes, call 631-351-3256 or 631-824-7128

A Nautical Flea Market is also scheduled for 11 a.m.-4 p.m. at Mill Dam Park in Huntington on Sunday.

The boaters—a 37-year-old Captain from Wantagh and his crew member—were a half-mile from the pines when they called 911 at 1:17 p.m. requesting help because their 38-foot lobster-style boat had last engine power and was getting tossed around by gale force winds and five-foot waves, police said.

Officers found the boat and attached a tow line to the vessel and towed it three miles to Brown’s River, police said. The boat is typically used to transfer workers to and from Fire Island Pines.

The captain and his crew member were not injured.

The breach on Fire Island at Old Inlet opened by Superstorm Sandy is blamed by some for Long Island flooding and credited by others with improving Great South Bay water quality (FINS).

New York State and federal agencies have begun the process of preparing to close the breach on Fire Island caused by Sandy amid renewed debate over whether it’s caused flooding on the South Shore.

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) requested Thursday that the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers (ACE) take the preliminary steps to seek out a contractor to fill in the breach—but they haven’t officially OK’d its closure.

“If the breach does not close naturally, the closure process will be much further along,” DEC Commissioner Joe Martens said in a statement. He said the request will allow the state and feds “to act more quickly to close the breach if that is deemed necessary.”

The breach falls within the remote eastern half of the barrier island in part of the Otis Pike High Dune Wilderness Area—the only such federal preserve in the state—known as Old Inlet, which has opened and closed repeatedly throughout history.

The south-facing portion of the breach facing the Atlantic Ocean has widened by more than 1,000 feet since the Oct. 29 superstorm—108 feet on Nov. 3 to 1,171 feet on Feb. 28—and the side facing the Great South Bay more than doubled from 276 feet to 616 feet during the same time period, according to the Fire Island National Seashore (FINS).

“It’s not a final decision to close yet but having everything in place so that when a decision is made we have everything ready to go,” said FINS Superintendent Chris Soller, who believes the breach may still close on its own this spring.

“It will probably be months rather than weeks,” said Chris Gardner, an ACE spokesman, referring to the time it takes to procure and haul in the required heavy machinery. “There’s a variety of different factors at play. Most importantly there’s not dredges working in the area that we can draw upon.”

DEC, ACE and FINS, a unit of the National Park Service, together agreed to begin procuring a contractor under the Breach Contingency Plan, which was used for the first time after Sandy since being inked in 1996 following bungled breach repairs at Westhampton Beach.

The plan was used to close two other breaches—one at Cupsogue County Park in Westhampton Beach and the other at Smith Point County Park on the other side of the Moriches Inlet—shortly after Sandy. The third breach has been closely monitored but left to close on its own because it falls within the federal wilderness area.

A spokeswoman for Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone, who called a news conference this week blaming local flooding on the breach and demanding that it be closed immediately, did not respond to a request for comment on the DEC’s announcement.

Adrienne Esposito, executive director of the Farmingdale-based Citizens Campaign for the Environment, contends that there is no proven link that the breach is causing flooding along Suffolk’s bay front. But, it is proven to be flushing the polluted Great South Bay.

“We need to base decisions on fact, not fear,” she said. “I’m very frustrated that science somehow went out the window here … we shouldn’t substitute political science for good marine science.”

Looking southeast, the breach on Fire Island at Old Inlet opened by Superstorm Sandy is blamed by some for Long Island flooding and credited by others with improving Great South Bay water quality (FINS).

Suffolk County officials renewed calls Wednesday for New York State and federal agencies to close a breach on Fire Island formed during Sandy amid debate over whether it’s caused flooding on the South Shore.

The posturing follows a weekend in which extremely high tides flooded coastal Long Island communities closest to the Great South Bay as well as neighborhoods on Fire Island itself—a problem that has been on the rise since the October superstorm. But environmentalists contend that the breach has helped improve water quality in the bay.

“There are people here today who will say this breach isn’t the cause of the flooding; there are others who will say it is—I’m not concerned with that debate,” Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone said at Shorefront Park in Patchogue. “We want that breach to be closed now.”

The breach, in a remote area of the barrier island known as Old Inlet, widened from 108 feet on Nov. 3 to 1,171 feet on Feb. 28 on the southern side facing the Atlantic Ocean, according to Fire Island National Seashore (FINS) data. The north side facing the bay widened to 616 feet from 276 feet during the same time period.

A spokesman for the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers said the agency is waiting for the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to send an official request for the breach to be closed before a company can be hired to fill the breach. Even if the OK were given tomorrow, it could take weeks or longer to dispatch the dredging equipment required.

“If the state is in agreement and wants to move forward…we would issue the necessary permits,” said FINS Superintendent Chris Soller, who initially took a wait-and-see approach in case the breach closed naturally. “It’s got to be a three-way agreement.”

Emily DeSantis, a spokeswoman for the DEC, said in a statement that the agency “is consulting with coastal experts about the breach to help to determine the best course of action based on science.”

A Breach Contingency Plan developed in the 1990s was first put to use after Sandy to close two other breaches on either side of Moriches Inlet—one at Cupsogue County Park in Westhampton Beach, the other at Smith Point County Park on Fire Island. But the third breach falls within the Otis Pike High Dune Wilderness Area, the only federal wilderness area in the state, where breaches are given time to close on their own before action is taken under the contingency plan.

Both the DEC and FINS said that there is no definitive link between the four-month-old breach and the increased flooding along Suffolk’s bay front from Brookhaven to Babylon towns.

Adrienne Esposito, executive director of Farmingdale-based Citizens Campaign for the Environment, has credited the breach with cleaning the polluted Great South Bay, which was designated by the state in 2010 as an impaired waterway. The bays shell-fisheries were once nationally renowned before brown tides in the 1980s wiped out most oyster and clam beds.

“While Mother Nature dealt a severe blow to our environment during Superstorm Sandy, she has also provided a precious opportunity to reverse years of declining water quality in the bay,” Esposito said in January. “New York must not squander this opportunity to help restore the bay and rebuild the local economy.”