July 20, 1986

In the last 15 years, Brick Township in Ocean County, N.J., has evolved from a comfortable summer resort of 35,000 permanent residents to a bedroom and retirement community of 60,000 people. Now, said Alan W. Avery, an assistant planning director for Ocean County, vacant land zoned for large-scale housing has almost disappeared in Brick Township, one of the largest communities in Ocean County.

It is 8:30 on a Sunday morning and David C. Rutgers is sitting in the grand dining room of the Hotel Enquinox here, praising public auctions as a method of selling real estate. ''They are a much more efficient way of buying property,'' he siad enthusiastically. ''They force the seller to make an instant decision. And buyers respond to the potential for a bargain. They respond to greed.'' Some of his comments were borne out later that June morning at his acuction of 110 properties - primarily condominiums and small ski chalets - in Sugarbush and Straton, Vt. Unfortunately for him, the instant decision many of his sellers made was to turn down the highest bid. And his potential buyers definitely were seeking bargains, often stopping tens of thousands of dollars short of the prices suggested in the catalogue.

Four Met players were arrested today after an early morning altercation with two Houston policemen at a local bar, but the attorney hired by the players said they felt they were ''unduly assaulted.'' The attorney said one, Tim Teufel, contended he was ''severely beaten'' in the incident. The four players, who were arrested at 2 A.M., spent 11 hours in a holding cell before they posted bail and were released this afternoon. Teufel, a second baseman, and Ron Darling, who had been the Mets' starting and losing pitcher Friday night against the Houston Astros, were charged with aggravated assault on a police officer, a third-degree felony. They posted bond of $8,000 each and are scheduled to be arraigned Sunday morning.

The explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power station was caused by unauthorized and poorly controlled experiments during scheduled repairs, the Politburo said today. The Politburo, in a report read on the television news, announced three dismissals of high-ranking officials and the initiation of criminal proceedings against people responsible for ''gross breaches'' of discipline and operational regulations at the power plant. The Politburo also said that direct economic losses from the accident April 26 totaled about 2 billion rubles, equivalent to $2.7 billion, and that the loss of the plant's power output had ''created difficulties with the power supply to the national economy.'' Follows Special Meeting The Politburo issued its statement after a special meeting Friday to discuss the report of a Government commission set up directly after the accident to study its causes.

SUFFOLK COUNTY and the Long Island Lighting Company are at odds once again, this time over a Federal report that notes deficiencies in the company's management n of the Shoreham Nuclear Power Station during a period that included low-power testing. The report, which was released last week by the Federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Northeast regional office in King of Prussia, Pa., found ''weaknesses'' and ''minimally satisfactory performance'' from March 1985 to February of this year in three of nine categories at the Shoreham plant. It also said the company was inconsistent in its overall performance at the plant and called on management to pay more attention to the plant's operations. County officials said that the report amounted to a failing grade for Lilco from the Federal agency that will decide whether the $4.6 billion Shoreham plant receives a commercial operating license or is abandoned. But Lilco officials said that, while the report's rating was less than satisfactory from their point of view, it was typical of reports the commission has issued for other nuclear plants going through the technical and management shakedown period of low-power testing.

ON major construction sites in New York City, union rules prevail. Only electricians can turn on the lights, only plumbers can operate the water lines and two workers must operate each elevator that moves materials and workers. Since hours and holidays differ among the trades, some workers routinely earn overtime. And every site has a dispatcher whose task, in principle, is to guide the flow of delivery trucks. But, as a union representative, he also turns away trucks driven by nonunion drivers. ''All kinds of nonsense goes on,'' said Arun Bhatia, a Manhattan developer of condominiums that sell for more than $300 a square foot. He estimated that labor practices that slow down jobs and that are widely deplored as featherbedding cost ''many thousands of dollars'' per apartment. Labor leaders, however, assert that their work rules make sense and do not increase costs.

HORTICULTURAL experts from throughout the state will participate in a one-day clinic Saturday at the display gardens and vegetable research farm of Rutgers University's Cook College. The college and the Cooperative Extension Service will pool their resources for this annual open house, and gardeners are encouraged to bring their questions, as well as diseased-plant samples, for on-the-spot answers and analysis. Visitors also will receive information on the latest in disease-resistant plants that do well in the state's climate. The gardens and vegetable farm are on Ryders Lane near U.S. 1, specifically on 50 acres that the college uses for research. Admission is free, and there is no charge for the plant clinics.

During the 1950's, Edmund Wilson (1895-1972) wrote for The New Yorker; put together five collections of his earlier work, including ''The Shores of Light'' (1952); published two other books (''A Piece of My Mind: Reflections at Sixty'' in 1956, and in 1958 ''The Scrolls From the Dead Sea,'' the research for which took him to Israel); and, at his family's house in Talcottville in New York's Adirondacks, worked on ''Patriotic Gore'' and ''Apologies to the Iroquois.'' He also traveled to Europe twice. All the while he suffered from gout and high blood pressure. The excerpts that follow are from ''The Fifties: From Notebooks and Diaries of the Period,'' edited, and with an introduction, by Leon Edel, to be published in September by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. ''The Fifties'' is a companion volume to ''The Twenties'' (1975), ''The Thirties'' (1980) and ''The Forties'' (1982); a volume covering 1960-72 is planned. In these notebooks and diaries, written, Mr. Edel says, in ''a mixture of neatness and scribble,'' we not only read about the work in which Wilson was engaged but also about his family and his =encounters with William Faulkner, W. H. Auden, Djuna Barnes, Andre Malraux, Cyril Connolly, Angus Wilson, E. M. Forster and many others.

PUBLIC school officials in Westchester are considering the unthinkable - turning down state aid already approved for their districts. The money in question is part of the new statewide $95 million Excellence in Teaching program designed to raise teacher salaries to attract and retain qualified people. Governor Cuomo proposed the salary-aid legislation earlier this year with strong backing from the state's teachers unions. The Legislature approved the Excellence in Teaching program April 5, as part of the $41.5 billion state budget. But now, as the Oct. 1 deadline for applying for the state funds draws closer, school boards and administrators around the state who lobbied unsuccessfully against the program, including many in Westchester, are reluctant to take the state money. They say it carries costly strings that would have to be paid for by local taxpayers.

HARVEY MINARS has been waging a four-year battle with the Town of Hempstead to gain approval for installation of a satellite dish antenna at his home in Woodmere. Michael Beofiore of Huntington Bay, on the other hand, purchased a satellite system that was approved, installed and operational within one week. The two cases demonstrate the wide divergence of ordinances in Long Island's towns and villages regulating the use of the high-technology equipment at a time when the number of dish owners on the Island, now estimated at 2,000, and around the country continues to grow. The differences also reflect the legal confusion surrounding the new industry. The equipment, sometimes called TVRO, for television receive-only satellite earth station, enables its owners to pluck broadcast signals out of the air, bypassing conventional cable-wired transmission. The dish antenna, in effect, creates an independent system capable of receiving audio and video broadcast signals directly from satellite feeds.

THEY do not have the influence of the Conservatives, or the strict ideology of the Right to Life Party, but the county's other ''minor'' political party, the Liberal Party, is hoping its message will get heard by at least some voters this year. What that message is, according to Richard O. Reyes, the chairman of the party, is misunderstood by many. ''No Liberal wants the Government to go bankrupt and not be able to pay its bills; no Liberal wants to see money wasted on projects,'' he said during a recent interview. ''But these are accusations Liberals get from conservatives and, sure, they stick.'' What liberalism really means, Mr. Reyes said, ''is to a large extent the absence of dogma, that everything has to be judged on its merits - if it works and how well it works.''

With its designation Thursday of a team led by William Zeckendorf as the developer for an office building at the South Ferry terminal in Lower Manhattan, the Public Development Corporation has embarked on an ambitious long-term program for waterfront development. The ferry project - with 1.5 million square feet of office space in a 60-story building - is the first in what is to be a series of at least 14 waterfront developments.