Lee Zeldin is one Trump nominee who cannot be easily put into a box.
When Adrienne Esposito, executive director of a New York environmental group, appealed to the then-congressman to keep funding for Long Island Sound restoration in the federal budget, he and two other representatives from the state secured the reauthorization of $65 million per year in 2018.
When he served as a Republican congressman from New York, Lee Zeldin delighted environmentalists by championing efforts to protect critical wildlife habitat from potential development efforts, including a golf course proposed by Donald Trump.
City officials and water management experts are working to stop overflows from New York’s archaic sewer system without really knowing how much worse climate change will make storm surges and extreme rainfall.
As climate change intensifies, New York City is increasingly facing weather extremes. Currently, the city is on drought watch, and recently, wildfires have erupted in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park and neighboring New Jersey and Connecticut.
The views are certainly mixed, to put it mildly, about President-elect Donald Trump announcing last week that he would nominate Lee Zeldin, the former congressman from Suffolk County, to lead the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The New York State Legislature passed a bill last June banning the harvesting of horseshoe crabs for bait and biomedical purposes, and environmental groups are pressuring Governor Kathy Hochul to sign the bill before the end of the year.
Donald Trump’s recent appointments for key environmental positions during his second term as president are causing quite the stir among environmentalists and policy experts. The names spotlighted, particularly former Congressman Lee Zeldin, have raised concerns about the potential rollback of regulations aimed at protecting the environment. Zeldin has been nominated to head the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and many local activists have expressed skepticism about his commitment to environmental issues.
LONG ISLAND -- Leaders in Nassau and Suffolk counties say they're hopeful that former Congressman Lee Zeldin, President-elect Donald Trump's pick for head of the Environmental Protection Agency, will in fact protect the environment.
Many have worked with him for years.
The choice of Mr. Zeldin, a former Republican congressman of New York, to be the next E.P.A. administrator caught even some of his closest allies by surprise.
When he ran for governor of New York two years ago, fellow Republicans privately exhorted former Representative Lee Zeldin to distance himself from Donald J. Trump and his debunked conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.
A dozen years ago, Superstorm Sandy charged onto Long Island’s coastline, resulting in an estimated $65 billion in damage to South Shore communities, destroying 100,000 homes and causing the deaths of 13 people. The storm surge reached more than 12 feet in some places, and waves of up to 17 feet thrashed the shoreline.
Water bodies on Long Island faced a record-setting 36 dead zones during the summer of 2024, and more than double the number of blue-green algae blooms in lakes and ponds than any other county in New York State, according to this year’s annual Long Island Water Quality Impairments report prepared by the Gobler Laboratory at Stony Brook University.
Candidates from the first, second and third districts discussed their views and policies on climate and the environment.
Candidates from the fourth district were not present.
District 1: Nick LaLota (incumbent, R), and John Avlon (D)
Nick LaLota is the incumbent representative for New York’s first district. He currently co-chairs the bipartisan Congressional Offshore Wind Caucus, which aims to create policies that will improve offshore wind technology and workforce.
When it comes to climate change, “if ever there was a Ground Zero for Long Island, it’s really the First Congressional District,” says Adrienne Esposito, Executive Director of Citizens Campaign for the Environment, of the district that encompasses the entire East End. “It’s very critical to hold our congressional leaders accountable for climate change. People still actually don’t believe in climate change, as if it’s a faith based system. You can’t believe or not believe in gravity. You have to understand it is real.”
LONG ISLAND - Harmful algae blooms are popping up in multiple bodies of water across Long Island.
The bays, lakes and ponds are not as clean and clear as they need to be - this according to an annual assessment of water quality report.
"We had a record number of dead zones in 2024 with oxygen levels of less than 3mg oxygen per liter. Ideally, our coastal waterbodies will have 4.8mg oxygen per liter," said coastal ecologist Dr. Christopher Gobler at Stony Brook University.
PATCHOGUE, N.Y. - Bays, ponds and estuaries on Long Island are losing oxygen.
According to a new report, 36 different bodies of water have been deemed dead zones, and 25 marine waterways have harmful algal blooms.
