Advocates see 2 Lee Zeldins: friend on local issues, not on global ones

WASHINGTON — As a four-term congressman, Republican Lee Zeldin played a key role in the yearslong bipartisan push to save Plum Island,  off Long Island’s North Fork, from potential commercial development. He helped secure funding for clean water projects in his Suffolk district. And he spoke out against a 2018 proposal to permit offshore drilling in the Atlantic Ocean.

Local environmentalists were often grateful for Zeldin's work on issues that mattered to them over the years.

Those same environmentalists are now trying to reconcile that gratitude against their anger over his move last week as the head of the federal Environmental Protection Agency to repeal an Obama-era legal opinion that for the past 17 years has been used to regulate and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Zeldin’s repeal of the so-called "endangerment finding" that declared six types of greenhouse gas emissions as a threat to public health leaves an opening for car manufacturers and power plants to emit unrestricted levels of climate-warming emissions that environmentalists contend will leave Long Island especially vulnerable to rising sea levels and poor air quality.

"People constantly ask, ‘What do you think of him?’ And I feel like a split personality," Long Island environmentalist Adrienne Esposito said.

Esposito said in a phone interview that "on the one hand" Zeldin's help on local issues, including hosting a meeting in Washington, D.C., last summer with Plum Island advocates about the future of the site, was good for Long Island's environment. But she said she believes his broader federal policy changes are "destroying the planet."

More than a year into Zeldin’s tenure as President Donald Trump’s EPA administrator, local advocates describe a friend on local issues but a foe on global concerns. They have worked to keep the lines of communication open with the former congressman and state senator from Shirley on issues like turning federally owned Plum Island into a nature preserve or efforts to protect Long Island Sound’s water quality. But they are also not backing away from publicly criticizing Zeldin on some of his policy changes, including his push to eliminate the Biden-era $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which was meant to fund clean energy projects in low-income communities.

"The tiny silver lining is that on local issues like Plum Island and Long Island Sound, Zeldin is still interested and concerned and helpful. But on these big and meaningful, substantive policy issues, he's just abandoned who he was and morphed into this person we see today," said Esposito, executive director of the Farmingdale-based Citizens Campaign for the Environment.

The EPA declined a request to interview Zeldin for this story, but in a statement said his "record of protecting human health and the environment for Long Islanders and all Americans is unmatched."

Focus on economic growth

In speeches and public appearances, Zeldin has maintained deregulation of the nation’s energy industry is critical to economic growth.

"We can and we must protect our precious environment without suffocating the economy," Zeldin said at his Senate confirmation hearing in January 2025.

The former congressman, who had served on the bipartisan House Climate Solutions Caucus and twice voted for legislation to curb the presence of PFAS, or so-called "forever chemicals," in drinking water, has since delayed by two years the deadline for water utilities to meet new federal water quality standards aimed at reducing the presence of those chemicals.

The extension, announced last May, was criticized by locals who noted Long Island has long grappled with underground water contamination of chemicals from once bustling factories. But Zeldin has defended the move saying some smaller water systems, particularly in rural communities, need more time to come into compliance.

In his current role shaping environmental policy for Trump’s second term, Zeldin has been a fierce defender of Trump’s "Unleashing American Energy" agenda that calls for increasing domestic production of fossil fuels, investing in nuclear energy production and boosting the use of coal energy — all as the administration looks to stymie the development of clean energy sources by pausing new offshore wind energy projects, eliminating solar energy tax credits and lifting clean emissions standards for vehicles.

"The Trump EPA is strictly following the letter of the law, returning common sense to policy, delivering consumer choice to Americans and advancing the American dream," Zeldin said on Feb. 12 at the White House, where he stood next to Trump to announce the rollback of the Obama-era endangerment finding — a 2009 EPA legal finding that declared six forms of greenhouse gas emissions a threat to public health.

'Existential threat'

Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-Glen Cove), who has called on Zeldin to reconsider his moves on PFAS and the endangerment finding, told Newsday in a phone interview that while he believed Zeldin "demonstrated concern for the environment on Long Island in the past ... this most recent action, I think, is very disappointing and is going to cause a lot of problems."

Suozzi, speaking at a news conference in Glen Cove on Tuesday, where he was joined by Esposito and about a dozen other environmental advocates, urged Zeldin to reverse course on abandoning the endangerment finding, saying climate change poses "an existential threat to us here on Long Island."

"It affects our trees, it affects our wildlife, it affects nature, but it also affects us in real ways, like causing your insurance rates to go up, like damaging your properties, like making it so you are more subject to more floods and more storms," Suozzi said.

Suozzi wrote a letter to Zeldin last fall invoking their 2019 and 2021 votes in the U.S. House in favor of legislation to address the presence of PFAS chemicals in drinking water. Suozzi, in the Sept. 19 letter, urged Zeldin to reconsider his move to delay the deadline for water utilities and public water systems to comply with new federal water standards targeting the presence of PFAS or polyfluoroalkyl chemicals.

"I know you understand these issues and their impacts on Long Island intimately," Suozzi wrote in the letter, noting Zeldin had served on the House PFAS Task Force. 

While Suozzi did not hear back from Zeldin directly, the EPA’s assistant administrator for water, Jessica Kramer, responded last December in a letter that asserted "continuing to address PFAS in drinking water is a priority for the EPA."

Attacks from environmentalists

At the Glen Cove news conference, environmentalists accused Zeldin and the administration of ignoring longstanding scientific studies linking greenhouse gas emissions with rising temperatures that are contributing to rising sea levels, severe droughts and extreme storms.

"The Trump administration is launching the single biggest attack in U.S. history on the federal government’s efforts to tackle the climate crisis," said Pete Budden, senior advocate at the Natural Resources Defense Council, a nonprofit that filed a federal lawsuit this week aimed at invalidating Zeldin’s action.

Matt Salton, federal policy manager of the New York League of Conservation Voters, said, "with the repeal of the endangerment finding, President Trump and the EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin are accelerating their assault on our health, environment and economic future. Clean air is not a partisan issue — it’s a human right."

Rep. Andrew Garbarino (R-Bayport) who serves as the current co-chair of the Climate Solutions Caucus and Rep. Nick LaLota (R-Amityville), Zeldin’s successor in the 1st Congressional District, and also a member of the caucus, did not return requests for comment on Zeldin’s EPA record.

Despite facing criticism back home, Zeldin’s stock has continued to rise in Trump’s orbit — the president recently tapped him to be a point person on rebuilding efforts in California following last year’s devastating wildfires, and Real Clear Politics last month reported Zeldin’s name had been floated to Trump as a potential replacement for Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem as she faced growing calls to resign after the fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens by federal immigration agents in Minnesota.

Zeldin, who stepped down from Congress in 2022 to launch an unsuccessful run for governor, was recently asked about his future plans at a Politico forum held on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference. He said he had not "given it any thought."

"I don’t think about what’s next," Zeldin said. "I just focus on the job that I’m doing."

By Laura Figueroa Hernandez

laura.figueroa@newsday.com@Laura_Figueroa

Laura Figueroa Hernandez is the White House correspondent and previously covered New York City politics and government. She joined Newsday in 2012 after covering state and local politics for The Miami Herald.