EPA nominee Lee Zeldin has backed environmental causes, but not all are convinced

WASHINGTON — Six years ago, more than 300 Long Islanders showed up on short notice during a nor’easter for a Friday afternoon hearing in Brookhaven to tell Trump administration officials they opposed plans to allow drilling for oil in the Atlantic Ocean.

Then-Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-Shirley) arranged the event after Long Island officials and local environmental activists complained that the only federal hearing on the 2018 presidential executive order to allow that oil exploration and drilling had been held in Albany. Legal challenges eventually blocked the drilling.

That opposition to coastal drilling stands as one of a relative handful of environmental issues on which Zeldin strayed from positions taken by the Trump administration and House Republican majority.

Zeldin ranks among the top two dozen Republicans in the House who voted for environmental bills their party or President-elect Donald Trump often opposed, a review of the liberal League of Conservation Voters scorecards found. But over his eight years in Congress, Zeldin still voted against environmental bills highlighted by the league 88% of the time.

Now, as Trump’s nominee to be the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Zeldin is facing questions from Long Island environmentalists who have worked with him for the past two decades.

"Are we nervous? Absolutely we are. We have a lot of anxiety about the Trump agenda being anti-environment," said Adrienne Esposito, of Patchogue, executive director the nonprofit Citizens Campaign for the Environment. She helped round up people for the 2018 meeting.

"The question is: Will Lee Zeldin remember his neighbors in Suffolk County and how his decisions are going to directly impact us — water, air, beaches, bays and local economy — because decisions have consequences, right?" Esposito said in a phone interview.

Critics abound

National environmental advocacy groups quickly condemned Zeldin’s appointment as they criticized Trump’s statement that his EPA director would "unleash the power of American businesses" through deregulation and "set new standards."

Judith Enck, a former EPA regional administrator in New York during the Obama administration, told Newsday: "He has not distinguished himself in his political career as someone who is committed to the mission of the EPA."

Zeldin’s Republican allies praised his appointment, though the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Competitive Enterprise Institute, critics of EPA regulations, declined to comment. Zeldin did not respond to an interview request.

Mike Sommers, president of the American Petroleum Institute, an industry lobbying group, praised Zeldin on a press call with reporters. Sommers served as the House speaker’s chief of staff during Zeldin’s first year as a congressman.

"He was a very practical member of Congress who sought to find solutions to the big challenges facing our country. We look forward to working with him when he is administrator of the EPA," Sommers said.

On Long Island, Esposito and Reps. Tom Suozzi (D-Glen Cove) and Andrew Garbarino (R-Bayport) applauded Zeldin's record in Congress on Long Island environmental issues.

To get a better picture of his views on the environment, Newsday reviewed his voting scorecards as a New York state senator from 2011 to 2014 and as a U.S. House representative from 2015 through 2022.

State Senate record

At the end of his first year as a New York state senator in 2011, the Albany-based nonprofit EPL/Environmental Advocates gave Zeldin its "Oil Slick Award" for "his efforts to harm New York’s air, land, and water ... by pushing a few really bad bills."

The advocacy group said Zeldin had backed a bill to end a tax on Long Island and downstate county businesses to fund the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and then to fill the budget gap by raiding state Environmental Protection Fund money.

It said Zeldin had a bill to repeal the state’s saltwater fishing licenses that in part funded the Department of Environmental Conservation’s oversight, and cited his bill to allow Patchogue to divert money for sewer repairs to other purposes.

Over his next three years, the advocacy group gave Zeldin among the lowest ratings in its annual voting scorecard for New York state senators.

Those ratings did not include Zeldin’s passage of a bill to extend the Department of Environmental Conservation's authority to manage oysters to avoid overfishing.

Esposito, however, praised Zeldin’s push to end the MTA tax, which she called unfair to downstate businesses. She added that environmental groups regularly had to beat back New York lawmakers’ attempts to raid the environmental fund.

And those bills had one thing in common: They would be good for his district.

Congress record

Zeldin’s best-known pro-environmental actions while in Congress include his work to protect Long Island Sound, and, with other lawmakers, his fight to block the sale of Plum Island, the former site of a federal animal research center now destined to be a nature preserve.

Esposito and other environmental activists also applauded him for being one of the few Republicans to vote for bills to address and limit toxic PFAS, the so-called "forever chemicals." Suozzi pointed to the funding Zeldin won to clean up polluted sites to protect groundwater on Long Island.

And Zeldin worked with other lawmakers on several environmental initiatives: the permanent reauthorization of the Land and Water Conservation Fund, reauthorization of the EPA Long Island Sound funding of $40 million a year and stewarded the National Sea Grant Program.

But like most members of the House in both parties, Zeldin usually voted with his caucus during his four terms in Congress — and that meant several votes against expansion of environmental regulations or additional funding for environmental programs.

A review of the League of Conservation Voters’ annual environmental scorecards during Zeldin’s eight years in Congress found that he broke with the Republican majority in 24 of the 201 bills that involved an environmental issue, or 12% of the time.

Those votes included rejecting amendments to eliminate funds for renewable energy, to slash EPA funding, to block drilling for oil in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and in the Atlantic Ocean, and to bar logging in the Tongass National Forest in Alaska.

But his votes with the House Republican majority often favored power companies, oil pipelines and mining companies by cutting or limiting environmental regulations, the review found.

And when he ran to become New York governor in 2022, he supported lifting the state’s fracking ban enacted under former Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

Future questions

Esposito and other New York environmental activists said they wonder how Zeldin will act without a congressional district to tend to and protect.

"Will he stand with the public, or will he stand for an anti-environmental agenda?" Esposito said. "We hope he stands with us."

She said she hopes that Zeldin, who will be only 48 at the end of the term, will take his future into account as he decides how he manages the EPA, especially amid expected calls for deep cuts from Trump, who proposed to slash the EPA budget by 31% in his 2018 budget proposal, a measure Congress rejected.

Zeldin also will have to respond to proposals for budget reductions by business owners Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy in their assignment from Trump to shrink the federal government.

"He has more he wants to do. He's always eyed being something else, the governor of New York, U.S. Senate," Esposito said. "So he has to play a balance here of how anti-environment he can be and then come back to New York in four years and run for something."

She added, "I'm hopeful that that's in the back of his mind as well, because this is why he was responsive to his district in New York. Because if you're a Republican or a Democrat, you still like clean beaches and clean drinking water."