Around Town Published by Messenger Papers, Inc.
15
Thursday, September 3, 2026
Continued from front cover
Zeldin Names New L.I. Sound Partnership Director
Sound Quality Before the announcement of Tachiki’s promotion, Zeldin sat down with Congressman Nick LaLota (R-Amityville) and key regional stakeholders, such as Sea Grant (both New York and Connecticut groups), Citizens Campaign for the Environment, and the Cornell Cooperative Extension of Suffolk County. Zeldin called “partnership” the “name of the game,” owing to his near-decade with the same stakeholders during his time in Congress. When he entered Congress in 2015, funding for LISP was at about $4 million. Now, their current authorization is over $40 million annually. “It’s not all about the dollars, it is about protecting the environment for future generations,” said LaLota, the only House Republican from the Northeast to sit on the powerful Appropriations Committee. He asked for the partnership’s continued guidance in their needs and the ROI on investing in the Sound’s protection and quality so as to better make the pitch to his fellow lawmakers in Washington. The EPA has found that the Sound’s hypoxia - low levels of oxygen - is a historic low since the program’s inception. They’ve mapped 257,000 acres of seafloor habitat, as well as more than 2,000 acres of eelgrass. 421 coastal habitat acres have been restored and 215 acres of open space have been conserved. On the training/education front, Zeldin said that they’ve trained 2,500 “decisionmakers” and have engaged over 5,300 students. Adrienne Esposito, Executive Director for Citizens Campaign for the Environment, said that while the 42 members in the coalition is down from its peak of 60, they are
Credit - Matt Meduri
Credit - Matt Meduri
Since 2019, Tachiki has served as the Strategic Planning Coordinator of LISP. One of her main duties in that capacity has been to develop LISP’s Reports to Congress and aiding the group through the Comprehensive Conservation and Management Plan (CCMP) She worked in the Drinking Water and Groundwater Protection Section as a specialist in 2012, and ascended to Acting Section Supervisor in 2024. Since 2022, she has served as a special assistant to the Regional EPA Administrator. EPA Region 2 serves New York, New Jersey, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and eight Indian Nations. Tachiki hails from Los Angeles, California, and currently lives in New York City. She holds a bachelor’s degree in environmental science from UCLA and a master’s degree in environmental science and policy from Johns Hopkins University. “Nikki brings deep and long standing commitment to the Long Island Sound Partnership, extensive experience in program leadership, stakeholder engagement, and strategic planning within EPA Region 2,” said Administrator Zeldin. “Since 2019, Nikki has served as a life scientist and strategic planning coordinator with EPA Region 2 in New York, where she has led complex, high-priority Long Island Sound Partnership efforts.” Zeldin added that in 2023 and 2025, Tachiki “led multiple teams of more than 60 authors in developing the goals of and action of the 2025 CCMP.” She’s also served as a project officer to help secure $537 million in funding. Zeldin hailed her work in providing “strategic support” for the Sound’s hydrodynamic water quality model and her contributions to nutrient management. Tachiki succeeds Mark Tedesco who retired after nearly 30 years directing LISP. She is expected to lead the organization through its current 10-year environmental plan. “With nearly 9 million people touched by the Long Island Sound, it’s essential that we take the steps necessary to protect its waters, its wildlife, and its role in the lives of surrounding communities,” said Tachiki (pictured right). She mentioned that one “highlight project” during her time with EPA Region 2 is working with the NYC Department of Environmental Protection to “determine the next steps to tackling nutrient pollution.” “Not a single leader or a single organization drives the success of this program. It’s the hundreds of hours that each member puts into the program each year, and it’s the decades of combined experience that each committee and work group brings to the table when we’re creating a pathway.”
“rebuilding” that coalition. She mentioned the coalition’s high school education program, which saw students read the CCMP, choose projects, and attend field trips to the Sound - especially for inland students who have never visited the regional gem. Eric Swanson, Executive Director for the Hempstead Harbor Protection Committee, said that the harbor’s shellfish beds, which had been closed for 45 years, have reopened under the sub-watershed plan and alongside wastewater upgrades, wetland restoration, shellfish seeding, and geese control. It’s now the second-largest hard clam producer in the state, at a peak value of $136 million. Six million oysters were planted in Hasset Bay, Hempstead Harbor, and Oyster Bay this summer alone, giving them the capacity to filter 100 million gallons of water a day if grown to their full size. Swanson added that Crescent Beach in Glen Cove, which was closed for 17 years due to “extreme bacterial levels,” reopened this summer. Zeldin Talks Data Centers Islip and Brookhaven are currently Suffolk’s only towns to pass moratoria on the construction of all data centers within their boundaries. Both towns passed their temporary bans unanimously for 18 months. While the question of Long Island as a potential home for data centers remains, Zeldin clarified the EPA’s positions on the new and controversial technology. Zeldin invoked his long-held ideology of “cooperative federalism,” wherein the federal government believes the states and municipalities are best to make decisions for themselves regarding their own communities without mandates or pressures from feds. “We [the EPA] have obligations under the Clean Water Act, and we fulfill our statutory obligations as it relates to that,” Zeldin told The Messenger. “But we don’t want to micromanage all of this where we are picking and choosing which projects get built and which ones don’t. Zeldin cited three primary concerns that he fields from across the country. The first is energy bills. He said that after touring all 50 states within his first 9 months at the EPA, he had a front-row seat to many of the data centers being built. “While there might be the most amount of focus on the most controversial example out there, it was very important to see examples of data centers in communities that will be getting a net benefit,” said Zeldin. “The local ratepayer is going to be paying less [for energy], not more.” Zeldin mentioned the facility in West Memphis, Arkansas, where ratepayers have received a $1 billion-plus net benefit. The second aspect is how the meter works for a data center that comes online. “They might be building a small modular reactor or otherwise generating their own energy capacity. ‘Is my local energy capacity going to be drained at all, will it be better or worse?’ There are a lot of new data centers that are coming online that are checking this box. They’re going behind the meter and they are net providers onto the grid as opposed to net takers.” The third point of interest for the EPA is water usage. Zeldin said that the EPA released their Water Reuse Action Plan 2.0 with data centers in mind. “The technology of data centers has advanced quite a bit. Many of them are now using closed loop systems; it’s 100% recyclable. There are data centers being built that aren’t even using anywhere near as much water as data centers just a few years back. So, it’s very important on this particular front that when these data centers are being constructed, they are not being constructed in a way where they’re constantly tapping into a water supply.”