Environmental issues will be focus of congressional candidate forum Tuesday

(Updated: Oct. 18) The candidates for Congress in the First Congressional District will discuss their positions on important environmental issues tomorrow evening at a forum in Riverhead.

Republican incumbent Lee Zeldin and Democratic challenger Anna Throne-Holst will take questions about their environmental priorities at the 90-minute forum at Suffolk County Community College Culinary Arts Center, from 6 to 7:30 p.m. tomorrow. The forum is hosted by the New York League of Conservation Voters, Citizens’ Campaign for the Environment, Defend H2O and Save the Sound.

The forum will be live-streamed on the N.Y. League of Conservation Voters’ Facebook page.

“Your representative in Congress has a big impact on local, and national, environmental issues,” the groups said in notice announcing the forum. “Members of Congress pass legislation and secure funding for everything from water quality improvements to open space preservation to renewable energy regulations.”

Zeldin, a first-term representative, says he has demonstrated a strong commitment to environmental issues important to the First Congressional District: successfully working to pass legislation in the house to prevent the federal government from selling Plum Island; opposing the federal government’s plan to “dump Connecticut’s dredge waste into the Long Island Sound”; and securing $27 million in funding for the National Estuary Program, which includes the Peconic Estuary and Long Island Sound.

Zeldin is a member of the bipartisan climate solutions caucus, coastal communities caucus, congressional shellfish caucus, and Long Island Sound caucus.

Throne-Holst, a former Southampton town supervisor and councilwoman, says her record in town government shows her commitment to both local and national environmental issues. Her record, she says, includes: preserving over 1250 acres of open space, including a program to make active farmland affordable to local farmers in perpetuity; spearheading the adoption of groundbreaking sustainable building codes; spearheading alternative energy and solar incentive programs; working successfully to create a regional ban on single-use plastic bags; and working to bring the New York State Clean Water and Technology Center to Stony Brook University.

To register for this event and reserve a seat, click here.

The SCCC Culinary Arts Center is located at 20 East Main Street in Riverhead. See map. (Free public parking is available in the lot accessed from First Street on Roanoke Avenue.)