Nobody in Long Island wants turbine windmills.

0:00 Speaker 1 Sunday Morning with us is Bruce Blakeman, County Executive. Nassau County well the safest county in the country. And Bruce Blakeman, rumors are around that people are pushing you to run for governor, but you are. You’re doing such a great job in Nasau County. We don’t want to lose you.

0:23 Speaker 2 Well, listen, I am completely dedicated to my job as county executive. We’ve done some great things. As you said, we’re the safest county in America. We’ve hired three hundred new police officers, we’ve hired new corrections officers, and we haven’t raised taxes. As a matter of fact, I canceled one hundred and fifty million dollar tax increase of my predecessor,

0:46 So in four years, we haven’t raised taxes at penny, even though you know, inflation has gone very high. And we’ve gotten seven bond upgrades John as well. So people think that we’re running our finances in a fiscally responsible way.

1:03 And I really enjoyed my job as county executive.

1:07 Speaker 1 Well, you’re doing a great job, and the people in Nassau County need you. And now, Bruce Blakeman, what a big problem has arisen, and nobody understands how we got here. Maybe you could explain it to the people. On a Sunday morning, the Secretary of Interior, Doug Burnham said that we’re not gonna have any windmills and said take the

1:33 windmills are vetoed or whatever his proclamation was.

1:38 Speaker 3 And then I spoke to.

1:41 Speaker 1 All of a sudden, it’s coming out that they’re gonna start building the windmills, forty one of them off the coast of Long Island. And you know what I tell people, When they were going to build windmills in Massachusetts, not even Ted Kennedy, a Democrat, wanted windmills off the coast of Massachusetts.

2:01 Speaker 3 How he do we get into the situation?

2:04 Speaker 2 Well, I’m very much against the John. I think it’s a terrible idea. It was a project that was started by President Biden and Governor Hoche against community opposition. People on Longa Island do not want these turbine windmills, and they don’t want these big storage battery facilities, these lifting batteries in their communities as well. So here’s how we

2:30 got there. They forced through a contract with the company I believe they’re from the Netherlands called equinor. Equinor is a foreign company that is in the business of building these windmills. It was with the support of Hoko and Biden, and basically it was rammed down our throats. And then they wanted to start what they called Empire two, which

3:00 it was another project off of Long Island that would create all kinds of problems for marine life, for fishermen, for the environment. And basically the problem is that Empire one the permits were already given out under the Biden administration.

3:20 So President Trump wanted to cancel Empire two, which he did and we congratulate him for that through Lee Zelden, who’s the administrator of the EPA, and he wanted to pause Empire one. By pausing Empire one, it gave everybody an opportunity to take a look and see if everything was done correctly. Before they got to that point, Governor

3:47 Hulkeel was in the process of interfering with the natural gas pipeline that would run through New York State, and President Trump, knowing that he probably wouldn’t be successful overturning Empire one in the courts anyway, decided that he would lift the pause on Empire one in order to get the pipeline of natural gas, and uh, that was a

4:14 trade off that was made. Look, I understand the position President Trump was in because we need that natural gas desperately or we won’t be able to be able to heat our homes or to make sure that industry has enough fuel to operate. So that was incredibly important. But I’m still opposing Empire one and Empire two, and I’m

4:39 dead sent against these big lithium battery storage facilities in our communities. Uh.

4:47 Speaker 3 Which those the ones that blow up in Teslas?

4:52 Speaker 2 Yes, and they’re the ones where our firefighters can’t put out the fire. There’s no way to put out the fire in has to burn itself out. So you could have lithium batteries burning in communities for weeks, and our firefighters they don’t want this to happen for obvious reasons, and the people who live in these communities don’t want them.

5:19 So we’re trying to ban those at a minimum. We’re telling governor, hopefully you should give us local control. You shouldn’t decide where they go. We should decide. So it’s a fight that’s ongoing. I’m going to continue to fight I.

5:35 Speaker 1 Think it’s going to be a Republican democratic battle. You have to tell the Democrats in your county, why are they supporting doing this? I mean the cost. I understand from the people that love the fisheries, we’re gonna the fisheries and the fishing off the coast of Long Island is going to die. I understand what all the noise

5:59 is going on that the whales are going to die. I understand that they’re going to put the additional cost of the electricity. I forget what it was, one hundred and thirty nine something compared to what it is now like twenty eight to thirty. Do you understand that the course of the power.

6:18 Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, it’s more expensive, it’s less environmentally friendly, it will hurt commercial fishing, it’ll hurt recreational and we passed.

6:28 Speaker 3 On to the people of Long Island, Vassall County and Suffer.

6:30 Speaker 2 County absolutely, and we get no benefit. The power is going upstate. So the bottom line is that we’re in a situation where we have to fight this. It’s something that most people do not want on Long Island, and we’re going to continue to fight it.

6:49 Speaker 3 Well.

6:49 Speaker 1 I have a beach house in Long Island and I’m going to fight it, and let’s use all the bullets at our disposal. That’s an expression I use in my own company that that we it’s bad for NASA County, it’s bad for Suffolk County. It’s bad for Queens and Brooklyn because they’re right on the coast of Long Island.

7:11 It’s bad for New Jersey because they’re on the other side of the coast. And it’s going to affect everything. So we have to do what we have to do. I look forward to sitting down with you uh and and and working out a game plan on what we have to do to save Long Island.

7:28 Speaker 2 John Zaky, your help would be very, very important because not only are you an extraordinary business person, but you have this outlet w a BC, this tremendous media outlet that really is something that could get the message to everybody and get everybody to rally together to oppose this.

7:50 So we we would definitely want to enlist your help in this in this battle because you’re titan and you’ve got the UH, you got the bully pulpit.

8:02 Speaker 1 We look forward to working together. We’ll talk next week, and God bless you and God bless America and you and h Nashau County and Suffolk County are very important to me.

8:14 Speaker 2 Thank you, John, God bless you as well, and God bless America.