Jeffries recently secured nearly $1 million for the Billion Oyster Project, which builds oyster reefs at sites around New York City — including Canarsie — to reduce coastal erosion, protect shorelines and improve water quality.
After he presented organizers with a check, he went on a boat ride with Executive Director Pete Malinowski and a group of students with the New York Harbor School, a public high school located on Governors Island.
“It was really amazing to spend a couple hours with Leader Jeffries,” said Malinowski. “Adults don’t often take high school students seriously, and he totally did. He treated them all like adults and experts, asking good questions. … It was such a vote of confidence for what we do in our organization to have that kind of support.”
Jeffries was also instrumental in getting language included in a water projects authorization to create the Hudson River Estuary Restoration Program.
Eight of the 20 projects from the program are in Jamaica Bay, including creation of the Duck Point Marsh Island, which provided the backdrop for the recent celebration at Shirley Chisholm State Park. Jeffries said that helping to establish that park — which he called an “urban oasis” just off a major parkway — is “one of the proudest accomplishments of my tenure.”
Collin O’Mara, CEO of the National Wildlife Federation, remembered how Jeffries, in the aftermath of Sandy, worked as tirelessly to fund conservation and restoration efforts for the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge as he did to secure federal relief for his displaced constituents.
“Obviously he was concerned about neighborhoods, making sure folks could go back, rebuild smarter, but he was also prioritizing the natural resources and making sure this gem of a refuge was not forgotten because it wasn’t a housing structure or a road that was blown out,” O’Mara said.
‘My record … speaks for itself’
The pain of Sandy still resonates with many of Jeffries’ constituents, including Rachel Rivera, now an organizer in his district with New York Communities for Change.
“In the areas where I’ve spoken to people … they want the property taxes, home insurance, flood insurance to go down,” she said. “A lot of people — Hakeem’s constituents — are complaining about it and they’re waiting to see what’s going to happen.”
The night of Sandy’s arrival, Rivera rescued her young daughter from her bedroom mere moments before the roof above them collapsed.
She grew emotional remembering the year she spent at a hotel in midtown Manhattan, separated from her other children, waiting to be able to return to Brooklyn.
“I never saw him,” Rivera said. “Nobody that I spoke to ever saw him. I saw [then-New York Mayor Bill] de Blasio more than I saw him. We needed somebody.”
Jeffries was curt when asked to respond to criticism from local climate activists that he hasn’t done enough.
“I’m proud to have had a close working relationship from my days in the New York State Assembly all the way to my time in Congress with incredibly important environmental advocacy groups like the League of Conservation Voters and the Environmental Defense Fund,” Jeffries said. “My record on climate and the environment speaks for itself.”
That includes a 97 percent lifetime rating with the national chapter of LCV. The group’s senior vice president, Tiernan Sittenfeld, credited Jeffries with helping keep members together in the previous Congress, when he was House Democratic Caucus chair, as climate bill negotiations zigzagged.
O’Mara predicted Jeffries would continue to advocate for biodiversity and the national wildlife refuge system as speaker. “Having a speaker whose district literally covers one of the biggest urban refuges in the world,” O’Mara said, would be significant.
Though Jeffries promised Democrats would “build upon the progress we’ve made” on the IRA, he was more circumspect when it came to other green priorities.
Nodding to the ongoing permitting reform debate, he said Democrats would have “further discussion” about “ways to make sure we can fully stand up a clean energy economy and make a transition to a solar industry and wind industry that are more dominant in … rural and exurban America.”
Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Fla.), former chair of the now-disbanded House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, said Jeffries appointed her to another select committee, the bipartisan House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, specifically so she might “bird-dog some of the energy issues” that might arise.
Yet Jeffries has so far been noncommittal on Castor’s lobbying to bring back the climate committee if Democrats retake the majority.
“We do want some climate forward focused activity in the new Congress, and what form that takes remains to be seen.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.).
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Jeffries told POLITICO’s E&E News, “but we do want some climate forward focused activity in the new Congress, and what form that takes remains to be seen.”
The lists of asks will keep piling up. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who in the previous Congress led a congressional investigation into allegations that Big Oil lied for years about its climate impacts, said he was “confident” a Speaker Jeffries would be “very supportive” of resumption of that work.
Tighe, of the New York League of Conservation Voters, said advocates want Jeffries to support bipartisan legislation that would allow for revenue sharing from offshore wind development, a burgeoning industry in the state.
And if Democrats win a governing trifecta, Jeffries will be fielding all sorts of demands for what to include in an “Inflation Reduction Act 2.0” reconciliation bill.
Meanwhile, back home, progressive climate activists are pledging to continue efforts to push Jeffries to the left, with Sikora saying New York Communities for Change wants to hire more organizers in his district toward that end.
“We’re building a chapter right now in Canarsie and hope to build more of a presence in his district because it’s important that Hakeem Jeffries transforms over time into the leader that the world needs,” said Sikora.
“If — really, when — he steps into the speaker’s office, we’re going to need a champion. New York is going to need a champion and the world is going to need a champion. He’s that champion. That’s something we would like to help him become.”
Reporter Kelsey Brugger contributed.
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Publish date : 2024-11-04 21:34:00
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