EPA Administrator Zeldin Completes Region One Swing, Visiting All Six New England States
WASHINGTON – On Monday, August 4, 2025, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin completed his travel to EPA’s Region One where he visited Rhode Island, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine on the heels of his first stops in Massachusetts, to meet with regional staff and learn more about the environmental successes and challenges in each state.
Following Administrator Zeldin’s travel to Massachusetts, he visited the Narragansett Bay Tunnel Commission and Restored Waters Program Management in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, where he received a project overview, and toured the tunnel site which will eventually hold water for filtration before being released back into the Bay, improving water quality.
Administrator Zeldin then visited the Newport Naval Base and participated in a boat tour to learn about PFAS and PCB contamination on the base that is currently being remediated.
After, Administrator Zeldin traveled to Iroquois Compressor Plant in Milford, Connecticut. The site would be an interconnection point for the Constitution pipeline, which if permitted, would unleash American energy for New England, driving down prices and enhancing grid stability for the region.
At the Raymark Industries, Inc. Superfund Site in Stratford, Connecticut, Administrator Zeldin heard from Stratford Mayor Laura Hoydick and the site team about remediation efforts at the former manufacturing plant for automotive breaks, clutch parts, and other friction components. The site is a success story for the area, with EPA helping to oversee remediation of soil, sediment, surface water and groundwater that consisted of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), volatile organic compounds (VOCs), asbestos, lead, copper, and about a dozen other chemical compounds.
Administrator Zeldin then met with Collective Oyster Recycling & Restoration (CORR) at their Oyster Shell Recycling site in East Haven, Connecticut, where he learned about CORR’s partnerships with local businesses and partners to recycle oyster shells that would otherwise end up in landfills to aid in shellfish restoration projects and help improve local water quality in the Long Island Sound.
Administrator Zeldin continued to the GE Consolidation Site on the Housatonic River in Lee, Massachusetts, to hear from project representatives on the final steps to needed to complete cleanup efforts and ensure clean air, land and water for residents in the area.
In Vermont, Administrator Zeldin met with Governor Phil Scott, Vermont Agriculture Secretary Anson Tebbetts, Agency of Natural Resources Secretary Julie Moore, Lieutenant Governor John Rogers, and local farmers at Newmont Farms in Bradford, Vermont. He toured the dairy farm and participated in a roundtable to hear directly from local leaders and farmers on the environmental issues that impact them most and the role of cooperative federalism in advancing commonsense policies on Waters of the U.S. (WOTUS), Effluent Limitation Guidelines (ELG), Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO), National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) and more.
At Eversource in Manchester, New Hampshire, Administrator Zeldin participated in a roundtable with Governor Kelly Ayotte, Mayor Jay Ruais, Commissioner for the Department of Environmental Services Robert Scott, and Eversource employees to discuss energy infrastructure and the importance of grid reliability as demand continues to increase. After the roundtable, Administrator Zeldin toured the facility control rooms. He then visited a city- owned PFAS Drinking Water Treatment in Newington New Hampshire to learn how PFAS is being eliminated from local drinking water.
Administrator Zeldin finished his New England visit in Portland, Maine, at Thompson’s Point Brownfield Site. Once an abandoned port, Thompson’s Point has been cleaned up with help from EPA’s Brownfields program and now hosts a children’s museum, a concert venue, and is continuing to be built out to be a cultural center for the City of Portland.
