Editor’s note: Adams and Hochul both take credit for bringing back wind farm project

Everyone deserves credit when it’s due, and both New York City Mayor Eric Adams and Gov. Kathy Hochul made sure they got theirs last week after the Trump administration reversed its decision to halt the Empire Wind 1 project off the coast of Long Island. The U.S. Department of Interior put a stop work order on the wind farm project last month, claiming the permitting process was rushed. That stopped construction on a project expected to power half a million households, create thousands of jobs and revitalize the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal, where an operations center for the project would be based. The project promises to be transformational for New York’s waterfront, pivoting away from a harmful fossil fuel economy to a more sustainable one.

The Adams administration had reached out to Interior Department officials to plead for a reversal of the stop work order. Then, Hochul announced May 19 that after weeks of talks she had convinced President Donald Trump and Interior Department Secretary Doug Burgum to put the project back online. The trade-off? “New York will work with the Administration and private entities on new energy projects that meet the legal requirements under New York law,” Hochul said in a statement. That signaled she may be open to natural gas pipeline construction, which is opposed by environmental advocates. Asked about Hochul taking credit for the reversal, Adams said it happened after he met with Trump. “I could care less who gets the credit,” he said, because the project was back on. Adams did leverage his Trump connections. So he and Hochul can tout themselves in what proved to be a major salvo for the state. Now about that pipeline construction …