Growing up in Lindenhurst, flooding was just a part of life. My family lived on Surf Street, just one block from the Great South Bay in homes that were converted from summer bungalows. There, high tides and Nor’easters would flood the block so regularly that my father used to joke that we had “occasional waterfront property.” A “No Wake” sign sat at the top of the block, and for good reason: when the water got high enough, boats could actually make their way down the street.
It seemed almost normal at the time. On Long Island, water has always been part of the bargain. It surrounds us, sustains us and helps define where and how we live. But increasingly, it also presents some of our greatest challenges.
Amanda Lefton, New York State Department of Environmental Conservation Commissioner, fostered the same deep experiences from the other side of the Island. Lefton grew up in Port Washington, where some of her earliest memories are tied to the waterfront.
“I used to walk down to the harbor all the time, and that’s how I spent time with my family,” she said. “I learned how to skip rocks on the harbor and watch the sunsets.”
But there was something else she noticed, too.
“It was always so interesting to me that people didn’t really go swimming there,” Lefton said.
For Lefton, those childhood experiences became an early lesson in both the value and vulnerability of Long Island’s natural resources. “It was my Long Island roots that really got me so involved in understanding the importance of environmental conservation,” she said.
That perspective now informs her work at the helm of DEC, an agency whose responsibilities touch nearly every aspect of the built and natural environment, from drinking water, wetlands and coastal resilience to brownfields, environmental permitting and economic development.
For Long Island’s construction industry, that can sometimes make DEC the agency standing between a proposed project and the moment shovels finally hit the ground.
Lefton understands that tension. But she challenges the premise behind it.
“One of my core tenets of what I believe strongly is that you can have a strong economy and strong environmental protection,” she said. “Not only can those things go hand in hand, in fact, they need to go hand in hand.”
On Long Island, perhaps nowhere is that relationship clearer than in the water.
Protecting the Water, Building the Solution
“I think Long Islanders know better than anybody the importance of water quality,” Lefton said.
Our drinking water comes from beneath our feet. Our communities hug bays, harbors, the Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean. Our beaches and waterways are part of our identity and a significant piece of our economy. But protecting them increasingly requires more than conservation alone; it requires infrastructure.
“We’ve seen water quality sometimes be degraded across places on Long Island,” Lefton said. “We’ve also seen the opportunity for it to be recovered through things like smart regulations, through investments in infrastructure, and through things like environmental conservation and restoration.”
That combination is particularly important in Suffolk County, where nitrogen from cesspools and septic systems has long posed a threat to groundwater and surrounding waterways. Efforts to address it are driving major investments in sewering, wastewater treatment and advanced septic systems. For the construction industry, those environmental investments translate into something tangible: projects.
And for Lefton, that is precisely the point.
“Why do you like living on the South Shore?” she asked.
“The water, the beaches, the parks,” I answered
Protecting those things and building the infrastructure Long Island needs are not separate missions. In fact, few places illustrate the relationship between environmental policy and infrastructure as clearly as Long Island.
For Lefton, that contrast helped demonstrate both the consequences of environmental degradation and the possibility of recovery. Across Suffolk County in particular, nitrogen contamination from traditional septic systems and cesspools has driven a generational push for sewer construction and advanced wastewater treatment. The state and county are investing heavily in both sewer infrastructure and replacements for outdated onsite wastewater systems.
Lefton pointed to the evolution of the state’s work from the Long Island Nitrogen Action Plan toward the broader Long Island Watershed Action Plan.
“We know that nitrogen is still something that is critical that we tackle, but thinking more holistically and comprehensively about how we manage our water bodies in order to be as successful as we can, because we know there are other threats,” she said. “It’s not just nitrogen. It’s emerging contaminants, it’s coastal erosion, it’s sea level rise.”
The state has also funneled significant resources into septic replacement programs, helping local governments reduce the nitrogen entering Long Island’s groundwater.
For contractors, those environmental goals translate directly into physical projects: sewers, treatment systems, drainage improvements, coastal work and other major public infrastructure.
Environment or Economy? Lefton Says Both.
The premise running through Lefton’s approach to DEC is that environmental protection and economic development do not need to sit on opposite sides of the table. Meeting environmental goals requires construction.
The state’s multibillion-dollar commitment to clean water infrastructure is perhaps the clearest example. Wastewater treatment plants and sewer systems may protect bays and groundwater, but they are also major capital projects that employ tradespeople, contractors, engineers and suppliers.
“Clean water infrastructure, as we know, is so critical for reducing things like nitrogen and other nutrients and protecting water bodies,” Lefton said. “It’s also big infrastructure, and that puts people to work.”
And it enables something else Long Island badly needs: housing.
Lefton pointed to efforts to make water infrastructure funding available to support new housing development, an example, she said, of government responding to concerns raised directly by industry.
“It’s a great example of how protecting the environment and a strong economy really go hand in hand,” she said, “but also about what we can achieve together when we have strong conversations.”
Certainty Matters
For contractors and developers, the tension often arises not over the existence of environmental protections, but over the time, uncertainty and complexity involved in navigating them.
Lefton says she understands the concern.
Her experience leading the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, where she worked on the development of the nation’s offshore wind industry, reinforced a lesson she now brings to DEC.
“I believe that it is critical for industry to have certainty,” she said. “That doesn’t mean that it’s certain that you’re going to get a permit,” Lefton explained, “but that it’s certain that you understand the rules of the road, of what it’s going to take.”
That predictability matters to investment.
“That certainty is really important for investment,” she said. “And that’s what I want to deliver as a regulator.”
For an industry where equipment, workers, financing and schedules can hinge on government approvals, the distinction is significant. Lefton said DEC has been examining its permitting systems and seeking ways to improve how applicants interact with the agency. She also pointed to the state’s Smart Access initiative, intended to create a more accessible online portal for regulatory and permitting processes.
But she repeatedly returned to something considerably less technological: communication.
“First, I think communication is really critical,” she said.
“I’ve really appreciated the opportunity to sit down with the builders, to sit down with contractors on Long Island, because I think that kind of communication and dialogue is really critical.”
Regulators, she said, need to hear from those who actually have to comply with the rules.
“In order for us to build strong regulations and guidance, we do need to have a real dialogue with the industry that’s impacted by them to ensure that they’re achievable, to ensure that they’re both protective but also efficient.”
Clear Rules of the Road
Lefton cited recent DEC work involving protections for bats as an example of that approach.
Certain bat species have suffered dramatic population declines, prompting habitat protections and restrictions on activities that could destroy critical habitat at particular times of year. But Lefton said DEC recognized that guidance surrounding those protections had created uncertainty for industry.
“We had a lot of discussions with the industry, and we ended up coming up with guidance that was to clarify how to move forward,” she said.
She acknowledged that regulated industries will not always welcome every restriction, but they should know what is expected.
“I think it’s very much my job and our job as DEC to make sure that the rules of the road are really clear, that we well communicated those, that we’re willing to listen and to be a partner,” she said.
That philosophy could prove consequential as New York attempts to simultaneously address housing shortages, aging infrastructure, water quality, climate resiliency and economic development.
‘You’ve Got to Play to Win’
In 2022, New York voters approved the $4.2 billion Clean Water, Clean Air and Green Jobs Environmental Bond Act, creating an enormous source of funding for projects ranging from water quality improvements to climate resilience.
But for contractors eager to see announced funding become bid-ready projects, there is often a frustrating gap between the headline number and the excavator arriving on site.
Lefton said some of that disconnect results from the way Bond Act dollars are distributed. Rather than inventing entirely new bureaucracies to spend the money, much of the funding has flowed through established state programs.
“If you’re getting funding from a specific program, it’s actually money coming from the Bond Act,” she explained.
And when it comes to municipalities hoping to capture more of those resources, Lefton offered an unusually simple piece of advice.
“You’ve got to play to win,” she said.
Communities must apply.
“I remind Long Island communities, especially municipal leaders, of that a lot because you’ve got to apply for the funding in order for us to grant you that funding,” Lefton said.
For Long Island’s construction industry, the stakes extend well beyond environmental policy. Grant applications that become awards become engineering work, procurements, contracts, jobs and eventually built infrastructure.
Preparing for the Water That Is Coming
If water quality is one defining infrastructure challenge for Long Island, water quantity may be another. Flooding, coastal erosion, sea level rise and increasingly severe weather are already forcing communities to rethink the infrastructure designed for a different era.
“It’s not just a big storm that’s causing our communities to flood,” Lefton said. “It’s regular rainy day flooding. And I think that makes us have to think differently about how we tackle these issues.”
There is no single solution.
Some projects will involve traditional hard infrastructure. Others will restore marshes, seagrass and natural shorelines capable of absorbing storm impacts. Still others may be as specific as replacing an undersized culvert beneath a road.
“Sometimes there are infrastructure solutions, sometimes there are restoration solutions,” Lefton said, “but really looking at tackling each of those challenges and ensuring that we’ve got the right tools in the toolbox.”
One of the most significant efforts underway is the Fire Island to Montauk Point project, with DEC serving as the non-federal sponsor alongside the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
The approximately $1.7 billion effort is designed to reduce coastal storm risk across roughly 83 miles of Suffolk County coastline. State sources confirm DEC’s role as non-federal sponsor in the long-term Army Corps project.
But Lefton stressed that resilience is also tied to environmental health.
“If we have healthy marshes, if we have seagrass, if we have healthy coastlines, that actually helps absorb some of the flooding,” she said.
For Long Island, once again, the environmental project and the infrastructure project are not separate conversations.
Getting Government Talking to Government
Contractors know another source of project delay well: the maze of jurisdictions involved in major public works. A single project can touch DEC, DOT, municipal governments, utilities and federal agencies. Lefton believes part of the solution is deceptively straightforward. People need to know each other well enough to pick up the phone.
She cited her working relationship with New York State Department of Transportation Commissioner Marie Therese Dominguez, joking about calls over permits while making a larger point about collaboration among state agencies.
“We really need strong communication and collaboration across our agencies because what DOT does is also really consequential for communities as well as for the environment,” Lefton said.
That coordination has practical consequences. A culvert replacement, for example, can simultaneously make a roadway more resilient to flooding and improve passage for fish and aquatic species.
The same philosophy applies locally.
“I see local governments as really one of DEC’s biggest stakeholders that we partner with all the time,” Lefton said.
DEC’s nine regional offices are critical to that effort because the relationships that determine whether issues are solved quickly often exist below the commissioner level.
“It’s really our teams that need to talk every day to make sure that we’re having the collaboration needed to move forward,” she said.
Making It Easier to Do the Right Thing
With responsibilities ranging from Superfund sites to wetlands, Lefton describes DEC’s mission as consequential precisely because its decisions affect so many aspects of New Yorkers’ lives. Among her priorities is what she calls sustainable development.
“How do we make it easier to do the right thing?” she said.
That can mean directing development toward previously disturbed land rather than environmentally sensitive areas. It can mean making regulatory pathways clearer. And it can mean using tools such as the Brownfield Cleanup Program to turn contaminated parcels into productive community assets.
Lefton pointed to affordable housing developments increasingly using the Brownfield Cleanup Program as an example.
“You’re getting something cleaned up and you’re giving it back to the community for beneficial use,” she said.
It is another area where the goals traditionally put into separate policy boxes: cleanup, housing, environmental protection and economic development, intersect.
Leadership and Making Space
Lefton is serving in a New York State administration notable for the number of women occupying some of its most influential leadership positions. She said serving under New York’s first woman governor and alongside women leading agencies across state government is a source of pride.
“It’s not about trying to fill a man’s shoes, but it’s about what we are uniquely bringing in the conversation and driving and getting done,” she said.
Lefton believes that representation carries another obligation: creating room for the people who come next.
“We know that there’s just not as many spots for us,” she said. “And I think it’s our job to help create more space for other women to be able to step in because there’s such incredible opportunity when we make that happen.”
She recalled being approached by a woman after a speaking engagement who told Lefton that hearing her talk about women belonging in positions of leadership helped inspire her to start a consulting company.
Lefton was struck by the power of something as simple as giving someone permission to imagine herself in a place she had not occupied before.
Among the leaders who shaped Lefton’s own thinking is former U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, whom Lefton watched lead with a style different from the traditional models she had encountered earlier in her career.
“I saw Secretary Haaland get things done in a different way and with empathy and inclusivity,” Lefton said. “And you know what? It was just as effective.”
That experience, she said, changed the way she thinks about leadership and results.
Protecting Home
Asked to name the place on Long Island she most wants protected for the next generation, Lefton initially resisted choosing a favorite, but one stretches across virtually her entire life.
“I have been going to Fire Island every year of my life since I was in a stroller,” she said.
Her family still returns annually to Davis Park.
She also retains an attachment to Sands Point Preserve in Port Washington, another reminder of the landscapes that shaped her. Ultimately, however, Lefton’s answer was broader than any beach, harbor or preserve.
Protecting Long Island for another generation will mean protecting its water and open spaces while also building the infrastructure necessary to allow communities to thrive.
“We know that the investments in water quality, the investments in conservation and having really that sustainable development on a place that needs affordable housing, that needs more sewering, that needs more infrastructure in many places,” she said, “that’s what I really want to see for Long Island for future generations.”
It is a vision that leaves plenty of work for both environmental regulators and the construction industry, as partners in building what comes next.