Editorial: Good Riddance to the "Empire Wind" Boondoggle
- Publisher
- May 13
- 2 min read

The Albany Lobbyists and their flunkies are screaming... And New York's homeowners and business owners are cheering.
The Trump administration gave New York's overtaxed residents a reprieve - and "paused" all development of the massive "Empire Wind" project boondoggle that would have killed jobs and bankrupted New Yorkers.
Governor Kathy Hochul and her "green lobby" cronies pushed the huge multi-billion dollar offshore windmill project to burnish their green credentials - and pour tens of millions into their favored lobbyists' pockets.
But with Hochul's "guaranteed" electric purchases at $155.00 per MWH - when clean natural gas or nuclear power plants generate electricity at $40 per MWH - to be paid for by you, the deal was little more than a grotesque rip-off.
And with 160 giant windmills churning and blinking all night just 12 miles offshore - covering a huge area of 150 square miles (half the size of Nassau County) - a new maritime "no go" zone - the project promised to make Long Island's now beautiful scenic oceanfront into an ugly - and dangerous - industrial thicket of whirling, nautical metal hazards.
What made the "Empire Wind" boondoggle even more offensive was that the entire project - and the "guaranteed" profits - were going overseas. The project is from Equinor, a Norwegian corporation re-investing the profits from Norway's oil export industry; and the huge wind turbine blades were to be built in Denmark.
New York Attorney General Letitia James (D-Bronx) is suing the Trump administration to try to force them to "back-off" any opposition. For the sake of fiscal sanity and the protection of our environment, let's hope she fails.
So "Thank You" to US EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin and acting US Interior Secretary Walter Kruickshank for issuing the Orders to "pause" the Empire Wind boondoggle. And "Thank You" to President Trump for backing them.
A White House spokesman put it best: "Americans in blue states should not have to pay the price of the Democrats’ radical climate agenda.”
Nor should New Yorkers be bled and impoverished just to enrich a bunch of corrupt Albany Lobbyists - or be forced to see our electric bills more than triple to pay for it.