A Newsday headline this morning reads:

Long Island-Area Public Broadcasting Feeling Pinch From Trump Budget Cuts.

Tiffany Cusaac-Smith reports in Newsday that public radio and television stations with a vast Long Island audience say they are facing significant funding gaps and assessing ways to move forward after the Republican-led Congress' approval of more than $1 billion in cuts targeting NPR and PBS.

Neal Shapiro, president and CEO at The WNET Group, part of the Public Broadcasting System and the parent company to Long Island-based WLIW, said the cuts will have a “devastating impact on all public media stations.”

Last week, Congress approved a rescission package that pulls back funding for 2026 and 2027 from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a nonprofit that funnels upward of 70% of its resources to more than 1,000 community-owned public media organizations, according to its website. The package also claws back roughly $8 billion in funding for foreign assistance.

About 10% of The WNET Group’s operating budget comes from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting grants, Shapiro said in a statement sent to Newsday on Monday, noting “we will not be able to make up the loss of all those funds.”

“We are currently assessing how we move forward in this new reality,” said Shapiro – president of The WNET Group…the parent organization of this listener supported public radio station.

Experts fear the funding cuts to public media could be disastrous, leading to the closure of news outlets in places where there are few local options and less emergency alerts. Funding from the federal government averages roughly 1% of NPR’s budget, about 8% to 10% of public radio stations’ and nearly 15% of PBS' along with its member stations, NPR reported.

Congress’ approval of the funding cuts comes after President Donald Trump signed an executive order in May saying NPR and PBS were unfair and biased and calling for the CPB to stop funding them.

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An event held by Long Island Head Start yesterday to announce its plan to build a new facility on property it owns in Riverside, ended with a $2.25 million surprise for the organization. Denise Civiletti reports on Riverheadlocal.com that when Head Start’s presentation was concluded, New York State Assemblyman Tommy John Schiavoni, who was accompanied at the event by his invited guest, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, took the podium. “On behalf of Speaker Heastie and the New York State Assembly, we will be committing $2.25 million to this project,” Schiavoni said to whoops of joy, applause, cheers and tears. Long Island Head Start CEO Debrah Everett-Garcia was overcome with emotion, as were members of her staff and board of directors in attendance. Some were visibly shaken. “Thank you so much from the bottom of our hearts— and from our children and community and from Suffolk County. Thank you” Everett-Garcia said, wiping away the tears that were streaming down her cheeks. After being coaxed to the podium to say a few words, the speaker said he worked in daycare as a college student at Stony Brook. When he returned home during school breaks, he worked for the Williamsbridge NAACP Early Childhood Center, Heastie told the audience gathered for the presentation event. “Young people and children— I have such a soft spot. So anything that is beneficial to them is important to me,” Heastie said. The state funding announced Tuesday will cover a little more than half the projected cost of the new building planned for the site at 77 Goodridge Avenue in Riverside, adjacent to Phillips Avenue Elementary School.

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After hearing just over an hour of testimony from the public last night, the Riverhead Town Board has closed a public hearing on whether its chosen master developer for its Town Square project, J. Petrocelli’s family of companies, is qualified and eligible to build the town square and an adjacent hotel. Beth Young in EAST END BEACON reports that the board said documents relating to the developers’ qualifications would soon be uploaded to the Riverhead Town website and held the public hearing open for written comments until Aug. 1. Also in Riverhead, a public hearing on the subdivision and mixed-use development of roughly 16 acres of vacant land on the north side of Middle Country Road, west of Fresh Pond Avenue, has been scheduled by the Riverhead Town Planning Board for Sept. 4 at 6 p.m.

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In a 4-1 vote last night the Southold Town Board enacted new restrictions on irrigation, at a time when the town’s groundwater is facing unprecedented threats. Beth Young reports in EAST END BEACON that Councilwoman Jill Doherty voted against the proposal, saying it would be difficult to enforce.

Using odd/even watering schedules, automated irrigation systems are set so they water on odd-numbered days for properties with odd-numbered street addresses and even-numbered days for properties with even-numbered addresses. That method of regulating the use of water is effective at reducing peak demand on the water supply, though some argue it has limited impact on overall water use.

Suffolk County Water Authority Chairman Jeff Szabo gave an impassioned argument in favor of odd/even watering schedules at the public hearing that preceded Tuesday’s vote. The Water Authority has proposed a major new water pipeline project to supply the North Fork’s peak demand, which occurs during the heat of summer when many customers are irrigating their lawns, estimating 70 percent of the water it supplies is used for outside activities like irrigation.

“When everyone waters at once, our system cannot recover,” Szabo said. “Odd/even watering would help us meet consistency… and it’s effective at reducing water use while keeping lawns healthy and lush.”

Mr. Szabo said that, during times of peak demand, the Water Authority’s storage tanks on Moore’s Lane in Greenport sometimes have just a couple feet of water remaining in them, while high pumpage at these times causes salt water to “upcone” into the wells, making them potentially unsalvageable.

Unlike the rest of Long Island, which has three aquifers that are capable of supplying groundwater, the only significant aquifer on the North Fork is the fragile Upper Glacial Aquifer.

The Suffolk County Water Authority has also extended the deadline for comment on its proposed North Fork Pipeline, this time to Monday, Aug. 4 at 5 p.m.

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Since its opening in May, the East Hampton Emergency Department has drastically reduced travel times for ambulance crews and boosted the circulation of ambulances for volunteer departments within the Town of East Hampton. However, like with any east end institution, some expressed concerns over sustaining staffing for the facility year round.

Jack Motz reports on 27east.com that Stony Brook Medicine opened the 22,000-square-foot facility in May as a means to provide better emergency room access for those in Springs, East Hampton, Amagansett, Sag Harbor and Montauk — the farthest end of the South Fork. Private donations and a $10 million New York State grant covered the cost.

In the past, at the height of the summer, a round-trip ambulance ride from Montauk to Stony Brook Southampton could take over three hours. Coming back, when drivers would get stuck in traffic, was often the biggest hurdle.

With the East Hampton Emergency Department now open, that has changed.

Ambulance drivers still travel to Stony Brook Southampton Hospital for certain types of injuries. Head injuries, for instance, get deferred to Stony Brook Southampton.

The rate at which for example Springs transports individuals to the East Hampton Emergency Department compared to Stony Brook Southampton varies. Nonetheless, overall around 60 to 70 percent of calls seem to go to the East Hampton Emergency Department.

There, Stony Brook Medicine has its own ambulance, which can bring individuals farther west, if necessary, to another hospital.

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The Hampton Bays Civic Association will hold its next monthly meeting on Tuesday, July 29, at the Hampton Bays Community Center on Ponquogue Avenue. Doors will open at 6:30 p.m. for light refreshments, with the meeting beginning promptly at 7 p.m. next Tuesday. This month’s featured guest speaker is Southampton Town Supervisor Maria Moore, who will provide an update on key issues impacting both Hampton Bays and the Town of Southampton. Also joining the meeting will be Southampton Town Councilman Rick Martel, who will share news on current governmental activities and initiatives. The evening will conclude with a Q&A session, giving community members the opportunity to ask questions and engage directly with Southampton Town officials. For more information, visit hbcivic.org.

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An accelerator larger than Yankee Stadium that produces intense X-rays 10 billion times brighter than the sun. A machine that recreates conditions of the early universe and a future facility to peer inside nature's building blocks. The longest and most advanced quantum network in the United States — a new kind of internet — that could revolutionize cybersecurity...

Liza N. Burby reports in NEWSDAY that these facilities are right here in Suffolk County, New York.

They make up the U.S. Department of Energy-funded Brookhaven National Laboratory, which sits on 5,265 acres north of the L.I.E. Exit 68.

It’s a site so vast it has its own post office and ZIP code — Upton, 11973 — plus 300 buildings and dedicated fire and police departments. Even the National Weather Service is on site.

It’s within this campus, which employs 3,000, that 78 years of scientific history — in physics, photon science and biological research — has been made. Scientists at Brookhaven have won seven Nobel Prizes — five in physics and two in chemistry.

And it’s the only such lab in the Northeast, said its director, JoAnne Hewett.

“If we go back through history, some of the discoveries that have been pioneered or patented at Brookhaven have changed the world for the better,” said Hewett, who in 2023 became the first woman named director for the lab. “We have a very long history of prominent world-leading discoveries about elements of the universe that nobody in humankind knew before, and they've really changed our fundamental picture of how the universe works.”

Before the site became Brookhaven National Laboratory, it was Camp Upton in two World Wars.

After WWII there was interest in developing a science facility on the East Coast to study peaceful uses of the atom following the Manhattan Project, which produced the first atomic bombs.

Brookhaven National Laboratory was founded in 1947 with a consortium of universities, including Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Princeton and Yale, the University of Pennsylvania, University of Rochester and Massachusetts Institute of Technology — all institutions that along with Stony Brook University are still on the board today.

B.N.L. is one of 17 national labs owned by the U.S. Department of Energy.