Friends Of The Bay’s New President Is Pulitzer-Winning Journalist

OYSTER BAY, NY—The Friends of the Bay board has elected Bill Bleyer as the new board president, succeeding Barry Lamb who served for almost ten years.

Bleyer is a retired Pulitzer Prize-winning Newsday reporter. Last year, he recently released a book called "Long Island and the Sea, A Maritime History," which tells the history of Long Island and its waterways.

"It's a great honor to be elected as the fourth president in the long history of Friends of the Bay," Bleyer said. "It's a culmination of a deep interest in the environment that begin on Earth Day in 1970 and intensified during the fight to stop the Bayville-Rye Bridge, which led to my four-decade career in journalism. I hope to build on the hard work of my predecessors and make Friends of the Bay more active and more visible with new initiatives to protect the watershed."

The Bayville resident joined the Friends board in November 2018 and became secretary last year. Previously, he was a founder and vice president of the Coalition Against an UnSound Crossing, formed to fight plans for a tunnel under Long Island Sound. Bleyer was a prize-winning staff writer for Newsday for 33 years before retiring in 2014. He is the author of four books on Long Island history.

The Friends of the Bay board also elected Mitch Kramer as the new vice president and Eric Swenson as the new secretary.

Captain Kramer is a lifelong Oyster Bay/East Norwich resident. He has spent most of his life on the waters of Oyster Bay. He established North Shore Towing & Diving, Inc. and TowBoatU.S. North Shore, which has been providing marine services to the boating community for more than 30 years.

Swenson, of Mill Neck, is the executive director of the Hempstead Harbor Protection Committee and former chair and current Village of Mill Neck representative on the Oyster Bay/Cold Spring Harbor Protection Committee. The former superintendent of environmental control for the Town of Oyster Bay is treasurer of the Nassau County Soil and Water Conservation District and a member of the Long Island Sound Study Citizens Advisory Committee.

Friends of the Bay, founded in 1987, is an environmental advocacy organization located in Oyster Bay. Its mission is to preserve, protect and restore the ecological integrity and productivity of the Oyster Bay/Cold Spring Harbor estuary and the surrounding watershed.

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