"Sailboats on the Sound" photo by Jessica Brockington

Although it’s way too early to say for sure, and way too uncertain to be complacent, conditions on Long Island Sound seem to be improving.In the most highly stressed part of the Sound, between Queens, the Bronx, Westchester and Nassau Counties, concentrations of dissolved oxygen – a key indicator of habitat health – have been significantly better in two of the last three summers than the 20-year median, an improvement that’s probably attributable at least in part to upgrades at sewage treatment plants.

More locally, reduced levels of pathogens enabled Nassau County to reopen 2,500 acres of shellfish beds in Hempstead Harbor in 2011, for the first time in 40 years. Shellfishing is part of the Sound’s legacy, and safe, sustainable shellfishing should be part of its future.

Improvements like these and others are the work of dozens, if not scores, of committed people and institutions. Four of them were honored this month by the Clean Water/Jobs Coalition, which presented them with its annual Sound Guardian award.

The honorees were Commissioner Joseph Martens of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and Commissioner Carter Strickland of the New York City Department of Environmental Protection, for a landmark agreement to use green infrastructure to keep polluted stormwater from reaching local waters.

U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand received the Sound Guardian award for her leadership in working to reauthorize the Long Island Sound Stewardship and Restoration Act in Washington D.C.

The final honoree was Skanska USA Civil Northeast, for its work building wastewater treatment plants that have led to significant improvements in the waters surrounding New York City.

The Clean Water/Jobs Coalition gives the Sound Guardian Awards to individuals and organizations who have made a difference in the protection, restoration and stewardship of the Sound. This year the Coalition gave the awards at a reception on April 19 at the Water Club in Manhattan.

The Coalition is a partnership of Audubon New York, the Construction Industry Council of Westchester & Hudson Valley, Inc., and the New York State Laborers. It was formed in 1991 to lobby and advocate for funding for public works projects that will help revive the Sound’s habitat, make the Sound safer for recreation and stimulate the local economy.

Although the towns in northern Westchester may seem far from Long Island Sound, large parts of Lewisboro, Pound Ridge, Bedford and North Castle are in the Sound’s watershed, and the Mianus, Mill, Byram and Silvermine rivers all flow through northern Westchester into the Sound.

from Top Left: Herondale Farm in Amenia, Energize NY home energy efficiency program, carpools, sustainability committee

Here are some high impact actions Northern Westchester residents can do to honor Earth Day and to reduce our communities carbon impacts!

ADOPT A NEW HABIT: take the train, find out your bus schedule, set up a carpool. Public transportation is not so easy in many of our towns, but with a little research you’ll find buses, trains and can set up carpools. Try these resources: Metropool (for commuters), 511 NY (for rideshares) and Avego (for rideshares)*. For public transportation: Bee-Line bus routes,  and the Ridgefield to Katonah HART shuttle and MetroNorth rail.

GET YOUR HOME ENERGIZED: Because most of our area is not heavy on industry, more than 50 percent of local emissions come from heating and cooling our homes. If one in three Northern Westchester homeowners pursue energy-saving upgrades we have the potential to save residents $52 million annually, and significantly reduce our carbon emissions. Together we can dramatically and quickly reduce our energy consumption. Most of our homes are wasting energy and money due to leaks, cracks and insufficient insulation. We encourage all of you to sign up with Energize New York right now to get a free assessment and guide you through the home improvement process. To sign up for this great program go to www.EnergizeNY.org or call the team in Mt. Kisco at (914) 244-7210. By the way, this program has my seal of approval.

JOIN YOUR TOWN’s Sustainability or Energy Advisory commmittee: Your contribution of time and thought can create real change. Since I joined the Lewisboro Sustainability Committee I not only get to learn how to make eco projects come to fruition, I get to work with great people, and have a sense of hope that we can do something about the dire environmental situation we are facing globally. Check your town’s government website to find out how to join. Here are a few links: Croton-on-Hudson, Lewisboro, Bedford, New Castle, Ossining, Somers.

SWITCH FROM FACTORY FARMED MEAT and eggs to local, organic, free-range and cage-free, and reduce the amount of meat you consume. Not only are feedlot raised beef cattle fed pesticide-laden feed and antibiotics which contribute to the proliferation of antibiotic-resistant diseases, the production of mass market beef relies heavily on fertilizers [which are in themselves a tremendous cause of climate change, air pollution, and water pollution] ,and are a huge contributor to the killing of life in downstream water bodies by stimulating the growth of algae. (See this photo and more info by J Henry Fair) Also, the fecal waste from factory farms is a tremendous toxic waste problem: one of the largest toxic spills in US history was the breaking of a hog waste lagoon during a Hurricane in NC which killed everything in the Neue River in 1995.  Much of the meat sold by the fast food chains is grown by ranchers in Brazil who are deforesting the Amazon to raise their cattle. [J Henry Fair, Industrial Scars]

By purchasing only locally raised (within 200 miles) you’ll reduce the impact from transporting the meats as well. When you switch over to local and grass-fed, you can get to know where your meat is coming from, how it is raised, what it is fed, and get an education on the food chain. You’ll be consuming meat that has a much lower carbon impact. Where to find? Try our local farmer’s markets, find local farms. Some resources: Slow Food Metro North, Katonah Green’s Green Guide, or go to Patch.com, navigate to your town, and search for local farmer’s markets.

Together we can make a difference!

* there is not yet an Avego community in our area, but we should use this tool and build one! Create a profile, download the app, and start posting where you are driving or if you need a ride. I’ll be participating over the coming month to get this rolling!

This week we had some great discussion around a video I posted from TEDTalks to my Facebook wall–Peter Diamandis’ Abundance is Our Future. I’m a fan of ‘abundance thinking‘  and of the potential of technology and the incredible possibilities of our combined efforts to solve a problem. In his presentation Diamondis says, “I’m not saying that we don’t have our share of problems – climate change, species extinction, resource shortage – but ultimately we have the ability to see problems way in advance and knock them down.”

My post spawned some insightful comments that I wanted to share from Tony Mannetta, a local foods activist. Tony is an agricultural consultant living in Dutchess County. He has been working to preserve farming in the New York region since 1980. He has served as Director of Greenmarket farmers market, local agriculture liaison for Baldor Foods and consultant to Pespsico’s Local Food Sustainability initiative.

In response to the “Abundance is Our Future” Tony commented:

“A Revival meeting for Tech Fix. I think he’s correct in some ways, but a few ideas very wrong. First off, he has the brain/danger concept wrong. We don’t handle long term crises well at all. Second, he, like many, simply dismisses human politics and change. Yeah, we got climate change to deal with, species extinction, but check out the Singularity! Finally, agriculture? Hello?! Guess our robot successors will figure all that out.”

For contrast I suggested he watch the countering climate change TED Talk from Paul Gilding called The Earth is Full.

“The world is full. It is full of us. It is full of our stuff, full of our waste, and full of our demands,” Gilding said. “We have created too much stuff. This is not a philosophical statement, this is just science. Our approach is simply unsustainable.”  Mr. Gilding is the former director of Greenpeace International. “Thanks to those pesky laws of physics, it will stop. The system will break.”

Tony commented: “Amen! The crux is to get people to see this as a crisis NOW without immobilization or dismissal. Fear can do both. He discusses this, and we all know the quite powerful forces that are at work to make sure people stay lulled until it’s too late. I am hopeful, but not convinced we’re going to make it through this bottleneck as a civilization (though I agree, it’s time we became civilized). As I always tell doomsayers, the future is not yet written, today is a day to act.”

Tony continues: “One story and I’m off:

In the early 1980s, I attended an annual dinner for NYC farmers markets. The audience was composed of local farmers and city officials, the dinner speaker a Chinese economist/agronomist. After regaling us with some pretty interesting stories of the failures of command agriculture and the rise of agricultural entrepreneurs (China wanted to create 10,000 farmers markets in five years), someone asked what we as Americans could do to help the Chinese in their mission to change their economy. I will never forget his response: “Change what you dream.” Puzzled faces across the room.

“We in China look to the American dream as the success story, everyone wants to have what you have. But there isn’t enough in the world to make that dream come true for China. So I ask you, I implore you: Change what you dream.”

Tony added some details about Chinese agriculture at the time stating that: “The command economy meant the government figured out how much consumers would demand, and farmers were charged with producing x amount of products for the region/nation, the only system more inefficient than an open market. He joked that over-production of Chinese cabbage would mean apartment building hallways would be lined with walls of cabbage at times. Obviously 30 years later, that story stuck with me.”

Thank you, Tony, for sharing your thoughts and insights and this great story.

~Heather

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Tony can be reached at winesap@mindspring.com.

Notes from the Field: Oddities and Observations

Though February, it’s already spring in my mind and there seem to be signs of an early spring in our local natural places. Regardless of your position on global warming, the weather we’ve encountered these past few months has been strange and unusual. The season’s predictions were for another brutally cold and snowy winter but that never happened. I’ve seen pockets of mosquito’s near the highest points of our county with the first appearing early in February and regularly since. I have no recollection of seeing them this early in the year before have you?

Looking back through photo’s taken on my cell phone for a good shot of winter its odd to find that the best winter photo’s were taken in October when all the leaves were still bustling with color. At the time I believed the forecasts of the brutal winter to come.

Sunrise on October 30, 2011 Copyright CJFinch.

But since that first snow in October there was only one other snowstorm late in January that produced enough snow to enjoy a few days of snowshoeing. There was but a few days in early January when I encountered a fully frozen pond but even that was a bit off from seasons past as there was no sign of snow on it. I’m used to frozen ponds, lakes and reservoirs around here typically have snow covering them this time of year.

Mister Finley on Hemlock Lake in North Salem January 5, 2012 Copyright CJFinch

By late January things had melted amongst a few spring-like days and the last of the ice quickly receded. Over that time Mister Finley and I witnessed a beaver family intending to settle in one of our local parks. The claim that beavers are only second to humans when it comes to changing landscapes quickly became evident.

Checking out the beaver family's work on January 27, 2012 Copyright CJFinch

In hindsight it seems the water’s reflection accompanied me more on my walks this winter then the forecaster’s brutally cold and snowy winter that never was. I’m wondering what kind of oddities and interesting things you have noticed and come across in our natural places over the last few months

CJFinch

Guest blog post by writer and environmentalist Tom Andersen

The schooner SoundWaters on in Mamaronack, August 1, 2011

Has Long Island Sound fallen out of the public consciousness? To some extent, yes. At least that was the impression of the folks at Save the Sound (a program of the Connecticut Fund for the Environment) and the Long Island Sound Study’s Citizens Advisory Committee.

They spent part of the last couple of years asking questions about the Sound and listening to the answers, and what they decided was that the Sound — not just its problems but its qualities, its beauties — has become less of a concern for the people who live near it.

That’s bad news because along with the qualities and beauties, there are serious problems. Hypoxia still turns dozens if not scores of square miles of Westchester, Nassau and Fairfield counties into a near-dead zone in July and August. Contaminated stormwater forces the closure of beaches with every heavy rain. Storm drains, streams and rivers carry tons of trash from the watershed into the Sound, sullying marshes and tide flats and beaches.

To change consciousness and to push for solutions, Save the Sound and the Citizens Advisory Committee came up with SoundVision, a two-year action plan to restore and protect Long Island Sound. They unveiled it for the first time on Monday, August 1, at Mamaroneck’s Harbor Island Park.

The action plan has four major components:

1. Protecting Clean Water to Achieve a Healthy Sound
2. Creating Safe and Thriving Places for All Sound Creatures
3. Building Long Island Sound Communities that Work
4. Investing in an Economically Vibrant Long Island Sound

Each has three to seven action steps. For example, two of the steps under Protecting Clean Water to Achieve a Healthy Sound are:

1. Promote green infrastructure projects in neighborhoods and in large city sites
2. Ensure that new construction in the Long Island Sound region uses low impact development to avoid stormwater pollution

You can read the others in the full report, at www.lisoundvision.org//full-report.cfm

At Monday’s event, the CAC co-chairs — Curt Johnson of Save the Sound and Nancy Seligson, a member of the Mamaroneck Town Board — summarized the details. Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino, State Senator Suzi Oppenheimer, County Legislator Judy Meyers, and Mamaroneck Village Trustee Toni Pergola Ryan each expressed support for the plan, as did Jennifer Herring of the Norwalk Maritime Aquarium and Dianne Selditch, the center director of SoundWaters.

The plan for the day was to follow the press announcement with a two-hour sail on the Schooner SoundWaters, which was docked in Mamaroneck Harbor’s East Basin. But the presence of thunderstorms throughout the region — and in particular a pall of heavy blue-gray clouds hanging over the Sound outside the harbor entrance — forced the cancellation of the boat ride.

Although the weather was a disappointment it did not discourage anyone or distract from the longer-range action plan.

“We’ve made a lot of progress,” Curt Johnson said, “but we have a long way to go.”

_____________________________________________________________

Tom Andersen- Happy Clammer

Tom Andersen is the author is This Fine Piece of Water: An Environmental History of Long Island Sound (Yale University Press). A Pound Ridge resident, he writes about the Sound and other environmental issues on his blog, ThisSphere.blogspot.com

High temps in NY July 23, 2011 from Weather.com

by Mike Gordon and Heather Flournoy

Our neighbors are in trouble, and we can help. Imagine a heat index of 112 in NYC, humid, and no air conditioning, no fans, no electricity.

Last night’s headlines from The Daily Westchester:

• 20,000 people in NYC without power
• 1,700 in Westchester as of 10:30 pm

Con Edison  is urging customers to keep their energy usage to minimum as the record-setting temperatures placed an extra burden on the power grid.

Together we can stop the drain on the grid!

On a hot day, go to the movies, swim in a pool, starting at 11AM isolate your air-conditioning to one room and read a book, unplug everything.

Dishwashers and laundry? Do it after mid-night, or don’t do it at all!

Air conditioning? Counter-intuitively, turn it way up tonight! It’ll allow you to coast a bit more in the morning.

Therefore we’re asking you this: Let’s turn of EVERYTHING and ask our neighbors and friends to do the same…

• Unplug electronics.
• Turn off AC when not in house. It is NOT true that running it continuously saves electricity! Again, run it on high over-night; your house will coast for a bit longer when you turn it off at 11 AM.
• Turn off pool pumps
• Turn off lights
• Turn off the hot water heater during the day.

Large consumers are being paid to turn off what they can; we will volunteer it.

Let’s keep in mind that this is not a sustainable approach and socially we can better prepare for this in the future. If we had a micro-grid now, our homes would be remotely controlled: left unplugged all day until twenty minutes before we came home, and then cooled for our entry. We’d be paid for that control, just as large consumers are.

More about the Smart Grid

More about Mike Gordon and Joule Assets

It got me thinking about what I do naturally to reduce consumption, and the challenges of following through when at a big conference.

Here are some quick ideas you can do today at the show involving re-use, recycling, little habit changes, and more.

8 tips for greening your day at Blog World and Book Expo America

1- Don’t Take That Napkin: Take 1 napkin, not 10. And only if you need that one.

2- Say no to plastic water bottles. I noticed at least two concessions yesterday that had glass water bottles. One was Agape, serving up Greek food downstairs.

3- Find the recycling bins. I’ll update this later when I find where they are at Javits.

4- Skip the taxi. NYC has good public transit. But if you are making the run from Grand Central to Javits Center like I am, you’ll need to plan on half an hour. Directions from Grand Central to Jacob Javits by subway and bus: Take the S to Times Square, then take the 1 train from Times Square to 34th street and 7th ave. Your metro card allows for a transfer, so grab the 34th street bus over to 10th to the Javits Center stop. By the way, I shared a cab with people last time I was at Javits, and it took just as long due to traffic.

5- Coffee Cup Nightmare- imagine how many hundreds of thousands of coffee cups are tossed each day in NYC. Stop the bad dreams. Bring your reuseable mug. If you forget it, grab your coffee, then keep your disposable mug for reuse later in the day. At least you’ve cut your coffee cup waste in half for the day. (And of course coffee cups are lined with parafin, which is petrochemical waste, into which one is pouring hot liquids)

6- Take a good look. Use the expo to educate yourself on waste. Even if you can’t seem to change habits in an instant, start looking around and estimating the waste numbers, multiplied by the number of people attending and working at Javits over these days, multiplied by the number of times they use something in a day: cups, containers, napkins, trash bags, wrappings, food, cleaning supplies, paper for paperwork, tickets, printouts. And we haven’t even considered the travel of all the people getting there and home, plus the transport of food and products in, then the waste out of there. And where does it go?

7- Put in a good word. In feedback forms, Twitter, Facebook or in person, ask Javits Center and Reed Expo organizers to increase their waste reduction, recycling and toxin reduction measures. I’m going to go so far as suggest they get in vendors using mainly organic food, and with serious waste reduction measures in place.

8- Partying after the expo? Skip the straw. Right. Who needs those stupid plastic stirrers in their bourbon? It’s bad enough the parties are using plastic glasses. Greener option? Beer in a glass bottle. Cheers!

Have fun!

Reed Expo on Twitter: @ReedExhibitions Javits Center on Twitter: @javitscenter KatonahGreen on Twitter? @katonahgreen and @reallysocial

Also find me on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/katonahgreen and http://www.facebook.com/reallysocial

Credit Where Credit is Due

More on Javits Center green initiatives

Case Study: Statue of Liberty Green Initiatives for Concessions and Operations