Improve New York Harbor Water Quality

Agreement Will Result In an Estimated $2.4 Billion in Green Infrastructure Over 20 Years and More Than $1.6 Billion in Gray Infrastructure Projects to Reduce CSOs

Public Comment Period on Proposal Begins Today; Public Meeting Set for November 9

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and the New York City Department of Environmental Protection reached a draft agreement to reduce combined sewer overflows (CSO) into area water bodies, the agencies announced today. The agreement modifies New York City’s approach to improving harbor water quality, under which the city will invest an estimated $187 million in green infrastructure projects by 2015, part of a planned $2.4 billion public and private investment over the next 20 years. The city will also complete work on approximately $1.6 billion in gray infrastructure projects.  A public comment period on the proposal begins today and runs through November 18.

DEC is holding a public meeting on the draft consent order on November 9 at 6 pm. The meeting will be held at DEC’s Region 2 Annex Building located at 11-15 47^th Avenue, Long Island City, NY. Public comments on the draft agreement can be emailed togekline@gw.dec.state.ny.us or faxed to 518-402-9029.

For more information:

10-19-11_NYSDEC_&_NYCDEP_Reach_Innovative_Draft_Agreement_to_

Join other local leaders to make a Blueprint for Green Jobs in the Bronx!

You have been selected as a candidate to attend the Bronx Green Jobs Summit, a project of the Bronx Green Jobs Roundtable.

Register for the Summit here: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/X6ZC89Z

The event will be hosted by

Bronx Community College Center for Sustainability on April 7th, 2010 from 9am – 5pm in the Lower Colston Hall.

You can get directions here: http://www.bcc.cuny.edu/directions/directions.htm

If you would like to recommend others to participate in the summit, you can
invite them directly or email us with their contact information and we will
reach out to them.

This summit is a result of a grassroots initiative within the borough to ensure
“green” development is good development—benefiting Bronx workers and addressing the longstanding environmental injustices with which our Borough has been burdened. It is designed to bring together leaders across the Bronx to build a shared analysis and blueprint for green workforce development in the Bronx. Our focus topics are: Small Business & Industry development; Local Food Justice; Air & Water; Remediation; Housing; Energy and Job Training.

As a roundtable, our goal is to ensure that Bronx Green Jobs resources– from training programs to Environmental Justice experts– know about each other and understand how existing resources can be used to benefit the community. Then together we can identify where gaps exist, and work to ensure that all this new interest and money in “green” flows to where it is truly needed to empower Bronx community members. Active participants in the roundtable include The Point, Sustainable South Bronx, Bronx Community College Center for Sustainability, the Osborne Association, Goodwill Industries, Mothers on the Move, the Northwest Bronx Community & Clergy Coalition, Green Workers Cooperative, Local 10, the Mary Mitchell Center, Youth Ministries for Peace & Justice, Urban Agenda, the Consortium for Workers’ Education and Congressman Serrano’s office.

A panel of experts convened by the mayor and City Council issued more than 100 recommendations Monday on how to make New York City’s building codes more environmentally sound by imposing energy-saving requirements on construction and renovation work.

The measures, presented to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and the Council’s speaker, Christine C. Quinn, include rules for insulating glass skyscrapers and a plan that would place temperature controls in individual apartments, eliminating the winter ritual of opening windows to vent excess heat.

Many of the proposals would need to be approved by the City Council.

“A lot of these are incremental gains, but together they amount to a big gain,” said the panel’s chairman, Russell Unger, the executive director of the New York chapter of the United States Green Building Council, which certifies green design and construction. “By changing code, everybody can have lower utility bills.”

The recommendations are the city’s latest attempt to reduce the greenhouse gases produced by its buildings, which are estimated to be the source of about 75 percent of the city’s emissions over all. In December, the City Council passed legislation requiring owners of New York’s largest buildings to pay for energy audits, upgrade lighting and take other steps to reduce energy consumption.

But as with previous green proposals for buildings, many of the improvements suggested on Monday could substantially increase the costs of renovation or construction.

The panel of experts, including representatives of the building industry and from environmental groups, said at a briefing that the city must find ways to secure financing and offer other incentives to help developers and managers make the changes.

“In general, the industry supports the overall goal,” said Charlotte Matthews, vice president for sustainability at the Related Companies, a major New York developer that has a representative on the task force.

She noted that some measures would be less palatable than others, and that in difficult economic times “any change is a little unnerving.”

But she said a stiffer code regulating buildings’ energy use was essential in meeting the city’s long-term environmental demands and “ensuring that all New Yorkers have a healthy home, school and workplace.”

The panel’s wish list includes requiring all commercial and residential buildings that are four stories or taller to meet the nation’s latest energy standards. Other proposals call for such buildings to be more airtight and to have minimal insulation.

One proposal would impose higher efficiency standards for heating systems and ban inefficient boilers in the city’s largest buildings. Another would phase in individual apartment temperature controls over a 10-year period.

Ms. Quinn said about half of the measures would not involve significant expenditures. The real estate industry’s participation in the process should help address concerns about costs, she added.

“It’s kind of a new way of looking at how we do business with a green perspective,” she said.

In a statement, Mayor Bloomberg said the recommendations by the panel, which was convened 18 months ago, were critical to meeting the city’s goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions 30 percent by 2030.

^{Open Spaces, Environment and Health}

^{Presentations}

^{Energy Efficiency}

^{Harlem River Working Group}

^{Shape Up NY}

^Workshops

^{Rain Water Harvesting}

^{Organic Growing Techniques}

^{Worm Bins Made Easy (composting)}

^{Panel Discussion}

^{Sustainable/Green Community Development}

^{Learn about all the Resources/Opportunities for Community Groups, Educators & Volunteers}

Join us for the 16th Annual Bronx Parks Speak Up

^{Saturday, Feb. 27th}

^{at Lehman College Faculty Dining Room}

^{11:30 am to 5 pm}

11:30am—12:30pm Registration

Networking, Refreshments & Live Music

^{For more info or to register e-mail to bxspeakup@hotmail.com.}

^{To reserve a table please send an e-mail to speakuptabling@hotmail.com by 2/19/10.}

Stormwater Management for Federal Facilities under
Section 438 of the Energy Independence and Security Act
http://www.epa.gov/owow/nps/lid/section438/

You HAVE to download this fact sheet:
http://www.epa.gov/owow/NPS/lid/section438/pdf/final_sec438_factsht.pdf

“We have 30 miles of rooftop in New York City and maybe 3,000 miles of walls,” said Paul Mankiewicz, the executive director of the Gaia Institute in New York. “It’s basically about maximizing the productivity per square foot.”

Read our documents

Bronx River LTCP WWFP 091809 BCEQ

Bx Riv Stakeholder LTCP 060707

StormWaterCaptureProjects_BronxWishList

CRO_Design Commission Response_090728_FINAL with comments

Earth Song

Thank you Michael

Staying Warm:  Grass pellets may be one solution

The potential of grass pellets and woody biomass as sources of home-grown heat is being explored in separate research projects sponsored by the CWC and the Watershed Agricultural Council (WAC).

The Franklin Town Highway Garage is the first of several Watershed buildings selected as a test site for a CWC-funded study by Cornell Cooperative Extension (CCE) to explore the feasibility of utilizing grass pellets as a bio-energy source for heating. Indoor and outdoor pellet-fired units will be installed at each site so that people can see both types of heating units in action. Their operation will be monitored for effectiveness, efficiency and ease of use, their air quality impacts will be gauged, and operation and maintenance issues examined.

The study will also determine the cost savings of using grass pellets instead of other forms of fuel. The Town of Franklin, for example, burned 3,000 gallons of fuel oil last year. The boiler that currently warms the highway garage uses about two and a quarter gallons per hour, and runs on average 12 hours a day in the  winter.  Thus the pellet stove project “is a pretty hot topic of conversation here, especially with the price of fuel,” remarked Highway Superintendent Mark Laing. Stoves that use wood pellets, made of sawdust and byproducts from sawmills and woodworking facilities, corn and even cherry pits have become very popular in light of high oil prices.

The CWC project seeks to find a reliable and profitable way to produce grass pellets to use in these stoves, thus turning vacant grasslands in the Watershed “into one more weapon in the arsenal of alternative fuels,” according to CWC Economic Development Director Mike Triolo.

At its meeting September 25, the CWC Board of Directorsauthorized the expenditure of up to $195,500 from the Catskill Fund for the Future for the three-year pilot project. Paul Cerosaletti and Marianne Kiraly of CCE have been consulting with Cornell agriculture professor Jerry Cherney, an avid promoter of the development of grass pellets as a low-tech, small-scale, environmentally-friendly, renewable energy system that can be locally produced, processed and consumed.  Prof. Cherney spoke on this topic at the 2006 Catskills Local Government Day, when he noted that New York State has about 1.5 million acres of unused or underutilized agricultural land, most of which is already growing grass. Farmers no longer raising dairy cows, landowners who have their fields mowed to retain open vistas, even New York City which is acquiring Watershed lands to prevent development and preserve water quality could turn unused grass into cash, and fuel.

READ MORE at http://www.cwconline.org/pubs/adv2009_01.pdf

For more info, check out the list of resources.  http://www.waterblogged.org/green-roofs-epa-webcast-feb-18-2009/

Karen Argenti

Water Committee