Sustainable East End

  We revisit the Climate and Community Protection / Investment Acts     Listen here

  SUSTAINABLE EAST END: CCA Sept Oct 2020 Over the past year or so Sustainable East End has featured several episodes about the effort to bring something called community choice aggregation, or CCA, to the East End. It's a way for municipalities to choose their own energy suppliers with an eye to increasing the use of renewable energy. Now, several towns are well on their way to implementing CCA. Southampton has already contracted with a CCA administrator, Joule Assets. And East Hampton just passed legislation that will enable the town to establish a CCA program. But hurdles remain, rooted in the position Long Island finds itself in as being under the jurisdiction of the Long Island Power Authority, or LIPA, for power supply and distribution. Those hurdles are the subject of two pieces of legislation brought by Assemblyman Fred Thiele. One piece is sitting on the governor's desk, awaiting his signature. The other will be introduced in the state legislature this coming yea...

Our region faces numerous environmental challenges, from climate disruption, sea level rise and ocean acidification to poor water quality. We also need good paying jobs and a green recovery to meet some of those challenges. All these issues are on the table in the 2020 election, from the local to the state and federal levels. One example is the planned South Fork Wind project, first proposed in 2015, a wind farm off the coast of Long Island, 35 miles east of Montauk.  It would help the state reach its goal of 70% renewable energy by 2030 and the goal of East Hampton Town to have 100% of its energy needs met by renewable sources. The project reached a major milestone when state agencies signed a Joint Proposal to allow the project to move forward, despite opposition from some homeowners at the site in Wainscott where the power cable from the wind farm would come ashore. But the fate of the project could still be decided by the outcome of the election. This month Francesca t...

    Francesca and Tony talked this month with Scott Carlin of the Ecological Culture Initiative in Hampton Bays That organization sponsors a wide variety of activities, including a Heritage vegetable garden, a seed Library and a weekly   Farmers Market.    We talked about these activities and the initiative’s   Zero Waste Economy campaign as it is affected by the ongoing pandemic.   Listen here The ECI’s Good Ground Farmers Market is held at the   Hampton Bays Plaza, 190 West Montauk Highway (Macy’s parking lot) on Thursdays from 3 - 7 pm, through October 22 nd More Information about the Ecological Culture Initiative is at http://eciny.org Information about the New York State Childrens’ Environmental Health Center at the Madonna Heights School in Dix Hills 27east.com: Visiting the Good Ground Garden