FLLT completes largest-ever conservation project

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Buys almost 1,000 acres in Steuben County CORNING — The Finger Lakes Land Trust (FLLT) says it has completed the largest conservation project in its 35-year history with the purchase of nearly 1,000 acres, including 1 mile of frontage along the Canisteo River. The 992-acre property is located in the towns of Erwin and Lindley […]

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Buys almost 1,000 acres in Steuben County

CORNING — The Finger Lakes Land Trust (FLLT) says it has completed the largest conservation project in its 35-year history with the purchase of nearly 1,000 acres, including 1 mile of frontage along the Canisteo River.

The 992-acre property is located in the towns of Erwin and Lindley in Steuben County, just southwest of Corning, per its Feb. 15 announcement.

The land purchase was made possible by the FLLT’s internal revolving loan fund that is utilized for time-sensitive acquisitions and replenished either through fundraising or the sale of land to a public-conservation agency.

The property lies within an identified Habitat Linkage Zone by the New York Natural Heritage Program and is home to black bears and bald eagles. It contains forested hillsides, multiple streams, small meadows, and miles of existing trails.

Visible from Interstate 99, the Steuben County property has an elevation of 1,520 feet at its highest point, the FLLT noted.

The organization says protecting this property will expand outdoor recreation opportunities, safeguard wildlife habitat, and enhance water quality in the Canisteo River and further downstream. The Canisteo is a tributary to the Tioga River in the Susquehanna River basin of the Chesapeake Bay watershed, FLLT said.

The property acquired the name “Bad Bear Hill” many years ago when the previous landowner was planting trees for reforestation. Plastic tree protectors were placed around the young trees to guard against damage from deer. However, curious bears found that the tree tubes were “great chew toys, and pieces were found scattered throughout the forest.”

The FLLT intends to convey Bad Bear Hill to New York State as an addition to the adjacent McCarthy Hill State Forest, which will more than double in size as a result. After developing an interim-management plan, the FLLT will open the property to the public for daytime use, sometime during this spring.

“This was truly an exceptional opportunity,” Andrew Zepp, executive director of FLLT, said in its announcement. “Our projects regularly involve working with multiple landowners to conserve the landscapes of the Finger Lakes. This single acquisition is large enough to provide an immediate positive impact for multiple wildlife species while also providing local residents with room to roam.”

By working with landowners and local communities, the Finger Lakes Land Trust has protected more than 32,000 acres of the region’s undeveloped lakeshore, rugged gorges, rolling forest, and scenic farmland, it said.

The Ithaca–based FLLT owns and manages a network of more than 45 nature preserves that are open to the public and holds perpetual conservation easements on 187 properties that remain in private ownership. The organization also provides programs to educate local governments, landowners, and residents about conservation and the region’s natural resources.

Federal funds to spur cleanup of Ley Creek portion of Onondaga Lake superfund site

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SYRACUSE — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is targeting the cleanup of the Ley Creek portion of the Onondaga Lake superfund site with a funding award of about $23 million. The money comes from the Infrastructure Investment & Jobs Law, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D–N.Y.) and U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D–N.Y.) announced

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SYRACUSE — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is targeting the cleanup of the Ley Creek portion of the Onondaga Lake superfund site with a funding award of about $23 million.

The money comes from the Infrastructure Investment & Jobs Law, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D–N.Y.) and U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D–N.Y.) announced on Feb 27.

The overall project will include excavating, disposing of, and backfilling about 144,000 cubic yards of contaminated soil from the floodplains and excavating and disposing of about 9,600 cubic yards of contaminated sediment from the bottom of Ley Creek. This funding will pay for about $23 million worth of cleanup work to begin remedial action as the EPA “continues to engage with responsible parties to hold polluters of the site accountable,” Schumer’s office said in the announcement.

“I want to thank New York Senators Schumer and Gillibrand, the EPA and all those involved for delivering the funding to advance this important cleanup initiative. This issue has languished for decades and proper removal of PCBs from soil and sediments from the GM site and Ley Creek streambed is long overdue,” Edward Michalenko, Ph.D., president of the Onondaga Environmental Institute, said. “The results will provide lasting environmental benefits for the entire Onondaga Lake watershed including fish and wildlife, and critical health benefits for nearby residents, downstream neighbors, and local business.”

The Onondaga Lake Superfund Site includes the lake and seven other waterways, as well as several land-based sources of contamination. Industries around Onondaga Lake discharged pollutants and sewage into the lake for more than 100 years. 12 subsites have been created for the site, including the General Motors–Inland Fisher Guide subsite and the Ley Creek Deferred Media portion of the site, which includes a portion of Ley Creek and its floodplains.

Crews will use the Infrastructure Law funding to address soil on the floodplains and sediment in Ley Creek that are contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and metals.

“Our work is far from finished, but kick starting the cleanup of these long polluted sites and waterways is exactly what the Superfund funding I fought to supercharge in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law was meant to do,” Schumer said in the announcement. “I am proud to deliver this federal funding so that cleanup for Central New York can finally get underway and vow to continue to fight for the resources needed to protect our beautiful Central New York waterways.”

Endicott receives nearly $1.8 million grant for water-improvement projects

Energy, Environment & Sustainability, Construction, Design & Real Estate, Regional News, Subscriber Only

ENDICOTT — The Village of Endicott recently has received a $1.78 million grant from the state’s Water Quality Improvement Project (WQIP) Grant Program administered by the New York Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), according to a news release from the village. The grant allows Endicott to continue its efforts to improve water quality and will

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Empire Center says N.Y.’s Climate Act needs “green guardrails”

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ALBANY — The sweeping climate law that New York State passed in 2019 to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions through bans, regulations, and taxes is “deeply flawed” and needs the state legislature to reassert its authority over climate policymaking to avoid “costly and economically destructive mistakes.” That’s according to a recent report from the Empire Center for

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In the report, called “Green Guardrails: Guiding New York’s Drive to Lower Emissions,” Ken Girardin, the Empire Center’s director of research, analyzes the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) that the state passed about five years ago and makes recommendations for changes.

Girardin says that the CLCPA — which mandates an electric grid that uses only “zero emission” technology by 2040 and an economy that has effectively zero emissions by 2050 — “leaves the bulk of the decisions about how emissions will be reduced to state agencies under direct control of the governor, vesting them with policymaking powers that are supposed to be reserved for New York’s senators and assemblymembers.”

He contends that the process that has played out since the law’s adoption “has been marred by a lack of transparency, with state officials failing to issue legally required cost estimates and crucial studies designed to guide state energy policy.” He believes that the evidence is growing that the state “will be unable to achieve its goals without significantly affecting the cost of living and doing business in New York and harming the reliability of its electric grid.”

Girardin concludes that he is not calling for “abandoning the state’s climate goals,” but instead recommending “open discourse, informed by the policy lessons and scientific advances of the past five years, [that] can and will result in better climate policy for New York.”

You can read Girardin’s full analysis of New York’s CLCPA at: https://www.empirecenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/green-guardrails.w.pdf.

The Empire Center, based in Albany, describes itself as an independent, not-for-profit, non-partisan think tank dedicated to promoting policies that can make New York a better place to live, work, and raise a family.

PaintCare seeks to give new life to leftover paint

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Leftover paint is a nuisance waste that one nonprofit is hoping to remove from the waste stream and give it new life. PaintCare is a Washington, D.C.–based not-for-profit that established operations in New York state in May 2022. Today, the organization boasts 328 year-round drop-off sites and collects about 1.4 million gallons of paint every

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Leftover paint is a nuisance waste that one nonprofit is hoping to remove from the waste stream and give it new life.

PaintCare is a Washington, D.C.–based not-for-profit that established operations in New York state in May 2022. Today, the organization boasts 328 year-round drop-off sites and collects about 1.4 million gallons of paint every year.

“It’s all just waste reduction,” says Kelsey O’Toole, PaintCare’s New York program coordinator.

Historically, paint has been difficult to dispose of, environmental experts say. Latex paint must be properly dried out before it can be sent to the landfill where the bulky cans take up a lot of valuable space.

Oil-based paint products are an even bigger disposal challenge, O’Toole notes, because they must be collected as hazardous waste.

Often, people only have only a few windows of opportunity each year to properly dispose of paint when municipalities open waste collection for such items, O’Toole notes.

“As you can imagine, those were inconvenient,” she adds, forcing people to hang onto old paint until one of the collection windows opened.

With PaintCare, residents have another option, with 19 collection sites around Central New York available for them to drop off waste paint. Sites include a number of Ace Hardware locations, Sherwin-Williams stores, and numerous independent lumber and hardware stores.

The nonprofit partners with paint retailers like hardware, home improvement, and paint stores to serve as collection sites where residents can drop off unwanted paint at no cost.

PaintCare’s funding comes from a fee charged in states that have paint stewardship laws. Manufacturers pay the fee to PaintCare and then pass the cost to dealers by including it in the product price, according to the nonprofit’s website. In New York, that fee ranges from $0.45 for containers larger than a pint up to one gallon to $1.95 for containers larger than two gallons up to five gallons.

What does PaintCare do with the all the collected paint? Most, O’Toole says, is blended to make “new” paint that is sold by their paint recycling partners. Oil-based paints are used for fuel blending.

“They’re incredible,” she says of the recyclers. They pour off the paint by like colors and blend it to make new batches. “It just gets new life as paint again.” Much of the new paint is sold overseas, she adds.

Since getting its start in New York, PaintCare has collected more than 46,000 gallons of paint in Onondaga County alone and more than 60,000 across Central New York.

But that’s still just a drop in the bucket when considering the 4 million gallons of leftover paint each year in New York. Nationally, about 10 percent of all paint sold each year becomes leftover paint to the tune of about 840 million gallons.

If PaintCare can help keep some of that out of the landfill, it’s just better for the environment, O’Toole says.

“We want to make it convenient as possible for residents to drop off their paint and know it’s going to be disposed of properly,” she says.

PaintCare also works to educate people about buying the right amount of paint in the first place to help further reduce the amount of waste paint.

PaintCare, Inc., is a program of the American Coatings Association, a membership-based trade association of the paint-manufacturing industry. It operates in Washington, Oregon, California, Colorado, Minnesota, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont, Maine, and the District of Columbia and is developing a program for Illinois.

To date, the organization has collected more than 70 million gallons of paint.

Longest-serving DEC commissioner to leave role this spring

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Seggos to step down after nearly nine years in office ALBANY — The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) will have a new commissioner later this year. Basil Seggos, who has served as DEC commissioner since 2015, will be leaving his position this spring. During his tenure, Seggos played a key role

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Seggos to step down after nearly nine years in office

ALBANY — The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) will have a new commissioner later this year.

Basil Seggos, who has served as DEC commissioner since 2015, will be leaving his position this spring.

During his tenure, Seggos played a key role in implementing the state’s environmental policies and regulations to combat climate change, according to the DEC. His efforts also helped the department in “protecting drinking water from emerging contaminants, directing record investments in natural resource and water quality protection, enhancing recreational access, and growing DEC’s workforce to more than 3,000 staff, among the many notable highlights over his tenure,” the department said in a statement provided to CNYBJ.

Seggos is the longest-serving DEC commissioner, the agency noted. The DEC’s statement didn’t include any details about his future plans.

In addition to leading the DEC, Seggos also advises the New York governor on environmental policy and issues, per his biography on the department’s website.

Seggos background

The DEC says Seggos was “instrumental” in the passage of the state’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act. That law requires New York to reduce economy-wide greenhouse-gas emissions by 40 percent by 2030 and by at least 85 percent by 2050, from 1990 levels, according to a state website about the law.

Seggos has been serving as the co-chair of the law’s implementing body, the Climate Action Council. He also devised and is responsible for the $2.5 billion Clean Water Infrastructure Act and spearheaded the reauthorization of the state’s Superfund law and reforms of the Brownfield tax-credit program.

As co-chair of the state’s Drinking Water Quality Council, Seggos oversaw the establishment of the “most protective” water-quality standards for PFOA/PFOS and 1,4-dioxane, the DEC noted.

In addition to leading DEC, Seggos also serves on a variety of boards, including as chair of the Environmental Facilities Corporation (EFC), chair of the Hudson River Park Trust, the Adirondack Park Agency (APA), Delaware River Basin Commission, the Great Lakes Commission, the New York State Energy and Research Development Authority (NYSERDA), the Olympic Regional Development Authority (ORDA), the Susquehanna River Basin Commission, and the New York State Energy Planning Board.

Prior to becoming DEC commissioner, Seggos served as the deputy secretary for the environment for the governor. In that role, he counseled the governor on environmental policy and the operations of New York’s environmental agencies, including DEC; the Office of State Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation,; the EFC and the APA; and was a liaison to the state legislature on environmental issues and legislation.

Before his career in state government, Seggos served as VP of business development at Hugo Neu Corp., a clean-tech private-equity company.

During law school, he was legal clerk at the President’s Council on Environmental Quality. Seggos began his career as an associate at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the DEC said.

Cayuga Medical Center to install new generators

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Using over $10 million in federal money for the effort ITHACA — Cayuga Medical Center in Ithaca will use more than $10 million in federal funding to help pay for the installation of two 2,000-kilowatt emergency generators. The money will also help fund a 20,000-gallon underground storage tank and the construction of a

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Mirabito formally opens travel center in Parish

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Includes fuel station, convenience store, and restaurants PARISH — Mirabito Convenience Stores — a chain of convenience stores and fuel stations, with more than 100 locations in New York and Pennsylvania — recently formally opened its new travel center in Parish. The company said it officially launched this multi-faceted convenience center and fuel station at

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SUNY Poly professors get grants to develop offshore-wind workforce

Energy, Environment & Sustainability, Education & Training, Subscriber Only

MARCY — A project led by SUNY Polytechnic Institute has received state funding to advance offshore-wind efforts by offering programs on campus. SUNY Poly’s Dr. Zhanjie Li, a professor of civil engineering, and Dr. Iulian Gherasoiu, a professor of electrical-engineering technology, were included in the second round of Offshore Wind Training Institute (OWTI) grants awarded

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MARCY — A project led by SUNY Polytechnic Institute has received state funding to advance offshore-wind efforts by offering programs on campus.

SUNY Poly’s Dr. Zhanjie Li, a professor of civil engineering, and Dr. Iulian Gherasoiu, a professor of electrical-engineering technology, were included in the second round of Offshore Wind Training Institute (OWTI) grants awarded for workforce development, according to a university news release.

In total, nearly $4 million in funding was awarded to support 12 programs at eight SUNY campus-led programs.

“We are grateful for these investments in SUNY Poly, and I commend Zhanjie and Ilulian for their continued efforts in offshore wind, the advancement of which is a clear priority in New York state,” Michael Carpenter, SUNY Poly interim dean of the College of Engineering and associate provost for research, said in the release. “These projects will be critical in educating the future generation of engineers entering this booming industry, as well as creating a clear and fast-tracked pathway for students and professionals to successfully enter the offshore wind workforce.”

A project led by Li will receive about $298,000 to develop a strong workforce-training program to boost the number of engineers, scientists, and engineering technicians with the skills needed to contribute to the current offshore-wind industry and help foster its growth. SUNY Poly Department of Engineering Technology Chair Andrew Wolfe and Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering Aarthi Sekaran are co-principal investigators of this effort.

Li received a $400,000 OWTI grant last spring that helped establish the SUNY Poly Offshore Wind Training Team and develop a plan to enhance workforce training in the design, construction, and manufacture of offshore wind. With the new funding, Li proposed additional areas and training opportunities, such as workshops, as a complementary effort.

Gherasoiu received $86,525 for his part in a collaborative project with University at Albany Professor of Nanoscale Science and Engineering Haralabos Efstathiadis. The two professors are developing three new courses as part of an offshore wind micro-credential program available to students at both campuses.

The courses at SUNY Poly enhance the renewable-energy curriculum, coordinated by Gherasoiu, and are offered in collaboration with the University at Albany’s College of Nanotechnology, Science, and Engineering, which includes courses on the fundamentals of photovoltaic energy, an introduction to electrical-energy storage, and an introduction to fuel-cell nanotechnology.

New York milk production and prices slip in latest month

Energy, Environment & Sustainability

Dairy farms in New York state produced 1.339 billion pounds of milk in January, down 0.4 percent from 1.345 billion pounds in the year-prior month,

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Seggos to step down after nearly nine years in office

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Includes fuel station, convenience store, and restaurants

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