On Earth Day, Forest Hills Pols Show How Green They Can Be

It’s easy for New Yorkers — living in a city dominated by concrete structures — to forget sometimes just how important it is to stay green. On Earth Day, some local leaders are reminding residents what they can do to help ensure NYC doesn’t do more than it’s fair share of harm to the environment.

“Protecting the people of New York goes hand-in-hand with protecting the environment in which we live and I encourage all of us to do our part to protect our environment,” said state Sen. Toby-Ann Stavisky recently. “When we take the environment – and the clean air and water it provides – for granted we only hurt ourselves. By working together to Go Green, we can protect our neighborhoods and communities, as well as create countless job and economic development opportunities in green technology to propel our economy through the 21st Century.”

Stavisky urged residents to do their part to help the environment both locally and globally when it comes to helping the environment. She pointed to a set of more than 40 new laws the legislature passed in 2010 to help keep the state at the forefront of the environmental movement.

Those laws included the creation of a battery reacharging and take-back program across the state, as well as a program designed to monitor instances of cancer with a focus on proximity to environmental facilities in the state.

In the state’s lower chamber, Assemblyman Andrew Hevesi, recently hailed Governor Andrew Cuomo’s signature of energy transparency bill A.261 into law.

Hevesi, who spent years working on the bill with colleagues in the state senate, said the bill is designed to ensure that energy efficiency measures or capital improvements created with state funds are closely monitored to ensure that effective installations and policies can be repeated, while those which don’t work can be eliminated.

Hevesi said the bill was the perfect confluence of environmental responsibility with fiscal prudence.

 “It is important that New York State continues to invest in and promote energy efficient technologies, but, in light of the fiscal state New York is in, it is crucially important that every dollar collected from the taxpayer be spent responsibly,” Hevesi said. “The reports generated by this legislation will allow us to take a hard look at how this money is being spent.”

For more on what you can do to help stay green in New York, visit the Department of Environmental Conservation.