Sustainable Long Island
November 2013
Sustainable Long Island Newsletter
The one-stop-shop...
For all Sustainable Long Island news! 
In This Issue
Sustainability All-Star Awards - Wednesday, December 4, 2013
Long Beach to get $13M Flood Barrier - Building back stronger, safer, smarter
Town of Brookhaven to Implement Reccomendation in the Greater Bellport Sustainable Community Plan
Food Mapping: Five Innovative Hunger-Fighting Programs - Sustainable LI highlighted
New Land Bank Targets Brownfields - A unique land bank for Suffolk County
Cultivating Resilience in the Face of Ecological Change
Sustainable LI Position Openings
Board of Directors

Charlotte Biblow, Esq: President
Farrell Fritz, P.C.
---------------

Lauren Furst: Executive Vice President

Pathways to Wealth, LLC 

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Robert Bernard: Treasurer 

Capital One Bank

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Lennard Axinn: Secretary 

Island Estates

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Russ Albanese

Albanese Organization Inc.
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Dr. Calvin O. Butts, III
SUNY College at Old Westbury

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Dr. Miriam K. Deitsch

Farmingdale State College,
State University of New York

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Pat Edwards

Citi Community Development
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Amy Hagedorn

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Jeff Kraut

North Shore - LIJ Health System

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Kevin McDonald

The Nature Conservancy
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Ruth Negr
�n-Gaines
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Mitchell H. Pally

Long Island Builders Institute

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Dr. Robert Scott

Adelphi University 

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Ron Shiffman

Pratt Institute

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Sustainability All-Star Awards 
Wednesday, December 4th, 2013

Sustainable Long Island invites you to the beautiful OHEKA Castle on Wednesday, December 4th for the Inaugural Sustainability All-Star Awards, at which we will be honoring board members:

  • Lutricia (Pat) Edwards, Vice President, Citi Community Development
  • Jeffrey Kraut, Senior Vice President, Strategy, North Shore-LIJ Health System

...for their outstanding leadership in sustainability across Long Island.

 

These two committed leaders have become All-Stars throughout the sustainability sector of Long Island - helping disadvantaged communities by implementing various projects and programs, engaging Long Islanders directly to help foster relationships and build capacity, and dedicating themselves and their affiliated organizations to advance sustainability initiatives island-wide.

 

Tickets are $100 per person. Sponsorship opportunities are available. Register today!

 

We look forward to seeing you there! 

 

Long Beach to get $13M Flood Barrier  
Long Beach building back stronger, safer, and smarter

(via Newsday) - New York State will spend $13 million to build more than a mile of flood barriers to protect the Long Beach wastewater treatment plant and other critical infrastructure -- the first cutting-edge technology to harden the Long Island shoreline since superstorm Sandy.

 

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo Sunday announced plans for a 4,400-foot-long adjustable seawall and bigger bayside bulkheads.

 

The wall, which can be raised to 11 feet when a storm approaches, represents the biggest part of the project using federal funds through the NY Rising rebuilding program. The barrier, known as a Dutch Dam because of its use in the Netherlands, will stretch along the Long Beach industrial area that houses critical utility operations.

 

The project also includes extending bayfront bulkheads to a height of 11 feet.

 

"This is one of the first and most aggressive modifications post-Sandy" in New York, Cuomo said. "Many of these South Shore communities could do this."

 

Expanded bulkheads and the seawall -- more than 6,000 feet of combined barriers -- will effectively encircle the industrial area, including the sewage treatment plant, electrical substations and a major gas pipeline. They were damaged by surging saltwater from Sandy and were shut down for weeks for repairs, which Cuomo and local officials said slowed the city's overall recovery.

 

Cuomo, speaking at a news conference at the wastewater treatment plant on Park Place earlier this week flanked by local leaders and State Sen. Dean Skelos (R-Rockville Centre), hailed the work as a bipartisan success and an example of "building back better" rather than merely making repairs, a theme of the NY Rising community reconstruction program.

 

But, citing the powerful typhoon that devastated the Philippines last Friday, he warned that more "extreme weather events" are on the way, and that Long Beach -- and New York State -- would not be immune. "We believe it's going to happen again," he said.

 

Seawall and bulkhead construction is to start next year and will be managed by Long Beach, with the state reimbursing the city, according to the governor's office.

 

Sunday's announcement marks the commitment to funding; design work and project planning come next, officials said.

 

Long Beach City Council President Scott Mandel said the barrier work would be a "transformative project" for the city that just got its boardwalk fully reopened late last month.

 

The wastewater treatment plant was out of operation for 10 days, and the water treatment plant was shut down for nearly three weeks, with periodic outages after that while post-storm repairs continued. Electrical power was unavailable to the city for two weeks.

 

An adjustable seawall is "one of the most exciting available options for what we're dealing with," Cuomo said.

 

When not in use, the Dutch Dam is at ground level and doesn't obstruct views. But when a storm is coming, it can be raised to protect against sea surges and flooding.

 

 

The Long Beach NY Rising Community Reconstruction Committee has sought to identify innovative ways to protect the city's infrastructure from the effects of future storms, Cuomo said.  

 

Editor's Note: Sustainable Long Island has been part of a consultant team for the NY Rising Community Reconstruction Program; facilitating community engagement and public meetings in Long Beach to achieve community input/ feedback on how to spend the available recovery money.

 

Sustainable Long Island is also part of similar consultant teams for three additional Community Reconstruction areas, including Oceanside/Island Park/Harbor Isle/Barnum Island, Lido Beach/Point Lookout, and Atlantic Beach/Atlantic Beach Estates/East Atlantic Beach.

 

Stay tuned for ongoing updates on these projects in upcoming e-newsletters. 

 

Town of Brookhaven to Implement Recommendation in the Greater Bellport Sustainable Community Plan    
Recent NY State BOA funding moves exciting progress along

The recent $10 million in Brownfield Opportunity Area funding that Governor Cuomo announced last month includes a grant for the Town of Brookhaven to implement a recommendation included in the Greater Bellport Sustainable Community Plan.

 

Town of Brookhaven: Bellport Revitalization Plan 

 

The Town will complete a revitalization plan for an 800-acre area characterized with 24 brownfield sites located in Greater Bellport. This will form feasible, strategic development projects and other actions to invite investment and catalyze revitalization.  

 

This exciting progress, applying for and being awarded a Brownfield Opportunity Area grant, is a direct result of the vision plan and community planning process that Sustainable Long Island facilitated dating back to 2006, led by the Greater Bellport Coalition. 

 

During the summer of 2007, Sustainable Long Island brought the diverse community of Greater Bellport together
to devise solutions to numerous problems, including the creation of a hamlet center, improving code compliance, and developing a range of housing options. The goal was to build consensus in a community of numerous ideas through the creation and implementation of a sustainable community plan that would serve as a roadmap for the future development of Greater Bellport.

Sustainable Long Island worked with the Coalition to lay the groundwork to ensure that it would follow through on the community's vision.

Over the years, the Greater Bellport Coalition has engaged the wider community to join committees and ensure that projects, ranging from implementing safety improvements to park renovations, are completed. Due to the Coalition's tireless efforts, the Town of Brookhaven officially accepted the Greater Bellport Sustainable Community Plan as a community vision plan in 2009.

The community's vision and hard work has now paved the way for the upcoming Brownfield Opportunity Area grant implementation. We're excited for all involved and would like to highlight additional successes since the planning process began:
  • $1 million renovation and improvements to Robert Rowley Park, including new equipment, basketball and handball courts, a walking path, and picnic tables
  • Street tree planting along Station Road  
  • Installation of security cameras in key locations throughout the hamlet to increase community safety
  • Launching of the Greater Bellport Community Youth market, which provides access to fresh, affordable, local produce to community members
  • Formation of a safety committee to work on safety issues,  i.e. reducing crime, improving street lighting
  • Formation of an Economic Development committee, which worked on 72H property transferring guidelines
  • Formation of a Youth/Recreation committee to address activities for after-school involvement
  • Identification of funding options for the implementation of community development projects
Photo credit: Carl Corry, Newsday

Food Mapping: Five Innovative
Hunger-Fighting Programs
The Mother Nature Network highlights Sustainable LI project

Countless studies show that poor nutrition leads to poor health, lost productivity and increased health care costs. Plus, a comprehensive plan to address food security could improve quality of life for many and decrease the dollars spent on diet-related diseases.

 

Check out these five interesting food initiatives, brought to you by the Mother Nature Network, designed to address food security, improve quality of life for many, and decrease the dollars spent on diet-related diseases.

 

Highlighted in the slideshow is Sustainable Long Island's food mapping project:

 

"The food mapping project launched by Sustainable Long Island is designed to identify which towns in Long Island have a paucity of food options. The map indicates the locations of supermarkets and big box retailers like Costco. By pointing to holes in Long Island's food system, the map enables agencies to identify which neighborhoods are underserved. In response to such efforts, in 2010, Gov. David Paterson allocated $30 million statewide to help bridge the gaps that food maps reveal.

 

The darker areas on this map of Suffolk County census blocks indicate higher concentrations of low-income households. Food retail options are shown as blue dots surrounded by a quarter-mile radius.

 

Due to the Great Recession, affordability and access issues have become especially acute on Long Island. Since 2008, enrollment in the number of households receiving SNAP benefits has more than doubled, and an additional 250,000 residents are estimated to be food insecure: living on the bubble between hardship and poverty with no federal assistance."

New Land Bank Targets Brownfields  
A unique land bank for Suffolk County, NY
Develop Brownfields Through Suffolk County's Land Bank
Develop Brownfields Through Suffolk County's Land Bank

(via LIBN) - Four Suffolk brownfields, long in arrears for unpaid property taxes, are hitting the open market.

The properties are coming available as part of a new countywide initiative called the Suffolk County Land Bank. Still in its infancy, the program has identified 133 sites that are both tax-delinquent - making them eligible for seizure - and potentially contaminated.

 

Through the land bank, the county - after taking the properties - can conduct environmental reviews that let potential buyers know exactly what they're getting into.

 

Those reviews, performed by U.S. Environmental Protection Agency contractors, may include background checks, site inspections and sampling of potential contaminants in brownfield-designated areas, all to determine future investigative needs and cleanup options.

 

The reviews are not cheap, running $100,000 each, but land bank officials have secured EPA funding to cover much of the assessment costs.

 

New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman recently informed the county he was earmarking $600,000 from the state's General Land Bank Community Revitalization Fund for costs associated with Suffolk's environmental assessments, which must be conducted before the properties can be sold.

 

Suffolk had applied for $1.22 million through the state's $20 million land bank fund, which Schneiderman created in June as part of the $25 billion national mortgage settlement, in which the country's five largest mortgage servicers agreed to pay to settle questionable mortgage-servicing and foreclosure practices.

 

New York State first passed land-bank legislation in 2011 to deal with foreclosed and abandoned properties in primarily upstate regions, where they are much more prevalent.

The state selected five upstate counties to receive land banks during its first phase and awarded Suffolk its own program as part of the second-phase rollout this year.

 

"This partnership allows us to take an important first step to redevelop abandoned and polluted brownfield properties that are blights on our local communities," Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone said in a statement, adding the county would explore new private and public opportunities to remediate dilapidated properties.

 

While New York State envisioned a land-bank solution for all foreclosed properties, Suffolk officials have tightened the scope to deal solely with those tax-delinquent properties classified as brownfields.

 

Suffolk Legis. Tom Cilmi, R-East Islip, a member of the Land Bank board, has long pushed for brownfield redevelopment.

Cilmi said the owners of the 133 prioritized brownfield properties owe the county $35.2 million in back taxes and letters were sent to these owners in July informing them the properties would be seized unless the bills were paid.

 

"More than a couple dozen" owners stepped up to agree to a back-tax payment program as a result of the letters, Cilmi said.

 

The first four properties to be seized - two in Bay Shore, one each in Islip and West Babylon - will be taken within the next couple of months. Once they're successfully assessed and resold, the Suffolk Land Bank will move down its list.

 

"We don't want to transfer them all at once, because we don't want to overwhelm the land bank with an unworkable amount of properties," Cilmi said.

 

The Suffolk County Land Bank has yet to set procedures for selling off the properties, but Cilmi said officials have some leeway on what they can do next. Options include direct sales and auctions, and a website is being developed to advertise the properties.

 

Owners of properties adjacent to some of the selected sites have already approached local officials to express interest, the legislator said.

 

Suffolk has always had the ability to take the properties because of the tax delinquencies, but the lack of a clear strategy of what to do with them has stayed the county's hand, Cilmi said.

 

The land bank program gives them that strategy - the ability to force property owners to pay, or to seize and sell the land, without sticking taxpayers with the environmental-review and remediation costs, he added.

 

Cultivating Resilience in the Face of Ecological Change 
Increasing the resilience of our social, economic, and political systems to adapt to a changing climate
Could this be a way to survive if sustainability is no longer possible? (Cartoon by Leo Murray)
(via WorldWatch.org) - In the past decade, approximately 200-300 million people have been seriously affected by natural disasters or technological accidents each year-a staggering figure that is bound to only increase in the coming decades. It is becoming clear that a failure to make political systems pay attention to climate challenges might lead to massive population displacements.

 

In State of the World 2013: Is Sustainability Still Possible? contributing authors discuss the imperative to prepare for such disasters and outlines how we can move forward on the path toward resiliency.

 

Building up a globalized and industrialized market economy and growing our food in globe-spanning monocultures may increase efficiency, but such practices also decrease resiliency. Many societies are now at risk of either short-term or permanent displacement due to both environmental and non-environmental disasters.

 

Of course, disasters of all kinds are nothing new. But the current era may be one in which their frequency, scale, and impact are greater than anything our species has previously confronted.

 

In State of the World 2013, contributing authors discuss an array of strategies and case studies that offer lessons for surviving and coping with the coming calamities that may result from climate and other ecological changes.

  • Recipe for resilience. In order for societies to be truly resilient-able to mitigate and withstand disturbances and recover afterward-socioeconomic practices should include redundancies, so that the failure of one component does not impact the entire system. Modularity is also critical, in that individual units retains some self-sufficiency when disconnected from the larger networks. Other characteristics of resilient systems include diversity, inclusiveness, tight feedbacks, and the capacity for innovation.
  • Adjusting and adapting. We must consider how the physical changes that take place on Earth will translate into social and economic changes. Adaptation can help reduce vulnerability by way of disaster and famine early-warning systems, livelihood diversification, drought-tolerant crops, restoration of ecosystems, flood-defense infrastructure, and crop insurance.
  • Cultivating social capital. Social capital, the sum total of resources, knowledge, and goodwill possessed by everyone in a network, provides a web of connections that communities can use to obtain relief and reconstruction aid. Members in well-functioning communities are best able to organize support, articulate their needs, and work together to rebuild and stabilize.
  • The Cuban Experiment. Over the past two decades, Cuba has moved to the forefront of sustainability. In 2006, it was the only country in the world rated as having achieved "sustainable development" in WWF's Living Planet Report. Although it is materialistically poor, it has First World education, literacy, and health care. The Cuban example proves what many wealthy nations are hesitant to even consider: that high material consumption does not necessarily equal human well-being. Cuba represents an alternative where material success as measured by energy consumption is secondary, while other quality-of-life issues are given priority.

A global paradigm shift is in order. We must not only alter our outlook on consumption and realign our consciousness with sustainability, but also begin to integrate policies and practices that diversify and strengthen our social, political, and economic domains.

 

Worldwatch's State of the World 2013 addresses how "sustainability" should be measured, how we can attain it, and how we can prepare if we fall short.  


Position Opening: Director of Development  

Sustainable Long Island seeks a talented and experienced fundraising professional to create, oversee and execute initiatives to support programs that support the mission of the organization. The Director, working closely with the Executive Director, is substantially responsible for raising funds.  

 

The ideal candidate will have a successful track record working with high-level corporate boards, managing board solicitations, grant writing and reporting, and experience with special events.  In consultation with the Executive Director, the Director is responsible for all of the fundraising activities of the organization. The Director of Development reports to the Executive Director.  

 

Duties and Responsibilities:

  • Lead and manage Sustainable Long Island's overall development efforts, including board solicitations, grants, special events, and individual giving;
  • Maintain fundraising calendar with grants, events, mail appeals, and other fundraising efforts;
  • Research and write all grant proposals and required reports (as required) to foundations and corporations, including working with program staff to develop and report on funded projects;
  • Cultivate and nurture relationships with current and potential donors;
  • Report to the Board of Directors and development committee on fundraising strategies and progress;
  • Assist the Executive Director with Board development and staff certain Board committees, as assigned;
  • Organize and oversee all efforts related to the planning of and fundraising for the annual educational conference, as well as other special events held throughout the year;
  • Solicit individual donors and supervise the annual giving/direct mail campaign;
  • Responsible for all data entry into Donor Perfect database;
  • Ensure accurate accounting of and reporting on all fundraising income and donors using the Donor Perfect database, and collaborate with the CFO for financial reporting/audit  purposes;
  • Other projects as assigned by the Executive Director.

Qualifications:

 

The successful candidate will have a bachelor's degree plus at least five years of pertinent fundraising experience.  The candidate must be an accomplished writer with excellent grammar and editing skills, capable of creating and presenting persuasive written arguments for funding support. Experience in the nonprofit sector is required and experience working with social issues preferred.  The ideal candidate will be able to work independently with diverse constituencies while meeting multiple deadlines; will be highly organized, detail-oriented and self-directed.  High quality computer and communications skills are essential.  Familiarity with Donor Perfect is preferred.  

 

To Apply:

 

Send a cover letter, including salary requirements, along with a resume and writing sample, to [email protected]

 

Sustainable Long Island is an equal opportunity employer.

 

Together we can build a more
sustainable Long Island

 

These challenging economic times have magnified the problems we Long Islanders face each and every day. With our leaders warning us of tougher times to come, thinking regionally and acting locally is urgent. It is in all of our best interests to stay engaged and do what we can together to build a more sustainable Long Island.

 

Please consider making a tax-deductible gift to Sustainable Long Island that will help support our ongoing and future work within your Long Island communities; while helping advance economic development, environmental health, and social equity!

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Sincerely,

The Board and Staff of Sustainable Long Island