By Lynn Capuano
A few weeks ago, I wrote about a few of the Town of North Hempstead’s environmental sustainability programs: native plants, home sustainability and protecting pollinators. This segment will cover the Town’s multiple efforts to address climate change.
From the Town’s Sustainability wepage, https://northhempsteadny.gov/sustainability, a link labeled Climate Action brings the viewer to a page where it lists its efforts to fight climate change and to encourage Town residents to do the same. Recognizing the detrimental effect of climate change on the community, the Town has adopted policies to reduce the Town’s carbon footprint and to assist residents and businesses through education, legislation and other measures.
From this page, one can take the Town’s climate change survey, submit their climate story, and apply to be featured as a “Green” business. The Town’s climate change survey seeks to identify key issues, perceptions, concerns. and priorities facing the Town and its residents with respect to climate change. The anonymous survey results are used to help shape the Town’s Climate Action Planning. Please participate at https://forms.office.com/g/M81YGpCgq7.
For those interested in the current trend of telling personal climate stories, there is a link to a recording of a workshop the Town hosted on telling your story of climate change. The purpose of telling your climate story is “to build an inclusive and effective movement to confront the climate crisis.”
To tell your story, the site, https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=5OTcfUghyEOd0zaJ5N3Bp2UXMoe7VVtHl32ihgCQ_t5UQUs3WVk4TUxHWFZLTk8wR0tDRDhBMlo4Mi4u, instructs you to answer three questions related to your feelings on climate change. The stories are intended to be available to the community to help people understand “why climate change affects everyone personally and what we can do to help mitigate and adapt in our changing world.”
Returning to the main Climate Action page, there is a link to a page on planning and setting goals related to the Town’s Climate Smart Communities Task Force. The Task Force advises the Town on climate-related activities and on planning for the Town’s Climate Smart Communities certification. Climate Smart Communities is a state-run program that provides local governments information and guidance on best practices for mitigating and adapting to climate change.
The Town’s initial efforts under the Climate Smart Communities Program focused on clean energy and energy use reduction; this included exploring solar project options and energy code enforcement training on best practices for code compliance officers and other municipal officers. The page also lists work the Town is doing like completing an inventory of its own greenhouse gas emissions to identify ways to reduce them; writing a climate action plan to mitigate and adapt to climate change effects; drafting a plan to educate residents and businesses on reducing food waste and promote food recovery; and identifying benchmarks for Town building energy use.
There are links to each of these efforts and related documents- https://northhempsteadny.gov/climateplanning.
There are additional links on the main page for education and outreach; decrease energy use and shift to clean, renewable energy; natural solutions and resiliency; climate smart communities and clean energy communities’ programs; and resources to reduce your climate impact. The education and outreach link brings you to a page with recordings of webinars on the resiliency of our drinking water, transportation innovations for environmentally friendly transportation options, and links to resources on food waste reduction from NYC, the state and EPA.
The page notes the Town is a member of the Long Island Green Homes Consortium and there is also a link to the Home Sustainability Workshops, which promote sustainable landscaping, gardening with native plants, composting, using a rain barrel and creating rain gardens. The final link notes the Town is a WaterSense promotional partner, advocating that residents save water.
The Town has several programs in place to address energy use and converting to renewable energy. They include promoting hybrid and electric vehicles by making them available for employee use and through installation of charging stations on Town properties. The Town code requires some new residential construction to achieve minimum energy conservation standards and the Town continuously replaces old equipment with more efficient options like LED lights. The Town also adopted a law forbidding use of gas-powered leaf blowers from June 15-Sept. 15.
To promote natural solutions to climate change and resiliency to climate change, the Town has a page explaining the benefits and effectiveness of conserving trees and native plantings and lists where cooling centers are located and how to access Nassau County’s hazard mitigation plan that addresses the identification and reduction of risks associated with natural hazards.
The Climate Action resources offer more guidance and information for residents to reduce their climate impact. These include actions to reduce energy consumption, improve efficiency, and transition to electric vehicles and public transportation as well as steps for conserving and protecting water.
The Town is setting a great example for us all, demonstrating that there are things we can do to change our relationship to fossil fuels and other contributors to climate change. While we know much more needs to be done, the Town’s efforts are certainly a step in the right direction.
