New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (Climate Act) was signed into law in 2019 with the mission to empower every New Yorker to fight climate change at home, at work, and in their communities. One of its main goals is to identify climate injustices happening in low-income, disadvantaged or vulnerable communities.
Is Ravena one of those communities? Given the data compiled by the Climate Justice Working Group, a think tank of the best and brightest, we at the CAC believe there is no doubt that it is.
Data easily found on the NYS Disadvantaged Communities Map shows that our environmental burden here in the village of Ravena is higher than 94% of those census areas tracked statewide.
Presumably, this is because of the ever-expanding industrial activities taking place on routes 144 and 9W between Lafarge and the Port. The risks associated with that burden include a higher incidence of asthma, COPD, heart attacks, premature deaths, lower birth weights, and disabilities. The map goes on to cite the reasons why:
- Diesel trucks in the village pose an 81% higher risk to our health,
- Active landfills in the village pose a 48% higher risk, and
- Industrial Manufacturing/Mining activities in the village pose a whopping 96% higher risk.
With so many stark warnings on our horizon, how could the DEC possibly green-light the first FEIS for the POWI project last week? Note that the DEC has NOT yet granted the permit so it’s still not too late to halt the expansion.
Admittedly, the need to switch from fossil fuels to wind energy is an important solution to the climate change crisis but if doing so jeopardizes the air, water, and soil quality along the Hudson, as the POWI project would do, it’s a “one step forward, two steps backward” strategy. We need a historic transition to cleaner, greener energy but not at the expense of our health or that of the community we live in.
Let’s slow down and reexamine the impact that more traffic, more dredging, and more degradation of land and habitats will mean to our town before we let the POWI project go forth.
Please join us as we raise these issues this summer by joining our email list. Stay up-to-date and active on our steering committee with bi-monthly ZOOM meetings. Meetings take place every other Tuesday for one hour starting at 7:30p.
Illustrations provided by the climate.ny.gov webpage:
