Moderated by our own, Barbara Heinzen, Ph.D., Chair of the CAC, this virtual event was recorded on April 10, 2022. It begins with an overview of the Carbon Dioxide Removal Leadership Act (A8597/S8171) in the NYS Assembly and Senate. Presentations by speakers June Sekera, Visiting Scholar at the New School University in New York/Senior Research Fellow at Boston University’s Global Development Policy Center and Jim Walsh, Policy Director for Food & Water Watch/Food & Water Action. There was a Q&A following the event.
This event is co-sponsored by us, the Clean Air Coalition of Greater Ravena Coeymans, the Clean Air Action Network of Glens Falls, Beyond Plastics, People of Albany United for Safe Energy, Food & Water Watch, Green Education and Legal Fund, and NATURE Lab and People’s Health Sanctuary at The Sanctuary for Independent Media.
The Sanctuary will continue to support community activists and environmental justice groups working on your behalf! Thank you for watching. Feel free to comment and share.
Every year, one of our CAC members dons a safety vest, rain jacket, and flashlight and finds herself stopping traffic on Route 144 in New Baltimore. That member is Barbara Heinzen and she is Mother Nature’s ultimate crossing guard. If the slimy, spotted salamander or the bumpy Fowler Toad, or the quick wood frog could talk they would thank her for their protection.
Weather DependentMigration
The migration crossing is an event not to be missed! The excitement is especially educational for children first learning about the importance of wetlands. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of critical little creatures emerge from their underground winter shelters and head to vernal pools for breeding. The estuary that surrounds Barbara’s home makes for the perfect habitat for an important courtship. “The adult amphibians will gather, breed, and deposit eggs early enough to ensure their aquatic young can hatch, grow and leave the pools before they dry up,” says the DEC. The migration is weather-dependent but it always happens on balmier, rainy nights.
The Bigger Picture
Barbara is also a guardian angel of biological diversity. She’s the protector of all things green and vulnerable. She has worked for decades, without funding, to protect and conserve her Hudson River property from the effects of industrialization. She’s a passionate stakeholder in ensuring that her ecosystem doesn’t fall victim to the same fate as the Port of Coeymans.
She has secured sensitive slopes and soils that border the Hudson river with newly-planted native trees, shrubs, and vegetation. She also unearths tons of garbage and tires that wash up onto the shoreline every spring. Cottontails, white-tailed deer, turtles, even Bald Eagles have slowly but surely migrated to her oasis.
Joy in the Journey
If you’d like to help the aquatic young survive the journey, let Barbara know and she will send you an email with details. Thank you to all for caring about our community!
The New York Public Interest Group (NYPIRG) reached out to the Clean Air Coalition this weekend because our work is focused on protecting Albany County’s public health. They asked the CAC to sign on to a letter urging New York’s congressional delegation to support the “Keep Food Containers Safe from PFAS” Act. Naturally, we did.
The Act aims to ban the use of PFAS in cookware and food containers like the sandwich wrappers, french-fry boxes, and salad bowls used at some fast-food chains. Even microwave popcorn bags and paper bags for baked goods have been found to include PFAS chemicals.
PFAS is a category of man-made chemicals that help to make food containers resistant to grease, oil, water, and heat. But, they are also toxic “forever chemicals” that have proven to be unsafe for the environment, drinking water, and the human body.
The CAC signed onto this congressional bill (S.3169/H.R.6026) because we worry about the prospect of PFAS-treated food containers (like tires) ending up at the nearby Lafarge cement company for incineration in their kilns. Our goal is to stop the possibility of anything other than coal and natural gas from being used to power the kilns for cement production.
There are safer alternatives for the fast-food industry like using
Environmental activism is not for the faint of heart. The challenges the CAC faces in Ravena-Coeymans-Selkirk are never-ending and always growing. Our vision to see our little Hudson Valley town transition away from polluting plants and dirty politics and replaced with clean progress and principled politicians is a thankless endeavor.
Our frustrations stem from far more than the disappointing passage of LECCLA late last year. Regardless of the ugly truths behind so-called “low-carbon concrete,” Governor Hochul passed it anyway. What a colossal greenwashing ruse. We fear that it’s only a matter of time before Lafarge starts burning TDF if they aren’t already.
As if that isn’t enough to keep us awake late at night… we also battle:
A Port that continues to expand its’ footprint regardless of increased truck traffic, scrapyard fires, DEC fines, or fugitive airborne particulates.
A Town Supervisor that continues to cater to industry polluters under the guise of job creation, defunds the local police department to line his own pockets, talks of passing a resolution to increase his strangehold on the community, and much more.
The scary part is this town is made up of a lion’s share of smart and informed residents but many are shaking in their shoes to speak up. They care but are afraid of retribution. They fear that their opinions might prompt a job loss or car tires slashed or a mailbox destroyed. All are valid reasons because all are true consequences to those that are daring enough to speak up.
Honestly, the level of intimidation and coercion taking place in our small, historic hamlet proceeds at a degree that would make a Mafia mob boss blush!
Let’s be honest, here: The CAC is made up of just a small handful of blue-collar, citizen activists who try like hell to protect what little is left. We fight to make right the wrongs of the very rich, the very powerful, and the very well-connected. Are we a threat to their bottom line? Seriously…that’s too funny.
Residents that can afford to move out of here, do, the rest of us dig in our heels and stay the course. Unfortunately, this survival mentality can only last so long. Indifference, apathy, detachment: these are inevitable outcomes of the underdog that gets beaten up one too many times.
Yet, we remain committed to, at the very least, the idea of a win in our favor. With the help of more brave voices, we still hold out hope we can turn the tide.
"Let's not grasp at fanciful notions when there's so much serious
environmental work to be done."
Dear Governor Hochul,
I’m writing to urge you to veto Assembly Bill 2591A, the Low Embodied Carbon Concrete Leadership Act. Recently I participated in a call with you sponsored by Indivisible groups. I was struck by your sincerity when speaking about your growing up and seeing the orange sky, made so by nearby smokestacks.
In Albany County, we face the threat of air pollution from the Lafarge cement plant in Coeymans. The bill you have before you to sign or veto would open the door to allowing plants like Lafarge to produce toxic air and ground pollution. 2591-A looks good at first glance, but its skeletal language would permit toxic waste incineration and/or toxic waste to be used in concrete mixtures.
In a recent OpEd in the Albany Times Union regarding LECCLA, the Lafarge plant manager referred to “green cement”. This characterization belongs in the same category as “clean coal”. Let’s not grasp at fanciful notions when there’s so much serious environmental work to be done.
The condescending language of the pro-LECCLA lobby in dismissing reasonable concerns as “misunderstandings by some environmental groups”, is not helpful. NYPRIG, Food and Water Watch, the Albany County Legislature, even the Association of General Contractors of NY, along with dozens of other respected groups, are unlikely to all misunderstand the problems with LECCLA. We need an open, clear-eyed discussion before enacting this bill into law.
Let’s tighten up this bill and explicitly prohibit incinerating toxic materials and/or adding toxic substances to the concrete mixture. Please be the good steward of our air that your own life experience dictates.
With thanks, Fran Porter Guilderland
This letter from CAC member Fran Porter was sent to Governor Hochul on Wed, 12/15/21
