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Brookhaven Town Supervisor Ed Romaine and Councilman Dan Panico, on left, with the new food scrap composters. Photo from Town of Brookhaven

As far as the Town of Brookhaven is concerned, going green is not just a casual practice — it’s a moral obligation to ensure Long Island’s future.

In the last few months, Supervisor Ed Romaine (R) and members of the town board have launched a series of environmentally friendly initiatives and continued ongoing efforts that encourage local residents to
reduce their carbon footprints and preserve the serenity of their surroundings.

“Whenever there are ways to benefit the environment, I’m 100 percent involved [and] I’m blessed by an extremely supportive town board,” Romaine said, highlighting an especially strong partnership with Councilwoman Jane Bonner (C-Rocky Point). “I don’t want to say Jane is my environmental soulmate, but she and I are on the exact same page. She is one of my cheerleaders in every manner, shape or form.”

Other environmental actions taken by Brookhaven:

– A 127-acre solar farm called Shoreham Solar Commons will be constructed on the recently closed Tallgrass Golf Course.

– The extension of the Pine Barrens to include 800 acres of national property around the former Shoreham nuclear plant will go forward upon Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s (D) signed authorization.

– A multiyear project to convert all 40,000 of Brookhaven’s streetlights to LED bulbs has begun with 5,000 already converted.

– Through a partnership with U.S Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-Shirley) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the town has secured funding to fix stormwater infrastructures along the North Shore, from Miller Place to Shoreham.

– A center at Ceder Beach in Mount Sinai  has been established to grow millions of oysters and sea clams that filter and clean the water.

In May, Bonner held her fifth bi-annual Go Green event at the Rose Caracappa Senior Center in Mount Sinai. It’s the town’s biggest recycling event where residents can dispose of unwanted medication and prescriptions and recycle old TVs and computers, as well as paper. The e-waste drive gathered 15,000 pounds of electronic waste and shredded 13,580 pounds of paper products and 26 boxes of unwanted pharmaceutical drugs, according to the town.

The councilwoman also hosted a Homeowner’s Guide to Energy Efficiency forum at the center later in the month, educating residents on how to get a free energy audit, affordable home energy improvements and save $1,000 a year on home energy bills. Through this effort, less fossil fuels are used to heat and light homes.

“We take it very seriously,” Bonner said of the town’s green initiatives. “We have a moral obligation to be good stewards of the Earth and this transcends party lines. Regardless of party affiliation, we all know we can do a better job of taking care of the planet.”

Aside from providing free compost and mulch to residents at Brookhaven Town Hall, officials also recently utilized a $5,000 grant to rip up the back lawn of the property to plant and restore native Long Island grasses, from which seeds can be collected and used.

In June, the town officially authorized the nonprofit Art & Nature Group Inc. to transform Brookhaven’s historic Washington Lodge property into a community nature center that offers environmental education programs.

Romaine and Councilman Dan Panico (R-Manorville) organized Brookhaven’s Food Scrap Composting pilot program at town hall last month, with hopes to expand it as a townwide initiative.

Through the program, town employees can deposit food waste, such as banana peels and coffee grinds, into organic material collection containers placed throughout the buildings, which are then collected and composted to be used for garden beds around town buildings.

“We must provide alternative waste management solutions like these if we are going to provide a cleaner, greener earth for future generations,” Panico said in a statement.

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Alyssa Iryami, left, and Audrey Shine, right, stand by their SuperSilk presentation at the July 14 Clean Tech Contest. Photo from Corbett Public Relations

Stony Brook University was bursting with “clean” and “green” alternatives July 14 thanks to high school students competing in the international Spellman High Voltage Electronics Clean Tech Contest, a competition geared to challenging teenagers to identify and create solutions to environmental and green building problems.

Now in its sixth year, July 14 was the first time the international competition took place on Long Island. It was hosted by the Center for Science Teaching and Learning of Rockville Centre, which encourages children to learn about science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

The nine teams on hand — which included seven from the United States, one from Singapore and another from the Philippines — competed for the top prize of $10,000. The teams earned their spots in the finals after beating out 230 other teams from around the globe in previous competitions.

This year’s theme was Creating a Greener Future, and the contestants outlined their findings for solutions in topics such as sustainability, green building, “sick” building syndrome and energy efficiency.

In the end, two Plainview-Old Bethpage John F. Kennedy High School students, Alyssa Iryami, 15, and Audrey Shine, 16, emerged the winners with their SuperSilk project. Feeding silkworms graphene, an allotrope of carbon, the girls were able to create strong, natural silk to construct low-cost water purification filters.

After the competition Alyssa and Audrey were ecstatic about their win.

“It’s been such a journey,” Audrey said in a statement. “It’s been a long day. It’s been a long year really because we started this in September, and now that we got this far I can’t believe it.”

Audrey said that both of their grandfathers had experience working with silkworms — hers in China and Alyssa’s in Iran.

The girls said it’s important for young people to get involved in creating green solutions. Alyssa said the sooner such solutions are applied the more people can do to protect the future of the planet to prevent “devastation and destruction.”

Loren Skeist, president of Spellman High Voltage Electronics, back row right, and finalists in the July 14 Clean Tech Contest. Photo from Corbett Public Relations

“Right now the world needs more environmentally friendly options considering that there’s a lot of pollution and water levels rising,” Alyssa said.

Loren Skeist, president of Spellman High Voltage Electronics, a Hauppauge-based company that sponsored the event, said in a statement the company became involved because the competition touches on important issues and topics that are of interest to the business, plus other aspects were attractive to them.

“The manner in which it’s done both in terms of focusing on practical applications that can have a meaningful impact on one of the central issues of our time, and working as teams and then providing the contestants with an opportunity to interact with teams and high schools from other areas around the world, it’s just a wonderful concept,” he said.

Skeist was not a judge at the event, which he said enabled him to interact with the teams more so than the judges were able to. He said he appreciated the students’ enthusiasm, energy and creativity, and the winners’ concept was extraordinary. He said he hoped the competition will encourage the contestants to continue with innovative green projects and support similar activities by others. 

“I learned from their presentations,” he said. “And it gets me excited about the opportunities to use technology to address important issues. They made me maybe more aware of issues that I hadn’t even been fully aware of [before], and some that I had been aware of but was not aware that there was this kind of approach to solve.”

Ray Ann Havasy, director of the Center for Science Teaching and Learning of Rockville Centre and Long Island administrator of the competition, said all the team members possessed creativity, which she said most people don’t realize is a big part of science. She said she was pleased with this year’s venue.

“This place has such a reputation for science and technology,” she said in a statement about Stony Brook.

The administrator of the competition said she was impressed by the winners’ enthusiasm.

“Something simple as silk combined with something that we know of graphene — I think how excited they were that something so common can become something so great,” she said.

Havasy said she hoped students such as the ones involved in the competition will inspire other young people to become involved in STEM education and work on green projects.

“The earth is changing and we need to save it,” she said. “I hate to sound pessimistic but if we don’t believe we can save it, it’s going to keep going the way it is.”

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Supervisor Frank Petrone shows off the rain barrel that Huntington resident Claudia Liu painted, which one resident will win this Saturday at Family Earth Day Expo. Photo from A.J. Carter

Huntington is getting ready to go green.

This Saturday, April 23, between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m., Huntington Town will host its annual Family Earth Day Expo at Town Hall, an event that helps residents learn about the many programs and businesses on the North Shore that are working to reduce their environmental footprint, as well as how the community members themselves can play a part.

“Each year the town tries to highlight how residents can help preserve the environment while saving themselves money,” Supervisor Frank Petrone (D) said in a statement. “Whether it’s … bringing e-waste for recycling or dropping off unneeded and unwanted medicines, residents will find a variety of ways they can get into the Earth Day spirit.”

One issue that will be highlighted at the expo is the risk pharmaceutical drugs have on the local water supply and marine life, such as when medications are flushed down the toilet or are present in human waste.

In a joint effort with the advocacy organization Citizens Campaign for the Environment, residents will be able to turn in medication they no longer need to the Suffolk County Police Department, which will dispose of it in an environmentally safe manner.

According to the World Health Organization, there is some discharge of pharmaceuticals into water sources, and Citizens Campaign said, “pharmaceutical drug contamination has been proven to adversely impact fish and aquatic life.”

According to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, male fish have developed eggs when exposed to female hormones in birth control pills. Anti-depressants and beta-blockers reduce fertility or affect certain aquatic organisms’ reproductive systems.

Staying on the theme of safe ways to dispose of materials, the town will also, in sponsorship with Covanta, a global corporation that works on sustainable solutions to waste-management challenges, give residents the opportunity to properly dispose of electronic goods with a recycling event.

Councilman Mark Cuthbertson (D) said it’s a day not only for adults to learn but also for kids to enjoy as well.

“Children and parents alike will definitely have the opportunity for a lot of hands-on fun at this event,” he said in a statement. “It is equally important to be able to show families across Huntington how easy it is to protect kids from harmful chemicals and pesticides, how to make homes and cars more energy efficient and how to save money in the process.”

There will be residential solar energy and organic garden demonstrations, as well as lessons for kids on how compost is made and how to plant a seed in a recycled pot.

Cornell Cooperative Extension of Suffolk, a nonprofit community education agency, will also provide a variety of sea specimens that kids are welcome to touch, to demonstrate the importance of protecting the marine environment.

There will be a raffle to win a custom-painted rain barrel, painted by former Huntington resident Claudia Liu. The 50-gallon barrel is both a decorative item and a utilitarian one, to be placed in a yard to capture and store rainwater for use with gardening, which helps conserve water. The winner will be announced at the expo.

Family Day Earth Expo will take place in the parking lot of Town Hall on Main Street, at Jackson Avenue, in Huntington.

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Program makes it easier for residents to save money

An infrared temperature gun measures the surface temperature of a home. Photo from Neal Lewis

It just got easier for homeowners on Long Island to monitor their energy costs.

The not-for-profit Long Island Green Homes Initiative is a public-private partnership that launched Nov. 10 with the goal of setting up homeowners with a professional energy audit at no cost. The program links residents with the state’s Energy Research and Development Authority to generate savings, stimulate jobs, boost economic development and promote sustainability, organizers said.

The initiative is headquartered at the Sustainability Institute at Molloy College and is partnered with three non-profits: Community Development Corporation of LI, LI Green and United Way of Long Island. A state program that offers similar services has been in effect for several years, but some said it wasn’t getting its message across to enough people.

Neal Lewis, executive director of the Sustainability Institute at Molloy, said some residents argued that the state government website was too confusing to use.

“The conclusion was that the key way to get more participation was to provide resources to homeowners to help navigate the process,” Lewis said.

That was how the Green Homes Initiative was born.

It started with the goal of providing an easy-to-use website coupled with energy navigators who help answer any questions a homeowner has. Lewis said the energy navigators then schedule a free home energy assessment that provides an in-depth analysis of a home’s energy efficiency for each homeowner.

It was crafted after similar programs in neighboring municipalities, but has tweaked pieces of the process with hopes of making it better, supporters said. In an earlier version of this program started in 2008 in Babylon, an average homeowner saved about $1,000 each year in energy costs, according to a press release.

LIGH has also partnered with five towns, including Huntington and Smithtown along the North Shore, to further encourage residents of those towns to take advantage of this program.

“I am proud this newest LI Green Homes Initiative is kicking off in Huntington Station,” Huntington Town Supervisor Frank Petrone (D) said in a statement. “This is a prime example where much of the housing stock dates before the first energy conservation codes were adopted in the 1970s and can benefit dramatically by upgrading insulation and heating systems that are at or near their useful life expectancy.”

Huntington Councilman Mark Cuthbertson (D) said this program incurs few out-of-pocket expenses for homeowners.

Many improvements that require homeowner investment are eligible for cost reductions of up to 50 percent, depending upon household income, according to Cuthbertson.

In an interview, Lewis said the only contractors providing the free home energy assessments were licensed, local, insured, and certified by Building Performance Institute. The contractors test a house’s insulation, heating and hot water systems, ventilation and more.

Once the tests are completed, the homeowner is given a comprehensive report that includes where and how their home can save energy, a fixed cost for each recommended improvement, and projected dollar savings on their utility bills for each recommended improvement.

If a homeowner decides to go ahead with those suggestions, the program would then assign them a performance specialist to do the work on their property.

The LIGH program can pay the entire cost of the improvements, and under a contract with the homeowner, the town sets up a monthly payment plan, Lewis said.

LIGH also structures the payment so that your savings cover your monthly bill. If a homeowner saves $100 a month on energy costs, they only owe the town $90 a month.

“We’re trying to get people to test their homes and make them more energy efficient,” Cuthbertson said.

The Initiative is funded for three years by a Cleaner, Greener Communities competitive grant award from NYSERDA of $2.3 million, and a supplemental grant from the Rauch Foundation in Garden City.

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