We don’t usually go to bed thinking, “what if I’m wrong?” We don’t get up asking ourselves the same question.
We develop our beliefs, stick with them and, as time goes on, we defend them or push for change based on something we think, or are fairly certain, we know.
But it’s worth considering the possibility that we might be wrong, particularly in connection with something as important as the only habitable planet we know.
If you don’t believe climate change is a threat and you think rules restricting environmental pollution are unnecessary and a federal government overreach, have you considered the consequences of being wrong?
I won’t trot out all the climate science experts who have what they consider incontrovertible proof that the climate is warming based on years of data.
You’d probably come back with the argument that the data can be interpreted in other ways or that science itself rarely has complete certainty.
You might even suggest that a warmer climate would mean we wouldn’t need to use as much heat during the winter months and that some crops might grow better during a longer, hotter growing season.
While I don’t ascribe to those thoughts —which a headline grabbing Republican recently espoused — because of the danger to so many staple crops from a warmer season that could include droughts and storms that cripple cities and destroy crops, I want those who don’t believe climate change is real to consider what might happen if they are wrong.
At the time of this writing, the Supreme Court hadn’t ruled on West Virginia vs. Environmental Protection Agency. If the conservative majority, who have been reshaping the political and legal landscape at a rapid pace, rules as expected, the EPA will have less authority to regulate power plant pollution.
That would mean power plants won’t have to comply with federal rules that limit the gases they emit into the environment and the pollutants they send into the air.
These companies may be able to make more money by continuing to operate as they had in the past. Yay for them? Right? Well, not so fast.
What’s the risk if they are wrong? We all make decisions when weighing risks, whether it’s the types of stocks we invest in, the places we go that might be dangerous at night, or the undercooked foods we eat.
So, if they’re wrong, the world continues to heat up, storms such as hurricanes move more slowly, dumping more rain on any one area, crops get destroyed, glaciers continue to melt causing sea levels to rise, and biodiversity declines, wiping out species that might have otherwise led to cures for disease or provide future food sources.
Some areas also become uninhabitable.
Our children, grandchildren and future generations can’t come back to tell us who was right. What we do or don’t do, however, will undoubtedly affect them.
Using the same logic climate change deniers use to suggest that nothing is certain, it seems critical to hedge their bets, protecting us from a future they believe is possible but unlikely.
Even if the Supreme Court acts (or acted, depending on the timing) as expected, we don’t have to be fatalistic or cynical about the next steps in the battle against our own gaseous waste.
Utilities and other companies that produce these gases have to take responsibility for their actions, regardless of what the Supreme Court says or does. Even reluctant legislators have to consider what might happen if they are wrong. Yes, leaders have numerous other problems.
We can’t ignore the Earth. If some people consider the consequences of freeing up companies to send carbon dioxide into the only air we have, they might be making a one-way mistake. They must consider what will happen if they are wrong.
Port Jeff village trustee candidate on her global approach to local issues
Ana Hozyainova is running for Port Jefferson village trustee. Photo courtesy of Hozyainova
Ana Hozyainova is a candidate for trustee in the upcoming village election on June 21. During a recent interview, she discussed her background in social work, her experiences abroad, the threat of climate change to Port Jeff village, the East Beach Bluff and more.
What is your background and why would you like to be involved in local government?
I would like to answer that in reverse order — why I would like to run and then how my background is beneficial in the service to the village.
One of the key things is that I would like to build upon and preserve the legacy that the village has already created. I see that the village, just like the rest of the nation and other municipalities, faces a number of challenges that are way outside of our control. For example, we are a coastal community that will suffer significantly with the worsening impact of climate change. The flooding will become only worse.
Ana Hozyainova (left) mediating a family conference. Photo courtesy of Hozyainova
We are a community that changes in its residential structure. The nation is aging and the nation is shrinking in certain ways, and this will have an impact on the village and the way the village works. We also as a village observed decline in our tax revenue, mainly through the LIPA gliding path. Any one of those challenges is already an issue that would require significant adjustment, but three of them together compound the issue and require a long-term vision and long-term solutions to the way the village functions.
I hope to be able to engage in that process because I would like to make Port Jefferson my long-term home. I have a family here and I would like that family to continue to grow and stay in the village. For me, the role of the trustee is a person who sets the policies, sets standards and hires people to implement those policies. This is where I believe my skills and my background are incredibly useful for the village.
I come with nearly two decades of experience of human rights work, international work. I worked in fields as diverse as countering violent extremism to working with mental health issues to doing community organizing to developing policies to address such thorny issues as: How do we still torture?
The sunrise over a landscape in Bamyan, Afghanistan, where Hozyainova worked for seven years. Photo taken by Hozyainova in 2011.
The issues I mentioned before are very difficult to address and they require creative thinking and problem-solving in order to develop a viable, functional solution. I believe that I have those solutions. I also have an education that is very helpful for that with a degree in social work from Columbia University. Part of the reason that I chose that school is that at the core of the teaching in my school, the person was put front and center.
With a lot of the political decisions — be it raising of the taxes or changes in the code or restructuring the zoning of the village — it is very easy to forget the human that will be impacted by those decisions. I have the skills that would be required to actually look at who would be those people who would be affected and what can we do to make sure that our decisions serve the greatest good of everyone involved, that we’re not just doing quick and dirty “let’s fix this” and forget about the unintended consequences that might come out of those decisions.
Hozyainova and a friend dance to the tango after a full day of reviewing and commenting on human rights reports, 2013. Photo courtesy of Hozyainova
Given your experiences abroad, why did you turn your focus inward toward local issues?
Again going back to my time at Columbia University — and the reason I mention it is because when I was there, I found it incredibly frustrating when my teachers would say, “Think small. Think of the impact that certain actions would have on people at the local level. Engage with the small steps first. Don’t try to change the whole system at the same time. It will become overwhelming and unmanageable. Think about issues that affect people on the ground, and from there start building up your intervention.”
As the years passed by, I’ve learned — despite my frustrations — that that’s indeed the true way to bring real change into the lives of the people. At the moment, my residency ended up in Port Jefferson by virtue of the people who I met, the person who I married. I feel that the work that can be done at the local level is no less important than any of the work that I could have done elsewhere. Right now, the moment has brought me to Port Jefferson and this is where my skills can be most useful and could be applied right now.
You have been a vocal proponent of reconfiguring roadways in the village. In your opinion, what is wrong with these roadways and how can they be improved?
The issue of walkability in Port Jefferson, especially pedestrian safety, is an issue that is very dear to me. I live in a residential neighborhood with two main roads that kind of hug the area. I walk those streets every day and I personally experience the impacts that speeding cars or reckless driving could have on pedestrians.
It is the issue that I personally experience and that’s how I start organizing the work. I’ve heard too many people say this is dangerous and unsustainable, that they’re fearful of walking but it’s the only exercise that they have. So I rallied the community for stop signs on California Avenue as an interim measure to assess what other possible solutions can be brought in to improve pedestrian safety.
As I did that work, I also got in touch with other residents in the village who also voiced their concerns and discovered that it is a systematic problem, that many people face issues about safety on the roads. What I hope to do is a systematic assessment of what can be done in Port Jefferson to make it more walkable as a village because our ability to walk is one of the prerequisites for developing strong, friendly communities. That is how my activism on pedestrian safety has started.
The issues that I would like to address if I were elected are the questions of transparency in the village.
— Ana Hozyainova
What are the most critical issues facing the village?
Hozyainova collaborated with the policeman above to investigate and eradicate torture in the community and to facilitate public engagement, 2016. Photo courtesy of Hozyainova
I mentioned earlier that climate change, the change and declining population nationwide and the lowering of the tax base are the crucial aspects that we are facing as a village. The issues that I would like to address if I were elected are the questions of transparency in the village.
By this, I mean that we have a number of pretty large projects that are developing in the village that have not received adequate public consultation, and the village has not made the effort to engage the community in the level that it should have. For example, the question of the $10 million that was borrowed to stabilize the [East Beach] Bluff. I personally have a lot of questions about how the project was designed, what other issues have been explored or addressed, also to hear what the rest of the residents want to say or have priorities for, and how they conceptualize and prioritize that as an issue.
I believe that the village has not had adequate engagement on those issues. The presentation on the bluff is available on YouTube, but that information does not adequately reflect the complexity of the issues that we are facing. For example, when we have a Dickens Festival, we don’t just publish a legal notice that there will be a festival and forget about it. We actually make a campaign, we engage people, we invite people over and over and over again, and the festival is a success.
So similar things need to happen when we are making decisions about the village such as the bluff or as small as figuring out the budget. What are the priorities for spending that would be in the residents’ interests? Transparency is one of the core areas to be developed if I were elected.
The other issue is climate change. Coming back to the question of the bluff, part of the reason why we have this situation is the way that climate change is exacerbating the storms and thus speeding up the erosion of the bluff. It’s a man-made issue: The harbor where the bluff sits used to be salt marshes. The movement of water in the salt marshes is significantly slower than in the dredged marshes that created Mount Sinai Harbor, which subsequently affected our bluff.
We are dealing with a double whammy of the harbor that we’ve created. I love this beach, I enjoy having access to that beach, but that beach is exacerbating the erosion of the bluff along with the more severe storms. I believe we will need a greater consultation about how we spend the rest of the money that has already been allocated for the upper part of the bluff. If elected, that will definitely become one of my priorities.
How can residents play a more active role in decision-making?
Part of it is the way the village engages with the village. For example, the Village of Port Jefferson doesn’t have a civic association. It has a range of working committees, but it doesn’t have a civic association that will collect or take the views of residents who might not be able to attend the public meetings held once a month at 6 o’clock.
Until I became engaged in the traffic safety issues, I found it very difficult to make my way to those meetings. It’s only after I rallied the community and took on the weight of their trust that I started making the time to go to those meetings.
If I were elected, I would explore a range of issues to engage more with the residents. One of them would be, for example, having a weekly time slot at the farmers market where one trustee can man a booth every week, so the residents wouldn’t have to go out of their way to engage the government. At the moment, I feel that the local village government is not doing enough to engage with the residents.
Ana Hozyainova drinks tea in Istanbul after a long day of interviews with community members and traders, 2018. Photo courtesy of Hozyainova
Is there anything else you would like to say to our readers?
To summarize my message, I believe that I possess the skills and experience that are required to serve as a trustee. If elected, I would be putting the residents front and center of my work in making sure that they are consulted and engaged, and that the best interests of all of the residents are considered.
At the Shea Theatre, Suffolk County Community College Ammerman campus, County Executive Steve Bellone (D) delivered his State of the County address May 18.
The county executive started his speech with a moment of silence to honor the lives lost in the Buffalo gun tragedy.
“We continue to grieve for those who were lost, for the Buffalo community and, most importantly, for the families that have been directly impacted by this incomprehensible act of hate,” he said. “We must speak out against hateful rhetoric that is contrary to the American creed and stand up for what we do believe. This requires that we continue to celebrate our diversity here and recognize it for what it is — a strength.”
County legislators onstage during the event, above. Photo from Bellone’s Flickr page
COVID-19 recovery
The county executive acknowledged the many challenges of leading the administration through the public health crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. “In March of 2020, life as we knew it shut down,” he said. “The world came to a halt and Suffolk County was at the epicenter of the COVID-19 global pandemic in our state and in our nation.”
Bellone reported that the county has lost over 4,400 residents to the virus. As normalcy slowly returns, he said that the pandemic has taught valuable lessons.
“One of the clearest takeaways for me is the importance of public service,” he said. “During this county’s darkest hour, our employees did it all. While much of the rest of the world was on lockdown, county employees ensured critical operations did not stop.” He added, “It is fitting that this year’s State of the County is here at Suffolk County Community College’s Ammerman campus as this was the location for one of our first mass-vaccination sites.”
Human resources
One of Bellone’s points of emphasis during the address was the need for greater human resources personnel in county government. Despite its size, Bellone said that the county government still operates without a fully functional human resources department.
“Human resources, to the extent that it has existed in this government, has been done on an ad hoc basis,” the county executive said. “Commissioners or department heads who are not human resource professionals perform these functions when a problem occurs or a crisis arises.”
Bellone considers this no way to run an organization, especially one as large and impactful to the lives of residents as the Suffolk County government. He likened human resources to military supply units.
“Operating departments without effective human resources is like the military trying to operate without its supply units,” he said, adding, “You can have the best fighting force in the world, but if those support units are ineffective, the mission will be undermined.”
Through the addition of the latest HR software and new organizational practices, he suggested the county can save $18 million per year in payroll operation costs alone.
Investing in the future
The county executive called the Long Island Rail Road a critical asset. “Nearly two centuries after its tracks were laid, that initial investment is still reaping extraordinary returns for the region,” he said.
Bellone said the county is taking two significant leaps forward with both the East Side Access and Third Track projects.
The county executive announced a new project called the Midway Crossing, which proposes to create two new public facilities which have long been under consideration: the Long Island Convention Center and a north terminal at MacArthur Airport.
“It is crazy that a region of our size and significance, of nearly 3 million people, with incredible innovation and natural assets, adjacent to the largest and most important city in the nation, has no convention center,” he said. “A convention center would bring thousands of people and businesses to our region every year from other parts of the country, importantly bringing new dollars into our local economy.”
In a grand plan, Bellone envisions this convention center will be connected to both a new state-of-the-art north airport terminal at MacArthur Airport and to the main line of the LIRR.
“The convention center attendees would conveniently and easily fly in and out of MacArthur Airport, and if a flight wasn’t available they would still have the ability to take the train from either JFK or LaGuardia,” he said. “Every great region must have a great regional airport and no one can deny that Long Island is one of the great regions in the nation.”
Bellone also foresees other opportunities to integrate the regional economy along the Ronkonkoma Branch line of the LIRR. He proposes relocating the “wholly underutilized” Yaphank station to create the Brookhaven National Laboratory Station, “effectively connecting this global institution to MacArthur Airport and the larger innovation ecosystem in the region by mass transit.”
Environmental quality
County Executive Steve Bellone, above, delivers the State of the County address. Photo from Bellone’s Flickr page
The county executive highlighted some of the environmental initiatives that his administration is working on. He said this region is currently on the front lines of the battle against climate change.
“As an island, we know that we are on the front lines of climate change,” Bellone said. “By taking action, we are not only helping to protect our region in the future, but we are creating economic opportunities in the near term as well.”
He also discussed the need for more charging stations as drivers throughout the county continue to transition to electric vehicles. He announced that two-dozen public libraries in each of the 10 towns in the county have partnered with the administration in the development of a charge-sharing network.
Suffolk County has also emerged as one of the centers of the offshore wind industry in the region, according to Bellone. “This is an industry that will have a more than $12 billion economic impact on New York,” he said. “Suffolk County is well positioned to benefit from the new supply chains and the creation of approximately 7,000 new jobs.”
The county has also reached out to businesses and collaborated with local colleges to establish workforce training programs that will prepare residents for these new jobs.
Opioid crisis
Exacerbated by the pandemic, ending the opioid epidemic remains near the top of Bellone’s list of priorities. He said opioids have wreaked havoc upon the county, causing horrific damage for users and their families.
“After years of steady progress, the pandemic created unprecedented circumstances of fear, isolation and anxiety that led to an increase in overdoses — 374 confirmed [fatal] cases last year alone,” he said.
“If we want to be part of the solution, then we need to do what the Greatest Generation did: Put our heads down and build. Build our families first and then do our part to build stronger communities.” — Steve Bellone
The Greatest Generation
Bellone concluded his address on a positive note. With war again raging in Europe, the county executive reminded the audience of the example of the Greatest Generation.
“The attack on Ukraine is the kind of naked aggression against a sovereign nation in Europe that we have not witnessed since the end of World War II,” he said. “The images and the videos that we see coming out of Ukraine are absolutely devastating and heartbreaking.” He added, “I don’t think that it is any coincidence that after more than 75 years of peace in Europe, forged by the sacrifices of American veterans, that we’re seeing this kind of aggression happen just as this Greatest Generation slowly, but inevitably, fades into history.”
Bellone said it is important to honor the legacy of the Greatest Generation as these Americans had laid the foundation for a future of peace. “They won the war and then they came home and built a better future for all of us,” he said. “If we want to be part of the solution, then we need to do what the Greatest Generation did: Put our heads down and build. Build our families first and then do our part to build stronger communities.”
Port Jeff village trustee on her environmental role in crafting village policies
Rebecca Kassay introducing a youth committee at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome, Italy, 2016. Photo courtesy of Kassay
Village of Port Jefferson trustee Rebecca Kassay is at the forefront of several environmental initiatives. TBR News Media caught up with her for an exclusive interview to discuss these matters in depth. In this interview, Kassay addresses her early involvement in community organizing, her first term as trustee and her vision for the village and its environment.
What is your background and why did you get involved in local government?
I went to SUNY New Paltz for a degree in environmental studies and a minor in communications and media. During the summers between my semesters there, I interned at Avalon Nature Preserve in Stony Brook. I worked with their three week teen program and, in working with these young people, I saw how excited they became and how engaged they were with their local community and their environment.
Interning over the summers, I began a dialogue with the park director to say, “Hey, wouldn’t it be great if there was a year-round program to engage the youth in this area to do things like habitat restoration, species studies and beach cleanups?” When I graduated from New Paltz, I got a call from the director and she said, “That idea that we’ve been talking about, do you want to give that a shot? Do you want to try to start that program?”
A ribbon-cutting ceremony at the first of four Relic beach cleanup stations in Port Jeff village. Photo courtesy of Kassay
At 21 I was starting my own program at a nonprofit. It was very overwhelming, but we started off strong and just kept building. I ended up working with hundreds of teenagers over the course of seven years at Avalon, engaging with dozens of nonprofits in the area and seeing what their environmental goals were. After working there for seven years, I began asking myself: “What’s next? What is it that I want to continue doing to build upon this experience?”
In 2013 I started a bed and breakfast at my home and it opened in 2014. I essentially had two full-time jobs — one as a Port Jefferson business owner and one working at Avalon Park and Preserve. I decided to hand the program off to someone else at Avalon and just run the bed and breakfast while I figured out where I wanted to take my skill set.
When COVID hit, I coordinated over 40,000 pieces of homemade PPE and comfort care items to frontline workers during the height of the pandemic. Through that, I began talking to local politicians about this effort and in Port Jefferson, someone said, “Hey, why don’t you consider running for office?” That sounded like a pretty cool way to get involved, so I started collecting my signatures. I ran unopposed and have had a really interesting first term.
What ignited your interest in environmental issues?
Back in the 12th grade [at Smithtown High School], I didn’t know what I wanted to do until I took Advanced Placement Environmental Science. It was the first course that I took that seemed to be very practicable. I felt that everybody should be taking this course because it has to do with how we interact with what’s around us. If you are humble enough and you’re willing to frighten yourself with the facts of where we might be going if we just continue on the path of neglecting our relationship with the environment, then it’s something scary to think about.
It’s very apparent to me and others that we need to start making some changes. We need to figure out which changes to make in order to help the Earth continue to exist in a meaningful way.
Climate change is a lens through which we have to view pretty much all of our problems, especially being a portside village. —Rebecca Kassay
What are some of the most pressing environmental issues facing the village of Port Jefferson?
In my view, many of the environmental hazards facing the village stem from climate change, which is something that a lot of people don’t want to talk about. The impacts of climate change are relatively new. It’s really in the past decade or so that we’re starting to see these more frequent and intense storms and more rain from these storms. What everyone has always done in the past is not working anymore. The types of decisions that are being made, the ways decisions are being made — they need to take climate change into account. It’s not going to get any better, it’s just going to continue getting worse.
Climate change is a lens through which we have to view pretty much all of our problems, especially being a portside village. We have a very tight relationship with the water — the harbor and the Long Island Sound. If we don’t start looking at the facts that are being given to us by engineers and scientists, we’re not going to be making the best decisions for Port Jefferson residents, not just today but Port Jefferson residents 20 or 50 years from now.
What are your thoughts on the state of Port Jefferson Harbor?
I know that the Setauket Harbor Task Force does a wonderful job. It may sound like they’re just in Setauket, but they also steward the Port Jefferson Harbor. They do a wonderful job monitoring the harbor’s water quality and make great efforts to identify solutions and put them into place. I think that the harbor itself is doing fairly well thanks to these environmental groups.
There are some issues. I myself have a sailboat and I’ve become more acquainted over the past few years in how boaters can affect the water. I’m really glad that we have a free pump-out boat in our harbor that will empty your boat’s sewage tanks for free. You just have to call them and the boat will come over because boaters’ sewage can have a very negative effect on our harbor. However, the water quality itself seems to be quite good.
What is the village doing to comply with new DEC guidelines regulating stormwater runoff into harbors and bays?
I can’t speak to the absolute current status of them, but I know that the village is very aware of the upcoming regulations and is looking closely to see what is the best pathway forward to meeting them.
Has the village considered adding rain gardens?
The village was granted funding for three rain gardens and those rain gardens are in front of village hall, the village center and the DPW planning department uptown. Those are great examples of the types of plants you would put in rain gardens. I personally think they are very beautiful and they can really help to retain stormwater, especially on individuals’ properties. It’s a beautiful addition, as opposed to this very expensive cistern in the ground that you might have to put in to retain your stormwater. And it’s also great for the environment.
You have prioritized planting trees throughout the village. What will these new trees do for overall environmental quality?
Trustee Rebecca Kassay holding 300 tree and shrub saplings from the Saratoga Tree Nursery, which were distributed and planted as part of the village’s Arbor Day celebration. Photo courtesy of Kassay
There are so many reasons we are pushing to plant more trees. The presence of trees helps in the absorption of stormwater. Large trees will lower the general temperatures in the area where you have a critical mass of trees, so homeowners will spend less fuel and less money on air conditioning in the summer and even heating in the winter because trees can block wind coming off the harbor.
For folks who are not as in love with the environment as myself and many others, they should know that planting more trees statistically increases property values. To have these larger legacy trees on your property gives the property itself and the neighborhood a greater sense of being established.
Trees are a staple in the ecosystem, providing a habitat for birds, pollinators and critters of all sorts, and these species are beautiful. I joke and say that the reason I bought my house in particular is because it has a beautiful oak on the front corner. I really love being the steward of that oak. It was there way before I was born and I think it will be there after I pass. It’s an honor to have the responsibility of taking care of the property that it lives on.
This month, the Six Acre Park Committee will present to the Board of Trustees. Can you provide readers a preview of that?
Absolutely. The committee has found consensus in agreeing on a mini arboretum-like park [at Highlands Boulevard], planted a bit more densely and focusing mainly on native species of trees. These are the species of trees and shrubs that have been evolving in this area for eons, so the local and migratory wildlife rely on these species. These are our oaks, these are our tulip poplars, these are the species that were here before people started moving in, harvesting timber and building homes and roads.
The concept is to give back to nature. Instead of taking trees down to build a parking lot or a development project, we’re actually putting the forest back. Not only is it going to be aesthetically beautiful, it will also be something valuable for wildlife and for wildlife lovers. If you go for a walk through this park, there will be a walking path throughout it. It’s a chance to bathe in nature and observe the beauty of what’s around you.
What can residents do to help improve environmental quality?
Trustee Rebecca Kassay (bottom-left) with a group of gardeners and volunteers at the newly established Beach Street Community Garden. Photo courtesy of Kassay
I think the village government has a great opportunity to set the precedent for our residents and say, “This is a village that prioritizes environmental efforts.” I am working to be a strong voice to keep that in the conversation so that whatever we’re looking at, we’re considering how this may affect the environment and to see if there are any opportunities to have a positive effect on the environment.
As far as residents go, I’m delighted in starting our first community garden in Port Jefferson village. I’ve also been working on these Arbor Day efforts. I pushed to start the committee on the Six Acre Park. Through creating all of these venues, I’m looking to tap back into my community organizing background and have it not just be the government taking action, but the government engaging its residents in being a part of that action. When someone feels that they are a part of something, they’re much more likely to follow through, to feel proud of it and talk to other people about it.
Do you believe the village is on the right track in terms of environmental quality?
I think that the village and the Town [of Brookhaven] and Long Island and the nation and the world still have a lot of work to be done. As far as getting closer to considering the environment in every decision-making process, I don’t think the village is any more ahead or behind any of our neighboring municipalities. I would love to help the Village of Port Jeff get put on the map as an environmentally minded village, a village that takes this into account.
Again, every decision has to be a balance, but I think the environment has to be a higher priority in most decision-making processes because I see the window of opportunity closing to start pulling ourselves out of a direction that will negatively affect Port Jefferson residents, Long Islanders and people across the globe. It’s these local actions that can have a big impact.
Trustee Rebecca Kassay with the members of the Six Acre Park Committee at their first meeting in 2021. Photo courtesy of Kassay
Is there anything else you would like to say to our readers?
I am very cognizant of the fact that we are not the only ones experiencing flooding or a decrease in tree coverage or any other environmental issue. I’ve started reaching out to nonprofits, to other villages, to people at different levels of government, asking to learn from their experiences so that we can move more efficiently in our local efforts here. To me, it’s very important to not try to reinvent the wheel every time you want to do something.
This networking has been very helpful both in refining concepts that we might want to put into place in Port Jefferson and also in bringing funding into the village so that these aren’t taxpayer-supported projects but grant-supported projects. If we can start a great project and bring in a lot of grant money, then it’s just a win-win across the board.
Also, one of my goals is to open peoples’ eyes to the miracles of nature on their own streets and in their own yards. We often think of nature as something to visit in state or national parklands, when in reality a relationship with, and a stewardship of, urban and suburban nature is equally profound and important. Far beyond the increasingly evident practicality of environmentalism, there’s a great joy to be embraced.
I work to help folks see nature as an asset, as something to enjoy and protect, instead of the current narrative that often paints nature as inconvenient or consciously in opposition to humanity.
Ironically, despite the narrative that environmentally minded actions or solutions are burdensome, there are often significant taxpayer cost savings in the long run. Taxpayers benefit when inevitable environmental issues are initially addressed with a long-term solution, instead of a series of Band-Aids which eventually fail and must be replaced by that same long-term solution.
Kevin Reed. Photo courtesy of Stony Brook University
By Daniel Dunaief
Rain, rain go away, come again some other day.
The days of wishing rain away have long since passed, amid the reality of a wetter world, particularly during hurricanes in the North Atlantic.
In a recent study published in the journal Nature Communications, Kevin Reed, Associate Professor and Associate Dean of Research at the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences at Stony Brook University, compared how wet the hurricanes that tore through the North Atlantic in 2020 would have been prior to the Industrial Revolution and global warming.
Reed determined that these storms had 10 percent more rain than they would have if they occurred in 1850, before the release of fossil fuels and greenhouse gases that have increased the average temperature on the planet by one degree Celsius.
The study is a “wake up call to the fact that hurricane seasons have changed and will continue to change,” said Reed. More warming means more rainfall. That, he added, is important when planners consider making improvements to infrastructure and providing natural barriers to flooding.
While 10 percent may not seem like an enormous amount of rain on a day of light drizzle and small puddles, it represents significant rain amid torrential downpours. That much additional rain can be half an inch or more of rain, said Reed. Much of the year, Long Island may not get half an inch a day, on top of an already extreme event, he added.
“It could be the difference between certain infrastructure failing, a basement flooding” and other water-generated problems, he said. The range of increased rain during hurricanes in 2020 due to global warming were as low as 5 percent and as high as 15 percent.
While policy makers have been urging countries to reach the Paris Climate Accord’s goal of limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius above the temperature from 1850, the pre-Industrial Revolution, studies like this suggest that the world such as it is today has already experienced the effects of warming.
“This is another data point for understanding that climate change is a not only a challenge for the future,” Reed said. It’s not this “end of the century problem that we have time to figure out. The Earth has already warmed by over 1 degrees” which is changing the hurricane season and is also impacting other severe weather events, like the heatwave in the Pacific Northwest in 2021. That heatwave killed over 100 people in the state of Washington.
Even being successful in limiting the increase to 2 degrees will create further increases in rainfall from hurricanes, Reed added. As with any global warming research, this study may also get pushback from groups skeptical of the impact of fossil fuel use and more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Reed contends that this research is one of numerous studies that have come to similar conclusions about the impact of climate change on weather patterns, including hurricanes.
“Researchers from around the world are finding similar signals,” Reed said. “This is one example that is consistent with dozens of other work that has found similar results.”
Amid more warming, hurricane seasons have already changed, which is a trend that will continue, he predicted.
Even on a shorter-term scale, Hurricane Sandy, which devastated the Northeast with heavy rain, wind and flooding, would likely have had more rainfall if the same conditions existed just eight years later, Reed added.
Reed was pleased that Nature Communications shared the paper with its diverse scientific and public policy audience.
“The general community feels like this type of research is important enough to a broad set of [society]” to appear in a high-profile journal, he said. “This shows, to some extent, the fact that the community and society at large [appreciates] that trying to understand the impact of climate change on our weather is important well beyond the domain of scientists like myself, who focus on hurricanes.”
Indeed, this kind of analysis and modeling could and should inform public policy that affects planning for the growth and resilience of infrastructure.
Study origins
The researchers involved in this study decided to compare how the 2020 season would have looked during cooler temperatures fairly quickly after the season ended.
The 2020 season was the most active on record, with 30 named storms generating heavy rains, storm surges and winds. The total damage from those storms was estimated at about $40 billion.
While the global surface temperature has increased 1 degree Celsius since 1850, sea surface temperatures in the North Atlantic basin have risen 0.4 to 0.9 degrees Celsius during the 2020 season.
Reed and his co-authors took some time to discuss the best analysis to use. It took them about four months to put the data together and run over 2,500 model simulations.
“This is a much more computationally intensive project than previous work,” Reed said. The most important variables that the scientists altered were temperature and moisture.
As for the next steps, Reed said he would continue to refine the methodology to explore other impacts of climate change on the intensity of storms, their trajectory, and their speed.
Reed suggested considering the 10 percent increase in rain caused by global warming during hurricanes through another perspective. “If you walked into your boss’s office tomorrow and your boss said, ‘I want to give you a 10 percent raise,’ you’d be ecstatic,” he said. “That’s a significant amount.”
Ecstatic, however, isn’t how commuters, homeowners, and business leaders feel when more even more rain comes amid a soaking storm.
As climate events continue to cause substantial widespread loss, damage, and financial costs that fall heavier on developing nations, a new commentary in the inaugural issue of PLOS Climate by two researchers, including Stony Brook University’s Professor Kevin A. Reed, calls for developed nations to direct resources toward operationalizing extreme weather events and impact attribution. While this kind of attribution technology is commonplace in the research community, if used by governments it could play a vital role in improving the global response to climate change by making that response more equitable and effective.
Authors Reed and Michael F. Wehner at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, point out the costs of extreme weather over the past 50 years are unevenly distributed across the world. Generally, the most financially expensive weather events have been hurricanes in the U.S., but the deadliest events are droughts and floods in developing nations.
“Our idea is to help guide and push operational centers and governments to use attribution technology to better quantify losses and damage due to climate change, so that the developed world can be better responsive to losses and damages in the developing world,” says Reed, Associate Professor and Associate Dean of Research at the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences (SoMAS).
The authors urge that extreme weather event attribution – science that quantifies the influence of anthropogenic climate change on specific individual events – can indeed play a significant role in quantifying loss and damage. They cite two examples in Hurricane Harvey in 2017 and a series of global heat waves over more than 25 years.
“While there has been much discussion about operationalizing extreme weather event attribution, none such exists today,” they write. “Rather attribution statements are performed by a myriad of academic-minded groups, mostly as research projects.”
They add that the credibility of extreme weather event attribution statements has been demonstrated for a wide variety of impactful events, and that observational, computational and statistical tools are readily available.
“Thus, we call on the funding agencies of developed nations to direct resources to their weather forecast services to begin to operationalize extreme weather event and impact attribution.”
Climate change is the most pressing issue of our time. Stony Brook University is honored to be a finalist for the historic Governors Island Center for Climate Solutions. Stony Brook University is under consideration by the City of New York and the Trust for Governors Island to become the anchor institution that will reimagine Governors Island, creating a global hub for climate science research and innovation.
If selected from among three other institutions, Stony Brook University will build the New York Climate Exchange — an ambitious new marketplace for investment and collaboration around solving the climate crisis. Featuring an innovative campus dedicated to sustainability and climate justice, the Exchange will generate transformative environmental, economic, technical, and social solutions without leaving any community behind.
“We are extremely excited to continue to be in the running for tackling one of the most urgent causes of our time, the climate crisis. We thank the Trust for Governors Island for recognizing Stony Brook University as a finalist,” said Stony Brook University President Maurie McInnis. “Looking forward, we hope to be able to put our longstanding commitment, expertise, strength and unparalleled research capabilities to work to benefit our community, our region, our country and our planet through Governors Island’s transformational initiative … The New York Climate Exchange.”
Key elements of The New York Climate Exchange include:
An engaging and interactive living laboratory with 335,000 square feet of green designed building space, including research labs, classroom space, exhibits, greenhouses, mitigation technologies, and housing facilities.
A Research and Technology Accelerator that will source and nurture ideas, projects, and new ventures dedicated to solving the climate crisis.
Green jobs training, doubling the number of green job trainees from 16,000 to 32,000 within ten years.
Partnerships and collaborative grant opportunities with community-based organizations already working to mitigate the impacts of climate change.
A Citizens Advisory Council, composed of key local stakeholders to ensure that partners’ and neighbors’ voices are heard and amplified as we jointly develop and implement new climate solutions, including those of low-income communities of color.
A self-sufficient community that goes “beyond zero” toward net positive sustainability.
Academic programs that prepare students at every level for careers focused on climate change solutions and environmental justice with hands-on learning, including a semester “abroad” on Governors Island, fellowship and internship programs, and continuing education.
Stony Brook University is the leading public research university in the greater NYC area, and a proud member of the SUNY system. Its areas of foremost academic distinction include its School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, College of Arts and Sciences, and the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science. Alongside Stony Brook University, the New York Climate Exchange’s founding partners include Brookhaven National Laboratory, University of Oxford, and University of Washington. Additional academic partners include Columbia University, Stanford University, Yale University, University of Tokyo, SUNY Maritime College, and Rochester Institute of Technology.
Stony Brook has invested in partnerships with more than 20 local organizations and unions including We Act for Environmental Justice, Good Old Lower East Side, 32BJ, New York City Employment and Training Coalition, the Urban Assembly New York Harbor School, the Museum of the City of New York, and more. A full list of current partners can be found on the Governors Island website.
Carbon emissions affect the planet significantly, causing global warming and ultimately climate change. This warming causes extreme weather events like tropical storms, wildfires, severe droughts, melting of the polar ice caps, heat waves, rising sea levels and the disturbance of animals’ natural habitat.
Greenhouse gases, including the carbon-containing gases carbon dioxide and methane, are emitted through the burning of fossil fuels, land clearance and the production and consumption of food, manufactured goods, materials, wood, roads, buildings, transportation and other services.
We all want a healthier planet, a place that will continue on for generations to come. You may wonder how you can make a difference in view of the enormity of the problem. The amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere because of our own individual energy needs is called our “carbon footprint.” It is our personal impact on the environment.
Did you know that the U.N. has found that 2/3 of all greenhouse gases originate from decisions made on the household level? Our decisions can help to rapidly transform our economies and lifestyles off fossil fuels and on to clean and green. Learn how your actions matter in ways to cut emissions, address equity issues and protect and restore ecosystems.
Change can become easier when individuals or small groups of people concentrate on their own personal change and share their ideas and accomplishments with others. Look at the success of the Carbon CREW project developed by Drawdown East End and supported by the League of Women Voters. The Carbon CREW Project brings together small teams of climate-friendly folks to plan, proclaim and live a 50% carbon reduction lifestyle! CREW represents both the team approach and is the acronym for Carbon Reduction for Earth Wellbeing.
Using 2040: A Handbook for the Regeneration by Damon Gameau, based on Project Drawdown https://drawdown.org/, guides lead participants in creating Personal Carbon Action Plans and in replicating the CREW strategy for exponential growth, peer to peer accountability and overall 50% carbon reduction by 2030. When the CREW sessions are over, groups stay in touch to confirm progress and provide ongoing support.
Despite our best intentions and our most persuasive approaches a person will not change just because we say they should. The only thing we can change is how we connect and relate to other people. This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t offer help, guidance, or opinion when asked to. So, if you are finding changing other people difficult, shift your focus to changing you. You can do your part to reverse global warming.
Start by finding out your personal impact on the environment by checking your Carbon Footprint on this website: https://www3.epa.gov/carbon-footprint-calculator/.The calculator estimates your footprint in three areas: home energy, transportation and waste. Everyone’s carbon footprint is different depending on their location, habits, and personal choices.
Develop a Personal Carbon Action Plan which acknowledges all the good earth saving things you already do. Decide what changes you can make now. Set long term goals such as the purchase of a Hybrid or electric vehicle or solar panels.
Here are some things you can do immediately to lower your carbon footprint and change your impact on the environment.
1. Use cold water for laundry, make your own fabric softener, purchase detergent sheets instead of products in bulky non-recyclable containers, air dry clothes whenever possible
2. Stop buying single use plastic products.
3. Always use a re-usable bag when shopping.
4. Schedule your thermostat.
5. Become aware of how often you use your car — combine trips.
6. Learn to compost or join a community composting group.
7. Join a Carbon CREW in your area.
8. Support and become active in environmental groups in your area.
9. Turn each new positive change into automatic good habits and share your success with everyone you know.
Susan Wilson is president of the League of Women Voters of the Hamptons, Shelter Island and the North Fork and representative to the board of the League of Women Voters of Suffolk County, a nonprofit nonpartisan organization that encourages the informed and active participation of citizens in government and influences public policy through education and advocacy. Visit www.lwv-suffolkcounty.org or call 631-862-6860.
Three long-finned pilot whales. Photo by Andrew Sutton/ Shutterstock
From left, Lesley Thorne, Eleanor Heywood and Julia Stepanuk. Photo by Julia Stepanuk
Lesley Thorne on a research ship in the Antarctic. Photo from Lesley Thorne
Lesley Thorne in the Antarctic. Photo from Lesley Thorne
Lesley Thorne with black-browed albatross in the Falkland Islands. Photo from Lesley Thorne
By Daniel Dunaief
Long-finned pilot whales can’t stand the heat, so they are heading north.
Amid increases in ocean temperatures caused by global warming, long-finned pilot whales have moved the center of their range to the north, according to a 25-year study Lesley Thorne, Assistant Professor in the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences at Stony Brook University and Janet Nye, Associate Professor at the University of North Carolina Institute of Marine Sciences and Adjunct Professor of SoMAS, recently published in the journal Scientific Reports.
What’s more, these whales are swimming farther north despite the fact that some of their prey, including fish and invertebrates such as squid, aren’t shifting as far north, while others are moving into deeper offshore waters.
That could have broad ecological consequences for both regions, as whales may head towards areas to compete against other predators for the same prey, while some fish populations in deeper waters offshore may increase, putting pressure on the creatures that live in those areas.
“We know that different species are responding in different ways to climate change,” Thorne said. “That will impact all the dynamics” including food webs and competition.
Climate change may change the predator-prey dynamics in unexpected ways, Nye explained in an email. “We know that it would be wrong to assume that all species would shift at the same rate in response to changing environmental patterns, but this is one of a growing number of papers to illustrate that the rate at which individual species” in different feeding groups changes can be different, which alters the way ecosystems function.
Nye explained that researchers don’t yet have a good sense of how such mismatches would affect productivity of fisheries or the ecosystem as a whole, but they are “working on answering those questions with food web models and climate models.”
To be sure, Thorne indicated that the researchers would need considerably more data to validate any ecological conclusions, as they only looked at one species of whale and four main prey species.
“Understanding the specifics of the broader implications for a location would require looking at a range of important predator and prey species and assessing how the strength of interactions” might be affected by their responses to climate change, she said.
According to Thorne, this study and others suggested that species characteristics such as body size, mobility, thermoregulatory strategy and longitudinal range, in addition to the speed of change in the climate, can help predict the responses of marine species to climate change.
Whales such as the long-finned pilot whale examined in this study are challenging to observe because they have wide geographic ranges, could be difficult to track, and spend most of their time underwater, where they are difficult to see or track.
Additionally, even people with considerable maritime experience sometimes have difficulty differentiating between the long finned pilot whale and the short finned pilot whale, which are different species.
To address the central range of these long-finned pilot whales, Thorne and Nye used two data points: strandings, when whales strand on land, and bycatches, when people catching other fish with bottom trawls also bring up these whales in their nets.
Bycatches occur in part because pilot whales and other cetaceans depredate fishing gear, removing fish from fishing lines or trawls, which presents an easier meal than searching for food themselves. These whales, however, sometimes get caught in the nets themselves.
People in the fisheries business sometimes use acoustic deterrents to keep the whales away. These efforts, however, can backfire, as the whales hear these sounds as something akin to a dinner bell and head for nets that could inadvertently trap them.
Strandings data is useful for looking at trends in the distribution of cetaceans because networks provide standardized observations throughout the coastline, dating back for decades.
Thorne is in the process of looking at strandings data more broadly. Her team is also looking at strandings of odontocete, or toothed whale, species along the east coast of the United States more broadly. She will also examine whether short-finned pilot whales, which are adapted to warmer waters, show similar trends.
“We are already examining the strandings data and testing our hypothesis that fish species may be shifting both horizontally (latitudinally or north-south) and/or shifting vertically (in depth),” Nye wrote. “I suspect that are doing a bit of both.”
Strandings represented about two thirds of the data in this study, while bycatch constituted the rest.
The shift in the central range represents a fairly dramatic geographic change in the center of the whale range and was considerably higher than that observed for their prey species.
Nye, who worked at Stony Brook from 2012 to 2020, said she was “shocked” that pilot whales were shifting much faster than the fish species, mostly because she knows how much the distribution of many species has changed over the last half century in the northeastern United States.
Whales are heading in the opposite direction that Thorne took in her career path. Thorne grew up in Kingston, Ontario and did her undergraduate work at the University of Guelph. She earned her PhD from Duke University and started as a lecturer at Stony Brook and was offered a tenure track position three years later.
During college. Thorne spent three years at the Huntsman Marine Science Center on the Bay of Fundy. Seeing the impact of the tides in the bay and taking field courses was “amazing,” she said. She first started working with whales at a research station on Grand Manan Island in the Bay of Fundy in future years.
Married to Bernd Distler, who is a surface materials engineer, Thorne and her husband have a four-year- old daughter Annika and two-year- old daughter Franka.
As for what her work tells her about the changing world, Thorne said it was sobering to see first hand the rapid changes in temperature occurring in the Northeast and, specifically, in New York.
This kind of study, along with others that highlight the increases in temperature, should be “more than enough information” to encourage action, she said.
'Prospect Park Red Oak After Sandy' by Kathy Levine
'Homaridae' by Pam Brown
'Rift' by Kathy Levine
'There's No Place Like Home' by Pam Brown
'Willow Weep for Me' by Kathy Levine
By Melissa Arnold
As global temperatures continue to climb, we are unfortunately subject to more natural disasters, lack of resources, and personal discomfort. It’s a harsh reality, but it can be hard for some people to grasp.
The Smithtown Township Arts Council (STAC) is tackling the issue of climate change with a dynamic and colorful exhibit called “On the Edge” at the Mills Pond Gallery in Saint James.
Beginning Nov. 6 and running through Dec. 19, “On the Edge” will feature more than 50 works from environmental artists Pam Brown and Kathy Levine. The exhibit is part of a deeper exploration of environmental concerns through the lens of art.
“For a while now I’ve been wanting to dedicate a year to the issue of climate change and what can be done about it. We read about it and are touched by it every day, but I thought we could explore this issue through art and the beauty of our natural world,” said Allison Cruz, executive director of STAC.
Cruz met Stony Brook-based artist Pam Brown years ago through the local art community, and since then, Brown has served as a juror for several STAC exhibits. Prior to the pandemic, Brown suggested she could put together an environmental-themed exhibit with Levine, her longtime friend and colleague from New York City.
“Pam’s environmental work makes me think, and it touches my heart. I love the choices she makes,” Cruz said. “I was so excited to see this idea take shape and to meet Kathy. When I saw [Kathy’s] passion for connecting people to the environment and the way she salvages material to create beautiful art, I was hooked.”
Brown, who focuses on sculpture, said that she spent much of her childhood exploring the woods around her home.
“The environment has always been a topic of interest for me, and art is a barometer for what is happening in the world,” she said. “It’s hard not to be connected to the environment, and it’s a tragedy to see the loss of beauty.”
Brown works with salvaged material that she says has its own story to tell. Everything is made of sheet metal or sheet copper, then hand cut with scissors or shears, stitched, soldered and welded together.
One of her works included in the exhibit is “A Place Called Home,” which depicts a bird inside of a hanging basket on a branch.
“The bird is calling out, looking for a new place to call home. In the same way, populations around the world are being forced to relocate because of climate changes and disasters in their places of origin,” Brown explained.
Levine is originally from Queens, but had the unique opportunity to grow up in Spain and England, where she was constantly immersed in natural beauty.
At the same time, she was impacted by the energy crisis of the 1970s. Her electricity was cut in the evenings, leaving her to do homework by candlelight.
“I saw the way humans were able to work in harmony with the natural world and have the potential to make it even better,” she recalled, “But I also began to learn just how fragile our connection to the natural world can be, and that our impact can be positive or negative.”
Levine is a mixed media artist, including painting, photography and recycled materials in her work, to name a few. She also makes recycled paper casts of natural objects including leaves and bark, and uses a water-based method of photo transfer.
One of Levine’s pieces, “Rift,” is a cast paper cross-section of a tree that’s split in half. One half depicts the urban sights of New York, while the other side shows a woodsy and natural scene.
“This kind of work fascinates me. It’s the one thing I feel like I could never get tired of,” Levine said. “It’s inexpensive and tactile, flexible and light, as opposed to other methods of sculpture.”
While the exhibit will showcase the beauty of our world, Cruz, Brown and Levine all hope that it will inspire viewers to become more active in preventing climate change.
“It can be overwhelming to consider just how large the issue of climate change is, but it’s small changes in your own family that make a big difference, like recycling, composting and using reusable materials as much as possible,” Brown said.
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The Mills Pond Gallery, 660 Route 25A, Saint James will present “On the Edge” from Nov. 6 through Dec. 19. The public is invited to an opening reception on Nov. 6 from 2 to 5 p.m. Meet the artists and enjoy an Art Talk presented by the Artists and Environmental Art Activists at 3 pm. Masks are required for unvaccinated individuals and optional for those who are vaccinated.
Gallery hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday through Friday, and noon to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Admission is free. Please use the rear parking lot off of Mills Pond Road. For more information, call 631-862-6575 or visit www.millspondgallery.org.
Authors Reed and Michael F. Wehner at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, point out the costs of extreme weather over the past 50 years are unevenly distributed across the world. Generally, the most financially expensive weather events have been hurricanes in the U.S., but the deadliest events are droughts and floods in developing nations.
Here are some things you can do immediately to lower your carbon footprint and change your impact on the environment.
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