Green Section - Networking Magazine

ADVISORY COMMITTEE
HON. STEVE BELLONE
Suffolk County Executive
HON. EDWARD MANGANO
Nassau County Executive
HON. STEVE ISRAEL
U.S. Congress
HON. KENNETH LAVALLE
NYS Senator
JOHN D. CAMERON, JR., P.E.
Managing Partner
Cameron Engineering & Assoc., LLP
ROBERT CATELL
Chairman
Advanced Energy Research and
Technology Center
BILL CHALEFF
Chaleff and Rogers Architects
NANCY RAUCH DOUZINAS
NETWORKING
®
MAGAZINE
2020:
GUIDE TO
GOING GREEN
President, Rauch Foundation
PETER ELKOWITZ
President, CEO
LI Housing Partnership
“ There is no doubt that a few committed people can
AMY ENGEL
change the world. In fact, it is the only
thing that ever has.”
Executive Director
Sustainable Long Island
ROZ GOLDMACHER
President, CEO
Long Island Development
Corporation
— Margaret Mead
AMY HAGEDORN
Board Member, co-founder
Sustainable Long Island
JOHN v. H. HALSEY
President, Peconic Land Trust
SARAH LANSDALE
Director, Division of Planning,
Environment; Dept. of Economic
Development & Planning,
Suffolk County
NEAL LEWIS, ESQ.
Executive Director
The Sustainability Institute
at Molloy College
EDWINA VON GAL
President and Founder,
Perfect Earth Project
DAVID MANNING
Director, Stakeholder and
Community Relations Officer,
Brookhaven National Laboratory
®
22 NETWORKING November/December 2015
KEVIN MCDONALD
Conservation Finance
and Policy Director
The Nature Conservancy, LI chapter
MITCHELL H. PALLY
Chief Executive Officer
Long Island Builders Institute
GORDIAN RAACKE
Executive Director, RELI
PAUL TONNA
Executive Director
Energeia Partnership, Molloy College
MICHAEL E. WHITE
Member of LI Commission for Aquafer
Protection and member of Board of
Governors for NYS SeaGrant
“So many people think that you can't have a lush green lawn
without lavish applications of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. Few
realize how dangerous exposure to these lawn and landscape chemicals
can be, especially to pets and children. Pesticides are linked to asthma,
autism, and cancers*. Plus they destroy biodiversity and pollute our
recreational and drinking waters.
The Perfect Earth Project is dedicated to raising consciousness
about the dangers of landscape toxins, and providing information
about how to do perfectly well without them, at no extra cost. Protect
your family and pets, and help the environment: Visit
www.perfectearthproject.org."
* http://www.beyondpesticides.org/health/pid-database.pdf
Perfect Earth Project:
From Panama to East Hampton
PHOTOS COURTESY OF EDWINA VON GAL
BY KARL GROSSMAN
W
ith roots in Panama, the Perfect Earth Project, based on Long Island,
seeks to promote safe, green ways of living with the land. As it
declares on its website: “The Perfect Earth Project promotes toxin-free
land management for the benefit of human health and the environment. We help
people understand the dangers of synthetic lawn and landscape chemicals,
especially for children and pets.”
Further, “we educate homeowners and landscape professionals on how to
use” what the group terms “PRFCT [perfect without the e’s] practices to achieve
great results, at no additional cost.”
The Perfect Earth Project is headed by Edwina von Gal, a renowned
landscape designer whose firm was long based in New York City, while Ms. von
Gal has also spent many years living on Long Island’s East End.
It got its start when she went to Panama in 2002 to design a park for Panama’s
BioMuseo. The Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute had a key role in creating
it as a museum
celebrating the
biodiversity of
Panama. Ms. von
Gal’s landscape
design
complemented the
architecture of the
museum which,
notes the
Smithsonian
Institute’s website,
features “scarlet,
blue and yellow
cantilevered roofs
like wings of a scarlet macaw.”
Ms. von Gal says in working with Smithsonian
scientists she became “totally immersed” in
environmental issues in Panama. She felt that it was
“the right place to pursue reforestation and alternative
land management concepts which did
not include chemicals…The cost
of chemicals was becoming prohibitive
for people in Panama. Insects were
becoming resistant to the chemical
pesticides that were being used, land
was being destroyed and peoples’ health
affected.” In this “very biodiverse and
very degraded place,” Ms. von Gal
bought a home and land and began
projects to help bring about green
practices.
Meanwhile, she thought about a
similar focus back home in the United
States. That
vision
crystalized —
“hit me,” she
recalls — in, of
all places,“my
dentist’s office.”
She was
Edwina and Outreach and
undergoing root
Education Director Sean O'Neill
canal treatment
at the
Southampton office of oral surgeon Dr. Robert Iovino. “He
is well-represented in my mouth,” jokes Ms. von Gal.
As she sat in the dentist’s chair, “Dr. Iovino said, ‘By the
way, I have a piece of land near the water and I’m concerned
about the amount of chemicals I’m putting on the land. He
knew about my being a landscape designer.” She provided
Dr. Iovino with information and from that encounter
ultimately grew the founding in 2013 of the non-profit
Perfect Earth Project in Springs in East Hampton.
She and her staff are committed to educating people about
and promoting poison-free growing practices. The website
of the Perfect Earth Project—
https://perfectearthproject.org/— is loaded with hard facts
and highly helpful recommendations.
For example, there’s the page headed: “Soft, lush, gorgeously green. Perfect for a
game, a picnic, or a nap. How perfect? Perfectly toxic.” The text states: “America’s
40 million acres of lawns are doused with approximately 250 million pounds of
pesticides yearly. Landscape pesticides can cause cancer, Parkinson’s disease,
nervous disorders, asthma and hormone disruption. The chemical lawn is especially
harmful to children and pets and anyone who sits, play, entertains, or occasionally
nibbles on it. And, get this, lawn chemicals are totally unnecessary.”
That is a central emphasis of Ms. von Gal and the Perfect Earth Project—that the
chemicals being dumped on the land in massive amounts are just not needed. “The
notion that you can’t have a lawn without chemicals is completely not true,” she
stresses. “You can have a better-looking landscape without them.”
Suggested are various alternatives to toxic pesticides. As to lawn fertilizers—
major contributors of nitrates to Long Island waterways and resulting problems
including brown and red tides—it counsels the use of far less and these slow-release
organic fertilizers. There is advice to water heavily but not often, letting grass grow
three-and-a-half to four inches to develop longer roots, and recommendations on a
myriad of other subjects.
Not just on its website, the Perfect Earth Project does educational outreach which
includes working with the Peconic Land Trust and Cornell Cooperative Extension
of Suffolk County, for which it has written a manual.
Members of its board of advisors include Stephen Pacala, professor of ecology at
Princeton; Scott Muri, curator of botany at New York Botanical Garden; artist and
architect Maya Lin; noted ornithologist Robert Ridgeley, honorary president of the
World Land Trust-US; trend expert Faith Popcorn; and Dr. Philip Landrigan,
director of the Children’s Environmental Health Project at Mt. Sinai Hospital in
Manhattan.
Ms. von Gal believes that Long Island can be a “model” of practices in harmony
with nature—for the United States and “everywhere.” ■
“We help people understand the
dangers of synthetic lawn and
landscape chemicals, especially
for children
and pets.”
®
NETWORKING November/December 2015 23
Edwina von Gal’s toxin-free property in East Hampton
Karl Grossman is an author, professor of journalism at the State University of New York/College at
Old Westbury, hosts the nationally-aired television program, “Enviro Close-Up” produced by EnviroVideo (www.envirovideo.com), and is chief investigative reporter, WVVH-TV on Long Island.
GREEN
THOUGHTS
COMPILED BY
SALLY GILHOOLEY
I
n October, United Way of Long Island
became the Grand Award Winner for
innovation in affordable homes at the
U.S. Department of Energy 2015 Housing
Innovation Awards to industry leaders at
the Energy and Environmental Building
Alliance's Conference in Denver, Colorado.
This distinguished recognition was
provided to 27 winning DOE Zero Energy
Ready Homes, where the awards
showcase the very best in business
excellence required to deliver highperformance homes. The homes in this
category represent one of the most
important goals - making high
performance homes affordable for
households below an area's median
income. See all the winners at
ENERGY.GOV
T
he Energy Department has
announced the results of a major
national evaluation during a typical
year in the State Energy Program (SEP)
operations, as well as during the American
Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA)
period. The results reaffirm the
Department's long-standing commitment
to drive economic development and
reduce carbon emissions at the state level.
SEP operates under the Energy
Department's Office of Energy Efficiency
and Renewable Energy. The program
provides grants and technical assistance to
states and territories to support a wide
variety of energy efficiency and renewable
energy activities. Read about key findings
at ENERGY.GOV
N
24 NETWORKING® November/December 2015
ew Mexico has abundant fossil
fuel resources: in 2013, it ranked
sixth in the nation for crude oil
production, seventh for natural gas and
twelfth for coal. It also has some of the
best solar and wind energy resources in
the United States. The state has developed
policies, programs and financial incentives
including a state-level renewable energy
production tax credit. These policies have
attracted millions of private and federal
dollars, generated construction and
manufacturing jobs, and boosted state
revenues from land leases for renewable
energy projects. More at ENERGY.GOV
P
roduction tax credits (PTCs) give
investors an incentive to build or
finance renewable energy projects.
They typically are offered for a fixed
period to help new industries scale up.
Unlike investment tax credits which
reward investors for building a project and
typically are paid up-front when the
project is put into service, PTCs are paid
over time and are based on the amount of
electricity generated. See more at
renewableenergyworld.com
S
olar installations are on track to grow
between 25 and 30% in 2015 over
2014 according to Mercom Capital
Group. With a strong pipeline of projects,
the U.S. market is headed for a robust 15
months of installations before the
investment tax credit drops from 30 percent to
10 percent at the end of 2016. See more at
RenewableEnergyWorld.com ■
Scientists worry that the wondrous spectacle of humpback whales breaching in the Gulf of Alaska might become more infrequent.
PHOTO GREGORY “SLOBIRDR” SMITH, FLICKRCC
What’s behind whales dying in
the Gulf of Alaska?
O
some disparate samples of phytoplankton in the
ver the past four months, 33 large whales
Gulf of Alaska that they determined could possibly
have been reported dead in the Western
produce biotoxins, there is no conclusive data
Gulf of Alaska, which encompasses the
currently associating the whale deaths to HAB, and
areas around Kodiak Island, Afognak Island,
the fin whale sample tested negative for HAB
Chirikof Island, the Semidi Islands and the
biotoxins.
southern shoreline of the Alaska Peninsula. The
“Even though the one sample we tested was
significant die-off of whales has been declared an
negative, it was not the most appropriate sample to
Unusual Mortality Event (UME) by the National
collect and test for biotoxins. We can’t rule it out
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA),
based on the results we have right now,” Rowles
marking the first large whale UME ever in Alaska.
adds. “It’s my understanding that sea surface water
The majority of the deceased humpback, fin and
and air temperatures in the Gulf of Alaska have
gray whales have been found moderately to
been high, and that always concerns us because that
severely decomposed and scientists have only been
means there’s probably a change in overall
able to obtain samples thus far from one fin whale.
pathogen exposure—
Alaskan citizens have
The significant die-off of whales has possibly HABs and
been instructed to call
other factors.”
the Alaska Marine
been declared an Unusual Mortality
Claims that the
Mammal Stranding
UME is linked to the
Network hotline
Event (UME) by
Fukushima nuclear
immediately if a
reactor meltdown or
stranded or dead whale
the National Oceanic and
the Navy-led
is spotted to ensure the
Atmospheric
Administration
“Northern Edge”
fastest response possible
military training
by trained experts.
(NOAA), marking the first large
exercises conducted in
“Large whale UMEs
the Gulf of Alaska this
are the most difficult
whale UME ever in Alaska.
past June have been
UMEs to deal with,
dismissed due to lack
principally because the
of evidence. Muscle tissue from the fin whale
animals are floating and rarely beached and we
sampled was sent to the University of Alaska
have a difficult time getting to the carcasses to
Fairbanks for cesium analysis, and the preliminary
actually examine them,” says Dr. Teri Rowles,
results did not suggest any unusual exposure to
Coordinator of the NOAA Fisheries Marine
manmade radiation. As the investigation continues,
Mammal Health and Stranding Program. “The most
NOAA will be publishing updated information
critical thing for this UME, given it is large whales,
pertaining to the UME on their website as it
is our ability to get to the animals, document them,
becomes available; however, the investigation could
and if possible perform sample collections either at
take months or even years to complete.
sea or on the beach if they are stranded. It is critical
“It takes a fair amount of time to pull data
that the public and mariners report large whale
together even if the event is over, and a lot of
mortalities or animals that they see in distress as
deliberation and analyses have to happen in order
soon as possible so that the Network can either
to determine what’s going on,” Rowles added. “It
document, access or track the carcasses.”
could be quite a period of time before we actually
Exposure to harmful algae blooms (HAB) is
have an answer, if indeed we end up with a
NOAA’s leading theory for the cause of the surge in
definitive answer for this UME.” ■
whale deaths. While the organization has collected
EarthTalk® is written and edited by Roddy Scheer and Doug Moss and is a registered trademark of E- The Environmental
Magazine (www.emagazine.com. Send questions to: [email protected])
CEWIT 2015 Conference & Expo
PHOTOS BY MIRANDA GATEWOOD
T
he Center of Excellence in Wireless and Information Technology’s 12th
annual international conference – CEWIT2015, was held at the Melville
Marriott. It billed itself as “New York’s premier IT conference and
international forum on emerging technologies for a smarter world.” For two days,
scientists, academicians, inventors, corporate executives and investors from around
the globe met and conferred on emerging technologies in healthcare, infrastructure
and energy through a series of workshops, discussion groups and networking
sessions designed to foster a smarter global environment.
Satya Sharma, director of the NYSTAR-funded center of excellence on the Stony
Brook University campus, noted ramped-up international presence scheduled for
CEWIT2015, with over a dozen companies from Israel slated to attend, joined by
“closer to 20” from South Korea. For more info, visit cewit.org ■
Russ Artzt, Founder, Digital Associates and Chairman of the
Board, CA Technologies, Harry L. Leider, MD, MBA, Chief
Medical Officer and Group Vice President, Walgreens, with
Dr. Satya Sharma, Executive Director, CEWIT
John Gee, Univ. Relations, Div. of Science, Technology and
Innovation, Empire State Development, Michael Faltischek,
Partner, Ruskin Moscou Faltischek, P.C., and Dr. Yacov Shamash,
Vice President for Economic Development, Stony Brook University
Dr. Arie E. Kaufman, Chief Scientist, CEWIT
with Amitabh Varshney, Director and Professor of
Computer Science, University of Maryland
Dr. Andreas Timm-Giel, Professor and Vice President Research,
TUHH (Technische Universitat Hamburg-Harburg) with Dr.
Samir R. Das, Director, Network Technologies, CEWIT
Dr. Schmuel Einav, CEWIT Conference Chair and Director of
Medical Technologies, CEWIT with Dr. Satya Sharma,
Executive Director, CEWIT
Bin Zhang, Associate Director of Computing Services,
CEWIT with Peter Goldsmith, President, LISTnet
(Long Island Software & Technology Network)
Dr. Lawrence Weber, Business Development Manager,
CEWIT with Frank Chau, Attorney at Law, F. Chau &
Associates, LLC Intellectual Property Law
Stony Brook University students Nancy Dhen, chemical engineering
major, Kelsey Price, mechanical engineering major and John Feinberg,
journalism major
Past Chairs of IEEE: Dave Mesecher, Engineering Fellow, Northrop
Grumman Corp. Aerospace Systems and current IEEE Aerospace & Electronic
System Chapter Chair; Dr. Susan Frank, and John Vodopia, Patent Attorney
NETWORKING® November/December 2015 25
Dr. Ann-Marie Scheidt,
Stony Brook University