After a several year hiatus, the county’s Green Committee, a subcommittee of the county legislature devoted to environmental issues, was reinstated May 23 with legislators Michael Eachus, Barry Cheney, Myrna Kemnitz and Leigh Benton, and Commissioner of Planning, David Church.
Its first incarnation was in 2007 as a Green Building Study Committee, which metamorphosed into the Energy and Conservation Committee in 2010, said Chairman Barry Cheney at the first meeting. In 2013 the members stopped meeting because “they just didn’t call for meetings anymore,” said Eachus, one of the legislators who had been pushing for it to come back.
Counting the accomplishments of the previous subcommittee, legislators said it was instrumental in requiring a LEED-certified architect to work on any new county buildings (LEED is an acronym for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), creating an anti-idling policy, and the Children’s Earth and Water Festival, which took place on June 4 this year.
In the first meeting Eachus, said he hoped it would be a “clearinghouse” for environmental issues and that more legislators and commissioners would be a part of it.
“There were more participants at the legislative level and at the commissioners level [last time]. I think that’s one of the reasons we were successful,” he said in a phone interview after the meeting. “We actually had more information right there at the tip of our fingers.”
Some ideas for projects were cutting down on the use of paper within county government, looking at the efficiency of the government center and other buildings the county owns, and assessing the benefits of single stream recycling.
Legislator Myrna Kemnitz suggested looking into upgrading a water filtration plant in her district that is unable to filter out salt that is leaking into the Ramapo River. The county gets good bond rates through U.S. Department of Energy for efficiency upgrades, and she wondered if the filtration plant met the criteria.
