This year for Earth Day celebrations, Little Gardens of Tarrytown  (LGTT) will be celebrating its 100th birthday on April 20th  in Neperan Park with cake and ice cream from 3 to 5 pm and a day of hands-on environmental activities open to all from 10 am to 1:30 pm.

Neperan Park is a beautiful two acre Village Park with stunning views of the Hudson which is currently  bordered by pollinator gardens along its perimeter. This was not always the case; thanks to the concerted efforts of dedicated residents and Village officials, the Park came to be in 1999 following 6 years of work. Slated for development, the green space that we enjoy today was made possible by Tarrytown’s “Open Space“ movement which entailed the Village negotiating with a developer who was willing to sell the parcel to the Village (ref. River Journal, Robert Bonvento). 

In 2008 LGTT focused on bringing sustainable beauty to the park with the planting of native plants. They were truly on the vanguard of the native plant movement, this was a time  when one rarely heard of pollinator gardens and the pollinator pathway had not yet been established.

Kim Waddell, LGTT’s president for the last 10 years, described how the Club became an innovator and staunch supporter of sustainable landscaping. At a monthly meeting in 2007 a speaker from Cornell Cooperative Extension, Barbara Fischer, spoke on the importance of restoring local ecosystems with native plants, Club members Carolyn Swenson and Maribeth Bishof were inspired to take immediate action and set about designing and orchestrating the planting of a sustainable native plant garden in Neperan Park

Club members worked diligently to raise funds for the garden’s creation and succeeded in obtaining a grant through The Principal Financial Group. Over the years, more grants were secured to expand around the southwest perimeter, namely from National Garden Clubs Plant for America and Ames for tools.

Acquiring grants in combination with the hiring of Anthony Ross, a landscape maintenance professional, as Village Parks Foreman, has propelled progress in the park. “Anthony's commitment to our projects has been a tremendous impetus to get things going," said Waddell.

Rotary grants over the years have allowed the gardens to expand, including a rain garden in a dipped part of the park.  Last year the Parks department collaborated with LGTT and TEAC to create a 1,400 sq ft native plant garden along the northwest side of the garden fully funded by the Village. Milkweed, anise hyssop, liatris, asters, goldenrod and a myriad of native plants sustain wildlife and provide natural beauty throughout the seasons in all of the Park’s gardens.

When asked what she considered the Club’s greatest accomplishments of late, Waddell stated that being an early adopter of sustainable landscaping practices and always focusing on what was most environmentally meaningful at the time, topped her list. Looking ahead, she hopes to engage youth groups to help ensure a sustainable future and acquire new members.

As we celebrate this Earth month, we look at past accomplishments while looking ahead to the future. There is a need for active and engaged volunteers to maintain what has been created and to forge ahead with new endeavors. It truly does take a Village to sustain our beautiful green spaces and work to ensure that they will be there in the future. The next time you stroll in the park enjoying the sound of birds, surrounded by the beauty of native trees, flowers and visiting pollinators, please be aware of the collective effort needed to create and preserve these precious green spaces. Whatever time that you can volunteer will make a big difference in ensuring that these tranquil spaces remain havens of beauty and biodiversity for years to come.

On Saturday, April 20, please join TEAC and LGTT in Neperan Park between 10am and 1:00 pm  to work on our pollinator gardens, remove invasive vines from Park trees and plant pollinator friendly seeds with your children to take home. Check the poster or link below for event details and info on other Earth Month happenings!

https://www.signupgenius.com/go/10C0C45A4AB22A2FCC61-48555445-earth#/

Energy Notes for April, 2024

By Dean Gallea, TEAC Energy Committee

Climate Action Plan for Tarrytown Village - The volunteer Task Force appointed to develop a Climate Action Plan for Tarrytown’s Municipal Operations will present a visual view of the draft plan at the public Board of Trustees meeting at Village Hall on Monday, April 15. This will illustrate the purpose and methodology used, and a number of proposed actions aimed at reducing the carbon footprint of the Village’s Operations going forward.

Decarbonizing Industry – The Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act continues to elicit benefits for our environment: “The U.S. Department of Energy today [3/26/24] announced it has selected 33 projects from more than 20 states that will be awarded up to $6 billion to jump-start the elimination of carbon dioxide emissions from industries that are hard to adapt to green technologies. The projects will match federal monies to invest more than $20 billion toward commercial-scale decarbonization solutions for cement and concrete, chemicals and refining, metals including iron and steel, pulp and paper mills, and so on. The projects are funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act, and will create tens of thousands of jobs. The Department of Energy estimates that the funded projects will cut carbon emissions by an average of 77%.” (Source: Heather Cox Richardson)

Charging Time – Those of us with plug-in cars have been able to take advantage of money-saving incentives – such as SmartCharge NY – to delay recharging until off-peak hours, during the night. Most EVs let the owner set their chargers to do just that. Supposedly, that’s when the load on the electric grid is lower, making it less likely that dirty, diesel- and gas-burning “peaker plant” generation would have to be started to keep up with power demands. But in regions where there’s a lot of renewable solar and wind energy – think California and the wide-open Midwestern states, as well as some European countries – a lot more of that green energy is produced during the daytime, including the traditional “peak hours”, than at night.

The result is that, sometimes, power drawn at night is coming from dirtier sources than during the day.

It’s likely that some of these charging-incentive programs will shift toward incentivizing charging during hours when there is actually excess green energy, which won’t necessarily be at night.

https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1142667_why-nighttime-ev-charging-incentivized-daytime-is-cleaner

Cleaner Big Rigs – A new EPA rule announced by the Biden administration could mean that one out of four tractor-trailers and 40% of smaller trucks will be non-polluting by 2032. The rule doesn’t mandate electric vehicles, but limits their emissions drastically-enough that diesel and gas engines will be phased out. The regulation will affect over 100 kinds of vehicles, including service vehicles like garbage trucks and ambulances. It will also reduce soot and other pollutants in areas near freight-truck routes. (Just rub your fingers on the surface of any house within a block of Broadway in Tarrytown if you want to see what’s in our air!)

This rule follows an earlier one that is designed to ensure that most new passenger cars and light trucks will be hybrid or EV by 2032, a strategy key to the U.S. confronting GHG’s effect on climate change.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/29/climate/epa-trucks-emissions-regulation.html 

King Coal No More – The last two coal-fired power plants in New England will close – one next year and the other in 2028 – ending the use of a fossil fuel that supplied electricity to the region for over 50 years This makes it the second region in the country, after the Pacific Northwest, to stop burning coal.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/28/climate/new-england-coal-plants.html 

New Jersey To Charge Chargers - To compensate for the lost “gas tax” that gasoline-car owners pay to support State highway maintenance, New Jersey is introducing an additional registration fee for Electric Vehicles. Starting July 1, EV buyers will pay an upfront fee of more than $1,000 on top of existing registration fees. The fee actually starts at $250/year, rising $10/year until it reaches $290, but EV buyers will be charged for four years at purchase. No doubt this will eat into EV sales, even though NJ has adopted the “California Mandate” for EVs to make up 50% of new car sales by 2027 and 100% of sales by 2035. In surveys, EV owners say they think the fees should be based on miles driven, rather than a fixed fee.

Spring Savings – Con Edison has increased their incentives on energy-saving upgrade products from local retailers, through the end of April. 

https://coned-findaretailer.icfsightline.com

REPAIR CAFES IN THE AREA
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TARRYHOLLOW REPAIR CAFE - Sunday, April 28, 10am-2pm, Sleepy Hollow Senior Center, 55 Elm St, Sleepy Hollow, NY

GREENBURGH REPAIR CAFE - Saturday, May 18, 11am-3pmTheodore D. Young Community Center, 32 Manhattan Avenue, White Plains, NY