2024 Earth Month was an awesome success! From walks around the neighborhood to clean ups across the village we had participation from people of all ages, getting dirty and exploring our wonderful spot on Earth. During April: 

• Hosted a Compost Giveback Day
• Started our Community Garden at the Paulding School
• Explored trails by the lakes and learned about native trees, invasive species, and some of Tarrytown’s history
• Cleaned up trash, debris and invasive vines across the village, parks, along the Hudson River, and in and around the Lakes
• Planted native seeds and gardens
• Hosted a Repair Cafe, helping community members fix household and personal items, and avoiding increased waste being sent to  the incinerator (aka waste-to-energy plant)
• Created a Save the Earth banner with children at the YMCA Healthy Kids Day/Duck Derby! (Visit our EARTH MONTH website to zoom in on the whole poster)

Five kayakers braved chilly and breezy conditions to conduct a cleanup of the Tarrytown Lakes shoreline on April 21. 

Besides detracting from the beauty of the lakes, discarded fishing line, hooks, and other angling debris pose a hazard to birds, fish, turtles and other wildlife, as do plastic bags and other refuse. 

The group collected 8-10 bags of non-recyclable and recyclable waste. The lakes are a terrific village resource. This cleanup and subsequent efforts will help ensure both human beings and wildlife can continue to fully enjoy them.
 

STUDENT ACTIVISM:
EARTH DAY CLEAN-UP AND ANTI-LITTER CAMPAIGN
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During April's Earth Month, the Hackley Lake Keepers led an anti-litter campaign on our campus in hopes to raise awareness and promote environmental stewardship within the community.

We posted anti-litter flyers throughout all divisions on campus, asked faculty to help spread the word, and to include us in school-wide communications.

In addition, we held our annual Earth Day spring cleanup on Sunday, April 21st, collecting 30 bags of trash with the help of volunteers from the community, Hackley students and faculty. We were glad to be able to make a direct positive impact on the environment!

HEARING FROM YOU:
VILLAGE CLIMATE ADAPTATION WORKSHOP
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The Village is hosting a Community Workshop this Thursday, May 16, from 6 to 8pm at the Warner Library to generate ideas about how the Village should be planning for the impacts of climate change in Tarrytown. 

Increasing extreme weather events, higher temperatures, and flooding affect the health and safety of our residents. We want to hear from members of the community about what the Village should be planning and doing in response. 

Last year, the Village participated in the Climate Adaptive Design Studio to re-imagine the Tarrytown waterfront in a changing climate. This Community Workshop casts a wider lens on how our Village can respond to changing hazards and will contribute to the development of an Adaptation Chapter in the Village’s Climate Action Plan. Please join us if you can, and share the opportunity widely with your networks. We hope to see you there!

ENERGY NOTES:
SOLAR, SEA-LEVEL RISE AND MORE
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By Dean Gallea, TEAC Energy Committee

Really small-scale solar, elsewhere - Recently, our friends Fred Mauhs and TEAC Member Cathy Ruhland traveled in Germany, and they report elsewhere in this newsletter on the prominence of rooftop solar they saw there. We should do more of that here! It’s a “no-brainer”, both for the environment and your own energy bottom-line. Payback from Federal and State incentives make the break-even less than 5 years, and the systems produce energy for decades.

Europeans have discovered that it takes very little investment to start offsetting their utility power usage, even if they live in an apartment or townhouse. Sprouting up all over are tiny “balcony solar” systems, costing about 500 Euro at local stores. They consist of one or two panels, about 3 to 4 feet wide, that you can place anywhere they get exposed to the sun, such as off a balcony railing or patio wall. They have a microinverter attached that changes the panel’s DC power to AC power, and a cord simply gets plugged into a nearby electrical outlet. The electricity produced, synchronized with the utility, flows INTO the outlet to offset some of the household’s power needs – up to 600 watts, about what a toaster, coffeemaker, or houseful of LED lights use. It’s inherently safe, because the “grid-tied” inverter shuts down if the utility power goes off, so workers can’t get “zapped”.

While you can get the components for a balcony-solar system by mail-order, they’re not sold as a system in the U.S., largely because of our archaic safety regulations, and reluctance of utilities to allow such ad-hoc power generators. Conceivably, you could produce more energy than you use at certain times. Older electric meters are not “smart” enough to record energy flowing out of your house separately from that flowing in, so it gets subtracted from your usage, lowering your bill. Con Ed, for one, wants to keep track of such extra production, so it’s disallowed unless you set up a “net-metering” account with them. If things change, allowing such self-installed solar systems, TEAC will certainly let you know!

Sea-level rise isn’t the same everywhere! – An article in the Washington Post describes how long-term sea-level rise, the result of global climate change, can actually vary from place to place as time progresses. That defies conventional “water seeks its own level” wisdom, but here’s why: Local weather conditions – aside from storm surges – can make the regional water levels go up. Ocean currents like the one that sweeps through the Gulf of Mexico and around Florida up the East Coast can make water “pile up”, much like what happens when you sweep your hand through a bathtub. Additionally, as water warms up, it expands, causing a rise in level before currents can carry the higher water away. Finally, sea-level rise is measured by instruments installed at points on the shoreline anchored into the earth, and in some places – especially on peninsulas and islands - the elevation of the land is actually dropping relative to the mean sea level and nearby land masses. All of this causes variations along the U.S. coast, and some alarming trends, like an inch every three years at Grand Isle, LA, and Galveston, TX, and an inch every 4 years at Windmill Point, VA. In the Metro NY area, we’re seeing about 1/8-inch per year currently, less than the rise at shorelines in New Jersey and Connecticut. But sea-level rise globally is accelerating, so we need to take measures to adapt to these changes. See the notice above about Tarrytown’s Climate Adaptation Workshop this Thursday, May 16, 7-8pm at the Warner Library.

IN THE GARDEN:
APRIL SHOWERS, MAY FLOWERS AND MOTHERS DAY
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By Rohit Sareen

For as long as I remember my mother has loved taking pictures of her standing next to flowers. There are countless photos of her with her beloved flowers. I get my passion for plants and love for flowers from her.  It’s only fitting that Mother’s Day comes in the middle of a time when our gardens are full of late spring and early summer flowers. 

May is the time that some of our beloved native flowers are finally starting to bloom. Here are a few of the May bloomers in our gardens as we pay homage to our moms and mother figures in our lives.  No garden?  No problem, these three can just as easily grow in large pots.

Eastern or red Columbine (Aquilegia canadensis) is a delicate herbaceous perennial.  There are a lot of different color cultivars out there but better to stick with the straight species that is red and yellow.  The tubular flowers attract hummingbirds, butterflies and bumblebees. The plant is deer resistant and easily self-seeds.  What’s not to love.

Phlox comes in many shapes and sizes and a must-have in every pollinator garden just for their sheer prolificity and longevity of the blooms.  Right next to where I have these unique purple-blue ground-cover type of Wild Blue Phlox (Phlox divaricata), I also have the 5-6’ tall Phlox paniculata which bloom later in June.  The tubular flowers are attractive to butterflies, moths and hummingbirds.  

And finally, one of my favorite host plants, Golden Alexander (Zizia aurea). Golden Alexander is an easy to grow perennial with cheery yellow flowers that is not only a pollinator favorite but also a host plant to the Black Swallowtail butterfly.  Over the last few years, I have raised many swallowtails from eggs that were laid on these plants. I have them in pots all around the house both in full-sun and part-sun. 


Phlox, Golden Alexander and Columbine in pots in front of my house. Next to the phlox is New Jersey Tea, a native shrub that blooms later in the summer

ROOFTOP SOLAR IN GERMANY

Our TarryHollow Repair Cafe on April 28 was a great collaboration. Thanks go to all our Repair Coaches and all the organizers, Suzie from RepairCafe Hudson Valley, Lindsey, Ariella, Gina and Lisa, to name a few. Here are a few photos by our student intern, followed by upcoming RC announcements.


    

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

IRVINGTON REPAIR CAFE - Saturday, June 1st, 11am-3pm, Irvington Public Library, 12 S Astor St, Irvington, NY

MAHOPAC REPAIR CAFE - Saturday, June 8th, 10:30am - 1:30pm, Mahopac Middle School, 425 Baldwin Place Rd, Mahopac, NY