• Held bi-weekly winter “Vine Squad” efforts to remove invasive vines on trails around the Lakes and in Wilson Park
• Participated in a series of Invasives Awareness workshops in collaboration with the Village, with support from Partnerships for Regional Invasive Species Management (PRISM)
• Planted and maintained public Pollinator Gardens and Planters in collaboration with Tarrytown Parks and DPW
• Held April Earth Month activities (all month long!) in collaboration with Sustainable Sleepy Hollow
• Hosted our annual Eco Fair in collaboration with The TaSH Farmers Market
• Hosted a Repair Cafe in collaboration with Sleepy Hollow and the Rivertowns Repair Cafe. TEAC's Co-Chair, Dean Gallea, participated as a "repair coach" at other Repair Cafes in Ossining, Hastings, Croton, Cortlandt and Irvington.
• Organized Waste Warriors at The TaSH Farmers Market to educate visitors about source separation of recyclables and compostables from trash
• Hosted Kayak to Nyack and Back, a group paddle across the Hudson in collaboration with Tarrytown's Recreation Dept and Harbor Master
• Maintained the Community Garden at John Paulding School, along with volunteer manager Kim
• Launched the Tarrytown Adopt-a-Spot Program in collaboration with the Village of Tarrytown
• Native Plant and Seed giveaways
• Tarrytown's Climate Action Plan Task Force (CAPI) completed its Action Plan for mitigating greenhouse emissions
• CAPI nearly finished the Adaptation Plan for the Village, providing residents with information and assistance for riding out severe climate events like flooding, outages, and storm damage

Social Roots and Connection

To officially adopt a spot, visit the Village’s web page here: https://www.tarrytownny.gov/AdoptASpot. You’ll be asked to fill out a form, submit your planting plan for the location, and provide other details. The deadline for submission is February 15, 2026.

There are many sites around the village that are “adoptable.” Here are some:

• Washington Street Parking Lot, East (Lot 3): Island between parking spaces 

• Washington Parking Lot, West (Lot 4): Area at entrance near pay station 

• Intersection of Green Street and West Main Street: Area around directional sign

• Main Street and Cortlandt Street Intersection – pedestrian triangle

• Wilson Park: Adopt one of the areas overtaken with invasive plants, replace invasive plans with native plantings

• Adopt A Whisky Barrel: Plant and maintain one of the whisky barrels that are placed in the downtown area in warm weather

• Plantings in front of Recreation Center: Maintain native plantings in front of Rec Center

• West Main Street: Traffic islands adjacent to Parking lots D and E (not the circle at the end)

• Suggest your own! Have you seen an area of public property that you would like to beautify? Make a pitch—the Department of Public Works is open to suggestions.

• The "Water Cooler" Effect: Working on a spot often leads to spontaneous conversations with neighbors who stop to offer a "thank you" or ask about a specific plant.
• Shared Pride: Seeing your name (or your organization’s name) on an official Village sign provides a sense of belonging and public recognition for your contribution.
• Collaboration: Local businesses and civic groups can use their spots as team-building exercises, strengthening professional and social bonds through shared sweat equity.

Happy New Year everyone, let’s get our 2026 gardens growing! The idea of planting seeds outdoors sounds a bit delusional as we gaze at snow covered yards and frozen ground but January is a prime month for starting native perennial seeds. This is because most native plant seeds ( milkweed, liatris, black eyed Susans. asters etc.) need to experience a period of cold temperatures (below 40 degrees) for 30 to 60 days in order to germinate in the spring. This cold stratification process is a survival mechanism for plants to ensure that they don’t sprout too early only to be killed by a freeze.

A fun, easy and highly successful method to cold stratify seeds is to create  "mini greenhouses” and leave them outdoors all winter. Create a separate greenhouse for each variety of seed that you plant. By spring you’ll have a garden started, it’s easy and economical.

Over the last several years TEAC members have grown hundreds of plants which we’ve shared with the community and planted in our public gardens. Starting January 12 we will have complimentary native seeds from our gardens available in the Childrens’ Room at Warner Library along with a Mini Greenhouse display and instructions to help you get your gardens growing this winter.

Clean Energy - The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
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By Dean Gallea, TEAC Energy and Conservation

Tarrytown has approved its first battery-energy storage system (BESS), following in the footsteps of Croton-on-Hudson (left), but other communities have yet to cross that bridge. To help that effort, the former Mayor of Croton, Bob Elliott, is tentatively scheduling a conference later this month at Teatown Reservation, in conjunction with the Environmental Leaders Learning Alliance (ELLA). This will offer environmental leaders and municipal officials the opportunity to discuss the pros, cons, and issues around permitting this important technology in the wider Westchester community. I will likely be a presenter at this conference, and details will be posted on the TEAC website. (Ulster County is also pushing for BESS acceptance as part of a larger State effort.)

We’ve started monitoring the website Heatmap.news, led by a non-partisan group that publishes well-researched information on worldwide and national energy policy. An example article: 2025 Was the Year of Energy Confusion. They offer daily and weekly newsletters, as well as a primer on climate change and potential solutions to the crisis here: https://heatmap.news/climate-101 .

A NY Times article details how the Federal Energy Department has changed under the current administration: Gone are the Offices of Clean Energy Demonstrations, Energy Supply Chains, and Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, which played a major role since the 1990s in promoting technologies like solar power. Instead, there are new Offices like Hydrocarbons and Geothermal Energy, Energy Dominance Financing, and the Office of Fusion. The intent is to prioritize energy sources that can run 24/7 to power data centers for AI and crypto, including coal, natural gas and nuclear. The Energy Department has terminated over $10 billion in funding to companies working on technologies like carbon capture that could stem greenhouse-gas emissions, and reduction in methane leaks from oil and gas operations. We renewable-energy advocates will have some challenges until there is a more eco-friendly administration in place.

In the news is the potential for a major U.S. policy effort to revive and expand the degraded oil-supply market in Venezuela, following the appointment of a “viceroy” by the White House to oversee this shift. There are many obstacles this effort will face, not the least of which is the reluctance of U.S. oil companies to invest their own money in what many see as a losing proposition. The U.S. market doesn’t need more heavy “sour” crude oil, which will cost many billions to develop the required drilling, transport and refinery infrastructure. Even if successful, it will depress the worldwide price of oil, further hurting any profit. The U.S. energy industry already understands that their money is better spent on developing renewables in the long term. And U.S. taxpayers will likely be resistant to the government subsidizing such an environmentally-unfriendly build-out. 

Finally, our beloved Tarrytown Music Hall, which for years has been reducing its carbon-based energy usage through its large rooftop solar array, has been told they have to remove it. The insurer for the Music Hall says the installation is a liability. The Music Hall asked their local broker to intercede and try to get the insurer to reverse that decision, but the broker was unable to do that. They said that the offshore-based company was still the best option for coverage, as the Hall was “a complex risk offering many types of programs and shows.” This is clearly a disappointment for all of us. It behooves other commercial venues to get a clear statement from their insurers that they are in agreement prior to any new installation.

The TaSH indoor Winter Market begins January 10 and continues every Saturday to April 25, 9:00am-12:30pm. Find them just across Broadway from Patriots Park at the John Paulding School. TaSH is also thrilled to be partnering with the Union Free School District to provide farm-fresh ingredients for free community meals at the Horsemen Family Saturday events.

Repair Cafe Yorktown Heights - Sat, Jan 17 - Grace Lutheran Church, 3830 Gomer St, 11am-2pm