sustainableflatbush.org

Tonight is the final workshop meeting of Imagine Flatbush 2030, the community visioning project created by Municipal Arts Society and Flatbush Development Corporation to “assist in creating neighborhood sustainability goals and tools to measure progress toward consensus-based goals”. As this stage of the project comes to a close (along with, presumably, Municipal Arts Society’s direct involvement), many neighborhood stakeholders (including Sustainable Flatbush) are eager to know how we can participate in working toward the goals that have been discussed in the workshops: preserving and expanding affordable housing, making streets more pedestrian-friendly (especially for children, seniors, and the disabled), establishing indoor and outdoor spaces for community gatherings, supporting locally-owned businesses, promoting a neighborhood arts scene, and more. For those of us who live, work, and study here in Flatbush and have a vested interest in its future, tonight will be our opportunity to establish how we will move forward with this collective vision of neighborhood sustainability.

Imagine Flatbush 2030 from MAS on Vimeo.

Tonight’s meeting is at 6pm in the Brooklyn College Student Center, 6th floor, East 27th Street and Campus Road. Childcare is available and refreshments will be served.

Rebecca’s container gardening demonstration

Last Sunday’s event, “Greening Flatbush: Garden Where You Are” was a huge success! The Sustainable Flatbush Gardening Committee assembled a stellar program of speakers and demonstrations on topics including Container Gardening, Urban Composting, Street Trees, Permaculture and more.

Mela and Sandra talk trees

Karla advocates for worm composting

We can’t wait for spring to get our hands dirty and start planting up the neighborhood!

Sustainable Flatbush has just endorsed a new report on NYC energy policy and climate change response from Sierra Club NYC Group. The report praises PlaNYC while declaring that we need to go much further in order to address the increasing pace of climate change along with energy volatility:

Government sustainability initiatives may have greater success when framed as responses to energy volatility than to climate change. In the short term, expanding capacity margins through energy conservation will make the City more resilient to volatility, while expediting PlaNYC initiatives. In the long term, we need to push discussion far past PlaNYC’s current goals, and start building a post-petroleum economy now.

The good news is that a national project to make clean energy cheap can restore domestic manufacturing, create millions of jobs that can’t be outsourced, and stimulate the economy, while improving our quality of life and mitigating climate change. New York City’s leadership can help make such policy actions a reality, while ensuring a better future for our citizens. What’s the next step for New York City?

Here’s a link to the summary version (the whole report is 50 pages long!).

Here’s some great news for fans of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) and fresh locally produced food in general:

Amantai Farm CSA is coming to Flatbush!

Shayna Lewis, last year’s market manager at the Cortelyou Rd. farmers’ market, is working with one of the farmers from that market, Jorge Carmona from Amantai Farm, to start a CSA in the neighborhood. They’ve already got 20 members signed up and their goal is 40. Here are some of the details from Shayna:

The share includes enough vegetables for a family of 4 for the week. Amantai Farm is not certified organic, but does not spray anything on their vegetables, which in my opinion makes them better than the certified organic farms who spray organic pesticides and fertilizers. It’s definitely a good deal for anyone interested in local and organic. Jorge will be doing just vegetables (and melons). In the spring he’ll have salad greens, spinach, peas, herbs, etc. moving into summer squash, cucumbers, a wide variety of heirloom tomatoes, eggplant, cilantro, sweet and hot peppers, summer greens, onions, potatoes etc into winter squashes, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, etc. He does produce honey and will provide it for CSA members at a discount.

DROP-OFFS: Saturdays will not work as a drop-off day, so we are going to pick either a Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday afternoon/evening to deliver the shares to your house, or to have you pick them up at a to-be-determined location if you live too far away or you’d rather pick up. If anyone has a preference for or against any one of these days, let me know and I’ll try to make it work for everyone the best way we can. Get back to me as soon as possible.

CHECKS: Please mail your checks/money orders made out to Jorge Carmona to:
Jorge Carmona
10039 Ziegels Church Rd.
Breinigsville, PA 18031
All checks should have arrived by mid-April, so you have some time, just don’t forget :). The cost is $400 for basic participation, add $60 to include a dozen eggs weekly, $30 for a half dozen. Eggs can also be ordered weekly. For a half-share, cost is $200.

SPREAD THE WORD: We now have about 20 members, but are going for 40. Please, tell any one you think might be interested. Feel free to give them my email address.

REQUEST VEGETABLES: Now is the time to request anything that Jorge is not already planning on planting. Most seed orders have to be in in the next three weeks, so speak now or forever hold your peas (sorry for the bad pun).

For further info, contact Shayna at shayna.lewis [at] gmail.com.

Shayna will also be speaking about Amantai Farm CSA and Community Supported Agriculture at this weekend’s Greening Flatbush event.

Enrique Peñalosa, former mayor of Bogota, Colombia and a legendary figure in the Livable Streets movement, speaks here with transit activists Commuters United for Transportation Equity (COMMUTE). If you care about our city’s future and particularly the mobility of low-income New Yorkers, have a look.

Lots of interesting local developments occurred during my two-week foray into the world of Carnaval in Brazil (still catching up!), and here’s one of my favorites: NYC is seeing the light on addressing the Combined Sewer Overflow problem – where even a minor rainfall can send sewage into our waterways and beaches – through progressive and sustainable practices. The City Council passed legislation to create a Sustainable Stormwater Management Plan, and it looks like they’ve been listening to the right people (as opposed to following the Department of Environmental Protection’s more expensive and less effective end-of-pipe plans designed to deal with sewer overflow after it occurs). Environmental organization Riverkeeper has previously presented a report showing that the most cost-efficient way to mitigate excess stormwater is by capturing it at the source through simple infrastructure such as parks, trees, green roofs and rainwater collection systems. How great is it when the least expensive solution to a problem also provides significant quality-of-life benefits?

“This local law is good for the City’s environment and makes sound economic sense,” said Basil Seggos, Riverkeeper’s Chief Investigator. “By regarding stormwater as a resource for irrigating the landscape, we not only improve water quality, but also capture all the added economic benefits of green infrastructure, including cooler streets, reduced energy costs (by reducing building cooling needs), cleaner air, sequestration and reduction of global warming pollution, flood mitigation, and more livable communities.”

Follow the link below to read the complete press release…
(more…)

Ever wondered why New York State, and New York City in particular, are so far behind other parts of the country (and even the region!) when it comes to actual numbers of installed renewable energy systems (especially solar panels)? I’ve received some inquiries on this topic from people who want to see more solar power in NYC, and it seems that a good place to start is knowing what the roadblocks are. One of the biggest is our state’s restrictions on net metering (allowing excess energy generated to be sold back to the grid). With high installation costs and long payback periods for solar and wind power systems, limiting the owner’s ability to sell power back to the utility can be a deal-breaker for many. This further discourages an increase in the number of installations that could potentially bring prices down through economy of scale. Here are some details, courtesy of Environmental Advocates of New York’s [Green] Capitol Insider e-newsletter:

NYS Gets “D”on Clean Energy Report Card

New York’s net metering policy, the practice that credits consumers for the clean power they generate, received a grade of “D” on a report card released earlier this month by the Network for New Energy Choices.

New York has one of the most restrictive net metering policies in the Northeast. Pennsylvania and New Jersey received “A”s and Connecticut scored a “B.” The report card is available at www.newenergychoices.org.

New York’s net metering policy, often referred to as “spinning the meter backward,” restricts the size of eligible energy systems. We are also one of only two states in the nation (out of the 40+ that are currently home to net metering policies) that doesn’t allow commercial and industrial customers to receive credit for the excess power they generate back to utility companies. Current New York State law limits system capacity to sizes too small to give businesses incentives to invest in their own clean energy systems.

The state can improve its net metering policy by increasing eligible system size, opening up net metering to all customers—residential, agricultural and business, expanding net excess generation for wind, and increasing the overall limit on net metering enrollment.

Fixing the state’s net metering policy would go a long way toward unleashing the economic development potential of the growing clean energy industry in New York.

True that. Judging from a panel discussion on solar power in NYC that I attended recently, there is a growing citizen movement to address this problem through lobbying and activism. I’ll post info as it comes in.

Oil vs. Pashmina, originally uploaded by Sustainable Flatbush.

One Soho scarf vendor’s take on Peak Oil.

Yesterday New York’s City Council voted in favor of implementing what would be one of the most stringent electronics recycling laws in the country. According to the New York Times, the bill would

impose a $100 fine on anyone who throws an old computer, printer or other electronic gadget into the trash. Recycling the electronic waste will become mandatory, and manufacturers will be required to take back their own products as well as those made by companies that have gone out of business.

The voting majority was enough to override an expected veto from Mayor Bloomberg, who supports e-waste recycling in principle but believes that holding manufacturers accountable for customers’ behavior is unconstitutional. Be that as it may, I can’t think of a better motivational tool to get manufacturers to redesign their products using less toxic materials…

Check out the whole Times article here.

The Sustainable Flatbush Gardening Commitee is spearheading this great free community event:

On Sunday, February 24, residents and other members of the greater Flatbush community can learn what they can do to beautify and improve the environment of their neighborhood.

“Greening Flatbush: Garden Where You Are” is an afternoon of short lectures, demonstrations, and workshops on topics ranging from planting and caring for street trees to composting with worms in your kitchen.

“Garden is a verb,” says Chris Kreussling, co-chair of the Gardening Committee of Sustainable Flatbush, which is sponsoring the event. “It’s not just a place you visit. It’s something you do.”

“Hearing about what others are already doing can inspire people to work with their neighbors to takeaction,” says Kreussling, who also authors a local gardening blog, Flatbush Gardener. “We want to build community through gardening.”

Greening Flatbush is Sunday, February 24, from 1:30 to 4:30pm at the Flatbush Branch of the Brooklyn Public Library at 22 Linden Boulevard.

The event is free, but space is limited. To register, or if you have questions about this event, please email greeningflatbush[at]gmail.com.

For directions, see the Flatbush branch web page on the Brooklyn Public Library Web site.

Have I mentioned that our Gardening Committee is amazing? Check out their mission statement:

We envision a clean, green, and beautiful cityscape for and by the inhabitants of Flatbush.
Our purpose is to empower our community through shared gardening and pro-environment projects.
To achieve this, we will:

• Educate our community to create green, life-promoting spaces indoors and outdoors;
• Support other groups and individuals in their environmentally sound gardening projects;
• Inspire and challenge all members of our community to sustain and respect public gardening and environmental initiatives;
• Green and beautify our neighborhood one flower, one plant, one tree at a time.

Anyone interested in becoming an active member of this committee can request to join their listserv here. Go Gardeners!!