Climate Change News: New York City

Mayor de Blasio and the New York City Council agreed to a landmark new budget for the upcoming fiscal year, which includes a historic $43.5 million increase in funding for parks and green spaces. This is a major victory for our Play Fair campaign and the future of our city’s parks.

Every year, NYLCV reviews the NYC Mayor’s Executive Budget and sets budget priorities that help advance New York City’s sustainability agenda.

The Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) is embracing solar power in a new initiative that will help fight greenhouse gas emissions and give the authority a new income stream to improve public transit. It plans to lease more than 10 million square feet of its rooftop space to solar power generating companies.

The new single-use bag law gives counties and cities the option to opt-in to a five-cent fee for paper bags, which would further reduce litter and solid waste pollution and substantially lower carbon emissions from producing paper bags. Some local governments in New York have already voted in favor of the fee, while others have either opposed it or are still deliberating.

As more school districts are looking to electrify their bus fleets, they are struggling to afford the costs associated with electric school buses. One solution is the Pay As You Save system. The model would allow utilities to invest in the charger and battery for a bus.

Our NYC Program Director, Adriana Espinoza, testified at a City Council Committee on Environmental Protection oversight hearing on wastewater treatment plants and discussed how the City can improve these plants. Investing in the long term sustainability and resiliency of these plants is critical.

At a City Council Sanitation Committee preliminary budget hearing, we proposed investing $10 million in a public education program around the organic waste and recycling programs available to residents.

NYLCV joined New Yorkers for Parks and DC 37 as founding members of the Play Fair for Parks Coalition to call for increasing the NYC Parks Department expense budget by $100 million next year in order to better maintain parks citywide.