Great Neck Plaza looking to be first Long Island village with climate plan

Joe Nikic

Village of Great Neck Plaza trustees announced Wednesday their intent to be the first village on Long Island to implement a climate-action plan.

“I think this is an issue people care about and they want to see how we are becoming more energy efficient. We don’t want to see all the dramatic effects that climate change is doing all over the world,” Village of Great Neck Plaza Mayor Jean Celender said. “There’s a reason we’ve got these heat waves in December. It’s not a good thing.”

In 2008, the state Department of Environmental Conservation created the Climate Smart Communities Program, an effort to persuade municipalities in the state to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve climate resilience.

According to the DEC’s website, municipalities make a public commitment to the program’s efforts through a “pledge” to the DEC.

Some 170 municipalities have pledged to support the program, including the Town of North Hempstead in 2008 and the Village of Great Neck Plaza in 2012.

In 2014, Gov. Andrew Cuomo began certifying municipalities in the Climate Smart Communities Program for taking positive steps after making the pledge.

Celender said no village has implemented a climate plan on Long Island and she wanted them to be the first.

“We’ve been part of all those planning sessions and we took the pledge and we have been drafting our own village climate-action plan to become more energy efficient, reduce our carbon footprint, incorporate renewables, and all the goals and objectives that the state level has been set,” Celender said. “We’re now doing analysis of how we can further that in our own village and actually using data on the amount of electricity we use in our village facilities through all the infrastructure that’s here that we have information on.”

She also said the village’s Citizens Advisory Committee reviewed the drafted climate plan and suggested changes to the plan that would benefit the village.

Celender said the drafted plan focuses on energy-saving initiatives including upgrading to LED lights, energy efficient infrastructure improvements, recycling, and reducing waste.

Four days prior to Wednesday’s board meeting, 195 countries signed the “Paris Climate Agreement,” a 31-page document highlighting various climate-related initiatives to be implemented by the agreement’s effective date in 2020.

The board unanimously voted to schedule a public hearing on the village climate-action plan at its Feb. 3 meeting.

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