To The Editor:

The Village of Croton’s Board of Trustees reviewed various proposed environmental projects in the Village with Lindsay Audin, Sustainability Committee Chair, and Frank Balbi, Superintendent of the Dept. of Public Works.  These promising initiatives include a pilot food scraps recycling program, a community solar array, an electric vehicle charging station and adding electric vehicles to the Village fleet.

I look forward to moving forward on new environmental initiatives for our Village. Already, the Village of Croton was designated as a Climate Smart Community by the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation and a Clean Energy Community by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA).

In the last 12 months, the Village developed a living lighting laboratory in Village hall; enrolled in the 100% green option of the Westchester Power Community Choice Aggregation program (which has been able to consistently beat the average price of power from Con Edison); launched a new Solarize campaign in March that resulted in dozens of new solar energy installations in our community; and established an energy benchmarking policy in August.

Many of these projects are grant-funded. In addition, they have the potential to produce long-term savings by reducing energy consumption and reducing the tipping fees for the disposal of solid waste.

As always, the Board’s Democratic majority is committed to pursuing environmental progress in a manner that is also economically sound and that provides tangible benefits to our community.

Sincerely,

Brian Pugh