Issue Position: Environmental Conservation

Issue Position

From 2015 to 2018, I was grateful to Chair the Senate Standing Committee on Environmental Conservation. It is one of the Senate's key committees and, most importantly, it has an enormous impact on local communities, local environments, local economies and local taxpayers.

That has certainly been the case over the past decade.

In 2018, I was deeply honored to be receive Audubon New York's "William Hoyt Environmental Excellence Award."

The legislative sessions from 2015 to 2018, during which I chaired the Environmental Conservation Committee, were widely recognized as an era in New York State government of meaningful environmental achievement.

I was , and I have been grateful for the opportunity to help move it forward. Read more HERE.

These achievements have included, following years of hard work and effort by so many conservation advocates and others, a fully funded, $300-million Environmental Protection Fund (EPF). The EPF supports critical environmental initiatives including clean air and water projects, flood control and restoration, and open space preservation.

The EPF helps create local jobs and studies have shown that for every dollar of EPF funds invested in land and water protection, the state and localities get back seven dollars in economic benefits. That's a pretty solid investment by any measure. The EPF enjoys an impressive record of government achievement which has brought benefits to a broad-based segment of New York's citizens and communities like very few government programs ever have.

Strengthening the EPF to the fullest extent possible within the context of the entire state fiscal plan makes great economic and environmental sense. It will be an enduring and proud achievement for future generations of New Yorkers and New York communities.

The establishment of the "Water Quality Infrastructure Improvement Grant Program" in 2015 has continued to help localities undertake water infrastructure improvement projects including sewer and municipal water line repairs -- an action which has become particularly timely as drinking water quality concerns and crises regionally, statewide and across the nation become increasingly acute. Senate Republicans fought for the program's establishment as a priority and we hope it will continue to serve as a model for transforming the state-local partnership to the benefit of local communities, local economies and local property taxpayers.

Other achievements highlighting my tenure as the head of the Environmental Conservation Committee included:

> the enactment of the nation's first law requiring public schools to test their drinking water systems for lead contamination, a law which I sponsored;

> the extension of the state's brownfields cleanup program for 10 years and refocusing it on the cleanup of polluted properties Upstate; and

> a new law enacted late last year (Chapter 673 of the Laws of 2019) to establish to establish an industry-sponsored "Postconsumer Paint Collection Program" to reduce a costly burden on local governments that are currently responsible for collecting and disposing of most post-consumer, unused paint. I first introduced the legislation to create the program in 2016. It will create local jobs, provide relief to local property taxpayers and encourage environmentally sound recycling and disposal of unused paint. I point to the program as an example of how government and industry can collaborate to implement effective environmental policies and programs.

I remain committed to working with legislative colleagues to strike a reasonable, sensible balance between environmental conservation and protection, and the need to spark and strengthen economic growth and private-sector job creation regionally and statewide.

The Irish have a saying about offering "a thousand welcomes" and I have certainly recalled that expression a thousand times over the course of my legislative service.

Of course I'm constantly reminded as I travel throughout the 58th Senate District of the importance of our outdoor recreational economy, whether it's the fields and forests of Steuben County, one of New York's premiere hunting destinations, or the Bath Fish Hatchery which stocks an abundance of our rivers, streams and lakes, or a visit to Watkins Glen State Park or any one of the number of spectacular networks of parks and trails dotting the landscape of our home.

It truly has been a thousand welcomes, and it has certainly enhanced my already deep appreciation and amazement at all that our state and region have to offer, and my understanding of the critical work facing all of us.

"I truly believe that we all share a critical piece of common ground, and it's a common ground that's a vital starting point for our future success," Senator O'Mara has said in reflecting on his role as Chairman of the Environmental Conservation Committee from 2015 to 2018. "President Theodore Roosevelt expressed it as "the great central task of leaving this land even a better land for our descendants than it is for us.' We will have differences and face controversies. But we have a responsibility to stewardship and conservation. We have a responsibility to do our best to address the challenges, to work through them, and consider and negotiate them in a balanced, deliberate, fair, serious and sensible way. I hope and I believe we will."

What we have accomplished has been important and meaningful in many ways -- it's only a beginning, however, and I'll be fighting to keep building on these foundations.

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