Letters to the Editor of the East Hampton Star during 2021

By ChangEHampton residents:  Nancy Erber, Len Green, Gail Pellett, Tom Plant and Stephan Van Dam

Destructive Impact
Published East Hampton Star, March 29/2021

To the Editor,

The East Hampton Town Board took a step in the right direction last week when it limited the use of gas-powered leaf blowers during, essentially, the summer months. In doing so, the board joined the growing number of municipalities that recognize the destructive impact of these machines. They are noisy, polluting, and highly damaging to wildlife. It’s hard to imagine why anyone tolerates their maddening drone.

They are, however, not only bad for our peace of mind. They, along with a whole range of unnecessary landscaping practices, contribute to the growing destruction and loss of pollinator species, blasting their nesting, hibernating, and egg-laying sites. This, in turn, has further harmful consequences up the food chain for native and migratory birds that feed on insects.

The good news is that East Hampton has moved to curtail the use of the blowers. But it should do more. Larchmont, for example, allows their use only during April, November, and December. This makes sense, both for the well-being of humans and insects.

There’s a lot more we can do to improve our landscaping practices (without putting landscapers out of business, by the way). For anyone who might feel uncomfortable with changing familiar landscaping habits, I recommend quietcommunities.org and 234birds.org. There’s abundant information there about how these changes have been put into practice already, why we need them, and how to bring landscapers into the process.

Respectfully,

LEONARD O. GREEN

Become a Model

Letter to Editor at East Hampton Star, published Nov. 4, 2021

Dear Editor:

By the time this publication goes to press voters on the East End will have made their voices heard regarding our Town Supervisor, Board and Trustees.  The challenges in front of this administration are serious.  Some would say existential.  Our planet is at the tipping point in terms of species collapse and the effects of climate change.  We are all aware of the impact of that on our communities here. Our social fabric is under enormous pressure by intensifying inequality. Where will we find teachers, emergency workers, caretakers, restaurant and store staff, taxi and bus drivers, and a myriad of other types of workers if there is no affordable housing?  We as members of this community need to hold our leadership accountable for fast and meaningful change locally.  Because we already know what’s at stake! All of these problems have been studied to death for as long as I have been visiting, then living on the East End—decades.

That means closing and reinventing an airport that caters to the convenience of a few over the endangerment of the health for many.  We need to stop studying the affordable housing problem and build. We need new and tough zoning regulations to halt the overdevelopment of this community.  We need a paradigm shift in how we think of the land, its uses, our yards, our practices that contribute to the collapse of species and the poisoning of our environment. The East End is no longer sustainable as it staggers along now.

Yes, there are days when we may all feel these existential issues are too overwhelming.  Let’s put a deadline five or ten or twenty years down the road and maybe things won’t be so bad or another administration will tackle this.  Tragically, we really don’t have that time to ponder. And we already have small models of sustainable transformation around us.  The Town administration could and should be a catalyst and leader in undertaking the most life-threatening of these issues.  It already has some remarkable environmental regulations on the books. They need to be rigorously enforced.  The Town has made a commitment to confronting climate change.  Then let’s do it rigorously in a way that may actually become a model for communities across the nation.  Because if a wealthy community like East Hampton cannot do it, I wonder who can.  We have some wonderful talent around us.  Let’s put those folks out front and empower them.

Take, for example, a simple issue that by changing it can make a rippling set of changes that make a difference—leaf blowers.  Communities—and states—across the country have begun to regulate these highly polluting and species-damaging machines.  First there is the movement to transition from gas powered leaf blowers to electric ones because the gas-powered ones emit dangerous levels of carbon pollution.  All of this has been documented ad nauseum.   But the real issue is the concept of the leaf blower and the environmental impact of its enormous forced air technology. First, leaf coverage is an important source of returning nutrients to the earth, providing fertilization along with water retention for the winter months.  That layer helps to replenish the soil.   Many small animals and insects in particular depend on that leaf layer to reproduce.  The powerful forced air of the leaf blower destroys that.  But the impact for the health of humans is that leaf blowers push dangerous lawn chemicals and animal droppings into the air which we breathe.

But what about my lawn?  I can hear so many of the Star’s readers screaming.  Yes, it means we need to take a tough look at our lawn culture.  It is deadly.  It removes valuable habitat from birds, bees, insects and small animals.  Again, there is a movement across the land to challenge us to think differently about our yards.  If you must maintain some lawn, grow clover which retains nitrogen, the culprit in our bays and drinking water. But why not experiment with pollinating gardens?  They are so much more beautiful and wildly chaotic than the boring repetitive straight-jacket of poisonous and water guzzling lawns.  You will be helping to sustain species rather than eliminate them.

There are many articles and resources, websites and organizations, including local ones on the East End to help you reshape your landscaping imagination.

GAIL PELLETT

No Abstraction
Published East Hampton Star, Nov 11, 2021

Dear Editor,

We used to be a can-do nation. Confronted with a threat, despite our enormous differences, we pulled together for the common good. That’s how we defeated the Axis. We made our sacrifices and won the war. Faced with the horrible disease of polio, we lined up for our shots, and essentially eradicated the disease.

Today, we face a planetary crisis. Climate disaster is no longer an abstraction. Droughts, fires, dying oceans are the clear consequences of human-caused climate warming. “In 2018, the World Bank estimated that three regions (Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, and Southeast Asia) will generate 143 million more climate migrants by 2050” (Brookings). Droughts in Central America are a significant driver of U.S.-bound migration. Droughts in our own agricultural regions are pushing the costs of feeding our families higher, and will continue to do so. These are just a few of the many disastrous consequences of our failure to address the climate emergency.

I find it hard to imagine how we can face the next generation, our children and grandchildren. What do we say? We didn’t know what we were doing? We didn’t care? While our governments need to urgently confront this problem, we all need to respond as if our families’ lives depended on our actions.

Here’s one simple consideration: our lawn care habits. Right now, the California lawn industry produces more air pollution than all the cars in California. Yes, that’s right, the lawn care industry, with its noisy and polluting, antiquated two-stroke gas engines. There’s a solution, and California is moving on it. It has a two-stroke buy-back program and has passed legislation to ban such equipment by 2024. New York State has similar legislation under consideration. We should contact our representatives and support it. We should also demand that our local governments ban this equipment. It’s not just noisy; it’s a menace to our health and the health of the planet.

Gas leaf blowers are not essential. Reducing atmospheric emissions is essential. We can get by just fine without the noise and pollution. Once fall arrives, I use my battery-powered mower once a week to mulch leaves in place. If you must remove your leaves, use a leaf sweeper once a week and an electric blower for tight spaces. Finally, you might consider helping fireflies and monarchs by letting part of your yard become a native grass and wildflower meadow. A little ingenuity can go a long way. Or are we seriously the “can’t do” nation I fear we have become?

LEONARD GREEN

Whine and Roar
Published East Hampton Star
November 18, 2021

Dear Editor:
This is peak time for leaf color and also peak time for leaf blowers. The steady drone, whine, and roar provide the soundtrack for fall in East Hampton, but gas-powered leaf blowers are not only noisy, they damage the environment and the people who operate them.
In this climate emergency, we can all do something (or many things) to make a difference. For fall cleanup and general lawn maintenance, we can go old school and use rakes, garden brooms, or leaf sweepers. We can take advantage of 21st-century technology and use quieter, cleaner, battery-operated equipment to mulch leaves in place, or blow them off walkways, out of rain gutters, etc. We can also support statewide actions. The New York State Legislature is working on bills to speed the transition from outdated and polluting equipment. One bill in the Assembly and Senate, A.8327/S.7453, would establish an electric landscaping equipment rebate program. Another bill under consideration, A.5375/S.1113, would prohibit the use of gas-powered leaf blowers between May 1 and Sept. 30. A Senate bill, S.7462-A, puts a deadline on phasing in “zero emissions” equipment; by 2027 100 percent of in-state sales of new lawn care equipment will have to be nonpolluting electric devices. All three proposals aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improve air quality, and reduce noise pollution by promoting the adoption of electric landscaping equipment.
It’s clear we need a significant cultural shift along with education and safety training if we want to clean up the environment by reducing pollution and the health hazards that come from burning fossil fuels. Our East Hampton Town Board has taken a few steps in the right direction. I appreciate that and I want more. I hope other town residents do too.
NANCY ERBER

Bad for Everyone
Published East Hampton Star, Dec, 2, 2021

Dear Editor:

East Hampton Town law protects summer people from the noise and air pollution caused by gas-powered leaf blowers. However, from early fall until late spring (a period when most yard cleanups occur), full-time residents are not protected under this law.

This stark difference in the law’s coverage can only be explained by the fact that most locals either don’t notice, or put up with, or just don’t care about whining engines and toxic exhaust penetrating their yards, houses, and neighborhoods.

If this is incorrect, why wouldn’t full-time residents (and weekenders as well) write, email, text, or call their elected town representatives and urge them to quickly pass a law that prohibits gas leaf blowers year round? How much time could this take? The names and contact information for all members of the town board can be found at ehamptonny.gov.

With the advent of electric battery-powered leaf blowers, we don’t have to put up with this crap anymore. It’s bad for everyone’s physical and mental health — homeowners and yard workers alike. Its also bad for the air quality of our town and our planet.

TOM PLANT

Habitat Sorely Needed
Published in East Hampton Star, Dec. 26, 2021

Dear Editor,

As the new year approaches, it’s time to think about what we can do better, how to live more mindfully next year. Here are some simple resolutions we can make that will improve things for all of us.

In 2019 the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology reported that we had lost up to 30 percent of the North American bird population since 1970. That’s somewhere around 3 billion birds in my adult lifetime. At about the same time, other scientists observed that we had lost about 80 percent of insect biomass in the last 25 to 30 years. These numbers are both alarming and connected, alarming because our entire ecosystem is threatened by the loss of birds and insects. Their loss will have cascading negative effects on our agriculture and economy, just to name two obvious examples. The numbers are also connected because the loss of insects contributes directly to the death of birds. Ornithologists have found that over the last 50 years, insect-eating birds have lost about 2.9 billion individuals. Yes, the loss of insects seems to be a major culprit in the bird die-off.

So, what does this have to do with our new year?

Insects and birds are dying because we are destroying and poisoning their and our habitats. When we kill grubs to keep our green grass pretty, we deprive a healthy and complexly connected balance that keeps our world going. When we plant invasive, foreign ornamentals, we do the same. As my neighbor, Gail Pellett, has recently written, “our yards are killing us” and the world that sustains us.

No, this doesn’t mean we need to dig up our favorite ornamentals and ditch our turf lawns. It does mean we should resolve to give some adequate portion of our yards back to native plants. The University of Delaware’s Doug Tallamy points to a clear, simple solution to get us on this path: “We need a happy compromise that shifts us from a majority of nonnatives to a majority of natives in our landscapes.”

Compromise. We can do this. We can leave some portion of our yards to the bees, birds, and native flora. We can even make it attractive. Take a look at the native gardens at Edwina von Gal’s Perfect Earth Project in Springs or any of the Garden Club of East Hampton native gardens. We can learn to lighten up on the leaf blowers, shut off the yard lights at night, do without the insect-killing treatments, — including the so-called organic sprays — and begin to restore some of the wild, beautiful land that was here long before us.

If we do this, our little native meadows, gardens, and woods will grow into what Tallamy calls a “homegrown national park,” connecting our separate native habitats into a network of restored habitat sorely needed by dying insects, birds, and our wounded planet.

Or, of course, we can continue the drive to extinction. It’s only our children and their children who will be left with the mess.

I don’t expect us to all undergo a great awakening at once. We need first to understand what’s wrong with what we’ve been doing. It’s up to institutions like The Star, our local governments, schools, and libraries to lead the way. Sounds like a solid resolution.

Happy new year,

LEONARD GREEN