Town of Rochester Environmental Conservation Commission
Meeting Agenda December 8, 2016

Facilitator: Laura
Recorder: Chris

Attendance: Laura Finestone, Rick Jones, Chris Hewitt, Tim Ganon, Judith Karpova, Angela Dorris, John Messerschmidt,
Guests: Larry Dewitt, Nick DePalma

I. Call to Order: 6:05pm
II. Business and Logistics
A. November minutes approved.
B. New members. Nick DePalma came to check out our meeting to consider joining the ECC.
III. Reports
A. Riverkeeper. No report.
B. Natural Heritage Plan report
-Working on prioritization for the planners. Laura is sending the latest version to everyone. The next joint meeting is in December 29 at 8am in Ellenville. Ask Laura for details. From estuary meeting that Laura and Judith went to, some take aways: 1) Work with the river; 2) Protect the wetlands at all costs; 3) Work with the forest and riparian buffers, especially contiguous areas. They’re going to have a workshop about forest plantings, like mushrooms. They have people who have been through their program who will visit your property to give recommendations for free. Four different types of wetland: vernal pools, hardwood swamps, wet meadows, marsh.
C. EMC. No report. Next meeting is next week.
D. Planning Board Report. No report.
-they are considering having Rick join the board.
E. Omelet talk with DEC, Cary Institute, and about a dozen orgs
-Wetlands Monitoring System. Discussed stations of pods that are collecting climate change data. Measuring difference between turbidity and sediment. Determining what sea level rise would do to wetlands and other habitats. 16 locations across the United States are sending data to National Oceanic and Atmosphere Association to see what the general changes are over 5 years. The Hudson River is uniquely able to deal with changes. As deposits rise in tributaries, the Hudson rises and lowers. Tivoli Bay is a good place to see the changes. Vegetation and sediment works together.
IV. New Business
A. Natural heritage priority. Already covered above.
B. Climate Smart Communities
-Angela went to the Kingston Climate Smart Commission meeting recently. They’re going after a $100,000 grant, with coaching from NYSERDA. First come first serve with submitting proposals. The first three communities to apply get $100K, and submissions after that get $50,000. If you are a climate smart community, it gets you points toward funding, and it opens up more funding opportunities.
-So far, what has been done for us becoming a climate smart community: we prioritized what is feasible for this town to do. We’re close to certification. Judith is volunteering to do energy audits of all of the town buildings. There’s a whole workbook of 100s of things that can be done to become climate smart. Examples: having the town board vote to become climate smart, making shifts to be energy efficient. We need to hit a certain amount of points to qualify. Angela is happy to share the workbook with anyone who is interested. We would like to focus our next meeting on reviewing the workbook to all get on the same page.
C. Solarize
-Marbletown is initiating a Solarize program. We should do the corridor of the Rondout together. Marbletown will most likely be the lead. There are educational meetings, the installers come and do presentations, and if there are enough people who install together, everyone’s prices go down.
-There’s a possibility of the town building a solar array in town soon, either at the transfer station on the old landfill, or the sand mine that the town owns behind 209, behind the Rainbow Diner. This is called Community Distributed Generation, which is similar to Community Choice Aggregation, which Citizens for Local Power has been promoting.
D. What is up for next year?
-Once index for Natural Heritage Plan is adopted by the town board, the ECC can become a voting board. We would become the Environmental Conservation Board. We would like to have a scientist and a lawyer join our commission first.
-Climate Smart Communities, starting in January
-Solarize, starting in January. We can ask John Wackman to come talk with us as a good first step.
-Reviewed our successes from this year. Also discussed potential ideas for next year, like education via a newsletter or billboard.

I. Old Business
II. Adjourn: 7:19pm