FLPG’S IMPORTANT APPEARANCE BEFORE LIPA’S BOARD OF TRUSTEES

On Wednesday, September 28th, a group of twelve Long Pond Greenbelt lovers and supporters traveled two hours by bus to LIPA’s board of trustees’ meeting, with three others joining them there, and five more attending via Zoom. The message sent by the speakers was clear: preserve the Greenbelt. Don’t destroy what it’s taken 50 years and tens of millions of dollars to protect. They entreated the LIPA board to stop PSEG’s plan to use horizontal directional drilling through the heart of the Greenbelt and to instead use an alternative route along existing roadways for the proposed Bridgehampton to Buell transmission upgrade. A petition with over 3,000 names supporting the alternate route was also presented to the board.

In recognition of the special effort made by Friends of the Long Pond Greenbelt, the board made an exception to its ordinary order of business and moved the public portion of the meeting to the front of the agenda. After FLPG’s remarks, two LIPA trustees took the opportunity to express their appreciation for the comments and later during the regular business meeting further aspects of the Bridgehampton to Buell transmission project were raised. It was also announced that PSEG would be undertaking a environmental review of the project, expected to take a few more months.

Making the case for Long Pond Greenbelt preservation before the LIPA board was an important step in keeping the pressure on LIPA and PSEG to redirect the Bridgehampton to Buell transmission route. But it’s not the end of it. Stay tuned for the next planned action.

Please send letters if you have not already done so to LIPA at boardoftrustees@lipower.org.  (If you would like to see a selection of letters already written by concerned citizens and local environmental organizations about the continued protection of the Long Pond Greenbelt, click here)

You can see News Channel 12 coverage of the meeting by clicking here and if you’d like to see footage of the speakers at the meeting itself, click here. The first speaker, FLPG President Dai Dayton, starts at around 12:00 minutes.

2022 Sundays at Two Lecture Series Continues

Co-Creating Your Landscape with Nature, 

with Suzanne Ruggles of The Barefoot Gardener

Sunday, October 16th, 2:00 p.m.

Long Pond Greenbelt Nature Center

1061 Bridgehampton/Sag Harbor Turnpike

On Sunday, October 16, Suzanne Ruggles, owner and operator of The Barefoot Gardener in Westhampton, will share practices for native habitat gardening, which aims to restore the earth by working with nature to promote diversity, beauty, and harmony in landscape gardening.

Her approach honors the native plants that already exist on a property and, where advisable, revegetating with carefully selected complementary native plantings.

A woman on a mission, Ms. Ruggles wants to dissuade people from using pesticides, insecticides, and other unnatural additives to their lawns and gardens and to encourage them to protect nature by using native grasses, flowers, and trees. She will address the many benefits of lawns and gardens featuring native plants, including how they encourage animal and insect creatures that have co-evolved with them.

“Bright green carpet-like yards are an abomination,” she says. “They are possible only with the assistance of harmful chemicals that subdue the complex world of flora and fauna living in the earth beneath the grass.”

By showing people how spectacular, how peaceful, how bio-diverse, and how life-affirming native plantings can be and by educating them on their benefits, the joys, and the freedom of using native plants, Suzanne transforms not just lawns but the attitudes of lawn-owners toward that slice of nature they can directly control.

Suzanne is a regular speaker about native habitat gardening at The Nature Lyceum School for Organics in Westhampton, and she also sits on the Board of Directors of The Wildlife Rescue Center of the Hamptons, a non-profit organization dedicated to the rescue, rehabilitation, and release of injured wildlife.

Check Out the Work Long Island Invasive Species Management Area (LIISMA) is Doing to Fight the Spread of Phragmites

LIISMA recently published an article about their fieldwork here: https://liisma.org/fieldwork-in-focus-coastal-plain-ponds-and-phragmites/.  

Photos from Fall Equinox Morning Hike in Vineyard Field

Fundraiser for Friends of the Long Pond Greenbelt