Housatonic Valley Association Receives National and Regional Honors

Housatonic Valley Assocation (HVA)

"The Housatonic Valley Association (HVA) received National Garden Clubs, Inc. (NGC) Award of Excellence in May and Aquarion Water Company’s Environmental Champion Award in June. HVA was recognized for its track record of conservation accomplishments and goal of achieving climate-ready environmental conditions across the region over the next two decades. To help establish watershed conditions that are healthy enough to withstand the effects of climate change, HVA launched three key initiatives: Clean, Cool and Connected, aimed at restoring and protecting rivers, streams, and groundwater; Follow the Forest, aimed at helping partners conserve a connected woodland corridor and wildlife habitat linkages from the Hudson Valley to Canada; and engaging and involving more people and local communities to be a part of the solution. HVA has saved or helped save more than 20,000 acres of land, with another 50,000 acres needed, and restored several hundred miles of local waterways and wetlands with another 500 miles needed, all leveraged by their 200+ partners. This includes municipalities, land trusts, nonprofits, businesses, and community groups, as well as the thousands of volunteers engaged in river clean ups, plantings, paddle trips, and more." Read More

Wilderness Programs for People of Color

Reconnecting Black, Indigenous, and People of Color to nature through mindful wilderness trips and ancestral workshops

The Rusty Anvil

"Peterburg, NY. August 13–14 & September 3–4, 2022. The BIPOC friction fire workshop is an overnight experience to learn and practice the art of fire birthing. The group will participate in a land walk to identify trees and other materials to make a bow drill kit. Participants will learn carving techniques and knife safety and begin carving their own bow drill kit. We will spend our second day together fine tuning our kits, learning about tinder and fire lays, and working on getting a coal. We will talk about fire both as a tool for survival and a bridge to the ancestral realm and ponder ways friction fires can become a part of your daily, weekly, or monthly spiritual practice. These programs run on a sliding scale. Registrations can be made here:

https://www.the-rusty-anvil.land/trips-and-workshops" Learn more about upcoming trips/workshops

New Pollinator Resolution signed between Rotary District 7890 and the Upper Housatonic Valley National Heritage Area

Upper Housatonic Valley National Heritage Area 

"Rotary District 7890 and the Upper Housatonic Valley National Heritage Area have signed a Pollinator Resolution in joint support of helping to reduce pollinator loss. A signing ceremony took place on July 15 at the French Park Pollinator Pathway in Egremont, MA. The National Park Service has joined this effort by helping to build collaborative partnerships between Rotarians and National Heritage Area leaders across our nation. Rotary International and the National Park Service / National Heritage Area Program have identified pollinator protection as a program priority, and have begun working collaboratively to raise public awareness of the problem and to support local actions that mitigate the hazards to pollinators. Throughout Southern New England, Rotary and National Heritage Areas have signed joint pollinator resolutions, pledging action in support of pollinators." Learn More

A woodpecker's brain takes a big hit with every peck: study

Jon Hamilton | NPR

"The brain of a woodpecker experiences a seemingly catastrophic impact every time beak meets wood. 'When you see these birds in action, hitting their head against a tree quite violently, then as humans we start wondering how does this bird avoid getting headaches or brain damage,' says Sam Van Wassenbergh, a researcher at the University of Antwerp in Belgium. In the past, scientists have suggested the bird's brain is protected from the impacts, perhaps by a skull that acts as a cushion, or a beak that absorbs some of the force, or a tongue that wraps around the brain. But Van Wassenberg wasn't convinced. [...] So Van Wassenbergh led a team that set out to settle the issue using high-speed video of woodpeckers in action. 'We went to four different zoos in Europe where they had woodpeckers and we recorded them at very high frame rates, while they were pecking,' he says. The videos, part of a study published in the journal Current Biology, revealed some remarkable details. [...] 'The way we see the head behaving is very rigid, like you would use a hammer hitting wood,' Van Wassenbergh says. That means the organ repeatedly experiences deceleration that would cause a concussion in a human brain. Yet the woodpecker brain emerges unscathed, even after thousands of impacts in a single day. That is possible because a woodpecker's brain is protected — not by cushioning, but by its tiny size and weight, Van Wassenbergh says." Read More

Springfield City Council urges rejection of Eversource pipeline project

Paul Tuthill | WAMC Northeast Public Radio

"The Springfield City Council has recorded an official protest to a controversial natural gas pipeline project in western Massachusetts. Citing the need to rapidly transition from fossil fuels, the danger of explosion and fire, and the cost to ratepayers, the City Council passed a resolution stating its opposition to a plan by Eversource to build a high-pressure natural gas pipeline from Longmeadow to Springfield. All nine Councilors present remotely when the vote was recorded Monday night supported the resolution. It was authored by City Council President Jesse Lederman and had 9 co-sponsors. Councilor Zaida Govan said Springfield, and the state, need to stay on a course to greatly decrease dependency on fossil fuels. [...] Eversource has said the new pipeline is needed as a backup for infrastructure that is 70-years-old. If the existing pipeline is damaged, or needs to be shutoff for maintenance, 58,000 Springfield customers could be without natural gas service potentially for months, the utility has stated. The cost for the project is currently put at $65 million. With the passage of the resolution, the Council joins a growing list of opponents to the pipeline project including the Longmeadow Selectboard and half-dozen members of the local state legislative delegation who recently sent a letter of opposition to state utility regulators. [...] An Eversource spokesperson, in a written statement, said the company is 'disappointed in the outcome' of the Springfield City Council’s vote. Eversource will continue the years-long effort to make its case for the project with state regulators, the spokesperson said. Energy companies, including National Grid, which along with Eversource are the two largest gas utilities in Massachusetts, have recently promoted plans to use their existing pipeline infrastructure to deliver hydrogen and 'renewable' natural gas that is sourced from landfills and animal waste." Read More

Senate Democrats Produce a Far-Reaching Climate Bill, But the Price of Compromise with Joe Manchin is Years More Drilling for Oil and Gas

Marianne Lavelle and Nicholas Kunetz | Inside Climate News

"To seal their surprise climate deal with Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Senate Democrats conceded that their only hope for advancing a plan for a clean energy future in Congress was to bind it up in a lifeline for fossil fuels. The legislation they propose to bring to the Senate next week still contains the heart of President Joe Biden’s climate plan—an historic $370 billion investment in transforming the U.S. power and transportation sectors and more than $60 billion in grants to help pollution-burdened disadvantaged communities achieve environmental justice. But the package—now called the 'Inflation Reduction Act of 2022'—also would invest in ensuring a future for U.S. fossil energy in a carbon-constrained world. The legislation hikes tax incentives for expensive carbon capture technology 70 percent. It also requires that, for the next decade, the federal government offer tens of millions of acres offshore for oil and gas drilling as a prerequisite to the expansion of offshore wind energy development. And Manchin said that he has obtained a commitment from Biden, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that they will advance separate legislation this fall that streamlines the permitting process for energy infrastructure, including pipelines and export facilities. [...] The legislation includes $369.75 billion in tax incentives and other support for clean energy—by far, the biggest federal investment ever in addressing climate change. It marks a decisive turning away from market-based schemes like cap-and-trade that Congress considered its best chance of gaining support for climate action a decade ago. Instead, Democrats will provide federal support directly, which, among other things, allows them to include the climate program in a budget bill, meaning they can pass it with just the 50 Democrats and Vice President Kamala Harris’ vote under Senate rules. [...] Tax credits for renewable energy for the first time would be extended for 10 years, a major boost for the wind and solar industries, which have not had sufficient time to plan and develop large-scale projects when tax credits were only available for one- and two-year intervals. The legislation also gives clean energy developers new flexibility to choose the type of tax credit that works best for their project—one based on the cost of their investment or one based on the project’s production. [...] The legislation also includes tax credits for an array of technologies that do not currently get any support, such as large, grid-scale power storage, as well as incentives for the manufacturing of solar panels, electric vehicles and other hardware domestically. The bill includes $9 billion in consumer home energy rebate programs, mostly focused on low-income consumers, to electrify home appliances and for energy efficient retrofits. [...] Perhaps the most controversial provisions of the bill are those that would require continued development of oil and gas on federal lands and waters for a decade. The deal would prohibit the Interior Department from approving renewable energy development over that period unless it also opened lands to oil and gas development. Onshore, the department would have to lease at least 2 million acres each year or half of what was requested by oil companies, whichever figure is smaller, in order to issue rights-of-way for wind or solar development. Offshore, it would need to lease at least 60 million acres for oil and gas development each year in order to open leasing for offshore wind development. [...] The bill includes a new tax credit for 'clean hydrogen' production, with levels of the credit varying depending on the lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions associated with manufacturing the fuel. Together with more than $12 billion allocated for carbon capture and removal in last year’s infrastructure bill, 'this package would provide the most transformative and far-reaching policy support in the world for the economy-wide deployment of carbon management technologies,' said Madelyn Morrison, external affairs manager of the Carbon Capture Coalition... While a few advocacy groups support this carbon capture tax credit, many environmental activists have come out strongly against it, arguing that it would effectively subsidize fossil fuel operations like power plants and even refineries. A coal-fired power plant, for example, could stand to reap hundreds of millions of dollars in federal tax benefits if it captures CO2 emissions, even as it continues to produce toxic coal ash waste." Read More