Pelham’s environmental leaders talk sustainability and tackling climate change at Junior League roundtable
A roundtable of Pelham’s environmental leaders Tuesday offered approaches for strengthening community knowledge, supporting sustainability and tackling climate change during the Junior League of Pelham’s annual community discussion.
The speakers at the Daronco Town House included Alexy Scholl, administrator of the Flooded Pelham Facebook group; Hanan Eldahry, Village of Pelham trustee and liaison to the Village of Pelham Sustainability Advisory Board and Climate Smart Communities Task Force; Lynda Raihofer, director of the Environmental Coalition of the Pelhams (EcoPel); Ava Knickerbocker and Plum Durham, co-presidents of Pelham Eliminates Plastic, and Superintendent of Schools Dr. Cheryl Champ.
Following the extreme damage that hit homes in Pelham during Hurricane Ida, Alexy Scholl said she, like many of her neighbors, immediately got to work afterward making repairs and improvements to enhance her property’s ability to withstand future flooding.
“It wasn’t enough just to rebuild,” said Scholl. “We needed to make improvements to lessen the impact of future flood events which we all expect will come again. This includes installing sewer check valves, building rain gardens and taking on complete basement remodels.”
Scholl’s Facebook group is a gathering place for sharing strategies on how to further improve homes in order to make the community more resilient to climate change. The group now has more than 260 members who are working with local governments to educate themselves on stormwater management studies.
The Sustainability Advisory Board and Climate Smart Communities Task Force tackle reducing greenhouse gas emissions and adapting to a changing climate. Eldahry announced the Village of Pelham’s new bronze certification for Climate Smart Communities, solidifying the village’s stance as a leading community in New York State for environmentally-friendly action. This certification places the village in the top 2.5 percentile in the entire state and makes it eligible for a variety of grants.
“Every time we partner with another organization, we are so much more successful with it,” said Eldahry.
Collaboration was highlighted throughout the night, with each speaker encouraging the community to come together for the common cause of environmental sustainability.
EcoPel, established in 2013, is a not-for-profit organization with the goal to educate the Pelham community about sustainable green practices.
The group “is a 100% volunteer-run environmental education organization, using this to cultivate an environmentally conscious community and to bring the community together in support of sustainability efforts,” said Raihofer.
EcoPel has been behind various environmental efforts in town, such as establishing food recycling, organizing monthly meetups at environmentally friendly gardens and running the cultivate-a-plant initiative—under which nearly 300 native sumac were planted this year—and holding Pumpkin Smash, which diverted 1.35 tons of pumpkins from landfills and sent them all to be recycled as compost.
“We’d love to engage more of our community and encourage participation by the elementary school, middle school and high school kids, as well as other volunteers to help with social media, help host our events and more,” said Raihofer. “We could always use more help.”
Champ discussed how the school district is working to teach environmental sustainability and making environmentally conscious decisions. At the elementary level, she said, the district has completed a phase of “Science 21,” which allows kids to be in touch with sustainability issues from Kindergarten up.
“For example, in Kindergarten, they’re going to have lessons based around interdependent relationships in ecosystems,” said Champ. “In fourth grade, they will talk about energy waves, earth systems, etc. In fifth grade, they are going to touch on earth’s systems, energy-matter and ecosystems.”
On the facilities side, Champ highlighted the environmental steps taken in the construction of Hutchinson Elementary School.
“We’ve been building a hot water heating system, including energy recovery units, and there is LED lighting,” she said. “Eventually, there should be an outdoor classroom and a kitchen garden. There is also a two-port electric-car charging station in the parking lot.”
Pelham Eliminates Plastic is a student-run activist group that educates the community about environmental matters. Knickerbocker is not only co-president of the group but is also a member of the Youth Climate Action Team and Youth Climate Save New York. Plum Durham, co-president, has been an active member of the group since she was in fifth grade.
“I think the most important part of PEP is our founding initiatives,” said Durham. “PEP was really just formed to pose the question, How do we as young people make change in our community and how do we as young people reduce the amount of waste that not only our homes but our stores or businesses, as well as our schools, produce?”
In past years, members have worked to encourage the high school and businesses to shift away from single-use plastics. PEP collaborated with DeCicco & Sons to make the shift from plastic to paper bags, which was eventually implemented in all of its Westchester locations. PEP launched its newest project just this past week, “Keep Wolfs Lane Clean.”
“This first started when we noticed a ton of trash on the floor of the Wolfs Lane Park area because a lot of students were eating out there for lunch, so we wanted to do something to keep this area clean while also allowing students to gain community service hours, which are needed for graduation and certain National Honors Societies,” said Knickerbocker.
Pelham Memorial High School’s environmental science club and the Village of Pelham worked with PEP to implement this project. The group welcomes others to join every Tuesday at Wolfs Lane Park to pick up trash.
During the open discussion, many audience members urged the event should not be a one-time meeting and that the leaders sitting in the room should promise their commitment to reconnecting and collaborating to ensure the progress of Pelham’s environmental position.
Closing remarks were given by Mayor Chance Mullen of the Village of Pelham, Mayor Jennifer Lapey of the Village of Pelham Manor and Town of Pelham Councilwoman Kristen Burke, who all promised their dedication to improving environmental sustainability in Pelham.
Laura is a junior at Pelham Memorial High School. She is a serious soccer player and competes for both the school and club teams. In her free time she...
Bob Shepherd • Dec 5, 2022 at 5:52 pm
Having lived here for only 9 years, sadly I’ve watched Pelham go completely in the wrong direction when it comes to some serious environmental sustainability issues, including the health and well being of Pelham’s residents.
Although I absolutely applaud all that’s going on here, there are daily issues arguably far more serious going on around the Pelhams that are barely being addressed, or not addressed with the seriousness required. There are those like myself that would agree that major weather events are becoming more frequent, and at a greater force…be it longer hotter summers followed by more frequent heavy rain storms. Whether this is a natural cycle, or caused by human behavior, or indeed a mix of both, should allow for each of us helping in any way we can to save what we have left, as I believe reversing the longer term global catastrophe completely isn’t achievable any more.
So, how about Pelham’s “environmental leaders” also take on such things as cutting out the many “engine idlers” that sit for many minutes to sometimes an hour or more in the streets of Pelham and outside the Pelham schools.
There have been times at the middle and high school in the past few years where I’ve literally been choking sat in my car surrounded by SUV’s, pickup trucks and cars with head lights on in broad daylight, and the twin or single exhausts belting out the pollutants from the engine still running…with too many of the drivers none of the wiser as they sit there playing on their iPhones. Engines work harder and burn more fuel when idle, and powering lights, heaters or air cons and radios add to it even more.
Some people in Pelham seem to like to have greener grass than their neighbors. As they go to the expense of all of us while eliminating weeds, bugs etc, by having chemicals sprayed onto their lawns and gardens. That then is blown up into the air when the “gardeners” show up with their fuel driven leaf blowers or grass cutters. The air quality in that block is immediately downgraded, probably to severe for quite some time after the event with the mix of fuel and chemical pollutants alike. I know, because I’ve been out jogging through it and thrown up at the end of the block having breathed in a lung full of the filthy pollutants blown up into the air.
As I mention “gardeners,” these landscapers and air polluters are many different companies within Pelham. In my block alone I’ve counted 5 different companies that come in the same week. That’s five different trucks, and five lots of landscaping machinery, whether mowers or blowers. If this was monitored, pollution would be greatly reduced by just having the one landscape company in the one truck arriving in the same block/street in the same week.
Just imagine how clean Pelham would become, given what the various environmental platforms are trying to achieve at present, if the following was to happen here from tomorrow: Drivers stop engine idling , fuel driven leaf blowers are not used, and putting chemicals on the grass becomes a thing of the past (as it is in many countries world wide), students who are forced to sit in locations like Wolfs Lane Park take their rubbish back to school after lunch and dispose of it responsibly, people in Pelham also become responsible for any rubbish seen in front of their property, be it on the grass, pavement or on the roadside (because who else is going to pick it up?).
Over night our wee town would become much cleaner, and the localized air quality would improve…if this thinking then got to spread US wide, then what a great clean country it would become…giving everyone a chance to survive the future of our extremely fragile planet.