Latest News: Westchester

A few communities in New York State are working on electric school bus pilot programs. As part of our Clean Buses for Healthy Niños campaign, we’re tracking these ongoing and upcoming pilot programs across New York State.

Slowly but surely, school districts across the country are initiating programs to introduce electric school buses as a cleaner way for students to get to school.

Along with Sustainable Westchester, we recently presented a Gold Certificate recognizing the Town of Bedford in Westchester for being a leader in greening the town’s municipal fleet of vehicles pursuant to our Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) Pledge.

The Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) is embracing solar power in a new initiative that will help fight greenhouse gas emissions and give the authority a new income stream to improve public transit. It plans to lease more than 10 million square feet of its rooftop space to solar power generating companies.

The new single-use bag law gives counties and cities the option to opt-in to a five-cent fee for paper bags, which would further reduce litter and solid waste pollution and substantially lower carbon emissions from producing paper bags. Some local governments in New York have already voted in favor of the fee, while others have either opposed it or are still deliberating.

Traffic is a notable problem in New York as mass transit is becoming riddled with delays, signal failures, and decades-old infrastructure. Congestion pricing would raise much-needed funding for long-term improvements to the region’s transit system, reduce air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from cars, and decrease traffic congestion by encouraging the use of public transportation.

Over the last fifty years, there has been a major increase in extreme weather, such as heat waves, droughts, and intense hurricanes. One of the most direct ways we experience the effects of climate change first-hand is when our communities are hit with extreme weather - and we can expect extreme weather events to increase in frequency and severity over time.