By Shawn Dell Joyce

Since Thomas Crapper invented the water closet (yes, that’s where the word came from), many experts have come to view our sanitation system as the worst idea of all time. We use 3.5 gallons (per flush) of our best drinking water to dilute a few ounces of “excellent fertilizer and soil conditioner” to create an expensive, wasteful disposal problem.

The World Health Organization recently declared that waterborne sanitation is obsolete, and only waterless disposal of waste will allow enough water for drinking, cooking and washing in the world’s largest cities.

Waterless and low flow toilets could save the average household as much as $50 to $100 a year on water, adding up to $11.3 million everyday nationally. These are not the same low-flow toilets that gained a well-deserved bad reputation ten years ago. Technology has improved even the lowly Crapper so that most new toilets use only about 1.6 gallons per flush (gpf).

Sweden has popularized a dual-bowl toilet with separate compartments and separate ways of treating human waste. This system uses no water and results in a high quality fertilizer and composted human manure as byproducts. The separating toilets cost comparably to American toilets, but may take a while to catch on. Dual-flush toilets are becoming more popular here in the States, and offer users a choice of .8 gpf or 1.6gpf depending on the size of the job.

Composting toilets are completely waterless and can be self-contained or attached to a whole building system. If you have many bathrooms, a whole building system would be the most economical. It connects all the dry toilets to a single, large compost tank usually in the basement. There is no sewer hookup, so the plumbing ends in the compost tank.

A self-contained composting toilet is essentially a compost drum enclosed inside a toilet with a fold-out handle and tray. Some also contain fans and vents to eliminate odors. We have both a low flow toilet and a composting toilet in our home. We bought the composting toilet locally from Stoves Plus in Thompson Ridge. It is interesting to see who goes where, and we often categorized our guests by their level of queasiness with our plumbing.  Once you get over the initial shock of “no water in the bowl” it is easy to appreciate the simplicity of a composting toilet. Wood chips go in, tree food comes out.

Incinerating toilets are similar to composting toilets in that they are waterless. But they use electricity to incinerate human waste to a clean ash eliminating both pathogens (good) and soil nutrients (bad).

Many of these alternatives are costly and require a bit of plumbing know-how to install. If you want to reduce your water use today:

—– Try putting a brick in your toilet tank to save up to 5 gallons of water per day.

—– Install a $5 Frugal Flush Flapper valve in your existing toilet and conserve half your water with each flush.

—– Try a $1 Toilet Fill Cycle Diverter to save about ½ gallon per flush.

—– Pee on the trees if you live in a secluded area where no one will know.

—– Flush less often using the “yellow-mellow” rule

—– Check your toilet for leaks which could waste more than 100 gallons of water per day. Add a few drops of food coloring to the tank and see if any colored water leaks into the bowl after a few minutes.

shawn@zestoforange.com

By Shawn Dell Joyce

I recently received a notice from my utility company comparing my energy usage to my neighbors. According to Central Hudson, I used 61 percent less energy than my neighbors and received a double smiley face on my report. You might think that would warm my green heart, but actually, it shows how inefficient most of our homes are.

I’m not really making an effort to be more energy efficient than my neighbors, I’m just more conscious of energy use and do a few things most people don’t…like weatherize windows, open windows instead of using the fan, and line dry clothes whenever possible. By doing a few simple things like these, I save $1,784 according to Central Hudson’s Home Energy Report.

Imagine what you could save if you really made an effort. Walden Mayor Brian Maher did just that, and committed the Village of Walden to take the “Ten Percent Challenge” issued by Sustainable Hudson Valley. This means that the Village government will measure and reduce its energy usage by ten percent, and get ten percent of Walden households to do the same.

Walden, joins Warwick, and Cornwall-on-the-Hudson, as municipalities willing to adopt simple efficiency measures to use tax dollars more wisely.  By successfully measuring, and reducing energy expenses, these municipalities are reducing tax dollars spent on energy by ten percent, and residents who participate are lowering their monthly energy bills by ten percent, saving money all around. To make it even sweeter, Earthkind is donating a solar thermal system to the municipality that reaches ten percent first. Why aren’t all our local governments participating?

In addition to the Village of Walden, the Orange County Chamber of Commerce,  and the Village of Montgomery expressed interest in joining the challenge. Several local businesses will be benchmarks, like the Walden Library and the Wallkill River School, which will have energy audits and reduce their energy use accordingly.

Jon and Kelsey Buhl are Valley Central students, Walden residents, and a brother and sister team that is setting up the challenge in their school. They committed to the challenge because “we are concerned citizens that want to help out our community in any way possible, and this project was a great way for us to get involved.”

These young people are right, and we need more stakeholders like them to help make the Ten Percent Challenge a success. If you want to join them, along with Mayer Maher, and many of the “movers and shakers” of our community, come to the next Ten Percent Challenge meeting in the Bradley Room on the second floor of the Walden Village Hall on Tuesday, May 17 at 7pm. Better yet, call you town and village board members and offer to carpool with them to the meeting.

“We’re in a new economic era. We have growing resource constraints but lots of under-employed people. If we’re going to achieve a turnaround, in economy and quality of life, we have to build upon our assets, and one of the greatest assets is the power of people who want to make a difference,” says J. Michael O’Hara, Campaign Manager, Ten Percent Challenge.

Shawn@zestoforange.com.

By Shawn Dell Joyce
           All the flowers in corporate chains and box stores are imported. The cheap abundance of imported flowers not only has an impact on Mom-and-Pop-owned florists and supermarkets, but also makes it very hard for local growers to compete. One grower complained; “We can’t allow other countries to come in and impact our bottom line in the name of free trade. How can you compare foreign labor costs of $3 an hour compared with our labor costs of $12 an hour?”

           “We can’t compete with imports,” a nursery owner said. “Those flowers are loaded with pesticides that local growers can’t even think about using.” A survey on Columbian flower plantations found that workers were exposed to 127 different pesticides. One-fifth of the chemicals used in flower production in South America are restricted or banned in the United States and Europe (such as DDT). Since there are very few environmental laws in South America, these chemicals wind up in drinking water, causing species decline as well as damaging human health.

          Workers are often denied proper protection and become sick after applying herbicides, fungicides and pesticides. Two-thirds of Colombian flower laborers (mostly women) suffer from impaired vision, respiratory and neurological problems, disproportionately high still-birth rates, and babies born with congenital malformations. When workers try to organize unions to defend their interests, they are often fired, ridiculed, or harassed.

        Vote with your dollars. When you buy Mom a locally-grown potted plant from one of the many nurseries in our area like Hoeffner Farms, Twin Ponds, or any other small farmer, you are voting for a cleaner environment and a healthier local economy. Want to celebrate both Mom and Mother Earth this year?

—–Ask your local Mom and Pop florist for organic flowers, or by a live plant.

—–Buy flowers from a local farm like Hoeffners orTwin Ponds in Montgomery.

—–Give Mom a live plant from a farm like Manza’s or Hodgson’s in Montgomery.

—–Give Mom an edible bouquet of salad greens and flowers from a local farm like Late Bloomer Farmstand (you can find them at Pennings in Warwick on Saturdays).

—–Buy Mom a flat of flowers from Hoeffner’s farm and plant them in flower beds for her

          Shawn Dell Joyce is an award-winning columnist and founder of the Wallkill River School in Montgomery. www.WallkillRiverSchool.com

By Shawn Dell Joyce

Last week, the price of crude oil jumped to $113/barrel, and suspiciously soon afterwards, the national average for regular unleaded gasoline leaped over the $4 a gallon mark. Lost production in Libya was blamed for the gas price hike, yet even at $4/gallon it’s really a bargain. Before you start penning me hate email, let me explain.

Even at $4, we are not paying the real cost of gasoline. Our federal government subsidizes the oil industry with numerous tax breaks, price protection, and research and development funding that totals billions of dollars every year. These subsidies help keep domestic oil companies competitive with international producers, and keep gas relatively cheap at the pump.

In other countries, like Bosnia, you would pay $10.86 for a gallon of gas because there are less government subsidies. Paris is at $6.52, Berlin at $6.42, and $7 in Amsterdam.

That $4 we pay at the pump can be divided into four main categories; taxes, refining, marketing/distribution, and the price of crude (according to a special report by CNN Money).

Crude oil is the most expensive part of a gallon of gas, costing over $2. This money goes straight to big producers of crude, or national oil companies controlled by countries like Saudi Arabia, Mexico or Venezuela.

The federal government takes about 20 cents from each gallon, on top of the state’s tax which varies greatly, but averages about 22 cents a gallon. Most of this money is used to build and maintain roads, (which is why removing the gas tax is a bad idea). Refineries eat about a quarter dollar for each gallon. Some refineries you may recognize are Valero, Sunoco, ExxonMobil, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips.

Marketing and distribution can eat up the rest of the $4 price tag with your local gas station getting only about 10 cents per gallon, transporting the gas to your gas station eating up another quarter, and so on.

But the price we pay at the pump is only the tip of the iceberg of the real cost of gas. Many expenses related to using gas are externalized, meaning we either pay for them through our taxes, or leave them as a balance due for future generations.  These “hidden costs” include military patrols of oil shipping lanes and presence in oil producing countries, air pollution from auto exhaust, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, environmental devastation caused by drilling, pipelines, and oil spills, and economic damage caused by importing foreign oil.

If all these hidden costs were actually tallied into the price of gas, we would pay well over $5 per gallon according to the National Defense Council Foundation. The economic penalties of America’s oil dependence total $297.2 to $304.9 billion annually, making the true cost of a fill-up over $100.

“Lives Per Gallon” author Terry Tamminen estimates that the true cost is actually much higher. Tamminen states that “Americans subsidize the oil and auto industry to the tune of about $6 or more for every gallon of gasoline sold, making the real price at the pump $10 per gallon.”

Tamminen also points out that it is difficult for “alternative fuels to compete against such massive subsidies, until mass-production of alternative fuels (and vehicles that use them) can bring the price down. Such incentives can also be considered an economic stimulus package, because those investments create jobs in America instead of sending more than $650,000 every minute to foreign countries for our addiction to oil (based on $75/barrel for oil).”

A side benefit of climbing gas prices is an increased awareness in the need to use gas more efficiently. A recent survey showed that American consumers list fuel economy as the most important factor when they purchase a new car (the number of cup holders was most important previously). If we had to pay the true cost of fuel at the pump, we would all ride bicycles and drive electric cars.

Shawn Dell Joyce is the director of the Wallkill RIver School in Montgomery, and an award-winning syndicated newspaper columnist. Shawn@zestoforange.com

By Shawn Dell Joyce

How would you like to get a check back from Central Hudson instead of paying them thousands in utilities this year? If you lived in Green Acres in New Paltz, that could happen to you. Green Acres is a Net Zero Energy housing development nestled amid a conventional housing development at the base of the Shawangunk Ridge.

Zero Energy Homes, or houses that produce as much (or more) energy as they use sounds like the stuff of science fiction. For years many people have thought it impossible, and builders speculated they would be unaffordable, but recently they have become a reality.

“The myth that zero energy homes are impossible in the Northeast, or cost prohibitive, has been broken,” says homebuilder Anthony Aebi. “I’ve found that it wasn’t a problem.” Aebi is the owner of Greenhill Contracting, and builder of Green Acres in New Paltz, NY.

Green Acres consists of twenty-five lots, only seven have finished houses and all but two of those houses have been sold. The average size of Aebi’s houses are four bedrooms, and less than 2,000 square feet. The average price for these homes is around $500,000 but take away the cost of the expensive property and the house itself is only 20 percent more than average market value. Aebi notes that homebuyers last year were given more than $40,000 in tax credits which helped offset the additional costs.

But there’s nothing average about the houses in Green Acres, the homes are all oriented toward the south for maximum passive solar, all have breath-taking views of the ridge from the West facing windows. Each house has curb appeal, and very few have any visible solar panels or signs that they are any different from the neighboring housing development.

What makes Green Acres different is the houses are not conventional “stick frame” houses, like most houses build today. These houses have walls made of foam and metal with concrete poured between them. The panels have a very high insulation value (R22) and give the house the strength to last through earthquakes (up to 9 points on the Richter Scale) and winds of 200 mph. The houses are insulated from top to bottom with sprayed-in foam insulation in the attic and R20 insulation under the floor slab. The houses are so tight that they remain at a constant temperature year round without any heat on.

“There’s no dust,” notes Green Acres architect David Toder of Bolder Architecture. Each home is equipped with a heat recover ventilation unit that makes the indoor air fresher and cleaner than the outdoor air. Geothermal wells provide heating/cooling and hot water to the homes, while eight kilowatt solar panels provide energy. Toder is a LEEDS certified architect and designed the homes to meet LEEDS Gold standards.

But the real proof on Zero Energy houses lies with the people who live in them. David Shepler was one of the first people to buy into Green Acres. Shepler is not your average homebuyer, and was looking for a greener house than the “typical McMansions on the market today.” Shepler notes that financing was the biggest hurdle between him and Green Acres.

“Appraisers don’t value green features,” said Shepler. This made it hard to get an accurate assessment of the cost savings of having no monthly utility bills. He has lived in his zero energy house for more than two years, and notes that he received a check from the local utility company for $80 after his first year, and $172 after his second year. Utility companies measure net zero on a yearly scale, starting in January. For a home to be zero energy, it has to produce as much energy as it draws from the grid, resulting in no monthly utility bills. Shepler’s home is slightly better than zero energy.

Shepler estimates that his monthly out-of-pocket costs for the luxurious home he and his sons live in roughly equivalent to a $450,000 home. Greenhill Contracting’s website cites that the cost of purchasing a $600,000 zero energy home at a 5 percent mortgage will cost you roughly the same per year as a $452,000 home. The difference is in a lower cost of living, and government incentives which could go towards your down payment.

Aebi didn’t set out to build a greener house, and is quick to point out that his houses are built to last with “green” being a side benefit. “I’m not an environmentalist,” he claims, “I just wanted to build a practical home that would last.”

Shawn Dell Joyce is an award-winning newspaper columnist and the director of the Wallkill River School in Montgomery. Shawn@zestoforange.com

By Shawn Dell Joyce

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates with our current rate of obesity, a third of our children born in 2000 will develop diabetes. The statistic is up to a half for African American and Hispanic children. Asthma, allergies, anxiety disorders and learning disabilities can all be traced to diet. Something has gone terribly wrong with our children’s nutrition.

For the first time in fifteen years, the United States Department of Agriculture announced it will upgrade nutritional standards for the National School Lunch and Breakfast program. Under a new law signed by President Obama in mid-January, children will be offered something that comes closer to current nutritional standards. The act came after much effort by health-conscious parents and groups to limit the high fat, high sugar school lunches that currently contribute to childhood obesity, and juvenile diabetes.

Soon, our children can expect to find an increase in fruits and vegetables on their lunch trays. This means nearly four half-cup servings a week of real vegetables, not just French fries or ketchup which used to qualify under the old standards. New vegetables will include dark green veggies and legumes, and more whole grains. At least half the grains served must be whole grains, and milk will now be fat-free or low fat instead of whole. Sodium levels will also be reduced.

While these changed are laudable, many local foods advocates want to see the reforms go farther to include sourcing the fresh fruits and vegetables locally whenever possible. In a recent New York Times editorial Alice Waters, a famous chef and local foods advocate, and Katrina Heron point out our schools “pay good money for what are essentially leftovers from big American food producers.”  The duo admits it would cost “about $5 per child to feed 30 million schoolchildren” an organic, locally-grown meal, “but the long term benefits would be worth it.”

Benefits like improving children’s dietary habits, food safety would be easier to track, and attention spans would likely improve as well. Probably the greatest benefit would be the money diverted from big food processors would go instead to local farmers thus improving the economy of the school’s community.

Pablo Rosado is a chef manager for Flik Independent School which provides food service for private schools including Tuxedo Park. If your child is lucky enough to have Rosado’s lunch program; they would choose between a salad bar with a whole grain salad, leafy lettuce salad and 15 other vegetable choices, deli buffet featuring whole grain bread choices or flavored pitas, or a hot lunch with a vegan soup choice. Rosado follows guidelines from on-staff dieticians including  no trans fats,  no synthetic  hormones, also uses local produce  with a focus on organic  when he can find it. Rosado’s lunches cost around $2.50 per student, while most public school lunches cost around $1.50

Wouldn’t you pay the extra $1 for your child to eat a more nutritious lunch with local ingredients? We need to overhaul our food system, now, as part of our economic recovery. Shifting from a global food system to a local food system would solve many problems at once. Not only would more people have access to fresh, varied local produce, but communities would benefit from the economic stimulus generated by keeping food money in the local economy.

The USDA has created a portal that is open to public comments on this new law only for a few more days. Comments may be submitted Federal eRulemaking Portal at http://www.regulations.gov.

Shawn Dell Joyce is the director of the Wallkill River School in Montgomery, and an award-winning newspaper columnist. Shawn@zestoforange.com

By Shawn Dell Joyce
Recently, ABC News asked commuters at Grand Central Terminal to remove items of clothing they were wearing that were made in China. Many of the commuters realized that they would soon be standing naked since more than 98 percent of all clothing sold in the U.S. is from China. It is difficult to buy anything that is not made in China today, since the U.S. imports almost half its consumer goods from that one country. Yet we Americans pay dearly in social costs for those cheap imports. We have lost most of our manufacturing jobs, and local industries to overseas exporters, mainly China.

ABC is launching a new show that examines goods made in America, and just how pervasive Chinese imports are in our country. They took a typical American home and removed everything that was made in China: food, rugs, furniture, linens, etc. The family was soon left with a house emptied of everything but the kitchen sink and a few other fixtures that were the only U.S. manufactured goods.

The flood of imported goods from China has nearly tripled since 1997. During that time, China quietly surpassed the United States as the world’s top polluter. China has no real environmental safeguards in place to protect drinking water from contaminants, no labor laws to keep children out of sweatshops, no legal ethics to keep entrepreneurs from producing dangerous products. 

Most of these products wind up on U.S. store shelves without much testing for safety, leading to massive recalls. More than 60 percent of the recalls issued this year and 79 percent of toys recalled last year by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission were from China. But those products were just a tiny drop in the flood of 17 million shipments of everything from Chinese organic produce to medicines to housewares to toys.

These inferior and often dangerous goods supplant locally made goods on store shelves because they are often cheaper than American made goods. What few consumers realize is that the costs we don’t pay for at the cash register must be paid for by our community and country through the loss of local industry, jobs, and economic impact.

When we opt for a cheaper import, our dollars flow out of our community and fund a system that degrades people and the planet. Our small businesses suffer, manufacturing jobs leave, and we find ourselves with boarded-up storefronts in our downtowns. This economic exodus further devalues our currency and increases the demand for “cheap.” It’s a vicious cycle, and one that we must end if we want to see real economic stimulus.

ABC’s “Made in America” is issuing a challenge to become aware of all the Chinese goods in your home, shopping cart, and on your body. ABC points out that if every American spent an extra $3.33 on U.S.-made goods, it would create almost 10,000 new jobs in this country. Make it a point to read labels and spend a little more to guarantee America’s economic recovery.

“You cast a vote every time you open your wallet,” notes ABC News. What kind of future are you casting a vote for? A future where your children work for Chinese companies or one where America has local industry and jobs again?

By Shawn Dell Joyce
Each one of us produces 1.2 tons of garbage per year, which is mainly bagged household trash. What’s not included in that figure are all the perfectly usable goods that get thrown out each year such as old furniture, clothes, books, obsolete technology and working appliances.

Many of these items are yard sale fodder or can be found parked by the curb with a “free” sign attached. If you can’t find what you need through curb shopping, or the classifieds in the paper, try websites like Craig’s List, and Freecycle. You can pretty much search any category from ab-workout machines to xylophones and find what you need. For cash-strapped families, or people who just wish to avoid adding to the consumerist culture, buying second-hand is the way to go.

The good news is that it also creates more economic impact in your local community when you buy something used from a neighbor than new from a big box store. In addition to filling your home with beautiful, new-to-you furniture, it helps reduce the solid waste stream flowing into our landfills. It takes a lot of energy and resources to produce new consumer goods each year. By reusing items, we extend the lifecycle of such goods, and reduce the environmental impact of our purchases.

In my circle of friends, we exchange garbage bags full of used clothing freely. We often have parties centered around exchanging used clothes, or trading hand-made things. Some of these parties have been open to the public, and leftover clothes were donated to families of migrant workers.

There are a few stores in the area that cater to a reusing crowd, like the Goodwill store in Middletown and Recycled Style in Montgomery. Walden has several, and Newburgh has Habitat for Humanity’s Restore for usable building materials. New Paltz is the new home of the Hudson Valley Materials Exchange, which specializes in redirecting usable things from the waste stream. Many materials can be used for art and educational purposes.

A paradigm is a collection of assumptions, concepts, beliefs and values that together make up a community’s way of viewing reality. Our current paradigm dictates that more stuff is better, that infinite economic growth is desirable and possible, and that pollution is the price of progress. To really turn things around, we need to nurture a different paradigm, based on the values of sustainability, justice, health, and community.

Our Irish ancestors had a philosophy of “make do with less” and “want what you have.” This paradigm shapes a resilient culture that thrives on minimal goods, and builds community rather than personal wealth. Many of our grandparents survived the Great Depression and learned to live simply. Hopefully, we don’t have to suffer through that deep of an economic drop before we adopt voluntary simplicity.

Shawn Dell Joyce is an award-winning newspaper columnist and the director of the Wallkill River School in Montgomery. shawn@zestoforange.com

By Shawn Dell Joyce
Spring showers wash it into our lawns, collect it in the gutters by the roads, and consolidate it in storm drains. With no leaves as camouflage, we see the plastic bags caught on bare branches. Beer bottles, tin cans and Styrofoam cups nestle like Easter eggs under shrubs and bushes. Litter is a man-made blight on the American landscape within five miles of every town.

But litter doesn’t stop there. In his eye-opening book “The World Without Us,” Alan Weisman describes a small continent of litter floating in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. His words: “It was not unlike an Arctic vessel pushing through chunks of brash ice, except what was bobbing around them was a fright of cups, bottle caps, tangles of fish netting and monofilament line, bits of polystyrene packaging, six-pack rings, spent balloons, filmy scraps of sandwich wrap, and limp plastic bags that defied counting.”

What is the source of all this flotsam and jetsam? Captain Charles Moore of Long Beach, Calif. is quoted in the book as concluding that “80 percent of the mid-ocean flotsam had been originally discarded on land. It blew off garbage trucks, out of landfills, spilled from railroad shipping containers, washed down storm drains, sailed down rivers, wafted on the wind, and found its way to the widening gyre.”

So, why do people litter?

According to the Keep America Beautiful campaign, “People tend to litter because they feel no sense of personal ownership. In addition, even though areas such as parks and beaches are public property, people often believe that someone else, like a park maintenance or highway worker, will take responsibility to pick up litter that has accumulated over time.”

Part of the mission of Keep America Beautiful, is to engage people in cleaning up their community and feeling that they have a vested interest in their environment. The organization points out that litter can also happen accidentally. As in overflowing garbage cans waiting for curb-side collection. Or from trucks at construction sites that are not properly covered. Even from municipalities that don’t offer litter cans and proper receptacles in public places.

Every year, Keep America Beautiful hosts the Great American Cleanup from March 1 to May 31. This is the nation’s largest annual community improvement program, with 30,000 events in 15,000 communities. Last year, volunteers collected 200 million pounds of litter and debris; planted 4.6 million trees, flowers and bulbs; cleaned 178,000 miles of roads, streets and highways; and diverted more than 70.6 million plastic (PET) bottles and more than 2.2 million scrap tires from the waste stream.

This year, for Earth Day, April 22, the Wallkill River School will host a cleanup from 10 to noon at Benedict Town Park in Montgomery along the Wallkill River. Bring a garbage bag and wear boots. Find other cleanups near you at www.kab.org.
Shawn Dell Joyce is an award-winning newspaper columnist and the director of Wallkill RIver School in Montgomery. www.WallkillRiverSchool.com

By Shawn Dell Joyce

One of the biggest import leaks in our county is energy. We bring energy into our region in the form of Appalachian coal and nuclear energy. But we also produce energy through hydropower dams on the Wallkill. Now imagine for a second what it would be like if we actually met all our electric needs through local, cleaner sources? We would eliminate the cost of delivery, and environmental destruction.

Now imagine if we all owned that local company as shareholders. Like a public utility that we all invested our savings in. Our bills would be lower, and we would regulate the company for the benefit of the community.

Taylor Biomass is a proposed waste recovery center that will convert 500 tons of waste into approximately 25 Megawatts of electric power, daily. That’s enough to power 25,000 homes. The primary product is a synthesis gas that is used to generate electricity. Byproducts from this process include silica ash that could be used for concrete, and a small amount of emissions, less than 100 tons per year. This is the same amount of emissions generated by the electric and heating use of 10 average houses.

Taylor points out that “the waste generated locally could be used to produce electricity to use locally.” This would eliminate the emission created by trucking the waste to Pennsylvania landfills, and lengthy power lines cutting through towns to meet power needs. Taylor could become our new local power utility company. 

The electricity generated by Taylor’s Biomass plant would be cleaner and greener than coal-fired or nuclear energy. It would be a boon to the local economy in that a huge chunk of each household’s monthly energy bills would stay local. Right now, promised Federal funding is evaporating for this project, putting its future in jeopardy. It would be a shame for our region to lose this valuable resource due to short-sighted politics.

The Taylor Biomass facility will not only create electricity, but also jobs. High tech jobs in particular, which is something sorely needed in Montgomery. Taylor intends to build a corporate headquarters and training center that would be used to train delegates from other areas in how to operate their own gasifiers and recycling facilities.

“I’ll be creating 24 jobs for the gasifier, 50 new jobs in processing and 40 high tech jobs in the corporate headquarters,” explains Taylor. “Orange County College graduates will be given first consideration.” Taylor is firmly committed to using local labor and materials to construct his facility, and hiring local graduates to run it. That’s a lot of money flowing into the local economy.

I’m not a wealthy woman, but I’d be willing to invest in Taylor to see it happen. I’m sure there are plenty of you who would, too. If only 5,000 people that live in the region potentially powered by Taylor (1/5^th of the households) were willing to invest just $500, we could raise more than $2,500,000 to make Taylor’s vision a reality. Considering the risks of the stock market, and the pounding most of our investments have taken over the past few years, this one sounds like a much surer bet.

Taylor has thrown his lot in with us every step of the way. He’s worked to keep this project in our region, and the benefits local. Now it’s our turn to help him get his project started, then become our community-owned electric company.

Shawn Dell Joyce is a nationally syndicated newspaper journalist and director of the Wallkill River School in Montgomery. Shawn@zestoforange.com