The governor wants to tackle climate change. At what cost?

“We’ll call this a 500-year event — I don’t buy it,” Hochul said Friday in Yonkers. “It happens, and we have to prepare for it. No longer can we say, ‘Yeah, that won’t happen again in our lifetime.’ This could literally happen next week. … The future is now; we have no more time.”

The Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, which the state passed in 2019, calls for an ambitious and costly slate of projects to address the problem. Hochul said those programs can be funded without taking from other pots of money, like the education budget.

“There are some decisions in my mind that are easy: Are we going to fight for our future or surrender?” Hochul said. “We’re going to make those adjustments and we’ll find the money, and we’re not going to shortchange education. We’ll get the job done.”

 A 22-member Climate Action Council continues to outline the needs for the state — its next meeting is Sept. 13 — but environmental advocates complain that funding for the panel and its initiatives isn’t high enough on the state’s to-do list. 

Hochul hopes the state’s Washington delegation, led by U.S. Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer — who was by her side in Queens the day after Ida struck — can secure the infrastructure money to build up the state’s defenses.

The $3 billion Environmental Bond Act, if passed by voters in the November 2022 election, could aid in that effort. But for Hochul, who hopes to see her name at the top of the ballot in the same general election, the first financial test will be next year’s budget negotiation. 

Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, a Westchester County Democrat who appeared with Hochul in Yonkers, said she would press for sufficient climate resiliency funds next year, likely with the advice of the Climate Action Council.

Individual lawmakers have their own ideas. Assemblywoman Patricia Fahy, D-Albany, has introduced a bill that would update building construction codes in line with the recommendations of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act.

Fahy said she does not believe that Democrats, even though they hold a supermajority in both chambers, have the votes to easily move the full range of climate policy she believes is necessary to see effective change. “The environment is still a back-burner issue,” she said.

She wants climate change placed on the same level with education, public health and housing in the annual budget battle.

Julie Tighe, president of the New York League of Conservation Voters, said the state still lacks a large enough pool of money for local governments to draw on for climate-related defense work. 

“The Legislature has been making some progress,” Tighe said. But she wishes lawmakers had slotted the the $3 billion bond act vote this year. “I think we all see now why it’s so important,” she said. 

Similar bonding used to happen every decade, according to Jessica Ottney Mahar, New York policy and strategy director for the Nature Conservancy. It last happened in 1996. Since then, there have been two recessions and a burgeoning climate crisis.

Mahar agreed major issues are reducing carbon emissions and both implementing and funding the state’s climate law. She said the state should focus on ensuring local governments can support sustainable communities.

State agencies were left woefully understaffed, she said, and to bring them to adequate levels is an “area where Gov. Hochul can set herself apart from Gov. Cuomo.” The DEC in particular needs help, Mahar noted, because under the state climate law its mandate has vastly expanded. 

Mahar said the state needed to do more to make it possible for local governments to hire personnel dedicated to climate issues. Local governments see problems that influence the climate like whether to allow for a developer to bulldoze trees without sufficient environmental mitigation or the density of their communities. 

“Those issues are being decided every Tuesday and Thursday in town halls across the state,” Mahar said. 

Albany County is one of five counties in the state to be selected for a climate resiliency plan. It involves taking inventory of assets in the county — bridges, roads, culverts — and then coming up with strategies to increase their resiliency.

Lucas Rogers, senior policy analysis for Albany County, is heading up the plans under County Executive Daniel P. McCoy. Some of the work has been delegated to an outside environmental firm. They are hoping by the end of 2022 to have clear plans to better strengthen the county, which they hope dovetails with the state’s bond program to pay for those needed improvements. 

In Rensselaer County, a particular need is to better track its many streams. In a mid-July storm, the county experienced substantial flooding, bringing state and federal officials to view caved-in roads and overflowing creeks. Rich Crist, spokesman for County Executive Steve McLaughlin, said that if the state led the way to take new inventory of its streams, then it could better keep an eye on potential rockfalls and debris that exacerbate flooding during heavy rains. 

“It would create another line of defense if there’s a heavy storm event,” Crist said. “You’re not going to be able to stop everything, but it can dramatically reduce the effects of it.”

He pointed to the county’s soil and water conservation districts that, if better staffed, could take the lead and be the “eyes and ears for monitoring the streams.” 

Schenectady County was of the first in the state to become a bronze-level recipient of the state’s Climate Smart Communities, County Manager Rory Fluman noted. He said with the help of local volunteers, many of whom are on an environmental advisory council made up of some former DEC workers, the county was able to achieve that level.

In 2019, it also has its own staff person dedicated to sustainability, a position primarily funded by a mix of state funds but made possible by the retirement of a planning department employee who used to work on recycling issues. 

The county has focused on issues of solar energy and recycling over the years, in addition to bigger scale issues like with the Mohawk River and the Vischer Ferry Dam, he said. At this point, some climate resiliency infrastructure — like plans to replace culverts — have become as common to municipal planning as replacing police cruisers and fire engines.

While Fluman is thankful to have made progress on flooding issues related to the dam in recent years, he said a lack of removable gates there remains the county’s top issue, especially as extreme weather events and flooding becomes more common. 

“We’ve survived the every-10-year flood,” Fluman said. “The question still remains: Are we going to survive the every-100-year flood that happens every 10 years?”