Green Guru Network

(Launch of Wind Turbine Technology Degree Program at SUNY Sullivan, and a New Turbine Erected)

The Wind Turbine Technology Program has had its inaugural semester this fall (2011), its students will earn an Associates Degree in Applied Science.  A new group of students will be starting the program in the Spring 2012 semester.

Graduates will enter the growing field of alternative energy and sustainability with a working knowledge of residential and industrial wind turbines. They will learn to read electrical schematics, understand AC and DC electrical systems, trouble shoot and repair electrical and mechanical failures, understand power distribution systems, apply a working knowledge of wind turbine motors and generators, and work safely utilizing OSHA and wind turbine standard operating procedures. 

Contact SUNY Sullivan's Wind Turbine Technology Program Staff

Excelsior Jobs Program ($70 million in tax credits)

Available for strategic businesses such as high tech, bio-tech, clean-tech and manufacturing that create jobs or make significant capital investments.

ELIGIBLE APPLICANTS:

The following strategic businesses located in or planning to locate in NYS that will create jobs or retain jobs and make significant capital investments.

Firms in strategic industries that make significant capital investment that have at least 50 employees are also eligible to apply for participation in the Program.

ELIGIBLE PROJECT TYPES:

CONTACT/ADDITIONAL PROGRAM INFORMATION:

For more information, eligible applicants should contact Lois Lawrence at Empire State Development, 30 South Pearl Street, Albany, New York, 12245, call (518) 292-5240 or visithttp://www.empire.state.ny.us/BusinessPrograms/Excelsior.html.

CSO’s are old sewers that are designed to carry sewage to treatment plants during dry weather but to bypass the treatment plants and empty directly into local waterways when it rains, so the plants don’t get flooded and damaged. Some of the 6,000 jobs that Brady referred to (back) would be for eliminating CSO’s. But it’s far from easy or quick.

Take a look, for example, at the effort it will take to solve the CSO problem in Bridgeport alone (Bridgeport is one of seven cities in Connecticut with CSO’s; New York City has them too). Here’s an excerpt from the Long Island Sound Study’sSound Update newsletter of fall 2010:

Full separation of [Bridgeport’s] stormwater and wastewater systems is projected to cost $560 million and take decades. The city has been making progress, though, and has already completed seven projects to achieve this goal with a total expenditure of $50 million. The next project scheduled will achieve separation in the Downtown, eastern portion of the South End, and northern portion of Black Rock. This project will cost $25 million, is projected to be completed in 2017, and will solve most flooding and CSO problems with a solution that (after construction) will be below ground and quite intensive.

Think of what that means. By 2017, after six more years of work, they will have spent $75 million -- and will still have $485 million worth of work left to complete. That’s daunting.

But also think about what it means from another perspective. David Carey, the director of the bureau of aquaculture in Connecticut’s Department of Agriculture, pointed out in Bridgeport that 45 oyster companies in Connecticut operate 110 oyster boats and harvest an estimated 300,000 bushels of oysters a year. Because of all the rain that fell over the weekend and on Monday morning, the CSO’s were overflowing into the Sound, carrying raw sewage. As a result, none of those oyster boats were allowed to harvest oysters.

In other words, it’s not that environmental regulations were hindering the economy; rather, the lack of environmental protection was putting people out of work.

The only conclusion I can draw is that the Republicans who want to be president are wrong: a healthy environment is good for the economy; cleaning up pollution creates jobs; pollution eliminates jobs.

Tom Andersen is the author of This Fine Piece of Water: An Environmental History of Long Island Sound (Yale University Press). He blogs at ThisSphere.blogspot.com