You may have read about us here back in January. ioby.org is now live.  Visit ioby (eye-OH-be), search for environmental projects in your borough, find one that is meaningful to you, click to make a tax-deductible donation to support it or volunteer to get involved.

ioby stands for “in our backyards” and the belief that environmental knowledge, innovation, action and service begin and thrive at the local level.  On ioby.org groups with environmental projects can quickly connect to the donors and volunteers they need to make positive, environmental change for New York City neighborhoods.

Visit ioby.org or call us if you have questions 212-228-6947.  Follow us on Twitter or join us on Facebook. Read about us on the American Museum of Natural History blog or listen to us on WNYC.

If you’re dismayed by the sight of plastic bags hanging off neighborhood trees, lining gutters and strewn on New York streets, it’s time to take action. Please take a moment to sign this petition addressed to Sen. E. Adams, Sen. C. Schumer, Rep. Y. Clarke, Asm. R. Jacobs.

Our goal: 5,000 signatures.

ONLINE PETITION:

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/act-to-reduce-plasticbags-NewYork

Help clean-up our neighborhoods; protect wildlife and nature from choking on plastic; and reduce pollution.

If there was ever a time for New Yorkers to act, it’s NOW. On Wednesday, the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) approved its “Doomsday Budget”, a measure that would impose disastrous fare hikes and service cuts to the more than 1.5 million New Yorkers who use public transportation on a daily basis. If the changes are implemented, prices will jump to $2.50 a ride and $103 a month, and two subway routes and 33 bus lines would be cut. We can still convince our elected officials to turn this thing around, but time is running out fast.

Currently there’s a plan (introduced by Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver) that would provide the MTA with the necessary funds to continue operating WITHOUT cutting subway or bus service, while keeping transportation fares low. This plan would also require public audits of the MTA’s accounting records, so that we’re not caught off-guard by another 1.258 billion MTA budget deficit.

We’re not going to sit back and watch while it becomes unaffordable for the average New Yorker to live and work in our city. Please join us! Sign this letter to our state legislators, check out our video on www.99problems.org, spread the word, and watch for more updates on what you can do to help!

This may be Gotham, but not everyone can afford a Batmobile. And New Yorkers don’t put up with no *(&$%.

Love,
Rachel, Steve, Sean, and all of the pissed off Brooklyn League of Young Voters Education Fund

‘Tis the season for making lists and checking them twice.

But it’s time for all you gifters to double-check toys for tots this Christmas and Hanukkah season.

An astounding one third of the most popular 1,500 children’s toys contain toxic chemicals like lead, arsenic, mercury, bromine, cadmium, and others.

This from an article on Forbes.com:

On Feb. 10, 2009, a new federal law — the Consumer Product Safety Modernization Act — will set new limits on the amount of arsenic, cadmium, mercury, lead and other potentially unsafe chemicals allowed in children’s products. The new legal limit for cadmium in children’s products will be 75 parts per million, arsenic will be 25 ppm, mercury will be 60 ppm and lead will be 600 ppm. Based on these limits and related safety standards limiting bromine levels to 1000 ppm, the Ecology Center generated its list of the year’s “worst toys,” which includes, but doesn’t rank, the toys with highest levels of lead, arsenic, cadmium, mercury or bromide.

Check here and here for some of the most popular toxic toys.

These toxic chemicals wreak havoc on our children. Read more about chemicals of concern.

Go to HealthyToys.org to test whether your child’s toys are safe, take action by contacting your Federal representative or by signing a petition for safe toys sent to manufacturers!

Last-minute shopping? Go for green toys at Earth Smart Games, GreenToys.com and Amazon.com. Check out more green toys at A Child Grows In Brooklyn.

NRDC lets us know about an urgent call for action on one of the most important topics to a sustainable metropolis: fresh, clean, safe drinking water.

The NYS Department of Environmental Conservation is considering allowing gas drilling and development in the shale formations that sit directly below the watershed that is to the west of the Hudson River. Unfortunately, a review of the draft scope (pdf) shows that such a drilling process would have serious environmental impact — from air, noise, and visual impacts to greenhouse emissions of all the trucks and equipment to the use of more than 1 million gallons per well of fresh local surface water (piped in from local NYS lakes and rivers).

Please take action before December 15th:

• Send a letter to NYSDEC Commissioner Pete Grannis
• Send a letter to Governor Paterson
• Send a letter to Mayor Bloomberg
• Submit comments to: dmnog@gw.dec.state.ny.us with “Scope Comments” as the Subject. Or send them a note via snail mail: Attn: Scope Comments, Bureau of Oil & Gas Regulation, NYSDEC Division of Mineral Resources, 625 Broadway - Third Floor, Albany, NY 12233-6500

More info on this disturbing development:

New York City’s drinking water supply is one of the purest in the world, providing nearly 9 million New Yorkers with abundant, unfiltered water. But the city’s watershed is facing one of the most significant pollution threats in its hundred-year history — industrial gas development.

Recent developments in technology and rising natural gas prices have made the development of significant natural gas reservoirs in the Marcellus Shale formation — which lies under much of southern and western New York — newly attractive to gas extraction companies. These new technologies carry with them the risk of a wide range of serious environmental damage, not least of which is the potential to contaminate New York City’s west-of-Hudson watershed. Should the city’s water supply become contaminated, filtering it could cost more than $10 billion.

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation is in the process of evaluating the potential health and environmental risks from industrial gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale. Although the DEC is holding a series of public meetings to solicit feedback from New Yorkers as it moves forward, it has not scheduled a single hearing in New York City, notwithstanding the significant potential harm to the city’s watershed.

The DEC is accepting public comments on this phase of the process through December 15th.

What to do:

Tell the Department of Environmental Conservation to give all affected New Yorkers a chance to participate in the environmental review process for proposed Marcellus Shale gas drilling by scheduling a hearing in New York City.

If you choose not to use the NRDC’s online form, here is the text of the letter that you can copy/paste into an email or letter:

I urge the Department of Environmental Conservation to conduct an additional hearing in New York City on the Draft Scope for the Draft Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement on the Oil, Gas and Solution Mining Regulatory Program for the Marcellus Shale and other formations.

As you know, New York City’s drinking water supply is one of the purest in the world, providing nearly 9 million New Yorkers with abundant, unfiltered water. I am very concerned about the potential threats to the city’s drinking water supply from industrial gas development in those portions of the Marcellus Shale formation that underlie the west-of-Hudson watershed.

Currently, the department’s closest scheduled hearing on the issue is located more than 100 miles away from New York City — a distance that is not practical for most working New Yorkers to travel. New York City residents deserve to be heard on this issue of critical importance to our drinking water source, and I urge your department to schedule a hearing within the city at the earliest opportunity.

For more information, read the draft scope (pdf) of the project provided by the NYSDEC.

Should we allow the DEC to release permits so that oil and gas companies can come into our state and potentially disrupt our watershed, then turn around and sell the gas on the open market? Methinks not…