New York State SmartTranscripts:

[Senator Liz Krueger (Chair, Senate Finance)]: Hello, everyone. Legislators, back in your chairs. Earn your living. And guests, they're here. Our panel, our first panel after government is here. So, citizens Thank you. Oh, a new staffer. Citizens Campaign for the Environment, New York League of Conservation Voters, Natural Resources Defense Council, and Clean and Healthy. Welcome all of you. Thanks for being with us all day. Just to know, you each get three minutes per organization, then we get three minutes in total to ask you questions. And obviously, it's already been somewhat of a long day, but you But didn't we all learned a lot, and we have 32 additional groups testifying. But again, for everyone to remember, your full testimony's already been submitted. It's already, I believe, up online for people to take a look at. Yes, it is, thank you. And therefore, even if you think, who's listening, everybody went to dinner, they could be eating dinner while you're testifying, or they can read the testimony, there you go. Anyway, I know that I'm starting out with Chair Pete Harham, and he doesn't get any more than three minutes either. He's not important.

[Senator Pete Harckham (Chair, Senate Environmental Conservation)]: He gets speak to first.

[Senator Liz Krueger (Chair, Senate Finance)]: Oh yes, see, I knew I was in trouble. Oh

[Assemblymember Dana Levenberg]: yes. I'm

[Senator Liz Krueger (Chair, Senate Finance)]: not good at that today for We're some gonna let you testify first rather than having Pete guess what you're gonna test ify.

[Assemblymember Gary Pretlow (Co-Chair)]: Like Carnack. Carnack.

[Senator Liz Krueger (Chair, Senate Finance)]: Okay. Why don't we just go down the list as you are listed? My old friend Adrian Esposito from Citizens Campaign for the Environment. Good Good evening, of the Senate

[Adrienne Esposito (Citizens Campaign for the Environment)]: evening, Assembly members. Thank you so much for the opportunity to comment. My name is Adrian Esposito, Executive Director of Citizens Campaign for the Environment. Couple of items. Number one is we want to say we were delighted to see in the Governor's proposed budget yet another $500,000,000 for clean water infrastructure. You probably know this, but I want to say thank you because the money that's been spent on clean water infrastructure since 2017 is $5,100,000,000 across the great state of New York, equating to 2,650 projects that have been upgraded and fixed. That's a success story. Last year in New York State, dollars 1,100,000,000.0 got out the door to fix our sewer and drinking water infrastructure. Thank you for that. We need to keep it up. It's made a difference here in New York State. Speaking

[Kathryn Nadeau (Environmental Advocates of New York)]: of

[Adrienne Esposito (Citizens Campaign for the Environment)]: that, we were a little dismayed to see in the Governor's budget the $200,000,000 for building new homes up to existing water infrastructure. That is not a clean water program. That is a pro building program. Now you can put that in the budget if you decide that the taxpayer dollars should be utilized to subsidize developers. Because apparently they're a needy group in New York State. And if you want to do that, please do that under a pro housing development. But it should be decoupled from the Clean Water Initiative. The Clean Water Initiative is about upgrading and fixing existing infrastructure, which we desperately need. For instance, last year, it was $500,000,000 But did you know that program was oversubscribed by six eighty five million dollars above the 500,000,000 That means $650,000,000 of grants were disapproved because of lack of funding. Also, we have a lead pipe problem. We have another 555,000 lead pipes to be replaced in New York State and that costs money. We also need funding for the leaky landfill leachate problem with PFAS chemicals. I was heartened to hear the Commissioner, Amanda Levenberg, say that we have $5,000,000 in the budget for that, but we also need more. Landfills are leaking leachate, which is difficult to say, all across the state of New York. And we need to pretreat that PFAS and those chemicals before they end up in our waterways. So we have lots and lots and lots of existing needs, without throwing on there that we have to build new communities. Last, in fifteen seconds, I'll mention we do have concerns about the secret initiative. It needs to be a lot more thoughtful with guardrails. We're concerned about changing the threshold for a neck deck from three houses to 100 houses. Has the potential to increase sprawl and to really eliminate the environmental review process in some cases. Thank you.

[Patrick McClellan (NY League of Conservation Voters)]: Thank you. My name is Patrick McCullen. I'm the policy director at the New York League of Conservation Voters, and thank you for the opportunity to testify. There's a lot to like in this year's executive budget for traditional environmental conservation programs, including the capital budgets for DEC and parks, matching last year's record $425,000,000 Environmental Protection Fund, and a new five year commitment to $3,750,000,000 for clean water. I will echo Adrian's comments, though, that the $200,000,000 that appears to be for drinking water infrastructure and sewer infrastructure for new housing, that might be an appropriate use of state funds to help address the housing crisis. It's really outside of my area of expertise. But we don't think that it's really an appropriate use of Clean Water Infrastructure Act funding, which is really meant to address the overwhelming existing need in New York State. When it comes to climate programs, this budget, though, does not go far enough. In particular, in light of the state's the governor's continued decision to not publish the final regulations for the capital invest program under the Clean Air Initiative, as the state is calling it now. We really believe that the state needs to invest in the Sustainable Future Fund again, as we did last year with $1,000,000,000 for climate mitigation and adaptation programs, because the need has not gone away. The climate crisis is on our doorsteps. It needs to be addressed. We need to have that funding in the budget. I think the most significant environmental legislation that was proposed are the reforms to CCAR. Broadly speaking, NYLCV are comfortable with easing CCAR requirements for dense transit oriented development because that type of housing has greenhouse gas emissions that are per capita so much lower than more sprawl development and development in areas that are more car centric. We do have concerns about some of the language, though, especially the definition of previously disturbed land. We have not had enough time to come up with suggested amendments, but we look forward to doing so in the very near future. And then on affordability, certainly the governor is focused on that this year, and especially with people's utility bills. There are a few proposals here, though, that were not included in the budget that we really think would help with affordability, particularly measures to expand access to distributed generation of renewable energy, especially solar. Because the best thing someone can do to lower their energy bills is put solar on their roof. It is getting more difficult, more expensive to do that because of the federal government. But there is a lot that the state can do to help, starting with passing the ASAP Act to increase the state's distributed solar goal, reform the interconnection process, and restore the New York Sun program. We also support automated solar permitting for municipalities and doubling the solar tax credit. And then finally, the state should also be doing more on battery energy storage. I have further comments in my written Thank you.

[Kate Donovan (Natural Resources Defense Council)]: There. Thanks so much for having us this evening. My name is Kate Donovan. I'm the Northeast Regional Director for Environmental Health at the Natural Resources Defense Council. And I'm presenting my testimony today on behalf of all of our program areas at NRDC, which includes climate, environmental health, and nature. So for more than fifty years, NRDC has been protecting public health and the environment and addressing the climate crisis. With the federal government retreating from its responsibilities from public health, the environment, climate stability, New York is leadership at this moment in time is so important. It also needs to be said that the economic growth is not incompatible with environmental protection. And the governor's let them build agenda doesn't need to sacrifice critical environmental laws that we've seen work successfully in years, and also to impact open space, climate resiliency, or overburden communities. Starting with water, I mean, I echo what my two colleagues here said about the water infrastructure money. Of course, very happy to see the $500,000,000 annual investment. Have some concerns about how the $250,000,000 will be spent. And as Adrian and others have said, the investments are so much greater than are currently oversubscribed. So just echoing NRDC's position about that and also all the strong work that we've done as an organization on replacing lead service lines. So we do see there's an opportunity to use some of that additional funding that's been allocated for lead service line replacements. We support the EPF at no less than $425,000,000 That would be nice. The other thing I wanted to mention is the government's budget is really not sufficient to address New York's PFAS contamination crisis. So we really like to encourage the legislature to look at additional funding for supporting the regulatory regulatory work on upstream sources of PFAS. We can spend all the money we want and we will spend billions and billions of dollars filtering out PFAS from our drinking water as well as deferred health care costs from that. But until we actually get PFAS out of products and industrial sources upstream, we really are in a futile position. CCRA, I'll just say briefly, I share the same comments, similar comments that Adrian made about that. We want to ensure that any amendments to this bedrock law are narrow, precise, and thoughtfully drafted. Onto climate real quick. We know that the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act is still an essential tool for moving affordable, good jobs, and public health benefits in New York. I do just want to urge with my last seconds that we want to see the legislature insert language on data centers to ensure that their fair share and operate flexibility to protect ratepayers.

[Bobbi Wilding (Clean and Healthy New York)]: Good evening. Thank you for the opportunity to testify tonight. My name is Bobbi Wilding. I'm executive director of Clean and Healthy. And we, along with We Act for Environmental Justice, co lead the Just Green Partnership. In a year when affordability is the watchword, I want to pause and remind us all that actions to reduce toxic chemicals and pollution are absolutely about affordability for everyday New Yorkers. As New Yorkers face skyrocketing health care costs, consider this. Chemicals in plastics are responsible for nearly $250,000,000,000 worth of US health care costs every single year. And that's just looking at a handful of the chemicals that show up in plastics. It doesn't cover the myriad of other sources of toxic chemicals, which can contribute to costly diseases like cancer, diabetes, asthma, developmental disabilities, and so much more. The governor's budget appropriately includes funds for clean water, including filtration for PFAS and drinking water, but it does not sufficiently expand the state's effort to prevent contamination in the first place. If we want New York to be an affordable place to live, we have to require companies to prevent pollution by turning off the tap on chemicals that threaten our health and our air, water, and soil. The Trump administration is radically undermining environmental and public health protections, but it isn't the only threat coming from the federal level. There is an effort to weaken the Toxic Substances Control Act, which would hamstring the EPA's ability to review new chemicals before they enter the market and expand preemption of state efforts like this legislature has passed time and time again. I want to thank all of the state legislators who signed on to a national letter opposing these efforts. More is going to need to be done. New York's leadership is more essential than ever. I urge you to seize every opportunity for New York to serve as a backstop against federal rollbacks and to promote environmental justice, to turn the state away from toxic chemicals from production through manufacturing, use, and end of life. We support at least four twenty five million dollars for the Environmental Protection Fund at least $500,000,000 for the Clean Water Infrastructure. We support at least $400,000,000 for the New York State Children's Environmental Health Centers within the EPF and urge you to increase funding for the Pollution Prevention Institute, which can provide safer solutions to PFAS for New York's manufacturers. Specifically, the manufacturing of semiconductors, given the massive construction of the Micron and other facilities across the state. We also urge you to ensure that the New York DEC has sufficient staff capacity, particularly in the Division of Materials Management and its Pollution Prevention Unit. I know it's a challenging budget year, but adding to a $400,000 for staff in the PT unit and making sure they've got funding for testing is going to be essential to that upstream action, both to implement existing laws, but also additional laws. For example, my favorites, the PFAS and Consumer Products Ban and the Beauty Justice Act. All that is to say, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Thank you.

[Senator Liz Krueger (Chair, Senate Finance)]: Okay. Thank you very much. Keith P.

[Senator Pete Harckham (Chair, Senate Environmental Conservation)]: Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you all so much for your testimony. Thank you for your advocacy. Thank you for your partnership. Please don't be offended.

[Assemblymember Keith P. Brown]: And I say this to some of the other panels as well. If I don't ask questions, it's not that I don't value your testimony. It's that your testimony is very clear, very poignant. We have your written testimony as well. I'll let your testimony speak for what it is. But thank you again for your partnership and for everything you do. So I will pass on questions for now, Madam Chair, but take the opportunity to say thank you to all the panelists.

[Assemblymember Gary Pretlow (Co-Chair)]: Assemblymember Glick.

[Assemblymember Deborah J. Glick]: Thank you. Thank you for still being here. I very much appreciate everyone pointing out the oversubscription to the water infrastructure work that has been done, that still needs to be done. I would ask that you be in touch with us specifically around the secret issues that are being raised. Not everything that's been around for fifty years should be changed. Some of our the Bill of Rights been around for two fifty years. And while some people seem to want to change that, I think it's pretty good. So I think that we need to be certain that any attempt to utilize the apparent concern about there not being enough building, There's plenty of building. My district in particular sees lots of building all the time. None of it is affordable. But this is not the way in which rolling back environmental protection is the way we're going to necessarily get affordable housing for New Yorkers. So thank you for the work you've done so far, but we obviously have a great deal more to do. And I specifically ask you to outreach to us on your concerns specifically around CEQA.

[Adrienne Esposito (Citizens Campaign for the Environment)]: J. May I respond, Assemblywoman?

[Assemblymember Deborah J. Glick]: J. Yes.

[Adrienne Esposito (Citizens Campaign for the Environment)]: J. A couple of things. One is we were told that the increase in money would go to affordable housing, and yet proposal doesn't contain the word affordable at all. In addition, Citizens Campaign for the Environment rejects the notion that secret is the reason we don't have affordable housing in New York State. If developers wanted to build affordable housing, they would build affordable housing. But the fact of the matter is they make more money building unaffordable housing. So I feel a little bit like we're trying to fix a problem that may not exist. That doesn't mean that we're not open minded. We wouldn't like to look at modernization of the SECRET Act. But we don't feel that taking the one state law that requires a hard look at how development impacts our natural resources traffic and air pollution should be diminished in any way. We could look at it. We'd like it to be a longer, more thoughtful process so we can tell the public that we can do both. We can provide adequate housing stock and protect our natural resources.

[Assemblymember Deborah J. Glick]: Thank you very, very much. Look forward to working with all

[Assemblymember Gary Pretlow (Co-Chair)]: of you.

[Senator Liz Krueger (Chair, Senate Finance)]: Senator Rachel May.

[Senator Rachel May]: Thank you, and thank you for your testimony. I just have a question for you, Adrienne, because one of the things you mentioned about secret was that you were afraid it would increase sprawl. And the bill that I carry with Assembly Member Kelles, which is kind of the underlying policy for this, what the governor put in the budget, is literally called Sprawl Prevention. That's part of the title of the bill because the point is to get, is to allow construction in those infill sites where the lawsuits happen, the kind of frivolous lawsuits happen that stop the production. And it drives developers to go out into green fields and build, you know, single family developments and former cornfields and that kind of thing. And so we see this as an environmentally positive thing to try to facilitate that kind of centralized development in places that already have infrastructure, that have sidewalks, that have buses, that have, you know, the amenities that people want in order to live a more sustainable lifestyle. And so I'm curious where that came from for you, what you saw in the governor's proposal that you think would promote sprawl.

[Adrienne Esposito (Citizens Campaign for the Environment)]: Well, just a couple of things very quickly. One is I am not an attorney, and I don't play one on TV. But for instance, the legislation identified areas that have previously been used as grass, been in lawn areas. But we don't know what kind of records have been kept about that, what kind of workaround that could allow previously disturbed areas with no definition of previously disturbed areas. Also, it did say, which was the one good thing about it would areas that have existing sewer connections. But there was no necessity to evaluate sewer infrastructure capacity or upgrades that would be needed or the long term maintenance costs, increased maintenance costs to those kind of facilities. So we just had a lot

[Shiv Sohin (TREEage / NY Renews)]: I'm just going

[Senator Rachel May]: to interrupt real quick and just say, I encourage you to take a look at our bill and see

[Adrienne Esposito (Citizens Campaign for the Environment)]: Yeah, if I'm there's not talking about your bill.

[Senator Rachel May]: See if there's language in there that assuages some of those. Because as we try to figure out how to negotiate this policy

[Adrienne Esposito (Citizens Campaign for the Environment)]: We are doing that. Just as a reminder, this just got dropped last week. And so many of us have been meeting, discussing, meeting with secret attorneys to get the guidance and their perspective that we think will J. Be valuable

[Senator Pete Harckham (Chair, Senate Environmental Conservation)]: in Wonderful. This

[Senator Rachel May]: And I'm sure Assemblymember Kelles and I are happy to have some of those meetings, too. J.

[Adrienne Esposito (Citizens Campaign for the Environment)]: Yes. Thank you so much.

[Senator Rachel May]: J. Yeah. Thank you.

[Assemblymember Gary Pretlow (Co-Chair)]: Thank you. Osama Min Ra?

[Michael Hernandez (Rewiring America)]: Thank

[Assemblymember Micah Lasher]: you. Micah, thank you all for waiting it out. It's been a long afternoon, I know. Adrian, can you repeat that number you gave in terms of how much in projects haven't been awarded because the need is so high?

[Adrienne Esposito (Citizens Campaign for the Environment)]: Yes. We were oversubscribed last year, just in one year in 2025, dollars $685,000,000, which equated to two seventy projects around New York State that went unfunded. And that's in one year. And Assemblyman, for you in specific, that doesn't even count the projects that were not submitted. For instance, in Nassau County, the need for fixing just the wastewater treatment pipes is $250,000,000 in Nassau County alone. These are some very big numbers that need very real responses.

[Assemblymember Micah Lasher]: R. Absolutely. And I know we had talked last year about getting additional money. It's great to see the $500,000,000 again. R. Yes. We're getting additional money because you know, lead pipes, lead service lines, all these other needs that are out there and not wanting to have that pull away from all of the other applications that are coming in for things. I'm sure you know and I know I'm, preaching to the choir here, but one of the things I'm hearing the most from my local governments about is the lead pipes and the lead service lines because we rightfully, right, took action legislatively a couple years ago so that people knew what they had. And now people are concerned and they want to replace them and the municipalities want to know how they're going to go about this and certainly that there's funding. As you know, we've put, you know, we've made historic investments year after year but very little of it has gone towards that That's relatively speaking. So it's a tremendous need and, you know, with, you know, mandates looming on on getting rid of that stuff as well as just families on the, you know, on the personal side, on the lead service line, just wanting to know that they can replace that infrastructure. It it it actually, I'll take the kind of glass half full approach that we've said, we're willing to put another $250,000,000 Now hopefully we can push it to be more, I think, appropriately spent on those type of things that are actual clean water You

[Adrienne Esposito (Citizens Campaign for the Environment)]: are singing

[Unidentified Legislator (female)]: our song, Assemblyman.

[Assemblymember Micah Lasher]: Thank you.

[Senator Anthony Palumbo]: Thank you, madam chair. Nice to see you all. And you along those lines because I I was actually I know that the water authority, they were concerned there's another bill out there mandating that all lead pipes be replaced. And I guess it's more of a comment but I'd like to see if you have any comments on it as well. And I think the numbers proposed were something like $24,000,000,000 to do it statewide because if you include goosenecks not just lead lines. So I think that's just more of a reason why I mean, we'd love to get there someday, that that money needs to get out the door. But I don't know if you have any other comments on that. I think we're all on the same page that we need to fund it and we need I mean, there's a lot of work to be done.

[Adrienne Esposito (Citizens Campaign for the Environment)]: Yeah. I mean, the only comment I'll make is we do have, as I said earlier, 555,660 pipes that we know of throughout the state of New York that need to be changed. And I don't know if that actually includes the Goosenecks. So the good news is we know how to change pipes. This is not a high technological adventure. But the bad news is we need money to do it. So it is going to take time. But we can do it with political will and with money.

[Senator Anthony Palumbo]: Yeah, certainly. And as far I mean, the Gooseneck is a small portion of it, but the pipes produce tremendous amounts of lead. Yes. So I mean, the reason the pipes obviously need to be addressed immediately. But thank you.

[Assemblymember Gary Pretlow (Co-Chair)]: Assembly Member Kassay.

[Assemblymember Rebecca Kassay]: Thank you. I have two questions, one for Director Wilding and one for Director Esposito. I'm to ask Director Wilding first because I know better than to try to Director Esposito. No, I just try to avoid it, with all love. It was an eye opening statistic that you shared that toxic chemicals like PFAS and others are responsible for an estimated $250,000,000,000 was that right of public health? Yes. Costs to address serious conditions like cancer, endocrine disorders, infertility that we're seeing on the rise. What would you identify as one of the most toxic offenders for New York State to tackle in the budget and thereafter?

[Bobbi Wilding (Clean and Healthy New York)]: I mean, I think the PFAS, turning off the tap on PFAS and recognizing an undiagnosed problem of the many sources of PFAS in manufacturing across New York State is something that frankly terrifies me. I think that it's really essential that we start getting our manufacturers to look at PFAS as a class and move away from it. Right now, on the environmental side, only a handful of chemicals are being tested for, but there are 15,000 chemicals in the class.

[Liz Moran (Earthjustice)]: So I

[Bobbi Wilding (Clean and Healthy New York)]: think that's really the urgent need.

[Assemblymember Rebecca Kassay]: All right. Thank you for that. And thank you for your testimony, everyone on the panel. Director Esposito, Adrian, another eye opening statistic was that the Clean Water Infrastructure Program was six eighty five million dollars over prescribed. And like you said earlier, that's not even all the projects that are needed. It was just those that applied. So knowing that towns in my district, like Coram and Port Jefferson Station, are looking to build out sewer infrastructure for clean water as well as economic development, They will be waiting on that line. I agree that there's need to shift more funding for that program. But we know that while we know that clean water is much cheaper to keep water clean than to clean up contamination, I know that investment is sound. But I also know that this taxpayer money coming back to communities can also boost economic development. And I wanted to ask you to just speak a little bit more to that.

[Adrienne Esposito (Citizens Campaign for the Environment)]: Yes. And in my testimony, have an analysis of the economic development. A couple of things. One is every dollar we spent on clean water infrastructure has created jobs, good paying jobs, plumbing jobs, electrician jobs, construction jobs right in the community, local jobs. And in addition to that is that when we have sewers and we actually treat our sewage, we don't pollute our drinking water. So we don't have to filter out the drinking water. We also then keep the bays and the beaches clean and beaches open. And we know that anywhere that has a lake or a beach or a marine environment really depends on tourism as dollars and as a recreational economic engine.

[Assemblymember Rebecca Kassay]: Don't we have $8,000,000,000 on the Highland? Yes.

[Adrienne Esposito (Citizens Campaign for the Environment)]: It's $8,000,000,000 so they think. It could be more in a good summer.

[Unidentified Speaker]: So

[Adrienne Esposito (Citizens Campaign for the Environment)]: really, clean water is one of the few bi partisan galvanizing issues that everybody agrees on. The public agrees on it. And we need to keep it going and keep the momentum advancing.

[Assemblymember Rebecca Kassay]: Super. Thank you all for your advocacy. I'm right there with you. And we'll continue to push for more funding, even though we got more than expected in this budget, really until we have all the infrastructure we need in our communities,

[Adrienne Esposito (Citizens Campaign for the Environment)]: we'll be We just pushing got to get that $700,000 in the clean water side.

[Assemblymember Gary Pretlow (Co-Chair)]: R. Assembly member Otis.

[Assemblymember Steven Otis]: R. Thank you all, and thank you all for your great work. I wanted to focus in on the water question. And earlier, I made some distinctions about the water, basically saying, number one, that we need more than the 500 for our preexisting needs. And I set up a dichotomy, which is, as it relates to housing and I don't there may not be $250,000,000 needed for this, but housing that would be okay and doesn't do anything bad to the environment, as opposed to something we're going to create infrastructure to put housing where it doesn't belong. I think that's a valuable distinction and I think we should try and work with the process. We don't wanna say no to the additional 250,000,000 and I think there's a way even even today's water funding sometimes is coupled with other projects that that occur. So any additional thoughts from any of you about that? Adrienne, you're going to start off because you led with it and just additional reflections on how we should deal with that in the budget process.

[Adrienne Esposito (Citizens Campaign for the Environment)]: Yeah, I mean, there is room to say. There are so many areas. We heard testimony from Senate and Assembly members early hours and hours ago now today, who said in my district, we all have septics. We want to hook up to sewers. We should do that. And then if you need to build more housing stock in those areas because then it is sewered, those should be prioritized. Every time there's money for sewers, every time I've ever been involved in a county project or a town project, they develop a prioritization list with a criteria. So I think that we could be more thoughtful about this. I appreciate very much that the governor's staff looked at this and said, we don't want to keep building houses without clean water infrastructure. That makes sense. That is a very good perspective. It's just I want to decouple this clean water infrastructure funding with creating new houses. Those two things don't go together. A housing initiative is the wisdom of the Senate and the Assembly to think about, do you want to create that and spend taxpayer dollars on that? But we have this fund created that's solving problems. To dip into it and disperse it even more now, I think, doesn't bode well for the future.

[Assemblymember Steven Otis]: J. Comments from any of the others? Thirty seconds left.

[Kate Donovan (Natural Resources Defense Council)]: L. I mean, I guess I would just say, in the language that the governor presented, I see, reading the text, it needs work. It needs to have the right words to ensure it's going to the right places. But there's an opportunity. They talk about preserving housing. And lead pipe service line replacement is a perfect example of how to preserve existing housing with a water infrastructure upgrade.

[Adrienne Esposito (Citizens Campaign for the Environment)]: Particularly in the rural communities. We all agree there's a very strong need in Adirondacks, Catskill, rural communities.

[Assemblymember Anna R. Kelles]: Get to my notes. So so good to see you all. Quick point. I I did wanna, just clarify for everyone. Although we, my colleague, Senator May, and I have introduced a bill and you are welcome to look it up 6,283 in my house it is not what is in the budget in the executive budget. I really just wanted to get that on the record. Made a point. So let me just step back and say, for us, why the data shows that the seeker process, as it is right now, adds two years to the entire process. And there's been some pretty significant estimates of increasing cost, which has caused, in my district and in other districts, affordable housing projects to pull out. So we have lost those. And I think that's important. But the reason that I'm seeing that it's used is not for the reason we as environmentalists would want. And those protections need to be preserved, like a shadow effect on people's house houses or it's next to a historic district. And I have literally seen that used. As a county legislator, I heard that. So the point that I think is really important is that if you look at the list of environmental protections that are there, the intention is to make it as strong or stronger men seeker. And it is not to prevent them or give them exclude them, but to say, if you meet all of these requirements like lead or passive house or some form and that, really clear stringent guard, protections for flood mitigation and protections It can't be built on environmentally sensitive property or, you know, lands, on and on and on. All those things are there. So I'd love to talk to you about those because I could not agree with you more. Those environmental protections need to be in stone and never weakened. But just to be on the record clear. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. So let's please absolutely continue that conversation. I I did wanna ask some things about PFAS in products. My first question is, I'd love to hear from you all what you're seeing from the data is, like, what products and industries are really the greatest contributors? And the other thing I know we've been waiting for six years for the toxic chemicals in children product laws to be, you know, the regulations. I'd love to hear your thoughts a little bit on that and what you want to see from us.

[Bobbi Wilding (Clean and Healthy New York)]: So on the second, which is quick, my understanding is that the regs have been drafted and they're under review. It would be great for the legislature to be calling on DC to release those regs so we can actually start seeing what toxic chemicals are in children's products here in New York. There's a long list of products that contain PFAS. It's longer than I could have time, even if you gave me an hour. But I think that things we've got that we could take action on this year include paint and cleaning products and textiles.

[Assemblymember Anna R. Kelles]: Fantastic. Thank you so

[Unidentified Speaker]: And cookware.

[Assemblymember Anna R. Kelles]: Cookware. Cookware. Fantastic. Thank you.

[Senator Mark Walczyk]: Thank you, madam chair. Is natural resource defense counsel here? Okay. Great. It's Kate. Wonderful. Last year, you reported approximately 200,000,000 in revenue. Is that right?

[Kate Donovan (Natural Resources Defense Council)]: Sorry. I'm not exactly sure what we reported.

[Senator Mark Walczyk]: How much did you spend in campaigns in New York?

[Kate Donovan (Natural Resources Defense Council)]: I don't know that answer, but I can find that for you.

[Unidentified Speaker]: She's the health department. I work

[Kate Donovan (Natural Resources Defense Council)]: in our health department. I'm a lawyer.

[Senator Mark Walczyk]: I got you.

[Kate Donovan (Natural Resources Defense Council)]: Mean, all of that information is publicly available, but I could get some more information back from you if you need.

[Senator Mark Walczyk]: Can you give me any awareness for what that money would be spent on in New York?

[Kate Donovan (Natural Resources Defense Council)]: Well, we have a tremendous program in New York, fighting, working with our climate, climate on climate, environmental health, nature. So all of the programs that we discussed here today, we work on in New York State. And we have several attorneys, scientists, and other parts of our organization that work on advocacy in just New York State. We are an international organization. But there is, I think, approximately, oh, I don't know, maybe 15 full time staff employees or more that work directly just in New York State.

[Senator Mark Walczyk]: How much, and maybe a rough percentage, how much of your organization is funded by international money?

[Kate Donovan (Natural Resources Defense Council)]: I do not I do not know the answer to that, and I do not think a lot.

[Senator Mark Walczyk]: In in 2024, your five zero one

[Senator Pete Harckham (Chair, Senate Environmental Conservation)]: c

[Senator Mark Walczyk]: three slid $900,000 over to your five zero one c four. Do you have any idea how much of that was foreign money?

[Kate Donovan (Natural Resources Defense Council)]: I do not.

[Senator Mark Walczyk]: Do do you know how much is in the account of your 501C4?

[Kate Donovan (Natural Resources Defense Council)]: I do not.

[Senator Mark Walczyk]: Me neither. I couldn't look that up. How many international donors do you have?

[Kate Donovan (Natural Resources Defense Council)]: I do not know the answer

[Unidentified Speaker]: to that question. Again, she does health.

[Senator Mark Walczyk]: Okay. That's all I have. I'm I'll yield back the rest of my time.

[Kate Donovan (Natural Resources Defense Council)]: Thanks.

[Alison Considine (Building Decarbonization Coalition)]: Great.

[Unidentified Assemblymember (Suffolk County)]: Thank you, Madam Chair. And I thank everybody for the testimony. To my good friend Adrian Hello, Mr. I just want to say thank you for all your hard work.

[Adrienne Esposito (Citizens Campaign for the Environment)]: Thank you.

[Unidentified Assemblymember (Suffolk County)]: You've been somebody that's stellar in what you've done and continuing. So I just we have our talks about certain things, but we all we care about the environment. We care about especially our clean water. And I know Senator Plumbow, he talked about the lead pipes and somebody that's a master plumber and with plumbers local union and always with filters and always making sure that over the years that that's what I have done to protect our citizens of residents of especially Long Island. We have $250,000,000 proposed with the governor's budget. Am I correct? We have How much

[Jonathan Cohen (New York Solar Energy Industries Association)]: do we have?

[Adrienne Esposito (Citizens Campaign for the Environment)]: $500,000,000 in the Clean Water Fund and $250,000,000 in another kind of quasi water development fund. A total of $7.50

[Unidentified Assemblymember (Suffolk County)]: Right. Million Plus we have money with Suffolk County with the Proposition two.

[Adrienne Esposito (Citizens Campaign for the Environment)]: Yes.

[Unidentified Assemblymember (Suffolk County)]: So we have a good amount of money for our clean water, clean air.

[Adrienne Esposito (Citizens Campaign for the Environment)]: There's approximately $47,000,000 in the eighth of a penny fund in Suffolk County for sewers and also for a septic replacement.

[Unidentified Assemblymember (Suffolk County)]: That's correct. And Suffolk County alone is only, if I'm saying this correctly, possibly, what is it, like 25% sewered in Suffolk County?

[Adrienne Esposito (Citizens Campaign for the Environment)]: Correct. You're right. Yes.

[Unidentified Assemblymember (Suffolk County)]: That's right. And we've to make sure that we're going be using this money and making sure that we're going to be protected because somebody that sat on Suffolk County Water Authority for six years, it was very, very important. We all know the contaminants, PFOS, PFOAs, the 14 dioxane. And we have right now 60 wells that obviously need to the AOP systems with Suffolk County Water Authority. Out of that money, $250,000,000 I know that's for the whole state of New York. Do you feel that we are going to be receiving our fair share, especially on Long Island?

[Adrienne Esposito (Citizens Campaign for the Environment)]: You know, it's an excellent question. I can't imagine. Our fair share? I don't know. Our share will get our share. We have been getting a good amount of money from the Water Infrastructure Fund, mostly for filtration devices of the granulated activated carbon systems and the advanced oxidation for the 14 dioxane and for PFAS. And you're making a great point because as the PFAS drinking water standard comes down to four PPT in 2029, even more wells are going to need that filtration system. And we're going to put greater demand on that fund.

[Unidentified Assemblymember (Suffolk County)]: I only have twenty seconds. Just so you know, we have two forty four wells just alone in Suffolk County, which is a lot. And I was with Joe Perconi. And they do an amazing job from the CEO, Jeff Zabo

[Adrienne Esposito (Citizens Campaign for the Environment)]: I agree.

[Unidentified Assemblymember (Suffolk County)]: Joe Percone, the whole staff, you know this. And it was something that was a premier board to sit on. And I know all your hard work that we've got to make sure, with your help, to make sure we get our fair share of this money, please.

[Adrienne Esposito (Citizens Campaign for the Environment)]: Are you lobbying me?

[Unidentified Assemblymember (Suffolk County)]: Yes, I'm I lobbying you. No, you know. How about we work together?

[Adrienne Esposito (Citizens Campaign for the Environment)]: Thank you very much.

[Senator Liz Krueger (Chair, Senate Finance)]: Good evening, everyone. And we're going to call you in the order you were on the printout. So we'll start with Elizabeth Moran, Earth Justice, then go to Ann Marie Gray, Open New York, then to Kathryn Nadeau, Environmental Advocates of New York, and finally to Alexis Goldsmith of Beyond Plastics. Good evening.

[Liz Moran (Earthjustice)]: Good evening. Thank you all so much for the opportunity to testify this evening. And thank you all for sticking it through. My name is Liz Moran. I'm the New York policy advocate with Earth Justice. We heard a lot today about energy affordability. And no New Yorker should have to choose between heating and eating. Since 2022, every major New York gas utility has raised costs on customers, which has caused more than 1,200,000 families to fall behind on their energy bills. It's really urgent to tackle this crisis. And I can tell you the cause. And the cause is the gas system. The main driver of energy costs going up for New Yorkers is gas, both the cost of supply and the associated infrastructure. And you can see this on utility bills. Delivery costs, in particular, which is the infrastructure costs, have been increasing the most. According to the New York Independent System Operator, energy rose by 35% to 53% across the system, driven primarily by an increase of 42% to 66% in natural gas prices. And right now, prices are spiking as a result of winter storm Fern. This is pretty normal during extreme weather events. And ratepayers in New York are going to see that on their energy bills, because our electric supply currently depends primarily on gas. So we also know that the infrastructure costs are astronomical. A report from the research organization Switchbox found that utilities spent over $2,000,000,000 on pipe replacement from 2022 to 2023 and pass these costs on to ratepayers. Now, on the flip side, the climate law is not causing utility bills to go up. A report from the Public Service Commission found climate policies accounted for anywhere from 5% to 9.5% of the average household's electric bill, or $10 to $12 per month, depending on the utility. And it was much smaller when it comes to gas bills. So gas is not affordable. New Yorkers can't afford the status quo. And when it comes to our budget and legislative session addressing that, there's a lot that we need here. And unfortunately, we didn't see this leadership from the governor in her executive budget proposal. So here are some things that we encourage the legislature to look into. One is putting $1,000,000,000 towards the Sustainable Future Program, increasing funding to $200,000,000 for Empower Plus. We encourage the legislature to look at funding for addressing delivered fuels. People who live in households, depending on delivered fuels, pay way too much for their energy bills and stand to save a lot by transitioning to heat pumps. Thank you so much for the opportunity to testify.

[Senator Liz Krueger (Chair, Senate Finance)]: Next testifier is Ann Marie Gray from Open New York.

[Ann Marie Gray (Open New York)]: Thank you. Thanks for sticking all this out. I'm Ann Marie Gray, executive director of Open New York. We're an independent grassroots pro housing nonprofit with over 1,000 volunteer members across the state. So as we've heard a lot today, New Yorkers are facing really big problems rising rents, soaring utility bills, aging infrastructure, and stalled progress on climate goals. I really believe that a huge challenge that is making a lot of these issues so much harder is CCRA, which is what I'm going to be speaking about today, the State Environmental Quality Review Act. So as has been mentioned, this was written in the '70s for a vastly different New York when we needed to stop things like dirty power plants, highways bulldozing neighborhoods. Today, it's just over and over again ends up being used to block the very solutions we need to our climate crisis dense infill housing near transit, clean energy, clean resiliency infrastructure. One single opponent or wealthy interest group can weaponize a process that delays crucial projects for years and years. And it's really important to remember these are projects that have already gone through a community process, that have been approved by local government under local zoning regulations, remain unchanged in some of these proposed changes. And we've been tracking projects like one in Buffalo, where a child care center, mixed income housing, a park were proposed to replace a parking lot. It got stalled over two years because of a lawsuit that actually wasn't even about environmental concerns. And these delays literally drive up costs for New Yorkers. New research that just came out from the Citizens Budget Commission found that environmental review increases costs by over 10%. So that's 40,000 to $80,000 per unit, which gets passed on to renters and buyers. So we're really encouraged that the Governor Hochul's proposed modernization of these rules in the budget. We also really applaud the work of Senator May and Assembly Member Kelles via the Sustainable Affordable Housing and Sprawl Prevention Act, which passed in the Senate last year. And we really hope the governor and the legislature can reach an agreement that blends the best of both of these proposals. Specifically, we really appreciate the May and Kelles bill offers a higher number of units allowed to qualify for type two exemptions and removes outdated and extraneous analyses for smaller projects. And this has widespread support. A recent poll showed threefour of New York City residents across every demographic supported it. And a clear majority in every region across the state, even in suburban areas, are supportive of this. And this morning, we also helped launch Unlock New York's Future, a coalition of over 30 advocates from housing, transit, environment, business that really support these reforms. We're also really proud to have really strong support from Mayor Mamdani, who recognizes that these are really crucial reforms to meet his affordable housing goals. So yet again, making it easier to build dense infill housing is climate action. Our current system actually really does incentivize and exacerbates sprawl and increases emissions and maintains our current reality of housing scarcity. And we've seen a clear mandate that New Yorkers really want their government to do everything possible to address affordability, and seeker reform is a really critical step for this session. Thank you.

[Senator Liz Krueger (Chair, Senate Finance)]: Doesn't want to cooperate. Environmental advocates, Kathryn Neto.

[Kathryn Nadeau (Environmental Advocates of New York)]: Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity today to testify on behalf of Environmental Advocates New York. I'll start by saying I don't envy you. You're being asked to balance a budget at a moment when federal protections are being rolled back and long standing funding commitments are being pulled out from under us. And in this context, your choices matter deeply, not in the abstract, but in determining the quality of the water New Yorkers drink, the air we breathe, and the resilience of our communities. So I want to begin with thanks for your continued commitment to our shared environment. Thank you for your continued support for the Environmental Protection Fund. We urge you to carry the governor's proposed 425,000,000 commitment through to the final budget. The EPF is an incredibly effective tool for protecting land and water while supporting jobs and local economies. And because of your commitment, New York has made historic investments in drinking water and sewer systems, but the need remains overwhelming with a $94,000,000,000 funding gap and hundreds of communities turned away due to oversubscribed programs. This budget should rebalance the governor's clean water proposal by supporting the $500,000,000 Clean Water Infrastructure Act investment and increasing this funding by $200,000,000 and then adding guardrails around the $50,000,000 for rural housing water infrastructure. Without limitations, the additional funding could incentivize sprawl and could harm water quality, and we wanna make sure that that doesn't happen. Thank you as well for leading on climate. In 2019, you set the national standard with the climate leadership and community protection act. Implementation remains unfinished, but this is not the moment to walk away or to weaken our law. This is the time to uphold our law and lean in. And that's why last year's billion dollar sustainable future program was so important. It's a promise to deliver climate action where it counts, lower energy bills, cleaner transportation, healthier buildings, and good paying jobs. To turn that promise into ongoing results, we need sustained investment. We urge you to invest at least another billion dollars this year. As you consider seeker revisions, we ask for clear excuse me. We ask for care and clarity. New York needs housing, especially affordable housing, yet we cannot trade speed for smart planning. The proposed definition of previously developed in the governor's proposal is too broad, and farmland must not be exempted from seeker review. Seeker reforms must reflect regional differences between upstate and downstate and keep clean water and community health at the center. And finally, we urge you to include the following in your final budget, a five year moratorium on sewage spread spreading, which includes expanded PFAS testing where sludge has been spread and support for impacted communities, $10,000,000 to maintain and strengthen the farm to school program, expanding and expanding access for schools and farmers, $200,000,000 for the GAP fund, dollars 10,000,000 to promote food donation and food scrap recycling, and much more in our testimony. We can meet this moment, and we look forward to working with you to do so. Thank you.

[Senator Liz Krueger (Chair, Senate Finance)]: Thank you. And Senator Chris Ryan has a question. Oh, after all of them, I I think I'm getting better at this, and then I just screw it up again as usual. I apologize. So sorry. How about we let Alexis Goldsmith from Beyond Plastics testify first, and then Chris Ryan might even have two questions.

[Alexis Goldsmith (Beyond Plastics)]: Hi, thank you. Appreciate it, Senator. I want to talk for just a few minutes about solid waste and its impacts on our wallets and our budgets here in New York. Waste is very expensive for municipalities and taxpayers to collect, sort, landfill, recycle, incinerate, and clean up when it winds up in the environment. And a huge portion of that waste stream is packaging and paper products. Now the governor's budget didn't really address solid waste, but there are two bills on the table that would, get at this big portion of the waste stream, and that's the bigger, better bottle bill carried by senator May and assembly member Glick, which we encourage you to put into the budget, and the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act, which we do not want to see in the budget, but it could pass as a standalone bill, and it's currently on the assembly floor. These two bills would save us tens of millions through direct revenue generation and through taxpayer savings and other avoided costs. So the bottle bill is $100,000,000 on the table right now if you put it into the budget, and that comes from expanding the numbers of the number of containers in the system and also doubling the deposit. The packaging bill would generate fees from producers on packaging to cover the waste management and recycling of packaging waste. And then in terms of avoided costs, the bottle bill could save municipalities 70,000,000 a year just from reducing the waste that they have to collect and transport, And the packaging bill would save $1,100,000,000 over ten years from reducing waste. So there's those direct revenue generation, money in the pockets of municipalities, and preventing waste in the first place. And then some of the indirect costs would be less pollution from waste, going to incinerators and landfills, less toxic chemicals from packaging winding up in leachate and emissions and also in the environment, which would save us on health care, which would save property values, which includes generational wealth and overall quality of life, especially for communities living near these facilities or communities dealing with truck traffic like the South Bronx, which sees 14,000 diesel trucks every day. Many of those are carrying New York City's trash to transfer stations. So these two bills get us a step closer to responsibly closing landfills and incinerators without needing to open new ones by addressing the root cause of the waste. And this is urgently needed because our landfills are running out of capacity, And when that happens, it's gonna be very expensive to send our waste even farther away. And it will also save us, costly contamination from clean the need to clean up plastic and toxic chemicals, create jobs, support small businesses, and our most marginalized workers. Thank you.

[Senator Liz Krueger (Chair, Senate Finance)]: We're pressing. Now we have a question or two from Chris Ryan. No, we're not going.

[Anshul Gupta (New Yorkers for Clean Power)]: Oh, you may go first?

[Unidentified Legislator]: Don't get to go first that often. Guess the question first for with the Beyond Plastics. There's business concerns. I just want to make sure that I obviously, I want to get all sorts of story on both sides. But there was a report issued, I think, that you read on 04/16/2025, I think, saying that it could save over maybe $2,400,000,000

[Alexis Goldsmith (Beyond Plastics)]: in ten years from reducing the amount of waste that's being generated.

[Unidentified Legislator]: Okay. Okay. And that was who was the author? Is that yours?

[Alexis Goldsmith (Beyond Plastics)]: That was my organization.

[Assemblymember Matthew Simpson]: That was

[Unidentified Legislator]: your organization. Okay. So on the savings aspect of it, I know that they have been rolled out implementation possibly in states Maine or Colorado. Have those states realized savings in any way with the implementation?

[Alexis Goldsmith (Beyond Plastics)]: They are still implementing their laws because they're relatively new. So we don't have the data from Maine and Colorado yet.

[Michael Hernandez (Rewiring America)]: Okay.

[Unidentified Legislator]: All right. And, you know, I think there's obviously, every story has two sides. I do hear from some businesses and I do hear from some packagers. I listen, we want to try to be environmentally conscious, and we strive to do that. But is there a concern through the bill that there could be a potential rise in costs due to packaging concerns or lack of products because they wouldn't be able to conform?

[Alexis Goldsmith (Beyond Plastics)]: Certainly, the bill's opponents are arguing that the packaging bill will raise costs. But there's no actual evidence for that. And Consumer Reports has said that there is no expected increase in costs. It's important to note that extended producer responsibility has been around in Europe, Canada, and other countries for decades now. But Consumer Reports looked at Oregon's system and did not see any meaningful increase in prices. But we can say for certain that municipalities will save a lot of money from reducing the waste and also from the fees that the bill will generate. So we looked at nine different municipalities to see how much they could save from reduction and fees. So Buffalo, for example, would save $250,000 from reduction, and they would get $500,000 in fees.

[Unidentified Legislator]: Have they returned that back to the taxpayers in those instances, or is that a secondary conversation? I can answer.

[Alexis Goldsmith (Beyond Plastics)]: Well, hasn't happened yet if the bill were implemented.

[Unidentified Legislator]: Oh, that's presumably. Okay.

[Senator Rachel May]: Thank

[Alexis Goldsmith (Beyond Plastics)]: you. So it would be up to municipalities to decide what to do with the fee.

[Unidentified Legislator]: Thank you very much.

[Assemblymember Gary Pretlow (Co-Chair)]: Assembly Member Policino?

[Unidentified Legislator]: If they want, I can do it.

[Assemblymember Michael J. Palmesano]: R. Yes. My question is for Ms. Goldsmith also. Thank you for your time and your patience. You mentioned your study of 1,100,000,000 And you said that opponents are citing the costs. But there was another study that was done by York University basically saying that the allocation costs for municipalities to producers and that material use reductions are unlikely to be achieved. In that same report done by them, their studies showed that it would translate into average family increase of four by between $456 and $732 a year. With these types of numbers, which contradict your study and I know their studies, obviously, was done by individuals with degrees in economics Are you concerned that these cost increases could have really a potential disproportionate effect on low and middle income households?

[Alexis Goldsmith (Beyond Plastics)]: The York study was flawed for a number of reasons. And we have an analysis on that that I can send to you. This same language comes up in other states when they are proposing EPR policies. So again, Consumer Reports looked at the existing EPR system in Oregon and found no increase in prices. But certainly we don't want to increase costs for low income families, but this bill provides an opportunity actually for more consumer choices and safer consumer choices because low income families have the least choices when it comes to how their food is packaged. So they're getting a higher burden of toxic chemicals and microplastics leaching into their food, increasing their health care costs, and they're more likely to live next to landfills and incinerators. So this bill will benefit them by reducing that toxic load, giving them more choice in how their products are packaged, and hopefully lead us one step closer to closing landfills and incinerators.

[Assemblymember Michael J. Palmesano]: When we see food packaging everywhere in stores, I know there's been strong concerns raised by the business community that the recycled content requirements are unachievable and can't be met. In that case, isn't there a concern that risk to food possibly with these mandates would not be available on the shelves because manufacturers would not be able to meet these aggressive targets? And if they were, wouldn't it just be more costly and more expensive for the consumer?

[Alexis Goldsmith (Beyond Plastics)]: So, clarification. In the bill, there aren't recycled content requirements for packaging. It's recycling requirements. So after the consumer uses that packaging, it needs to meet a 75% recycling rate by 2052. There are alternatives that exist today. I could enumerate them. I would love to send them to you. But companies have a large range of options when it comes to how to package their packaging, their products.

[Assemblymember Michael J. Palmesano]: Thank you for your time.

[Senator Rachel May]: Thank you. I'm going to keep asking you, Alexis, questions. I am curious. I know Connecticut updated its bottle redemption policies. And I'm curious if there are data yet about the success of that and the results of what they have done.

[Alexis Goldsmith (Beyond Plastics)]: There is data. I don't remember it off the top of my head, but they did see a huge increase in their redemption after going to $0.10 And I'll get you those numbers.

[Senator Rachel May]: Okay, great. Thank you.

[Assemblymember Gary Pretlow (Co-Chair)]: Assemblywoman Glick.

[Assemblymember Deborah J. Glick]: Thank you. Just a couple of quick questions. On the development of changes to secret in order to develop more housing, Some of the narrative has been around affordable housing. It does not appear to be part of the budget. I believe environmental advocates raise some concern about wanting to take care in how we make any changes. And certainly in my district we see a lot of building. It's just that it's all unaffordable. So I'm not sure what changes would be made in secret that would then all of a sudden move developers to move from luxury development to affordable. Is there anything that you perceive?

[Kathryn Nadeau (Environmental Advocates of New York)]: Not that I know of, no.

[Assemblymember Deborah J. Glick]: Open New York?

[Ann Marie Gray (Open New York)]: It's a really good question. And actually, affordability requirements are defined in the local zoning approvals. And it's about the red tape that holds up projects after they've been approved. And so local governments still get to decide which projects are built, determine the levels of affordability. And actually, there's no environmental about zoning, not necessarily environmental review.

[Assemblymember Deborah J. Glick]: Well, we've had zoning issues. And what we've done on occasion is change a zoning in order to get mixed income and affordable housing.

[Ann Marie Gray (Open New York)]: Right. But

[Assemblymember Deborah J. Glick]: then another touch point. And then the city changes its mind, we get commercial development. So it's not necessarily follows that a change in SECRA automatically makes it easier to do affordable housing?

[Ann Marie Gray (Open New York)]: Well, this does not touch zoning, right? So affordability requirements usually fit into zoning. But a huge number of projects that add affordable housing get stuck in sort of weaponized lawsuits because of the secret reforms. So this will help speed up projects like that, but this is not a zoning change.

[Assemblymember Deborah J. Glick]: Thank you.

[Assemblymember Gary Pretlow (Co-Chair)]: Senator Walter?

[Senator Mark Walczyk]: Thank you, Madam Chair. For Liz Moran from Earth Justice, so in your opening statement, you said you wanted to ban gas in New York State. Is that right?

[Liz Moran (Earthjustice)]: I did not say that.

[Senator Mark Walczyk]: Oh, Okay. Would you just clarify? You talked a lot about gas.

[Liz Moran (Earthjustice)]: J. Yeah. I said that gas is the primary driver of increased utility bills in New York.

[Senator Mark Walczyk]: J. Okay. So you don't want to ban gas in New York?

[Liz Moran (Earthjustice)]: J. I think we need to dramatically reduce our reliance upon gas if we want to save ratepayers money. I think we need to accelerate renewables, transmission, and battery storage because those are proven technologies that can reduce energy costs for people. J.

[Senator Mark Walczyk]: Okay. Thank you for clarifying. In 2023, your five zero one(three) Earth Justice sent 315,000 to Earth Justice Action, which is your five zero one(four). Is that right?

[Liz Moran (Earthjustice)]: All of our finances are publicly available on our website.

[Senator Mark Walczyk]: That's what I found. What was that money spent on?

[Liz Moran (Earthjustice)]: I only know what is publicly available on

[Bill Acker (New York BEST)]: our website.

[Senator Mark Walczyk]: I also couldn't find that answer and hope that you would shed some light. People get tax credits when they donate to a five zero one(three) but not to a C4, which is why I wanted to ask that question. Does Earthjustice receive any revenue that comes in from the New Venture Fund, Windward Fund, Hopeful Fund, or other five zero one(four)s?

[Liz Moran (Earthjustice)]: I don't know the answer to that.

[Senator Mark Walczyk]: And what coordination do you have with Sunflower Services?

[Liz Moran (Earthjustice)]: I don't have any awareness of this.

[Senator Mark Walczyk]: Okay. For Open New York, your mission statement I read your website. You're about housing affordability, but this is the energy environmental conservation budget hearing. What brings you to the table today?

[Ann Marie Gray (Open New York)]: Yeah. I'm only here to talk about secret reform because it actually ends up having a big impact on housing that gets built and overall affordability for New Yorkers.

[Senator Mark Walczyk]: Gotcha. Do you receive any government funding, any government grants for your organization? No. Okay. And your organization also runs a political action committee. Is that correct? Abundant New York Super PAC?

[Ann Marie Gray (Open New York)]: It's an affiliated entity. It's separate.

[Senator Mark Walczyk]: And you endorse political candidates as well?

[Ann Marie Gray (Open New York)]: Through one of our entities, yes.

[Senator Mark Walczyk]: Okay. Who donates to your PAC?

[Ann Marie Gray (Open New York)]: That information is public. I don't have it off the top of my head, but it's publicly available.

[Senator Mark Walczyk]: In 2024, there was $255 from your 50One(three) that went to your Super PAC. Is that correct?

[Ann Marie Gray (Open New York)]: No this is 501 C three is not legally allowed to do that so that was not that did not happen

[Senator Mark Walczyk]: okay thanks

[Assemblymember Gary Pretlow (Co-Chair)]: thank you assemblyman Simone

[Assemblymember Tony Simone]: Good evening. It's a question for Anne Marie Gray from Open New York. As New Yorkers face ever increasing hurdles of unaffordability, as we know, there's a housing crisis. We're losing congressional seats over it in New York. It's worsened not just by lack of supply of new housing, but also bureaucratic delays and lawsuits which lead to increased costs, which are passed on to buyers and renters. SEEKR was designed to protect our environment, and the governor's budget proposal includes reforms to the law. Can you discuss how modernizing CCRA would help renters across the state and while still protecting our environment?

[Ann Marie Gray (Open New York)]: J. Yeah, definitely. I mean, so one number that actually just came out, the Citizens Budget Commission was really tangibly trying to put a cost on what these delays cost that gets passed on to renters and homebuyers. And again, they said that for development costs are increased for sort of like 500 unit plus projects in New York City by 11%, which is $82,000 per unit, which gets passed on to renters or homebuyers, depending on the and similarly, this adds like $35,000 or more for places like Rochester. So it really does have direct cost. Just also, the time delays of some of these projects I mean, we are looking at examples of projects that, again, not there anyone is suing over something that has thousands, sometimes thousands and thousands of pages of things that are not necessarily what we're trying to measure in terms of climate environmental goals. And projects are getting delayed for two, five, sometimes even ten years. And so that is people that are not in those homes. That is just generally increasing housing scarcity and worsening our housing shortage across the state.

[Michael Hernandez (Rewiring America)]: Thank you.

[Assemblymember Gary Pretlow (Co-Chair)]: Thank you. Senator Columbo? Just

[Senator Anthony Palumbo]: a couple of quick ones, Madam Chair. Thank you. I have some questions regarding EPR. And I think it was maybe Alexis had mentioned something about that. And there have been a couple of iterations. The chairman and I were just chitchatting about it. I was a co sponsor of the bill and then there were some changes that were contemplated. And you mentioned other states like Oregon. As far as advanced recycling, I've seen what seems, what appears to me to be empirical data that there is a significant cost savings. There are different types of advanced recycling And other than, I guess, self created research that I've seen from beyond plastics, is there any empirical data regarding the cost savings if it were to be implemented? And not so much about advanced recycling, but if you could just kind of comment on that whole thing again Because I've seen data that would indicate that, of course, that the costs of compliance would be very significant and would, of course, have to be passed off to the customers.

[Alexis Goldsmith (Beyond Plastics)]: Yeah, as far as advanced recycling, so we have a 97, I think, page report looking at the 11 existing advanced recycling facilities in The US. Since that report came out, two of those facilities actually closed because they were not financially solvent. So all the data I've seen, which comes from NRDC, Safer States, and many other organizations, shows that advanced recycling is possible in a lab setting, but in reality it's very expensive. It's highly polluting. It generates large amounts of hazardous waste and air pollution. And it's not effective at transforming plastic into new plastic. It's effective at transforming plastic into low grade fuels that can be burned when combined with actual fuels. So advanced recycling as a technology is not banned under PREA. It just would not count towards the recycling requirements because there isn't evidence that it can effectively recycle plastic.

[Senator Anthony Palumbo]: J. Sure. And some of it it's non combustible, some levels of it, correct? That they don't actually burn it? It's not a combustion action?

[Alexis Goldsmith (Beyond Plastics)]: J. It's a really nuanced subject, and it depends on the technology. But under the Clean Air Act, Section 129, Pyrolysis and Gasification, the two most common types of advanced recycling are legally considered incineration.

[Senator Anthony Palumbo]: I understand. Okay. And some of those I guess some of those advanced recycling facilities may have become insolvent, I think, because of certain regulations. But the Oregon legislation itself does not ban advanced recycling, is my understanding. Is that accurate?

[Alexis Goldsmith (Beyond Plastics)]: I actually don't know the answer to that. Okay. Thank you. I don't think it bans it, no.

[Assemblymember Gary Pretlow (Co-Chair)]: Understood. Thank you. Assembly Member Levenberg.

[Adrienne Esposito (Citizens Campaign for the Environment)]: Thank you,

[Unidentified Legislator (female)]: chair Prelo.

[Assemblymember Dana Levenberg]: I just had a couple quick questions. First for Liz Moran, you were talking about, the, delivered fuels, and I was wondering if you had a suggested amount of money for that, and if you could explain a little bit more about what that is, all of it, what that is.

[Liz Moran (Earthjustice)]: Yeah. We're proud to be part of the Renewable Heat Now Coalition, and the coalition is recommending $200,000,000 to go to a new program to address homeowners that rely upon delivered fuels. If you are on delivered oil, you actually would stand to save about $2,000 per year by switching to heat pump technology. And there are large swaths of the state that still depend on delivered fuels. From Columbia County, most of the county does depend on delivered fuels. So this would be a really good affordability measure.

[Assemblymember Dana Levenberg]: So is oil and also propane, right? Is that another delivered fuel? Is there anything else included in that? Or is that that kind of covers it?

[Liz Moran (Earthjustice)]: Oil and propane are

[Alison Considine (Building Decarbonization Coalition)]: the two Oil other and propane.

[Assemblymember Dana Levenberg]: Okay. And right now, they're not part of the programs that would receive some of the benefits that exist in some of the other provided programs already that

[Liz Moran (Earthjustice)]: They would qualify for some of the other programs that exist, but we felt that something dedicated towards these homeowners would be a really good way to address affordability needs in the short term. And that way, they don't have to compete with other parts of the market.

[Assemblymember Dana Levenberg]: Thank you. And just in terms of how the money flows, Alexis, I thought maybe I'd talk to you a little bit about some of the organizations that are behind some of the research that says that we can't actually, get at this packaging reduction, act because, it's gonna be too costly or they can't do it. And also maybe even talk a little bit about some of the changes that were made to the new bill because I think that, that these, the current polluters and the packagers, that are seeking to undermine this legislation, have in fact, have have already done this work elsewhere, like in other countries. And also, we have seen proof, like, for example, that in Canada, it doesn't, it it doesn't create prices to go up, not just in Oregon, but also in Canada, which I think they've been doing it for longer.

[Alexis Goldsmith (Beyond Plastics)]: Yeah, just one example in thirty seconds. So Amazon India actually phased out all of its plastic mailers because of a groundswell of people not wanting these plastic mailers. But we still get plastic mailers here when we order online, so it is possible. But the irony is that plastic mailers are still being burned in India because they're coming from countries like The US who are shipping our plastic waste to other countries to deal with. So it is possible without raising costs.

[Senator Liz Krueger (Chair, Senate Finance)]: Thank you. Thank you. Hello. Sorry. Senator Pete Harkom.

[Senator Pete Harckham (Chair, Senate Environmental Conservation)]: Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Thank you all. Since we've opened the door to talking about political spending, can any of you comment on how much fossil fuel industry has spent on climate denial in the last fifty years?

[Kathryn Nadeau (Environmental Advocates of New York)]: Roughly, dollars 11,000,000,000. I don't know that number off the top of my head, but we do know that it is an enormous sum of money between lobbying, misinformation, propaganda campaigns that have been spread throughout the state.

[Senator Pete Harckham (Chair, Senate Environmental Conservation)]: All right. Do we anybody know how much the fossil fuel industry and utilities have spent on legislative campaigns in the state of New York?

[Kathryn Nadeau (Environmental Advocates of New York)]: I would love to follow-up with that answer.

[Senator Pete Harckham (Chair, Senate Environmental Conservation)]: I would like for you to share that information with the finance staff. Do we have an estimate on how much industry has spent on lobbyists opposing the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act?

[Alexis Goldsmith (Beyond Plastics)]: I believe the number is $10,000,000 and they've retained 107 different lobbyists and lobbying firms.

[Senator Pete Harckham (Chair, Senate Environmental Conservation)]: 107 different lobbyists?

[Assemblymember Matthew Simpson]: Yes.

[Senator Pete Harckham (Chair, Senate Environmental Conservation)]: All right, thank you. Do we know the cost to human health in New York State annually for our overreliance on fossil fuels?

[Kathryn Nadeau (Environmental Advocates of New York)]: I don't have that in this year's testimony. We've certainly, through the state scoping plan process and other state led processes, have dived into those numbers in the past. And I'd be happy to pull them out.

[Liz Moran (Earthjustice)]: I have them.

[Adrienne Esposito (Citizens Campaign for the Environment)]: I'm going

[Liz Moran (Earthjustice)]: to come in for you, Catherine. There's public health benefits to the range of 160,000,000,000 to $170,000,000,000 by meeting the climate law mandates.

[Senator Pete Harckham (Chair, Senate Environmental Conservation)]: Just for New York.

[Liz Moran (Earthjustice)]: And according to our scoping plan, the cost of inaction is significantly greater than action by about $115,000,000,000

[Senator Pete Harckham (Chair, Senate Environmental Conservation)]: J. All right. And then if someone could confirm for me, I think the latest figure I saw on the impact of microplastics on human health was in the billions of dollars annually?

[Alexis Goldsmith (Beyond Plastics)]: There was a study, comprehensive study from Duke University in November that the impact of plastics on economic, health, and environmental costs is $1,100,000,000,000 per year in The United States.

[Senator Pete Harckham (Chair, Senate Environmental Conservation)]: All right. So that would also that would include microplastics that we ingest, the chemicals we ingest through food packaging, the people who live near chemical plants where plastics made, and fossil fuel extraction?

[Alexis Goldsmith (Beyond Plastics)]: It's a the study author said it's conservative, and the cost is actually likely much higher.

[Senator Pete Harckham (Chair, Senate Environmental Conservation)]: All right, thank you.

[Assemblymember Gary Pretlow (Co-Chair)]: Thank you. Simpson.

[Assemblymember Matthew Simpson]: Thank you. My question is for you, Alexis. You mentioned, when you were talking about the bottle bill, you mentioned $100,000,000 was on the table. Could you expand on that? What do you mean $100,000,000

[Assemblymember Jo Anne Simon]: Sure.

[Alexis Goldsmith (Beyond Plastics)]: So the bottle bill would increase the deposit from 5 to 10¢, and it would put a deposit on all beverage containers except for milk and 100% juice. So increasing the deposit will increase the redemption rate. Other states that have that 10¢ deposit see a 90% redemption rate. Ours is 64. So literally billions of containers are out there not being redeemed. They're going to landfills and incinerators. So the increase in revenue to the state comes from that increase in the deposit amount, even though redemption is going to increase, and there will be billions more containers in the system. So it's kind of

[Senator Liz Krueger (Chair, Senate Finance)]: a win

[Alexis Goldsmith (Beyond Plastics)]: win. Consumers will get money back in their pockets because redemption will be easier from increased investments in redemption access, and the state will get money

[Senator Liz Krueger (Chair, Senate Finance)]: as well.

[Assemblymember Matthew Simpson]: Okay. I was confused because there's about $100,000,000 currently that goes into the general fund in unredeemed bottle deposits.

[Alexis Goldsmith (Beyond Plastics)]: Yes, this would be an additional $100,000,000

[Assemblymember Matthew Simpson]: Okay. So that 100,000,000, wouldn't you think that that would put a large dent in our efforts to reduce packaging without increasing the cost to consumers?

[Alexis Goldsmith (Beyond Plastics)]: So it will reduce waste going to landfills and incinerators. As I said, the redemption rate is going to increase. So most people are going to get their deposit back. If they don't, it's because they just chose to not redeem their container and they either put it in the trash or in the curbside recycling. Studies show there was a Santa poll out last year that actually the lowest income New Yorkers support the bottle bill the most.

[Assemblymember Matthew Simpson]: Okay. I got one more question and I'll get in. So you mentioned diesel trucks. I think it was 14,000. So if we increase the number of container I mean, where is the reduction in diesel traffic, diesel truck traffic? Because in my communities, there's still those redeemable bottles deposits are being hauled out in tractor trailers.

[Alexis Goldsmith (Beyond Plastics)]: Yes. Well, still have to be hauled out, obviously. But there is going to be less waste going to transfer stations, which then has to be sent somewhere else, either by rail or by barge. In The Bronx, which is what I was talking about, there are 14,000 trucks, and that is because they have transfer stations and they barge and rail waste from that South part of The Bronx. That waste is going all the way to Niagara Falls or it's going to New Jersey. It's going far and away. And we're not getting any value back out of it because it's just going to a landfill, whereas a bottle that's redeemed is going to get turned into something useful.

[Assemblymember Matthew Simpson]: But we're still going to have the trucks. For

[Alexis Goldsmith (Beyond Plastics)]: all intents and purposes, I guess. Fewer it's trucks still less.

[Senator Liz Krueger (Chair, Senate Finance)]: Thank you. Have I missed any senators? Assembly.

[Assemblymember Gary Pretlow (Co-Chair)]: Assembly Min Ra.

[Bill Acker (New York BEST)]: Thank you, chair.

[Assemblymember Micah Lasher]: Thank you guys for your testimony. So for Beyond Plastics, I'm sure you're familiar with this, and I'd appreciate if you can just elaborate on your entity. I read something about basically the background of the entity. So is it a legally formed organization? I know you've come before us many times in the past, advocated on these bills. Is it an incorporated entity? How is it funded? How many people work for it? And I guess, what is the mission? What does it represent?

[Alexis Goldsmith (Beyond Plastics)]: We are a small organization dedicated to ending plastic pollution. We are formed through a fiscal sponsorship with Bennington College. And I don't know what our revenue is off the top of my head. I'd be happy to share my salary with you privately.

[Assemblymember Micah Lasher]: That's not necessary.

[Alexis Goldsmith (Beyond Plastics)]: But we're very, we are a small organization.

[Assemblymember Micah Lasher]: Okay, and do you engage in that advocacy just in New York or all over the country?

[Alexis Goldsmith (Beyond Plastics)]: We engage in advocacy across The U. S. I live in Rensselaer County so it's very convenient for me to get here.

[Assemblymember Micah Lasher]: Okay. So you talked about the Oregon bill and, in particular, the Consumer Report review of it. Do you know the differences between the Oregon law and the New York bill? My understanding is that the source reduction is a lot more aggressive in New York's and that, I think, is where a lot of the concern comes in terms of potentially driving up consumer costs.

[Kathryn Nadeau (Environmental Advocates of New York)]: Yes.

[Alexis Goldsmith (Beyond Plastics)]: It's true that Oregon does not require source reduction and recycling in the same way that the New York bill does, but we stand to gain even more financially from that source reduction.

[Assemblymember Micah Lasher]: Okay, so I guess, Lasher, has a similar study been done, you know, Reports, that type of entity on the New York bill?

[Alexis Goldsmith (Beyond Plastics)]: We have looked at the cost savings from source reduction of waste and from fees that would be generated. So as I said, 1,100,000,000.0 just from reducing the waste. And then you add in the fees, which I can't tell you what the fee structure will be because that's not in the statute.

[Assemblymember Micah Lasher]: Okay. And then at one point, there had been some, I guess, I think it came directly from the D. C. That they would need, a substantial number of additional staff to implement this. I know that has been disputed over time. Do you have any estimates with regard to that?

[Alexis Goldsmith (Beyond Plastics)]: I do not have any estimates with regard to that.

[Assemblymember Micah Lasher]: Well, I I have the sponsor next to me, so it sounds like she's going to give me some information after I finish. Thank you.

[Alexis Goldsmith (Beyond Plastics)]: J. Thank you.

[Assemblymember Gary Pretlow (Co-Chair)]: J. L. Assemblymember Khaleelis.

[Assemblymember Anna R. Kelles]: J. L. You all so much. So quick question about redemption centers. How many do we have in New York State? And how many have been lost because we have not passed the bottle bill? Like, generally, the impact that we have.

[Alexis Goldsmith (Beyond Plastics)]: I don't know how many we have, but we've lost 200 or more in the last couple of years, including the one I used to go to in Troy.

[Assemblymember Anna R. Kelles]: 200 or more. And they're all small businesses, right?

[Alexis Goldsmith (Beyond Plastics)]: Yes. Can't but most, yes.

[Assemblymember Anna R. Kelles]: Okay. I'm just pointing this out because anyone here who is continuing to say that they are against this bill and they support small businesses are lying. And they're supporting big plastic industry instead. Because if they were, they'd be supporting small business. And the small business would require that we pass this. So I'm just saying it's disingenuous to be against this bill if you're pro small business. It's just my two cents about that. So just to get on paper again so that I understood your data, the health impacts were plastic in general are included in that 1,100,000,000,000 conservative estimate that Duke gave out about plastics? Yes. Okay. I just wanted to make sure it's a conservative estimate. Thank you. I will absolutely read that paper because I do appreciate science and facts. Kathryn, I have a question for you. You mentioned the guardrails that you would like to see about the $50,000,000 for water. I absolutely appreciate that and agree. I'd love to give you some more time to talk about what guardrails you'd like to see.

[Kathryn Nadeau (Environmental Advocates of New York)]: I think one of the things we want to do is just make sure

[Unidentified Legislator]: that

[Unidentified Speaker]: mean it? The

[Senator Liz Krueger (Chair, Senate Finance)]: I'm sorry.

[Assemblymember Jo Anne Simon]: Thank you. Absolutely.

[Kathryn Nadeau (Environmental Advocates of New York)]: J. I think one of the concerns in the language as it's written is that there aren't any definitions around what types of projects would qualify here. So whenever we're talking about shifting communities from septic to sewer systems, those are fantastic investments, right? We know that sewer systems are more protective than septic typically. So not typically, they just are. Excuse me. So whenever we can support that, we do, and we will. And a lot of our concerns are really around the $200,000,000 that is just a blank slate right now. So as the legislature moves forward, we're really encouraging you all to look at what types of spending so that we're investing as much as we can in the fix it first model. We have a $94,000,000,000 need for an oversubscribed program. Let's invest there first.

[Assemblymember Matthew Simpson]: J.

[Assemblymember Anna R. Kelles]: Okay, great. That's super helpful. Thank you all so much.

[Senator Liz Krueger (Chair, Senate Finance)]: J. Thank you. Tom O'Meara, Senator Tom O'Meara.

[Senator Tom O'Mara]: J. Just a quick question for Alexis on Beyond Plastics. You had some questions. You gave us some answers about lobbying, lobbying expenses for the opposition to your bill. But is Beyond Plastics itself has hired a lobbyist last year and this year, correct?

[Assemblymember Anna R. Kelles]: Yes.

[Senator Tom O'Mara]: And what is your budget for that?

[Alexis Goldsmith (Beyond Plastics)]: I actually don't know. But I can say that it is far smaller than the industry's.

[Senator Tom O'Mara]: All right. Yourself, Ford Factor, listed as a lobbyist on behalf of Beneathen College, correct?

[Assemblymember Anna R. Kelles]: Yes.

[Senator Tom O'Mara]: Thank you.

[Assemblymember Gary Pretlow (Co-Chair)]: Okay. Assembly member Simon.

[Assemblymember Jo Anne Simon]: Thank you.

[Unidentified Legislator (female)]: Okay. So thank you very much. It's taking me a while. Sorry. Ms. Moran, you testified about the number of people that are not able to pay their utility bills. When that happens and it's one point seven million?

[Liz Moran (Earthjustice)]: One point two.

[Unidentified Legislator (female)]: 1.2, sorry, Okay. Who pays? Who takes the hit for those arrears? The company, the utility? Or might that be paid by somebody else? And if so, whom?

[Liz Moran (Earthjustice)]: This is a great question. And Pulp will be testifying later and can talk about this. They often have great statistics related to this. But when someone goes into collections or arrears, rate payers are covering those costs. So ultimately, it's more affordable to make sure that people can afford their energy bills rather than allowing them to get into debt over it, because everybody else ends up covering those costs.

[Unidentified Legislator (female)]: And those people still don't have energy if they've lost their service?

[Liz Moran (Earthjustice)]: We really want to make sure that there are policies put forward to prevent people from losing their service.

[Unidentified Legislator (female)]: We still have an obligation to serve gas in New York State. If we eliminated that obligation didn't ban it, made it certainly available but if you eliminated that obligation, how would that affect ratepayers' bills?

[Liz Moran (Earthjustice)]: J. So we're strongly in favor of modifying what's known as the obligation to serve gas. We talk a lot about all of the above energy. Seems to be largely in favor of gas rather than actually allowing for other energy sources to come online. So if we modified the obligation to serve, what this would allow for is utilities to look at aging infrastructure and determine what's the most cost effective option. And if it's more cost effective to have targeted electrification for a neighborhood, and that would lead to cost savings, it would allow the utility to pursue that as an option they so don't have to automatically go to gas. But because of how our current law works the obligation to serve gas is the only option. So if a gas line is old and failing, we have to cover those costs, even if it would be cheaper for people to be switched off to something else by the utility.

[Unidentified Legislator (female)]: Thank you.

[Senator Liz Krueger (Chair, Senate Finance)]: J.

[Assemblymember Gary Pretlow (Co-Chair)]: Thank you. Assembly Member Anderson.

[Assemblymember Khaleel M. Anderson]: J. Okay. Good evening. Thank you, chair, and to all of my colleagues who stuck it out. And thank you to this panel that is here. So I have a question. I think it's for either Alexis or Elizabeth. It's good to see you up there, and Elizabeth. So it's regarding the debate with Pyra and the extended producer bill. I will get those acronyms when it's not this late. But so I'm still learning about it. I'm hearing from my colleagues who have bills on this. But one sort of clarifying question I have is, can you speak to the science of advanced recycling, or like the pros and cons of it? Because I actually, over the fall, I had an opportunity to go visit a site. And I'm still listening and trying to figure out what the science is, and how ultimately one of these things can figure out how to improve the quality of air, and of course, the quality as it relates to pollution in our environments. And can you use the color? So can you just give me a snapshot in the science of it?

[Alexis Goldsmith (Beyond Plastics)]: Yeah, it's a broad topic, way more than I can address in a few seconds. But as I said earlier to the question, generally advanced recycling, chemical recycling, is very, very energy intensive. It's very expensive. And these companies rely on public taxpayer subsidies in order to actually build their facilities and operate. Where they do build and operate, they are often opposed by the local communities who don't want them there. And generally, they are turning plastic waste into low grade fuels. In the case where the plastic is actually being turned into new plastic, it has to be combined with virgin plastic in order to be actually feasible. And the percentage that I saw was 2% pyrolysis plastic to 98% virgin plastic. So it's not even like a small amount of virgin plastic that has to be added.

[Assemblymember Gary Pretlow (Co-Chair)]: And then what else can I say?

[Assemblymember Matthew Simpson]: Well, no,

[Alexis Goldsmith (Beyond Plastics)]: I Oh, and mathematically, it's just the scale of the technology that's available is so inadequate to address the 400 plus million tons of plastic being produced from fossil fuels every year.

[Assemblymember Khaleel M. Anderson]: J. Got it. I guess in my last twenty seconds, I guess there's two sort of these concepts and schools of thought. I guess what would you say is the best way forward in trying to meet in the middle somewhere?

[Alexis Goldsmith (Beyond Plastics)]: R. Reducing plastic and replacing it with reusable and actually recyclable materials, or just eliminating it if we don't need it.

[Assemblymember Khaleel M. Anderson]: R. Thank you.

[Assemblymember Gary Pretlow (Co-Chair)]: Thank you. And Assemblyman Otis to close.

[Assemblymember Steven Otis]: Alexis, on the packaging bill, in your testimony, you indicated you prefer it not be in the budget. But you did have some statistics that show savings for taxpayers, savings for local governments by implementing the packaging bill. And certainly, today is not the day to debate the packaging bill. But I'll make one comment, which is the targets in the bill have been reduced in the last couple of years from 50% in ten years to 30% in twelve years. Even with that, there are savings. Do you want to just give a little more detail, since this is a budget hearing, on savings to taxpayers from the bill that may be in your written, but not really in your oral testimony?

[Alexis Goldsmith (Beyond Plastics)]: Sure. So 40% of our waste stream is packaging and paper, and a huge portion of that is plastic that cannot be effectively recycled. The recycling rate in The U. S. For plastic is less than 6% for a lot of technical reasons, that's and also a big reason why the industry is promoting advanced recycling, but I won't get into that. So reducing that 40% means 40% less waste being trucked to the RAP Road landfill if you're throwing your waste away here in the Capitol Building, less waste going to incinerators that are very, very expensive, less waste going to landfills ultimately. And we are very quickly running out of our landfill capacity. And when that happens, our waste disposal costs are going to skyrocket because we'll either have to open new landfills or send it farther away. So just reducing waste at the source is going to save us those costs right away and then also save our health care costs, our environment costs, tourism, etcetera.

[Assemblymember Steven Otis]: Thank you. Question for Kate. In your testimony, you did mention in passing the nuclear issue, which has been discussed in your written testimony. Just that renewables are better. Any additional comments you want to

[Kathryn Nadeau (Environmental Advocates of New York)]: I'm curious if maybe you're mistaking our testimony with somebody else who's testifying. We certainly feel like renewables we know that renewables save consumers money, that they are easily deployed, we support renewables 100%.

[Assemblymember Steven Otis]: Thank you. I'm done.

[Assemblymember Gary Pretlow (Co-Chair)]: Great. Are we done?

[Senator Liz Krueger (Chair, Senate Finance)]: J.

[Shiv Sohin (TREEage / NY Renews)]: I

[Senator Liz Krueger (Chair, Senate Finance)]: think we are done. Just checking. Jen, thank you very much for your time with us, I think, all day and this evening, and for your work all the time. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Our next panel, panel E, for those keeping track, we have New York renews a different representative, Shiav Swan, S O I N, from the steering committee Allison Considine, Building Decarbonization Coalition Michael Hernandez, Rewiring America and Joshua Berman, Regional Planning Association. Let you all get comfortable.

[Assemblymember Gary Pretlow (Co-Chair)]: Good

[Senator Liz Krueger (Chair, Senate Finance)]: evening, everyone. Okay, let's just go in the order you were in. So first up will be New York Renews, then Building Decarbonization Coalition, then Rewiring America, and then the Regional Plan Association. Evening. Thank

[Shiv Sohin (TREEage / NY Renews)]: you so much, Chairwoman Krueger and members of the committee. My name is Shiv Sohin. I'm the co executive director of Triage. We're a student led organization of over 2,500 high school and college students across the five boroughs of New York City. Myself and Triage also are steering committee members of New York Renews, which are a coalition of over 400 organizations across the state and led the passage of the 2019 CLCPA. So today I'm going to cover four things that are written in our larger testimony. First being Governor Hochul's proposal to update the building aid rules for solar in schools, which is a good first step, but it's more regulatory focused right now and schools need additional dedicated funding for these retrofits. And the last funding round under NYSERDA's Clean Green Schools Initiative awarded only four districts and cumulatively over its cycle has dispersed around $30,000,000 The governor is proposing around $33,000,000 in additional funding to be dispersed among many initiatives, including Empower Plus, but we're calling specifically to expand this program to 100,000,000 in addition to these regulatory changes. And we're also calling upon the state to further invest in CUNY and SUNY school retrofits matching the $250,000,000 invested in last year's fund in the Sustainable Future Fund. Next, because of the governor, New York still lacks finalized cap investment, cap and invest regulations and the voluntary approaches are insufficient and we're at this point losing around $3,000,000,000 minimum in annual revenue. We're calling on the state to at the very least match last year's $1,000,000,000 sustainable future fund. Anything less is a cut in spending on climate priorities for New York State. Next, indigenous sovereignty is central to climate justice. The Tonawanda Seneca Nation has called for an immediate halt to state subsidies and permits for the stamp mega site industrial site. Indigenous nations across New York state have also consistently opposed nuclear power as a climate solution. It's expensive, subsidy dependent, produces radioactive waste, and harms indigenous communities. Climate action that undermines indigenous sovereignty is neither just nor sustainable. And finally, the rapid expansion of data centers in New York requires strong regulation, transparency, and community oversight to prevent serious harm to the state's climate goals, electric grid, water systems and local communities. The proposed 500 megawatt data center at Stamp exemplifies the risks of unchecked data center expansion. These facilities are extremely energy and water intensive and unchecked growth risks increasing fossil fuel reliance during peak demand. We hope to see critical action this year in particular regarding the regulation of data centers. New Yorker News has submitted a much more extensive testimony outlining many more priorities, but we're eager to serve as partners to deliver tangible climate action this year. And thank you all for a really rigorous budget process. Thank you.

[Bobbi Wilding (Clean and Healthy New York)]: Good evening. Nice to see you all.

[Alison Considine (Building Decarbonization Coalition)]: My name is Alison Considine. I'm the New York director of the Building Decarbonization Coalition. Thank you to the committees for the opportunity to testify tonight. I want to begin by thanking you for your leadership this past session in reforming the 100 foot rule line extension allowance. This vital common sense affordability and climate measure will save ratepayers $600,000,000 a year when it takes effect in 2027. To further increase access to cost saving home upgrades for New Yorkers, the budget should include a renewed commitment of $200,000,000 for the Empower Plus program to continue funding it, support its growth and its ongoing stability. And additionally, we urge you to allocate $200,000,000 in funding for pre electrification repairs and upgrades for the green affordable pre electrification program. Together, these affordability measures would save New Yorkers billions of dollars on their utility bills over the coming decades. But we must go beyond these solutions to neighborhood scale solutions that support the union workforce in the ongoing transition of buildings. The legislature should continue its commitment to advancing shovel ready thermal energy network projects across the state with $200,000,000 in new bonded funding for TENS in this year's budget. This investment will help the state reduce its own emissions and build resilient, energy efficient infrastructure with union labor. There's a $120,000,000 of shovel ready work at campuses across the state, at University at Buffalo, University at Albany, Farmingdale State College, SUNY Potsdam, and SUNY Binghamton. Decarbonizing entire campuses with TENS will improve public buildings, save the taxpayers money through reduced demand on the electric grid, lower energy bills, and avoided electric side upgrades. Investing now will ensure that work can break ground this year and next across the state. This body passed the Utility Thermal Energy Network and Jobs Act in 2022 with bipartisan support near unanimous, requiring the utilities to propose and the Public Service Commission to approve, modify, and implement utility thermal energy network projects within six months of the law's passage. Today, there are eight strong projects which have the backing of the environmental movement, labor unions, utilities, and building energy stakeholders. It's critical that the PSC authorize projects to move to construction as soon as possible and get union workers on the job. And we urge that remaining $200,000,000 dedicated to thermal energy networks be available to support the upgrades to public buildings and affordable housing within these utility thermal energy network projects. We support proposals in the Governor's budget to improve the Green Jobs, Green New York program and to mitigate energy cost burden by improving tracking and monitoring of energy burden within the utilities. However, if the legislature wants to really unleash more meaningful savings for ratepayers, it's critical that you advance obligation to serve reform, like my colleague Liz discussed. This outdated mandate is keeping ratepayers on the hook for increasingly expensive pipe replacement, forcing them to pay for two duplicative systems and preventing neighborhood scale cleanup energy upgrades like TENS from moving forward. Thank you.

[Senator Liz Krueger (Chair, Senate Finance)]: Okay, sorry. Up, environmental oh, no, excuse me, Rewiring America, Michael Hernandez. Hi, Michael.

[Michael Hernandez (Rewiring America)]: MICHAEL Hello, good evening. Michael Hernandez, New York policy director for Rewiring America. Glad to be here tonight. Rewiring America is really focused on electrifying homes, communities, and businesses. We develop tools and data to and build coalitions and partnerships to make going electric easier. Rewiring America helps New Yorkers to save money, to tackle emission goals, improve health, and build clean energy to build a clean energy workforce. The Empower Plus program really supports investments in LMI, that's low and moderate income household, incentives. Heat pumps with some energy efficiency can really do a lot of savings. When you think about fuel oil, there's annual savings of about $2,000 for those homes. When you think about propane homes, it's about $2,900 annually that you can save. So significant annual savings on energy bills. In 2023, we gave the program $200,000,000. New York State gave the program $200,000,000 and that worked. It built the program up tremendously. We and it's a national model for electrification of low and moderate income households. Unfortunately, that money has run out and we need to refund that program. Back in May, what we saw happen is that NYSERDA said we're going to have to downshift the program and they said that contractors could no longer submit applications on behalf of their clients because they were concerned that they were not going to have enough money for the program. And so that's why it's vitally important that we include investment in that program this year. Now last year we did beat the Sustainable Future Fund. We said a minimum of $50,000,000 but we could have given up to $300,000,000 And in fact, the Assembly's One House said we should give $330,000,000 for the MPOWER plus program. When the Governor came out with her spending plan she gave the bare minimum $50,000,000 to the MPOWER plus program and that really causes a lot of problems. We're really excited because NYSERDA did increase the incentives in its Regi plan that was passed earlier this week, last week. But we are still in need of $200,000,000 to make that program whole and to keep it growing at the level that it needs to in order for us to meet our goals. Thank you.

[Senator Liz Krueger (Chair, Senate Finance)]: I'm trying to get the green light on. Our last speaker for this panel is Joshua Berman, Regional Plan Association.

[Joshua Berman (Regional Plan Association)]: Thank you. Thank you, everyone, for sticking with it tonight. My name is Joshua Berman, and I'm speaking for the Regional Plan Association, an independent urban planning nonprofit working to improve the quality of life in the New York Metro Area. New Yorkers are confronting two interconnected challenges, a severe housing crisis and the accelerating impacts of climate change. It is because of these challenges that RPA strongly supports governor Hochul's proposed modernization of CCRA. CCRA was enacted more than fifty years ago in a very different context. And while its core purpose remains critical, like most things in life, good laws need good maintenance. CCRA is too often used to delay, block, or abandon exactly the kinds of housing and infrastructure that New York urgently needs. RPA has run the numbers because we love running the numbers. And we found that New York State needs to add over 800,000 housing units by 2032 to address our shortage and start bringing down the cost of housing. And if we're truly to get to an affordable New York, we need to make it easier to build. At the same time, RPA also recognizes that it matters where these units are located. The most sustainable places in the region are places that are already developed, and we should focus our growth in these areas. As it stands, CCRA perversely incentivizes outcomes that undermine its original intent. Projects in walkable transit served communities are delayed or discouraged, while development shifts toward greenfield sites that increase car dependence, emissions, and sprawl. This is inconsistent with New York's climate commitments and regional planning best practices. So the legislature has already been leading on this issue with senator May and assembly member Kelles championing really important reforms to SECRA with their legislation, which passed the senate last year. And their work has really helped lay the foundation for the governor's proposal. We're very grateful for their commitment to refocusing environmental review to allow for infill housing and fight sprawl. The legislature can continue to be leaders on this issue and strengthen the governor's secret reform proposal by creating a transit oriented development zone that grants a density bonus to residential developments within close proximity of transit. This would focus development in the right places, boosting transit ridership, and reducing climate emissions. RPA applauds the governor for her leadership and urges the legislature to support secret reforms as part of the f y twenty seven budget. These changes will help New York deliver housing faster and cheaper while upholding our commitment to environmental stewardship. And just shifting gears for a second, we also want to ensure that when it comes to energy projects, there is a strong emphasis on moving towards renewable projects and energy efficiency measures. Last year, governor Hochul launched the Sustainable Future Program, which was a landmark program to accelerate such projects with a billion dollars. We did not see that in this latest budget allocation, it would like to see the legislature allocate at least $1,000,000,000 to the program in the final budget. Thank you very much.

[Senator Liz Krueger (Chair, Senate Finance)]: Thank you very much. Appreciate it. So now I think all four of you have spoken. So that's great. And Rachel May, I know, has some questions.

[Senator Rachel May]: I do. Thank you, Chair. So first for Michael, I have a question about the health benefits of electrification of buildings. You may have heard that I talked about gas stoves before. Is this something you're able to measure? Do you include it in your cost benefit analysis or your promotion of building electrification?

[Michael Hernandez (Rewiring America)]: Absolutely, yeah. I think the numbers I gave are just the energy savings that you see on the energy bill. But when we look at the scoping plan, we saw tremendous savings coming from the averted health costs of electrifying the housing sector. And that really brought down a lot of the savings and a lot of the benefit came from the averted health costs.

[Senator Rachel May]: Great. Thank you. And then to Josh, I have a question for you about the environmental costs of a single family home on two or three acres, which is often the alternative to the kind of infill construction that we are trying to promote. You once said something to me about how it was strange that they weren't subject to secret review. Can you just address what the environmental costs are of the alternatives to the sort of building we're trying to promote?

[Joshua Berman (Regional Plan Association)]: Sure. So, you know, building single family homes on large plots of land creates what we call in the urban planning business sprawl. And that really spreads out where people are living and drives up our carbon emissions when it comes to our transportation because people are driving for their different distances to take care of their basic needs. It also increases the amount of infrastructure that we need to build. You know, the further apart every house is, the more piping we need to put down, the longer roads we need to build, the more concrete we need to pour, and this is all part of these increased emissions that come from the sprawling development. But on the other hand, we also can look at infill housing as extremely environmentally efficient, with the energy savings that come from building densely and also the reduced climate emissions that come from shorter trips or taking more public transportation or even walking to take care of your needs.

[Senator Rachel May]: Thank you.

[Michael Hernandez (Rewiring America)]: Can I just since there's thirty seconds, I'll just note that Rewiring America has a report that actually showed that the averted health costs would actually, in and of itself, pay for the cost of the appliance?

[Assemblymember Matthew Simpson]: Nothing. SPEAKER Oh, I'm sorry.

[Assemblymember Michael J. Palmesano]: SPEAKER Palmisarro.

[Senator Liz Krueger (Chair, Senate Finance)]: SPEAKER Palmisarro. Excuse me.

[Assemblymember Michael J. Palmesano]: SPEAKER That's Okay. My question is for Mr. Miller. I really was going to ask a question, but what you mentioned in your comments about concern over nuclear energy and I'm assuming all types of energy and its impact on the indigenous community and probably disadvantaged communities. Is that an accurate statement? Yes or no? I mean, you're concerned about that type of R.

[Shiv Sohin (TREEage / NY Renews)]: Sorry, do you mind just repeating that?

[Assemblymember Michael J. Palmesano]: R. Yes. I mean, you mentioned about your concern over nuclear policy and impact on the indigenous community. And I'm sure you're concerned about any type of energy policy, natural gas, anything on whether it's indigenous or any disadvantaged communities. Is that an accurate statement?

[Shiv Sohin (TREEage / NY Renews)]: I'm carrying the demands from the Tonawatka Seneca Nation, I don't want to speak for them on that exact question, to be honest. No.

[Assemblymember Michael J. Palmesano]: That's sorry to say, and you're with New York Hear News, right?

[Shiv Sohin (TREEage / NY Renews)]: Yes, correct.

[Assemblymember Michael J. Palmesano]: Okay. And then, what about also pretty you're probably supportive of the mandate for more electric vehicles, correct? Because of impact to the environment? R.

[Shiv Sohin (TREEage / NY Renews)]: Sure, yeah.

[Assemblymember Michael J. Palmesano]: R. When you talk about disadvantaged communities, and something I talk about a lot my colleagues don't like when I bring it up, but I'm going to bring it up here electric vehicles, the batteries, the products used to source the minerals, the elements used to source the batteries to power the electric vehicle. Cobalt, lithium. 70% of the cobalt is extracted in the Democratic Republic Of Congo, well documented and used in child labor. These kids go in these mines, hand mines, these artesian mines. These mines have fallen on them, collapsed on them, killed them, paralyzed them, lost limbs. And then, the lithium the radioactiveness from the mining of the lithium the Lithium Triangle in South America poisoning water, rivers, and streams in those countries. When we talk about the impact of disadvantaged communities, are we only talking about here in New York, in The US? And shouldn't we be cognizant of the policies that we're implementing and how it's impacting I mean, I think The Congo and South America are disadvantaged communities. Shouldn't we be cognizant of the impact of our policies and what it's having on those countries? And shouldn't we guarantee that these batteries are not being made with child labor? They're not poisoning water or rivers and streams in these other countries just so we can meet our so called green energy goals and green energy mandates? Shouldn't we guarantee and ensure that those batteries are produced with not produced with child labor and poisoning water rivers and streams in those disadvantaged communities, shouldn't we?

[Shiv Sohin (TREEage / NY Renews)]: I'm not a member of the state assembly, so that's not in my jurisdiction. But I would say I'm specifically concerned about the most equitable way to really like renewable energy and clean energy does specifically benefit disadvantaged communities. I mean, could theoretically say the same thing about natural gas, coal. We can go down the list by Mr.

[Assemblymember Michael J. Palmesano]: Miller, thank you. I appreciate it. That was like a no answer to my question, which is fine. But you know, I know a lot of my colleagues don't like oil rigs. They don't like natural gas fracking wells. I don't see any children working on them.

[Senator Liz Krueger (Chair, Senate Finance)]: J. Thank you very much. Next, we have Senator Walzuk. Was reminded it was Wednesday.

[Senator Mark Walczyk]: R. Thank you, Madam Chair. It is Wednesday still. For Michael Hernandez from Rewiring America, do you want to ban gas stoves in the state of New York?

[Michael Hernandez (Rewiring America)]: We are in favor of the All Electric Buildings Act, which basically provides that when we're building new construction that we build those homes with energy efficient and electrified homes. We're saving money on delivery costs of the gas infrastructure. We don't have to build that out, which is actually driving up our energy costs. And so we can focus on the energy and the electric system, which is far more efficient and thereby bring down our total energy consumption by half by twenty fifty.

[Senator Mark Walczyk]: Thanks. The Sergey Brin Family Foundation gave your 05/2001 c $34,500,000.0. Does that sound right?

[Michael Hernandez (Rewiring America)]: I'm not I'm not familiar.

[Senator Mark Walczyk]: Okay. And then your organization, Rewiring America, also cofounded and led the founding of a coalition of five zero one c threes to create Power Forward Communities. Is that right?

[Michael Hernandez (Rewiring America)]: I'm not familiar with that.

[Senator Mark Walczyk]: And Power Forward Communities, which was founded by Rewiring America, got a $2,000,000,000 grant in 2024 from the EPA's greenhouse gas reduction fund. Does that sound familiar?

[Matthew Krug (PBA of New York State – Environmental Conservation Officers)]: Yes. How

[Senator Mark Walczyk]: are you spending that $2,000,000,000?

[Michael Hernandez (Rewiring America)]: We are not spending that money because it has been frozen by the EPA. New administration has illegally frozen the account. We have challenged that, and it's pending in court.

[Senator Mark Walczyk]: J. How are you related to rewiring Community Investment Fund, another five zero one(three)?

[Michael Hernandez (Rewiring America)]: I'm unaware of that.

[Senator Mark Walczyk]: Okay. Because they reported $5,000,000 in government grants in 2024, so I was wondering what they were spending that money on.

[Michael Hernandez (Rewiring America)]: I'm I'm not a part of that.

[Senator Mark Walczyk]: Okay. How much of your revenue comes from new venture fund?

[Michael Hernandez (Rewiring America)]: All of our information is on our nine ninety. That's publicly accessible. I I don't do the finances of the organization.

[Senator Mark Walczyk]: Yeah. It's the tricky thing about five zero one c fours is not all of it is publicly available. What coordination do you have with Sunflower Services?

[Michael Hernandez (Rewiring America)]: I don't know Sunflower Services.

[Senator Mark Walczyk]: How do you think your organization is funded?

[Michael Hernandez (Rewiring America)]: I'm not part of the finance department of our organization. I'm the policy department.

[Senator Mark Walczyk]: Do you have any idea how your organization is funded?

[Michael Hernandez (Rewiring America)]: Just what's available through our nine ninety.

[Assemblymember Anna R. Kelles]: Great. Wonderful. I will just start by saying I inspired by my colleague who's made the comment very frequently about cobalt I actually have done a very extensive analysis on the comparative impact on child labor of the oil and gas industry that is the alternative, which is extensively and exceedingly more severe. No system is better than is Okay that uses child labor. We do need to address it and improve it. But I do want to acknowledge and appreciate your comments in response because I'll be releasing that and bringing that up very often in chamber from now on. So thank you very much. So question very quickly about Empower Plus. We put $100,000,000 in the first time, reduced it by half, 50,000,000 last year. We're doing 50,000,000 this year. What is the total need? How much would we really need to put in every single year if we were gonna address the actual need?

[Michael Hernandez (Rewiring America)]: Well, as Doreen Harris testified earlier today, the budget this year was $250,000,000 And then, but what we're seeing that we need to continue to grow that program. So $300,000,000 to see that growth go.

[Assemblymember Anna R. Kelles]: Every year.

[Michael Hernandez (Rewiring America)]: Every year.

[Assemblymember Anna R. Kelles]: Yeah. So we're nowhere close. So we really should do the Sustainable Futures Fund again and do that 300 or $3.30 that the assembly put in last year as a possibility. I would love to see that. But we've come nowhere close and, of course, we have the oldest housing stock in the country. You know, low income people are the most likely to live in the oldest housing and the leakiest, and experiencing all of the, you know, the issues with the cost. So, this is the only program that we have besides the GAP Fund, and thank you for bringing it up. I know that a lot of the agencies have touted that as a great success this year, but we've only put $2,000,000 into it. We're asking for $200,000,000 because that would actually start to address the need. So, thank you for bringing that up. And I was curious if you have reviewed the Achieve program and how many large scale developments have gotten funding through that as possible tens candidates. So we have one in my district that is over a million square feet and would be an amazing thermal energy network for waste heat capture. Just curious if you've looked at that.

[Alison Considine (Building Decarbonization Coalition)]: I haven't looked at the Achieve program, but there's also a utility thermal energy network pilot proposed in your district in Ithaca Yep. In front of the commission. And along with the other seven pilots that are awaiting commission approval to advance the construction, I think that'll do a lot to make thermal energy networks more viable in New York State, building the market, supporting our union workforce in the skills transition from gas pipes to thermal energy network pipes Fantastic. And really showing us how we can build a system to monetize waste heat capture.

[Assemblymember Anna R. Kelles]: And we don't have time, but I'd love to talk to you about your data center regs that you'd love to see more of. Thank you.

[Unidentified Speaker]: Yeah. I'm sitting here. Sorry.

[Assemblymember Dana Levenberg]: Can I go? Okay. Sorry. So, Michael, could you just clarify? Because, president Harris actually mentioned that there was a sustained amount that was planned for of $200,000,000 a year. So maybe you can clarify because I'm a little confused. I've heard from everybody that we need another 200,000,000 in this budget this budget this year. Which year are we talking about? What's the 200,000,000 or the 250,000,000 that's currently in the budget? Is that for 2526, and we're looking for 2627? Just if you could clarify again, she said that the money was there sustained in regi money, blah blah. So that and then my second question is if you could name the eight projects that are in the, quote, unquote, pipeline.

[Michael Hernandez (Rewiring America)]: Great question, and I think this is a question that a lot of people want the answer to because there's several pots of money where the Public Service Commission provides money for the mPOWER plus program, the regional greenhouse gas initiatives provides money, and the state provides money. And but we have not so this this year's budget was $2.50 but what

[Assemblymember Dana Levenberg]: This year is 2025, 2026

[Liz Moran (Earthjustice)]: we're talking about.

[Michael Hernandez (Rewiring America)]: Right. So we need to at least get that 50,000,000 that the governor is proposing in order to keep us level with last year's spending.

[Bill Acker (New York BEST)]: Got it.

[Michael Hernandez (Rewiring America)]: But then that does leaves a gap for next year and the following year because, Reggie, it it it goes down significantly. So the 200,000,000 that we're saying we need would keep us level for this year and then provide the the gap for next year and a little bit of growth.

[Assemblymember Dana Levenberg]: But you did hear president Harris say that 200,000,000 was there.

[Michael Hernandez (Rewiring America)]: I did hear that. Okay.

[Assemblymember Dana Levenberg]: She said that. Right?

[Michael Hernandez (Rewiring America)]: She did say that, but that would be a decrease in the program.

[Alison Considine (Building Decarbonization Coalition)]: The other thing I would just point out here is, you know, especially in a week like this where it's eight degrees out, you know, I feel the way my apartment isn't very well insulated. My apartment's my neighbor's apartment's not being well insulated means there's higher demand on the grid. Programs like Empower Plus are providing vital funds to help people weatherize

[Kathryn Nadeau (Environmental Advocates of New York)]: But can you just leave them

[Assemblymember Dana Levenberg]: eight projects? I'm sorry not to cut you off

[Unidentified Legislator]: because I

[Assemblymember Dana Levenberg]: have huge

[Alison Considine (Building Decarbonization Coalition)]: Yeah. So there's eight utility projects across the state from the Eutendia Act that you all passed. They're in Brooklyn, Chelsea, Rockefeller Center, Mount Vernon, New York, Troy, Haverstraw, New York, Syracuse, and Ithaca. And just to say, this program, the Empower Plus program, has had much more demand than dollar supply, so we're calling for that $200,000,000 to help meet that increased demand and actually, you know, upgrade even more homes.

[Assemblymember Dana Levenberg]: Okay. You just said 200,000,000 wasn't enough. Now, you said 200,000,000 is what we need

[Alison Considine (Building Decarbonization Coalition)]: For fiscal year twenty twenty seven.

[Adrienne Esposito (Citizens Campaign for the Environment)]: Harris said

[Assemblymember Dana Levenberg]: that there was 200,000,000 in sustained over time. So I am still very confused, but I guess I'll get my answer

[Alison Considine (Building Decarbonization Coalition)]: to We'll follow-up. We have a memo that breaks down all the funding sources And yeah. Thank you.

[Assemblymember Gary Pretlow (Co-Chair)]: Thank you. Assembly member Simon.

[Unidentified Legislator (female)]: Thank you. Michael, you talked about low and middle income projects where you've been able to really save people energy costs. I know there had been heat pumps put in a number of NYCHA developments. So my question is, are you including in that the NYCHA projects that have been done in various parts of the city or other areas? And where else other than NYCHA have you been able to effectuate these kinds of changes?

[Michael Hernandez (Rewiring America)]: J. Yeah. There's been a really great success with NYSERDA, with NYSERDA, we've seen where they've taken out old fossil fuel heating systems, put in heat pumps, and the energy consumption drops significantly. And the people in the units love their new units. They have better control, more comfort, and so it's been a rousing success in both dropping energy consumption and providing better comfort for the tenants.

[Unidentified Legislator (female)]: And with the additional $200,000,000 $250,000,000 you'd be able to continue expanding that?

[Michael Hernandez (Rewiring America)]: J. That's right. The Empower Plus program would continue. I think these other programs would also provide the Empower Plus program is really focused on one to four family homes. But yes.

[Unidentified Legislator (female)]: Okay. Mr. Berman, you're with RPA. And so one of the questions I have about discussing changes to secret is, what are those changes? And how would they actually change? What's happening in real life? So nobody's building single family homes on two or three acres in my district in Downtown Brooklyn, as you know. But most of the building in New York City is as of right. And so secret doesn't actually come into play unless you're looking to dramatically change something enough. How is that going to effectuate I think is needed housing to be built in parts of the city that aren't as remunerative for the developers?

[Joshua Berman (Regional Plan Association)]: J. Yes. You're correct that the secret process does not apply to as of right zoning because it applies government makes a decision. And so when there are zoning changes, which can happen for affordable housing developments or market rate, those do need to go through the secret process. And New York City has the Green Fast Track program, which has categorized some developments as not needing to go through the process because they're seen as environmentally friendly. But the governor's proposal does increase that amount.

[Unidentified Legislator (female)]: And how does that work? I'm curious because I keep hearing about this change, I don't really understand what would be different.

[Joshua Berman (Regional Plan Association)]: We can talk after. Okay, thank you. Thanks.

[Assemblymember Gary Pretlow (Co-Chair)]: Thank you very much. And I believe that ends the questioning for this panel, panel E, so panel F. Thank you very much, lady and gentlemen. Panel f, please proceed to the table. That's New York Battery and Energy Storage Technology Consortium, the Public Utility Law Project, New York Solar Energy Industries Association, and the New Yorkers for Clean Power. And if we testify in that order, it would be appreciated. Okay, so Mr. Ecker, you're going to go first, and then Ms. Wheelock, and then Mr. Cohen, and then Cooper.

[Bill Acker (New York BEST)]: Good evening, distinguished members of the legislature. I'm Bill Acker, the executive director of New York BEST, the New York Battery and Storage Technology Consortium. New York state faces a critical moment. Electricity costs are rising, grid reliability margins are shrinking, and we have ambitious climate goals to meet. Energy storage can simultaneously address all three of these challenges. Its cost effective solution not only for enables renewables but also makes the grid more efficient, increasing reliability, and driving down cost. First on reliability, energy storage can act as a virtual transmission system, storing energy and delivering it locally when and where it's needed and avoiding the need for costly power lines and substation upgrades. This is particularly important in New York City right now where the ISO and Conrad has identified immediate reliability shortfalls. Standalone energy storage can provide flexible, reliable capacity more quickly than traditional infrastructure. Second, on cost. According to Dasserta's own analysis, achieving our six gigawatt target will avoid at least $2,000,000,000 in transmission system costs for ratepayers. This doesn't include additional savings from avoided distribution upgrades, reduced health care costs for cleaner air, or preventing economic loss from power outages. Third, on the environment. Energy storage directly reduces the reliance on fossil fuel power plants of non emitting and enable greater renewable energy integration. Yet despite all these benefits and New York State's six gigawatt goal by 2030, we have deployed only about half a gigawatt, only 8% of our goal. With less than five years remaining, we must dramatically accelerate deployment. Despite progress, including the launch of NYSERDA's programs last year, energy storage projects continue to face significant financing, permitting, and interconnection barriers. To unlock the full benefits of energy storage, we respectfully ask you to advance three key initiatives this session. First, enacting sales tax exemption for energy storage as is already provided for fossil fuel resources. This levels the playing field and eliminates unnecessary red tape of enable of obtaining discretionary exemptions. Second, pass legislation to permit large energy storage systems over 25 megawatts under the Office of Renewable Energy and Siding, ORES, establishing centralized expert review process for storage and aligning with how we treat other energy infrastructure of the same scale. Third, establish a three gigawatt target for long duration and multi day storage to be contracted by 2030, providing clear market signals needed for attracting investment and scaling manufacturing. We applaud the legislature as being a global leader on climate and modernizing the energy system. We have the tools to maintain that leadership and deliver on grid reliability and affordability. Our members are ready to build. We need your support to deploy at scale. We thank you for your leadership and opportunity to testify today.

[Assemblymember Gary Pretlow (Co-Chair)]: LORD Thank you. LORD The Public Utility Law Project?

[Assemblymember Anna R. Kelles]: LORD W.

[Lori Wheelock (Public Utility Law Project)]: Good evening. My name is Lori Wheelock. I'm the executive director and counsel of the Public Utility Law Project. We go by pulp for short. Thank you so much for including us. We've submitted substantive comments. And first and foremost, just thank you. Our organization receives most of our funding from the state legislature. And because of you and your continued support, our organization has been able to grow. And as we grow, we've been able to do even more work across New York State to help low income New Yorkers. Last year, when I sat at this table, there were 10 of us. Now there's 14, and we're very close to being 16. So, thank you for that, and we ask for continued support so we can continue to grow. As our team grows, though, the calls, the emails for help just continue to grow as well. In 2025, we received 1,800 contacts from low income New Yorkers who were behind on their utility bills. Of that 1,800, 800 were at risk of shut off or already shut off by the time they got to pulp. And I think it's just an example of what's really happening on the ground across the state. We also participated in four rate cases, multiple generic proceedings, trainings all across the state. And when we talk to low income New Yorkers, how we describe energy affordability really falls into three spaces, the first being immediate financial assistance ways to help people pay their utility bills right now because they are struggling. The second is energy efficiency and programs like Empower Plus, which you've heard a lot about already tonight. But that is important because it helps lower the usage, which will help lower the bills. And the third is the hardest nut to crack, and that's the rates themselves the rate design component, the delivery rates, the supply everything from the rate cases and onward. And that's why we were so grateful to see the eight umbrella proposals by the governor that were included in this budget. It is a door that is opening at a time where we need it to be open and to have very honest conversations about the way we do things in New York. We're also not alone. You see what's happening in Jersey, Rhode Island, Georgia. All of us are having similar conversations, but New York is ahead of the curve. We have many bills already, many of which I look forward to discussing tonight. One of which that we include in our own budget proposals is A. 9,621, which is Assembly Member Barrett's bill, to create an Office of Energy and Equity. We've heard a lot tonight about the different energy affordability programs, but it's becoming hard to track all of the funding and how many people are enrolled and are they funded enough. And so having one entity that can reach into all the various agencies from HCR, OTDA, DPS, NYSERDA, and onward, we think is really necessary at this time. It will make us stronger. It will make our funding processes work better. And so we look forward to discussing ideas like this tonight with you all. And thank you again for including pulp.

[Assemblymember Gary Pretlow (Co-Chair)]: J. Thank you. New York Solar Energy Industries Association.

[Jonathan Cohen (New York Solar Energy Industries Association)]: J. Thank you. Good evening, everyone. My name is Jonathan Cohen. I'm the policy director at the New York Solar Energy Industries Association. I'm going to start with the bottom line. Rooftop and community solar paired with battery storage is a billion dollar energy affordability opportunity for New York. Earlier this month, Synapse Energy Economics released a statewide analysis showing that if New York scales rooftop and community solar to 20 gigawatts by 2035 and we hit our energy storage goals, it will save New Yorkers 1,000,000,000 every single year in avoided energy costs. Those savings flow to all ratepayers by lowering wholesale energy costs and reducing reliance on fossil fuels. And that billion dollars is on top of the hundreds of millions of dollars in direct utility bill savings that are already going to solar and battery customers themselves. This is really important because we've learned today energy and security is the dominant concern of New Yorkers. So as you consider this budget, the central question really should be what policies will most effectively lower energy bills for all New Yorkers quickly, durably, and at scale? It is a fact that solar is the least expensive form of new generation on Earth. That makes rooftop and community solar the most powerful tools we have to achieve broad energy affordability. Distributed solar and storage are already New York's most successful clean energy sector. We surpassed our six gigawatt CLCPA target more than a year ahead of schedule. We're on pace for 10 gigawatts by 2030. We've set record setting levels of deployment for the last two years. And we've built a vibrant industry that employs nearly 19,000 New Yorkers across every region of the state. On the budget, NYSEA has one ask include the Accelerate Solar for Affordable Power Act. And the reason is simple. The ASAP Act targets energy and security and it unlocks a billion dollars in energy savings. It does this by raising the state's distributed solar target to a level that independent analysis shows will deliver the greatest savings for ratepayers and by modernizing interconnection to drive down costs. Today, York is still trying to connect twenty first century energy projects using twentieth century tools. And rate payers are footing the bill. Costs have skyrocketed because timelines are unpredictable and utilities aren't incentivized to control their costs. The ASAP Act will bring real transparency, predictable timelines, proactive planning, and flexible interconnection options, all of which allow solar and storage to connect safely, quickly, and affordably. And all of this happens with no fiscal impact to the state budget. My written testimony has additional next steps that can find further savings after we enact the ASAP Act. I only have nine seconds, so I won't go into those. But I will end where I started. New York has a billion dollar opportunity to lower energy bills for everyone and to lead the nation on energy affordability. Let's get it done.

[Assemblymember Gary Pretlow (Co-Chair)]: J. Thank you. New Yorkers for Clean Power?

[Anshul Gupta (New Yorkers for Clean Power)]: Good evening, and thank you for this opportunity to testify. My name is Anshul Gupta. I'm the policy and research director for New Yorkers for Clean Power, which is a statewide campaign to transition to a clean energy future. As we all know, affordability is the dominant theme of today's energy zeitgeist. Unfortunately, the fossil fuel industry and their business partners are deceptively exploiting this to stall New York's progress towards a clean, sustainable, and ultimately more affordable energy future. Prolonging our dependence on fossil fuels sets the stage for costlier and more volatile energy, not to mention higher pollution and health care costs. New York has seen little reduction in fossil fuel pollution since the enactment of the CLCCA. Yet New Yorkers are facing skyrocketing utility bills. Our energy unaffordability crisis is the product of the fossil fuel status quo and an aging energy infrastructure. We urge the legislature to defend and uphold the CLCPA that it passed in 2019, maintain the scientific integrity of its emissions accounting, and ensure implementation and adequate funding. This would be the real path towards economic growth and affordability. I will now summarize some of our specific recommendations. First and foremost, it is absolutely critical that the $1,000,000,000 sustainable future program is renewed each year with at least the same level of funding until the capital invest regulations go into effect. We often hear about federal government's hostility as a reason to slow down our clean energy progress. But the building sector, which is New York's largest source of climate pollution, is mostly within the state's purview and generally free of federal interference. With adequate and stable funding for Empower Plus, green affordable pre electrification, weatherization assistance program, and clean heat programs with heat pump assistance for oil and propane customers, We can lower energy bills and meet our target of 2,000,000 electric or electric ready homes by around 2030. We must also modify the utility obligation to serve gas in our antiquated public service law to an obligation to serve cost effective, fuel agnostic heating options. Without this change, the gas utilities are on an unsustainable multibillion dollar gas pipeline spree funded by increasing delivery charges on our gas utility bills. Lowering the cost and interconnection permitting hurdles for distributed energy resources like solar and batteries will reduce grid strain, unleash much needed new electricity generation fueled by free in state sunshine, and lower electricity costs for all New Yorkers. We urge the legislature to include the Accelerated Solar for Affordable Power, or ASAP, Act in the final budget and authorized automated residential solar permitting and balcony solar, as other states are doing. To conclude, in the last year, New York has strayed from its clean energy commitments. We urge the legislature to help correct the course and guide the state towards a stable, affordable, and clean energy future that fossil fuels can never deliver. Thank you.

[Assemblymember Gary Pretlow (Co-Chair)]: R. C. You. Senator Harkom. R. C.

[Senator Pete Harckham (Chair, Senate Environmental Conservation)]: You very much, Mr. Chair. Thank you all for being here. Thank you for your testimony and your written testimony. I want to direct this question to Bill, if I may. There has been an abundance of disinformation and, quite candidly, a lack of real hard information about the advancements in safety in best technology, what the state has done, what the new requirements are, what the new technology is like. Could you address some of the advances in safety in best technology?

[Bill Acker (New York BEST)]: Yes, senator. Thank you for that question because I think it's incredibly important. If you if you go on the Internet or or look, you can easily be convinced that battery fires are common and that batteries are unsafe. In fact, there have been huge advancements in in safety in a number of dimensions. The safety of our energy storage systems is really a multilayered approach that the state has enacted some of the strongest safety rules and codes in the nation that went into effect just this January 1 that built on on on on a lot of years of study of the best codes possible to to ensure safety of battery energy storage systems. That includes things that involve extensive testing of the systems to ensure that fires cannot propagate from one unit to another. A lot of the things you might see on the internet, there were really two systems, two sites in the country that have gotten a lot of press about that, that were much older systems where batteries were packed together and and there were no barriers between them. So when a fire can start, it's spread across the whole facility. The testing is designed to ensure that cannot happen. There are multiple then further safety systems that are put in place for monitoring control of the batteries. They need to be monitored according to new codes. There needs to be emergency response plans. In the siting process, we need to go through a third party review for all of these things. And there are a whole litany of other pieces that go into ensuring that the new the the safe designs. I also would add that the technology has been evolving. There was a question earlier about cobalt and lithium ion batteries. Basically, all of the grid batteries you'll see in New York State don't have any cobalt in them at all. They're a new design of of of what's called LFP batteries. And so the the systems are evolving, and the codes have been evolving to ensure these systems are safe.

[Senator Pete Harckham (Chair, Senate Environmental Conservation)]: Thank you very much. Yes,

[Assemblymember Michael J. Palmesano]: my question is for Laurie. Laurie, I appreciate some of the conversations we have, and I certainly appreciate your advocacy on behalf of the ratepayers of New York State. Earlier today, when the panel with President Harris and PSC Chairman Christian, there was a discussion that came up and was part of the point that was brought up is how utilities are sitting on over $2,400,000,000 in reserves. That money is collected from the rate payer through assessments and fees directed by the PSC to pay for the green energy program's mandates. And NYSERDA asks the PSC for the money. When they do, that's when utilities send it to NYSERDA for these green energy programs. But given the fact and certainly your advocacy for people in arrears, the rising utility rates that people all across the state of New York are facing given this fact, wouldn't it be better and more effective to use that excess money for direct rate payer relief versus actually higher utility rates for individuals in arrears who are facing tough choices to subsidize someone's electric vehicle purchase, to subsidize someone's electric heat pump, or to subsidize someone's electric snowballer. Wouldn't that money be better used to provide direct ratepay relief? The constituents I'm hearing for, they want direct ratepay relief. They're not asking for more green programs to subsidize through higher utility bills. Wouldn't that be at least wouldn't that be something we could do right now to provide direct relief to try to ease that burden on those individuals in arrears and ease that burden on the rising utility rates that we're seeing based on the utility hearings and rate cases that are going on? Wouldn't that be something we could do?

[Lori Wheelock (Public Utility Law Project)]: Well, thank you so much for the question, Assembly Member. And I know we've had some conversations in the past. I think PULP's budget testimony really focuses on lessons we've hopefully learned from November to begin with. The federal shutdown was particularly hard on New York State. We're still dealing with the financial aspects of what's going on. And so in general, for instance, we really do support the governor's plan for an annual affordability report. We would love far more detail, in particular with the NYSERDA funding. I think we've seen how much the funding goes to different programs from, again, Empower Plus to energy efficiency. And we would be interested in tracking it. Pulp has also filed comments this summer because we noticed that in the clean energy standard, there was a surplus fund. And so we filed comments there going, we see a surplus. Could we use that funding for ratepayer relief? We were not successful, I'd be happy to discuss offline what that outcome was. Just yesterday, the NYSERDA board did vote with RGGI that if there are over projections, about 34% of that could go potentially to fund energy affordability programs. So we are seeing these conversations happening. I think for us, we want to be able to track these and continue to have those conversations.

[Senator Mark Walczyk]: Thank you, madam chair.

[Senator Liz Krueger (Chair, Senate Finance)]: It's a Wednesday.

[Senator Mark Walczyk]: It is. So for New York battery energy, Mr. Acker, You talked a little bit about how rare battery thermal runaway or fire chemical fires are, but New York State's already seen four facilities. One of those catch fire. One of those facilities is actually in my Senate District in Lyme. It caught fire in 2023. In Warwick, their facility caught fire in 2023. And then again, you'll remember the news just in December in 2025, East Hampton also in 2023 had a fire that disrupted rail traffic, and all of these have endangered their communities. When one of your battery facilities catches a chemical fire through thermal runaway, it produces hydrogen fluoride, hydrogen cyanide, carbon monoxide, hydrogen chloride, sulfur dioxide, methane, ethylene, all bad, but hydrogen fluoride in particular, the CDC says dangerous to life and health at 30 parts per minute or parts per million. It's corrosive to the lungs. It can cause poisoning and death, and it's at levels that are toxic before you can ever smell or taste it. And in your testimony, you asked for larger battery storage facilities over 25 megawatts and a lot more of them, three gigawatts in total storage to be expedited under ORES is what you brought to us here today. So how many battery fires in the state of New York will New Yorkers have to suffer if your plan sees through in the state?

[Bill Acker (New York BEST)]: So, senator, first of all, the the battery fires are rare. The the you are correct in the in the ones you cited in New York. There are thousands of batteries. Texas already has more batteries deployed than our entire goal of six gigawatts. You haven't heard of a single one there. So these are rare events, But they do they have happened. Those fires that you just talked about that happened, there was air monitoring that happened, and they detected no harmful levels for humans above any limit that would be harmful of any of the emissions that you just cited.

[Senator Mark Walczyk]: Which is an additional concern because if we don't have monitoring equipment, but we know that those are the dangerous emissions that are coming off of these things, the community of Lyme was locked down during the fire. People were told to stay inside of their homes. The fire department didn't know how to deal with the fire, and people were terrified. And for them, it's not rare. They only have one battery storage facility. So to the New Yorkers that have already suffered under this plan, it's not rare at all.

[Bill Acker (New York BEST)]: So the new codes make sure that there's an emergency response plan so the fire department knows how to respond, that there's training, and also that that wouldn't have happened. They wouldn't have had the lockdown if they had had those plans in place then. Right. The new codes addressed

[Assemblymember Gary Pretlow (Co-Chair)]: Woman Simon.

[Unidentified Legislator (female)]: Thank you. Thank you. So Lori, first of all, I think we ought to just double what we give you in budget every year because you guys do such a fabulous job and have really helped so many members throughout the state with this very burning issue, No pun intended. Have a question for you. I had asked earlier about the landlord utility accounts. I asked the chair, the PSC. And my question is, do you know what the governor is seeking to accomplish with this proposal? And if you can explain that so that we understand it better, that would be very helpful. And then I have another question for Mr. Acker about batteries.

[Lori Wheelock (Public Utility Law Project)]: Okay, I'll be quick. So sometimes you can have a multiple dwelling, which again, three or more units, and the utilities are in the landlord or owner's name, not the tenant's. If that landlord or owner stops paying, the tenants can actually lose the service. And so it's a really sad situation where the tenants are essentially stuck in the middle between the owner, who's not paying, and the utility company, who needs them to pay. Right? Like, they're clearly using a service. They need to pay for it. We talked about the uncollectible risk. And so we have seen this, unfortunately, happen across the state. And a lot of times, POLP has worked with Law New York out in Elmira, Bronx Legal Services, Queens Legal Aid, Albany Tenants Association right here to try and help these tenants go after the owner so that the utilities don't get shut off. And so the hope is with this proposal, which there's also a Senator Kavanaugh and Assembly Member Rosenthal bill that's very similar, they would be allowed the utilities could go and get a lien in court against the property and the utility service could stay on. So that's the real hope protect the tenants, allow the utility to seek recovery, but go after the owner and not have the tenants be harmed.

[Unidentified Legislator (female)]: Thank you. That's very helpful. And Mr. Acker, you just testified a bit about battery and energy storage. A couple of questions have come up. The sort of battery storage that would be what you're talking about for energy retention. It's not like the lithium batteries in the bicycles, which I think a lot of people think it's lithium and that it's going to end up causing fire like we have a big problem with that. It's a huge problem in a lot of places with those batteries. So if you could explain the difference in the technology and what difference that makes in the usability of this technology. And also some citing concerns because people have been concerned that they might be too close to residential neighborhoods. If you could address that issue, I'd appreciate it.

[Bill Acker (New York BEST)]: R. I think I have five seconds. I I will follow-up with R.

[Assemblymember Gary Pretlow (Co-Chair)]: You, Assembly Member Levenberg, To close.

[Anshul Gupta (New Yorkers for Clean Power)]: I'm teasing.

[Kathryn Nadeau (Environmental Advocates of New York)]: Okay. Thank you.

[Assemblymember Dana Levenberg]: So quick question first for Laurie. And, again, I know everybody's expressed their thanks. I'm gonna just add my thanks to everybody else's, for all your incredible work and help through our recent Conrad rate case for the intervenors. What is one thing you think that New York State can do to make these rate cases more effective and have better outcomes for ratepayers? And then follow-up question is for Bill. Bill? Is that

[Alison Considine (Building Decarbonization Coalition)]: your name? Bill? Bill F.

[Assemblymember Dana Levenberg]: Yes, Bill. You can continue to answer Joanne's question, please. And also just maybe a comparison to gas line explosions, nuclear sites. You know, there's there's gas powered cars and all the other things that are powered by gas. Do we see fires in them? Laurie, first, then don't.

[Lori Wheelock (Public Utility Law Project)]: Yes. Real quick, guidebook. We would love it if the department and the commission would create a guidebook for parties, especially new ones who want to participate. You don't know what your rights are. You can do interrogatories, testimony. There's all these rights as a party, and we would love for that to be created.

[Assemblymember Dana Levenberg]: Thank you.

[Bill Acker (New York BEST)]: And I think one of the really important things about the battery safety is that is that the batteries have to be manufactured correctly. They have to be they have to be engineered systems correctly. They have to be tested and validated and they have to be controlled. And so one of the things that happened with the micro mobility fires was that a lot of those batteries were very cheap Chinese batteries sold by Amazon or other companies over the over the Internet with no UL certifications, no validation of the quality of the batteries. And then they were being charged by people and operated by people with no controls, no monitoring, any of those kinds of things. The big difference is that for the grid energy storage systems that we have, all of those first things are in place. There's good monitoring. There's testing of it. The factories are monitored to make sure the batteries are manufactured well. All of those things are in place to make sure that the batteries are good quality systems. And so that's the main difference. There also are differences in the chemistries used in certain cases, but there actually are a variety of lithium ion battery chemistries. The bigger ones are actually the systems in place and all the controls on how they're manufactured, their quality products.

[Assemblymember Dana Levenberg]: And I do believe I just really

[Bill Acker (New York BEST)]: And I guess oh, I'm sorry. I was going the last part of your question. I mean, we hear a lot about battery fires. But most of the time, any of the evacuations, with the exception of Moss Landing, which was a very odd situation, was a very old facility, bad design long before the codes, there have not been loss of life. There have not been any major incidences with them. Whereas, we can go through the litany of the fossil fuel industry. We had a gas truck on fire nearby, and then the highway was mentioned earlier today that caused evacuations on and around it. This has all the time in the gas industry. Because battery is a new technology, I think it's a lot more focus.

[Assemblymember Dana Levenberg]: Thank you. L.

[Senator Liz Krueger (Chair, Senate Finance)]: R. Very much. Member Pao. Thank you all for coming and being with us and testifying fairly late in the evening. Appreciate all of you and the work you do. And I hope everyone will get back safe. Thank you. Very nice. All right. Next up, panel g. So we have conservation officers, PBA, Matthew Krug, New York City Environmental Justice Alliance, Connor Bambrick and Upstate New York Towns Association, Doctor. Carolyn Price. Really? Okay. Fine.

[Assemblymember Matthew Simpson]: Smart to buy pizza. Because drinking the Romero's.

[Assemblymember Steven Otis]: Yeah.

[Assemblymember Matthew Simpson]: And pizza. I'm gonna go get pizza.

[Senator Liz Krueger (Chair, Senate Finance)]: He's getting pizza.

[David Ansell (Save the Sound)]: Is our

[Assemblymember Gary Pretlow (Co-Chair)]: list. I know. I know. Goodbye.

[Senator Liz Krueger (Chair, Senate Finance)]: Good evening, all of you. Nice to see you. Thank you for being with us so late this evening. And we're gonna start with conservation officers PBA, then go to New York City Environmental Justice Alliance, and then to Upstate New York Towns Association.

[Assemblymember Gary Pretlow (Co-Chair)]: Good evening. Sure. My name is Matt Slater. Your room.

[Senator Liz Krueger (Chair, Senate Finance)]: Oh, green circle needs to be lit. So press the button, and there's a sweet spot, and then it will turn green. Except me, it doesn't like me. Try again. There you go.

[Matthew Krug (PBA of New York State – Environmental Conservation Officers)]: Evening. My name is Matt Krogh, and I'm the director of the Environmental Conservations Local, and serve on the board of directors for the PBA of New York State. First and foremost, I would publicly like to thank Commissioner Amanda Lefton for approving the purchase of a new records management system and body cameras for our officers, which is expected to be delivered in late twenty twenty seven. The commissioner has also approved hiring 30 more officers who will begin their twenty nine week academy next month. The primary responsibility of a conservation police officer is to protect the people and environment of the state of New York by enforcing the laws that are passed by this legislature. Unfortunately, despite the new hiring, our staffing numbers are down 20%. At full staffing, we are allowed three forty four officers, a limit that was set decades ago. But we currently have approximately two seventy five officers statewide. New York has expanded deer hunting seasons, passed aquatic invasive species laws, protected an additional 1,000,000 acres of wetlands, and designated low income neighborhoods as environmental justice areas, with less field officers now than in 2008. In Governor Hochul's budget address, she stated that she intended to make an investment into an urban search and rescue partnership to deploy quickly and sustain large scale rescue operations during a major disaster. However, we are a part of that response and that was unfunded. We do not have that safety equipment and small craft necessary to accomplish the mission. Conservation officers responded to nine eleven, Hurricane Irene, and Hurricane Sandy. However, if a major event like that happened tomorrow, we are woefully unprepared due to past budget cuts at the DEC that deprioritize first responders. Maintaining emergency response equipment needs reliable funding sources. To correct these issues listed, I ask the legislature to dedicate separate line items for enforcement in the budget. Secondly, to add our members to the state police retirement system so that we can stay somewhat competitive with hiring. Third, pass a Senator Harkom and Assemblywoman Kelles enforcement bill, which will collect fine money from poachers and polluters to supplement future environmental enforcement. Lastly, to pass a newer version of the bottle bill, which directs a portion of those unclaimed deposits to fund an increase in officers in environmental justice areas. Thank you.

[Senator Liz Krueger (Chair, Senate Finance)]: Thank you very much. Good evening.

[Conor Bambrick (NYC Environmental Justice Alliance)]: Good evening, and thank you for the opportunity to testify. My name is Conrad Bambrick, senior climate advisor with the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance. Founded in 1991, the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance is a nonprofit citywide membership network linking grassroots organizations from low income communities of colors in their struggle for environmental justice. Our our written testimony, touches on a few key areas, namely transportation, e commerce warehouse regulations, air quality monitoring. But I want to lift up two key areas, and I'll be brief in doing so. Number one, the Sustainable Future Program. We support NY Renew's call for an additional $3,000,000,000 for the Sustainable Future Program this year. That's in line with really the low end of what cap and invest would have raised had the governor and the state move forward in a timely manner on cap and invest regulations. Secondly, with the Sustainable Future Program, we believe there needs to be more transparency associated with it. We believe New Yorkers should be able to track where that funding is going, whether it's through new funding or even the funding allocated last year. The ability to see when those dollars are going out the door, to what projects they're going towards, and how those projects are progressing would enable us as advocates to better convey to the communities that we're serving just how the benefits of New York spending are being delivered. And then finally, should the state move forward with regard to cap and invest, should the legislature choose to do so, we urge you to take a strong look at Assembly Member Kelles' legislation, Assembly Bill 3,975, which would establish some critical guardrails that would protect communities from any undue environmental impacts from a cap and invest program. And then finally, I wanted to touch briefly on the events of the last few days. I think we've seen a tremendous amount of state and local resources dedicated to responding to the and rightfully so to the tremendous storm that New Yorkers and many across the country have faced. Tragically, several New Yorkers have lost their lives. And I raise this because in a few short months, New Yorkers are going to be once again struggling with extreme heat conditions. And the state has not dedicated nearly enough resources to deal with these conditions. Extreme heat is the largest cause of weather related deaths in New York State. In New York City, over five hundred New York City residents on average die from extreme heat. We believe that over the next couple of months during this budget process, the state should dedicate resources to codify the extreme heat action plan and to provide the spending necessary to actually implement that plan. And then also pass Assembly Bill seven fifty five, which would mandate heat mortality reporting across the state.

[Bill Acker (New York BEST)]: Thank you.

[Senator Liz Krueger (Chair, Senate Finance)]: Thank you very much. Good evening.

[Unidentified Speaker]: Good evening. And thank you very much to Chair Krueger and Chair Pretlow for giving us this opportunity, and also the distinguished members of the panel that are sitting here. We know it's been a long day, and thank you for your time. You, as legislative leaders in our state, must be very proud that we are a home rule state. The municipalities are very happy that it's a home rule state because the communities can manage their own affairs, and they can create local laws with less interference from the state. Currently, there are two proposed additions to the Community Solar Act. Senate eight one one nine a is in Senate Local Government Committee, and Assembly nine zero eight seven is in the Assembly Energy Committee. Additions to the Community Solar Act that have examples of going counter to home rule are setback requirements, decommissioning, sound limitations, and limiting the number of facilities. Remember, one size doesn't necessarily fit everyone. And certainly, over the 900 towns that we have in New York State are very, very different in size, topography, and various characteristics. The strength of home rule is communities decide what is best for them. In closing, I'd like to leave this question with you to think about. Do you, as the state, really want to put municipalities through the process of amending their local solar laws? And this is what the proposal is. So I want you to remember that these communities would have to go back to their solar laws, introduce it at a meeting, have a board discussion, schedule a public hearing, whole public hearings, the board has to vote, and then file it with the state? Or would it be better to have representatives from our association, other applicable associations, solar companies and we just heard Jonathan Cohen speak. He would be an excellent addition. And representatives from the New York State Legislature on the assembly committee defined an alternative solutions to what the state's needs and municipalities need and companies need regarding solar. Today, we heard a lot about how good solar is. What I'm asking you, let's find alternative solutions rather than forcing new regulations on all of the municipalities.

[Senator Liz Krueger (Chair, Senate Finance)]: JULIE Thank you very much. Senator Hercobel.

[Assemblymember Gary Pretlow (Co-Chair)]: Trying to get

[Bill Acker (New York BEST)]: my light on.

[Senator Liz Krueger (Chair, Senate Finance)]: I know. Sometimes it's not in the mood.

[Senator Pete Harckham (Chair, Senate Environmental Conservation)]: J. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you all for your testimony. Thank you for staying late. We appreciate it. Just a couple quick questions for Matt. So you said the commissioner has approved a class of 30. You're low you're well below, you said, 2008. How many more FTEs do you think you need to be where you need to be after this class of 30 comes on?

[Matthew Krug (PBA of New York State – Environmental Conservation Officers)]: To start really going into environmental justice areas and going after the pollution there and not only filling our vacancies, I think our appropriate staffing levels should be above like 400 easily. And we have not been really above 300 in the last five years at all.

[Senator Pete Harckham (Chair, Senate Environmental Conservation)]: R. Right. And so what's your attrition rate? You'll bring on 30, but how many will you lose because your benefits aren't as competitive as other law enforcement agencies?

[Matthew Krug (PBA of New York State – Environmental Conservation Officers)]: So one of the tricky parts is just getting them through the door right now, is our hiring process takes nine months to a year. We lose a lot of different candidates, good candidates, to state police who make a little more money, retire sooner with a better pension system. Once we get in, we have a lesser of a problem with the we usually are just losing people to retirements. For the most part, we've lost maybe 10 officers in the last six or seven years to other agencies and career choices.

[Senator Pete Harckham (Chair, Senate Environmental Conservation)]: All right, thanks. And then the last question is, mentioned equipment shortages. What are the big ticket items that your officers really need for their safety and also for the safety of the public and public health?

[Matthew Krug (PBA of New York State – Environmental Conservation Officers)]: R. So we need funds set aside each year just for dedicated equipment. It gets cycled out every eight to ten years. For instance, the snowmobile assigned to Washington County, they quit producing parts for those snowmobiles eight years ago because these snowmobiles are older than the officers we're hiring right now. So a radio that I may have to use either in Albany County or in Buffalo costs about $8,000 We need those capabilities each. So big ticket items would be an offshore boat for the wind turbines on Montauk. That looks at about $1,500,000 But it's really just $800 to $1,000 to $1,000,000 each year to maintain our fleet and purchase small crafts for emergency response.

[Senator Pete Harckham (Chair, Senate Environmental Conservation)]: Thank you.

[Senator Liz Krueger (Chair, Senate Finance)]: Thank you. Assembly.

[Assemblymember Gary Pretlow (Co-Chair)]: Assemblymember Simpson.

[Assemblymember Matthew Simpson]: Thank you. Thank you all for being here. And Matt, it's always late when we get to hear from you. I want to follow-up on Senator Harkin's questions. You mentioned the bottle bill, I think that is a great area, that 100,000,000 or more. And then if this body does increase those redemption fees, you know, theoretically you could assume that there's going be even more monies available to really strengthen up the overall goal, which is to capture more containers. I know we've spoken about the fraud that exists within that system, which hurts everyone involved, and you need resources for that, do those numbers you mentioned of FTEs cover all of the needs for that program as well? And even the expansion of that program, should we expand it to other containers? Because it's going be your responsibility.

[Matthew Krug (PBA of New York State – Environmental Conservation Officers)]: R. We could probably use another 10 officers on top of that just for the New York City Metropolitan area for that. Special investigators that are going to be looking up where the fraud's happening and comparing who's smuggling they've literally smuggled non deposit cans from New Jersey and other states into New York for redemption. And you can put a lot of cans in a tractor trailer. And I had worked those cases earlier on in my career downstate. So there's a lot of potential for it. And right now, it's really tough to catch them because of our lack of officers.

[Assemblymember Matthew Simpson]: And the equipment, I mean, I'm sure there's much more sophisticated equipment you need for managing, you know, that type of investigations into what's happening?

[Matthew Krug (PBA of New York State – Environmental Conservation Officers)]: Yeah. Yeah. So It's really manpower intensive with seeing where stuff comes from. It's going through business records to see who collected the $05 deposit, who's selling non deposits and collecting it, and where that money is actually going. So if you had a small business that maybe they sell, I don't know, 100,000 cans a year, what are they claiming they're selling? And what are they turning in for unclaimed funds each year? I mean, there's a pretty good upside to short the state. And so in that bill, I'm hoping that some of the money will come back for enforcement.

[Assemblymember Matthew Simpson]: J. Thank you. The only other thing I want to say is ice fishing looks really good if you do a derby for the

[Bill Acker (New York BEST)]: I'll keep you in mind. Okay.

[Senator Liz Krueger (Chair, Senate Finance)]: Are there senators? Yes, Senator Walzik.

[Senator Mark Walczyk]: Thank you, Madam Chair. Officer Krug, first of all, you for your service and for your stewardship. And please send my best regards to the men and women who work in your field. We appreciate their stewardship as well. Doctor. Price, when a town doesn't want a solar project, what are their options?

[Unidentified Speaker]: Well, I haven't seen that happen yet. I can say that our towns are supportive of solar. It sometimes takes a long time to go through the process, all the steps that I mentioned. In the bill, the assembly bill that's there right now, if this bill goes through the way it is, the towns would only have one hundred and twenty days to go back and put these provisions that are in the bill in their own local laws. We do get a lot of people that turn out for public hearings for anything related to energy. It is a hot topic with the public. You know that old saying, not in my backyard? So it not only happens with solar. It happens with wind. It happened with natural gas when all that was going on. So I think it would get down to you have to follow the state laws. And there already is a Community Solar Act. So towns have to follow that. I think what we're saying is we don't want to see home rule eroded. And also, if we want people to support solar, we really don't want more regulations coming down and have to bring all those people back into our public meetings. I think things are going quite well. What I listen to today, some of the advantages of solar, I think we need to make it happen and happen in a positive way and have people supportive.

[Senator Mark Walczyk]: J. If a town passes a moratorium on solar or wind or battery storage or any of the host of things that fall under the Office of Renewable Energy Siting or ORES, How does ORES handle that resolution? Is that a respect of home rule? They end the project at that time?

[Unidentified Speaker]: I really haven't heard about enforcement, I know in this law that I'm referring to that would, we think, take some of the home rule away, they want to limit how many moratoriums you can have. I think there can be one of six months, and then for emergencies, maybe six months more. We have seen towns that want to take more than a year. So this is why we need to sit down. We need representatives from the assembly and the senate. We need representatives from the company. We need representatives from the town to say, what are your needs, and try to solve this problem without mansing.

[Assemblymember Gary Pretlow (Co-Chair)]: Thank you for your answer. Assemblymember Giglio?

[Assemblymember Jo Anne Simon]: Thank you, doctor. And I thank your testimony for local control. Because you know what? The state has done so much as far as we don't care what the local government has to say when it comes to solar on these mega projects or when it comes to cannabis cultivation. And that is really affecting my district. But, Matt, my question is more to you. So we had a discussion last year about fraud and about tractor trailers coming in from other states, New Jersey, Connecticut. And you actually, your team identifying them with these bottles that don't have the $05 and really it's fraudulent. And you write the tickets and they go to court and they go to the DAs and the DAs dismiss the case. So I want you to talk a little bit about that because we really need to stop the fraud, especially when we're talking about increasing the bottle redemption to $0.10 a bottle. And we have all this fraud of all of these tractor trailers coming into our state with where they don't have bottle redemption policies and try and redeeming those bottles and getting the money. So please talk about that, Matt.

[Peter Baker (Creek and Sustainability Solutions, LLC)]: So environmental

[Matthew Krug (PBA of New York State – Environmental Conservation Officers)]: enforcement's really tricky in New York. When we make a case, we either have the attorney general's office that may prosecute the case on some of the really large scale pollution cases, Or it goes to local district attorneys who are normally prosecuting the penal law, vehicle traffic, family law. So when it comes to environmental law, they are not familiar with it. It also could be a very large amount of evidence involved with it pictures, video, surveillance for a topic they're not familiar with. So when it comes to the cases, they're looking to clear their dockets. We really need specific district attorneys or prosecutors that know our law and are passionate about it is really the biggest issue with being the under prosecution of our cases, especially when it comes to these frauds. They look at it and go, ah, it's just a nickel. Who cares? You know, the victims can sometimes be the small business. But if they don't have a face to the victim like they might have in a child abuse case or in a domestic violence case. So I don't really see that they're very passionate about the environmental enforcement overall. And that really leads to more fraud when you're not holding people accountable.

[Assemblymember Jo Anne Simon]: And I agree with you that if we are going to talk about the bottle bill and raising the cost, that that money should be allocated. Just like the gambling money was supposed to be going to education, and it's not. It's funding the general fund. This money for the battle redemption should go to the enforcement of these fraudulent characters.

[Matthew Krug (PBA of New York State – Environmental Conservation Officers)]: Yes. Yes, ma'am.

[Assemblymember Jo Anne Simon]: Thank you.

[Matthew Krug (PBA of New York State – Environmental Conservation Officers)]: Thank you.

[Senator Liz Krueger (Chair, Senate Finance)]: Thank you. Are there any other senators?

[Assemblymember Gary Pretlow (Co-Chair)]: No? Just Okay, assembly member, close.

[Assemblymember Michael J. Palmesano]: Yes, thank you. First, Matt, I just want to say thank you to you and all your members for what you do for us. I just wanted to say that first. You guys do a tremendous job for our state. I just wanted to send our appreciation and thanks to you and your members. Doctor. Price, I kind of wanted to focus in on what you talked about when you said the word home rule, and my colleagues have brought this up. Home rule and local control is something we've been talking about for a number of years. And we have systematically seen this legislature, with the help of the governor, erode home rule and local control. When we talk about energy, we had Article 10 at one point where there was five there were seven representatives. There were five from the state. So the state still control it. But you had two local representatives on that board to make decisions on citing of projects. That wasn't good enough. So then they went to ORAS. So it basically took all local participation off that board. And then the state of New York makes that determination. So we've had projects around the state. I know you said you're not aware of them, but I know there's some major solar projects that have widespread opposition from local communities, battery storage opposition from local communities. I mean, no one in the community supports it. But the way the laws are written in the state of New York, if the state of New York decides that your community needs wind or solar, you're going to get wind or solar without any regards to what you want, what the people want. And what's happening where is that coming from? That's coming from Upstate New York land, because we have the land. There's no land in the city for these types of projects. And so if 95% or 99% of the people don't want it, they're going to get it if the state of New York says we have to get it because we have to meet these green energy mandates. And the fact of the matter is 90% of our generation in Upstate New York is emission free because of the nuclear fleet and the hydro fleet. 90% of the generation in downstate is 90% of it is fossil fuel. And that increased significantly after the closure of Indian Point. I remember the former NCON chair who served, I remember we were at a hearing, he was asking questions. It doesn't make sense to me and we were talking about why we were allowing clear cutting of trees to put up a solar farm. Trees absorb carbon dioxide. That's good for the environment. And we've had projects where they're clear cutting trees to build a solar farm. That makes no sense. That's not home rule. That's not local control. And on top of it, to add insult to injury, from a local control perspective, now the state of New York, after a lawsuit, they went back and has taken away local assessments. Local assessors control the assessments for their towns. Now, local assessors can't have any input on assessments of solar or wind in their local communities. And that's another insult on local control and home rule. So thank you.

[Senator Liz Krueger (Chair, Senate Finance)]: I believe that is the assembly members and the senators.

[Anshul Gupta (New Yorkers for Clean Power)]: That is it.

[Senator Liz Krueger (Chair, Senate Finance)]: All right. Then thank you very much for being with us tonight. Appreciate your testimony and staying so long.

[Assemblymember Gary Pretlow (Co-Chair)]: Thank you.

[Senator Liz Krueger (Chair, Senate Finance)]: Thank you. Right. Thank you. And we are now up to panel eight, the Adirondack Council, the Adirondack Mountain Club, Paul Smith College Adirondack Watershed Institute, Protect the Adirondacks, and Open Space Institute. There's a theme here of this panel. No problem.

[Senator Anthony Palumbo]: Okay.

[Senator Liz Krueger (Chair, Senate Finance)]: Shall we go in the order you're on the agenda? Starting with Andrew Williams, and then Kathy Pedler, then Maureen Cunningham, then Claudia Braemar, and then Eileen Larabee. Does that sound okay? All right, three minutes each.

[Andrea Williams (Adirondack Council)]: All right. Not good afternoon, good evening. Thank you Chairs Harcom, Glick, Krueger, Pratt Lowe, and ranking member Steck and Simpson. Really appreciate you guys having us here today. My name is Andrea Williams. I am the director of government relations here, not here, at the Adirondes Council. Thank you for the opportunity to testify. For over fifty years, the Adirondack Council has worked exclusively to protect the ecological integrity and wild character of the 6,000,000 acre park Adirondack Park. We are a nonprofit that relies on science and advocacy to ensure the globally significant Adirondack landscape continues to thrive and serve all New Yorkers. The Adirondack Park is a national treasure. It contains over it contains one of the largest intact temperate forests left on earth, provides clean water to communities across the state. It supports roughly 130,000 year round residents and plays an outsized role in carbon sequestration and climate resilience. As New York works to meet its climate and conservation goals, the Adirondacks are not on the peripheral. They are central to this. I want to highlight a couple key areas in the governor's budget that are really important to our organization, specifically in the Environmental Protection Fund. We were happy to see that the governor included $425,000,000 again in this year's budget. Significantly out of the EPF, there's a couple key pieces that are really core to us. The first being the Survey of Climate and Adirondack Lake Ecosystems, also known as SCAL. This is a globally significant study. It's building off of the work that and the legacy of the ACID RAIN studies that shape national clean air policy. This is such an incredibly important program that will last the data will last for years and will help the state combat issues that are caused by climate change. We are asking for the legislature to increase the funding. The governor only included 1,000,000 in her executive budget. We're asking for that to get up to $2,000,000 to potentially finish off in a couple of years at a total of 12,000,000. We have received 6,000,000 since. Another key EPF line item that we're really passionate about is the Timbuktu Institute. This is a partnership between CUNY Medgar Evers College and SUNY ESF. This year, we had about 130 students from all five boroughs New York City participate in both the New York City program and the Adirondack program. I had the opportunity to join them a couple times this summer. We got to do a couple paddles up in the Adirondacks and also go to Governors Island. And this is such a great program. I really got to see these students light up in nature. These are kids that might not have had the chance to really see what an Adirondack Lake was like. And from my experiences and I'm sure Matt wow, that went quick.

[Senator Liz Krueger (Chair, Senate Finance)]: It's amazing how quickly three minutes goes by. But again, although the time is late, everyone who's testifying, you have submitted your full testimony and is up on both of our websites so that all 20,000,000 New Yorkers can read it. So thank you so J.

[Peter Baker (Creek and Sustainability Solutions, LLC)]: They all will read it. J.

[Senator Liz Krueger (Chair, Senate Finance)]: There you go. And we won't even test them tonight. Next is Kathy Pedler.

[Kathy Pedler (Adirondack Mountain Club)]: J. Great. Thank you for this opportunity. We are so grateful to the Senate and the Assembly for your leadership in creating the dedicated EPF's State Land Stewardship Fund for the Catskills and Adirondacks, including the line in your one house budget proposals the past several years and for fighting for this dedicated funding which was 10,000,000 in the final budget last year this year ADK the groups on this panel and over 50 organizations and municipalities sent a letter to the governor requesting that this critical line be maintained at least $10,000,000 and that the EPF be maintained at at least $425,000,000 In the executive proposal, the stewardship line is at $8,000,000 So we are respectfully requesting that you restore that dedicated funding for the Adirondacks And Catskills to at least 10,000,000 This critical line for protecting wilderness and wild lands in the Catskills And Adirondacks Catskill And Adirondack Parks, which represent over six and onetwo million acres and attract more than 44,000,000 visitors annually who provide $5,000,000,000 in expenditures to the region and their communities. The funding line ensures that the parks are able to continue to be great places to live and work and also to continue to perform essential services of combating climate change, protecting critical habitat, and providing fresh drinking water to millions, including New York City. The dedicated funding ensures visitor experiences are safe and welcoming and has allowed for expansion of trail work, more educational stewards, improvements to recreation infrastructure, and projects to improve accessibility. In the final budget last year, visitor centers were also supported, thanks to your good work again. And in this year's executive budget proposal, three visitor centers were supported, including the Catskill visitor center, the visitor interpretive centers of Paul Smiths and SUNY ESF, which is awesome. But unfortunately, Adirondack Mountain Club's visitor center was not funded in the proposal. So we are also respectfully requesting that you restore ADK's visitor center funding at $250,000 This facility is an essential infrastructure for the Adirondacks and the High Peaks Wilderness. It's a year round resource for outdoor recreators, providing, very importantly, twenty four hour bathrooms, access to skilled educators, trip planning, weather reports, trail conditions, and essential gear. There are other important initiatives listed in our written testimony that were outlined in the joint Adirondack and Catskill letter to Governor Hochul. And I've included a table that summarizes the EPF in terms of funding requested by the Adirondacks and Catskill groups and what is proposed in the executive budget. The unshaded table lines show requested increases or needed restoration. So thank you very much for this time. J.

[Senator Liz Krueger (Chair, Senate Finance)]: Thank you very much. And our next testifier is Maureen Cunningham from Paul Smith College Adirondack Watershed Institute.

[Maureen Cunningham (Paul Smith’s College Adirondack Watershed Institute)]: -Good evening. Thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight and your continued leadership supporting scientific monitoring, research, and education through the EPF. I'm Maureen Cunningham, executive director of the Adirondack Watershed Institute at Paul Smith College, the only four year college inside the Adirondack Park. Like others, I grew up hearing about acid rain damaging the Adirondack Lakes that I love. This pollution decades ago led to the launch of one of the state's largest and longest water quality monitoring programs that is now part of the Adirondack Watershed Institute's mission. I'll say AWI for Adirondack Watershed Institute. The Adirondack Park sits at the headwaters of several major freshwater systems, feeding the Great Lakes, the St. Lawrence, Lake Champlain, the Mohawk, and the Hudson. What happens to water quality in the Adirondacks flows downstream to drinking water supplies serving millions of New Yorkers. For over thirty years, AWI has built the long term scientific record needed to protect these waters. Working with partners and more than a 100 trained community volunteers, we monitor approximately 80 lakes each year that, by watershed area, make up roughly a third of the park's total area. This work is powered by our water quality lab, the only state Department of Health certified lab in the Adirondack Park, allowing us to detect small changes in sensitive lakes. Long term monitoring is essential because even small shifts can push lakes to ecological tipping points. With decades of data, we can detect changes early from acid deposition to road salt contamination to the growing threat of harmful algal blooms. When monitoring lapses, we lose irreplaceable data about these lakes that can help others throughout the state. The EPF support sustains AWI's lab staff and monitoring infrastructure. It also sustains a broader network studying forest preserve health, including the White Face Mountain Field Station and Cary Institute. I also want to thank the legislature for supporting Paul Smith's College Visitor Interpretive Center, or the VIC. Visitor centers like the Vic, along with ADK's High Peak Center and others, connect tens of thousands of people each year to the outdoors. In closing, I respectfully ask that you include 200,000 for AWI's forest preserve research and monitoring and the same for Whiteface Mountain and Cary Institute, and 250,000 for Paul Smith's Vic and the same for the other visitor centers, including Adirondes' High Peak Center. The return on these investments extend far beyond the Adirondex and ensure strong science continues to benefit all New Yorkers. Thank you for protecting New York's scientific excellence.

[Senator Liz Krueger (Chair, Senate Finance)]: Thank you very much. Next up, Claudia Brainer, protect the Adirondacks. You.

[Claudia Braymer (Protect the Adirondacks)]: Good evening, senator Krueger and chair Pretlow and chair Harcom and chair Glick and to the other members of the Senate and Assembly environmental conservation committee, thank you very much for this opportunity to testify and for still being awake with us. My name is Claudia Braimer. I am executive director of Protect the Adirondacks, and I would like to highlight three points of our written testimony. First, we are pleased that governor Kathy Hochul's proposed budget sets the environmental protection fund at 425,000,000. And I would like to note that we would urge the state keep striving to get the EPF up to 500,000,000. In this year's EPF, we urge you to increase the open space and land acquisition line to at least $50,000,000 These funds are essential for acquiring ecologically significant lands throughout the state, such as the 36,000 acre Whitney Park property in the heart of the Adirondacks, and to help the state to protect the approximately 3,000,000 acres of land that is needed to reach the statutory goal of protecting 30% of our lands and inland waters by 2030. We are also asking the legislature to increase the Adirondack Visitor safety and wilderness Protection Line to 10,000,000. Funding for three critical institutions that provide for the protection and research of natural resources in the Adirondacks needs to be restored to the EPF that was left out of the governor's proposal. That's the Adirondack Mountain Club's visitor center, AWI's research center, and the Atmospheric Science and Research Center at White Base Mountain. Last year, the state budget included $1,000,000 for DEC to undertake a carrying capacity study of the Saranac Chain Of Lakes in the Adirondack Park. We support the governor's proposal to reallocate that $1,000,000 so that DEC can undertake and complete this vital work in the coming year. As a final note for the EPF, we urge you to increase the funding the governor proposed for the Timbuktu Institute and for the Adirondack Diversity Institute. Second, we urge the legislature to include in the state budget an amendment to the real property tax law that would create a tax incentive for private landowners to keep mature forests intact. This type of project would be especially beneficial for landowners in the Adirondack Park where millions of acres of privately owned forests are at risk of conversion. And there's already legislation to establish this program. Senator May and Assembly Member Kelles have a bill that could be included in the budget as an Article seven bill. Finally, PROTECT supports Governor Hochul's proposal for a constitutional amendment to Article 14. We urge you to increase the amount of the compensation lands to 2,500 acres to ensure that the people of the state know that this is a net benefit to the forest preserve. Thank you so much for this opportunity.

[Assemblymember Matthew Simpson]: Thank you

[Senator Liz Krueger (Chair, Senate Finance)]: very much. Our next and last on this panel, Eileen Laraby, Open Space Institute.

[Eileen Larrabee (Open Space Institute)]: Eileen Thank you, Senator. Thank you for the opportunity all to appear this evening. My name is Eileen Laraby. I'm executive vice president at the Open Space Institute. Founded in the Hudson Valley in 1974, OSI has grown into one of the nation's most trusted conservation organizations and is now active in more than a dozen states. We are proud to have protected more than a half a million acres in our home state of New York, including 100,000 acres in the Hudson Valley and tens of thousand acres in the Catskills and the Adirondacks, much of it in partnership with state agencies and local partners. I will jump right in and express gratitude for the State Environmental Protection Fund and for your historic support for it. The Senate and the Assembly's decades long backing of the EPF has protected its integrity and grown its funding level, and with that, its impact. Similarly, OSI is grateful for Governor Hochul's recommendation to maintain the EPF at its current historic $425,000,000 level, and we strongly urge that, at a minimum, this investment be maintained. Furthermore, within the EPF, we are gratified by the governor's continued commitment to open space and land protection. Conservation delivers tangible benefits across the state, including clean air and water, recreational opportunities, habitat protection, and climate change mitigation in the form of carbon absorption and containment of floodwaters. Land protection is challenged by new and expanded sprawl, development pressures, and rising real estate prices across urban, suburban, and exurban communities. We need to act quicker and be more creative and responsive to local needs, including the need to protect more parks and trails and greenways, the protection of local water sources, identifying new solutions for housing partnerships, strengthening local economies, and tackling flooding in the age of climate change. We look forward to working with the governor, the legislature, and the agencies to empowering local governments to prioritize conservation and and make it easier for them to access funding, further streamline state processes and grant making, and do more to leverage federal conservation dollars. In the meantime, thank you for your time and your leadership and unwavering dedication to the people of the special places in New York State.

[Senator Liz Krueger (Chair, Senate Finance)]: Thank you very much. Senator Walczyk.

[Senator Mark Walczyk]: Thank you, Madam Chair. For Ms. Bramer, so you mentioned the 36,000 acre tract of private land in the town of Long Lake. Towns in the Adirondacks struggle to provide basic services, and Whitney Park is important to the town of Long Lake's tax base. We have the opportunity to let the APA oversee development and preservation of the tract at the same time. Why would the state ignore the wishes of the sellers, both will and deed restriction, on this tract?

[Claudia Braymer (Protect the Adirondacks)]: Senator Walzak, thank you so much for your service to our country. I want to say that first. And I want to thank you for that question. Whitney Park has been on the state's open space conservation plan priority list since its inception in the nineteen nineties early nineteen nineties. And even before that, I believe my colleagues at the Adirondack Council had identified that property as important for its ecological resources and its ability to connect other lands surrounding it to make it one connected block of intact forest. So we are not suggesting that the state should ignore any legal restrictions that may be in place at this time. The property is listed for sale by the sellers, the trustees, and it's our hope that some sort of solution could be found so that the state could step in and be be a buyer to a willing seller at this point. And we still think there's a possibility for that to happen. And we do understand that the Adirondack Park agency would oversee any sort of development on that property, and we would be scrutinizing that very carefully. And I wanna point you to our recent report where we did a desktop analysis of the natural resources on this site to show that much of the land is covered by wetlands, steep slopes, and also soils that are not available or readily available for septic systems, which would make it very hard for someone to develop much of the property.

[Senator Mark Walczyk]: J. The question remains the same, though. And I worry a lot about the precedents of rolling over someone's will while they're in the grave and deed restrictions that they placed on their property. The seller didn't want to sell this to the state, right?

[Claudia Braymer (Protect the Adirondacks)]: J. My understanding is that Mr. Hendrickson, who has passed away, was upset with the state about certain things that had to do with the fisheries in the area. But I believe that DEC is a good steward of our natural resources. In many respects, yes, we need more ECOs and we need more forest rangers. If you can get the trustees to show us the trust document that actually has the provision that prohibits the state, that would be great. As far as I know, that has not been made public And there is no deed restriction.

[Senator Mark Walczyk]: Did the governor put $125,000,000 in her budget to buy that land?

[Claudia Braymer (Protect the Adirondacks)]: As far as I know, no. That's not in there for Whitney Park.

[Assemblymember Gary Pretlow (Co-Chair)]: Thank you. Thank you. Assembly member Glick.

[Assemblymember Deborah J. Glick]: Thank you very much for first being here and staying around. And secondly, for the work you do throughout the park to maintain its integrity for all of not just New Yorkers, people come from all over the country to enjoy what is truly a unique location. Your points regarding some of the, what I would characterize as somewhat modest amounts of money that are really crucial to maintaining both the scientific research capacity, but also the longevity of some of those studies that are important to maintain the data going forward. So I think those for me are points well taken and very much appreciate your advocacy. And I think offline I'd like to have conversations with all of you about the constitutional amendment piece and some of the changes to SECRA which may or may not have direct impact on some of the smaller communities and how they can create more housing in their hamlets. So I think there's a lot to be unpacked. I'm not sure that this is the time that I would absorb your wisdom. But those are areas that I want to follow-up with each of you on. I think some of our concerns have always been about if it's a public or private sale of forest preserve, what do we get? What is the public benefit? So I'm sure you have some insights into that that would be useful. Thank you.

[Claudia Braymer (Protect the Adirondacks)]: May I speak to that? Just quickly, I just want to reiterate how great AWI is and that it's our certified laboratory in the Adirondack Park. We're a partner with them on the Adirondack Lake Assessment Program, one of the longest running monitoring programs in the park. And I'd be happy to talk to you further about the constitutional amendment and why we think that there is a public benefit here to be had. Thank you.

[Unidentified Speaker]: Thank you. Thank

[Senator Liz Krueger (Chair, Senate Finance)]: you. Any other assembly members or senators?

[Assemblymember Gary Pretlow (Co-Chair)]: I have two more.

[Senator Liz Krueger (Chair, Senate Finance)]: Excuse me.

[Assemblymember Gary Pretlow (Co-Chair)]: Assembly Member Simpson?

[Assemblymember Matthew Simpson]: Thank you.

[Senator Liz Krueger (Chair, Senate Finance)]: I didn't

[Ann Marie Gray (Open New York)]: see

[Assemblymember Matthew Simpson]: My anybody question is for Ms. Primer. I'm interested in learning more about your climate protection based private land forest management program. And can you enlighten me a little bit on the criteria? And also, if you've done any estimates of how many localities could qualify for this program?

[Claudia Braymer (Protect the Adirondacks)]: So I want to mention first too while I'm thinking about it. Whitney Park is subject to the 480A program, which means it has a very reduced tax that it provides to the locality. And that is under an old forest tax law amendment. What we are proposing here goes to the current $4.80 a real property tax for forest owners. And what it would do, it it would expand the existing applicability. So right now, you can get a tax reduction if you have your forest lands in a program that provides forest products. Under this proposal, you could expand that so that you are maintaining your forest as intact forest pursuant to a perpetual conservation easement. We are proposing that you would lower the minimum acreage from 50 acres to 10 acres in order to get the tax benefit. But basically, you would have to have a bona fide not for profit organization hold your conservation easement in order to get the tax incentive. And we're not talking about doing away with any of the forest products tax incentive that currently exists.

[Assemblymember Matthew Simpson]: But if they were enrolled in this or they took advantage of this, they wouldn't be able to use that for forestry products?

[Claudia Braymer (Protect the Adirondacks)]: Right, right. No. They would have to enroll in four eighty a via the other vehicle. So we're saying you can either do forest products or you can keep your forest intact as standing trees for climate purposes. Right now, if you enroll in four eighty eight, you are supposed to be doing timber harvesting. But we know there are many private landowners who are not interested in doing that. There's a pretty rigorous DEC program you have to follow, and some people just want to keep their trees standing. But that's a benefit to the state because as we've heard earlier, trees absorb the carbon dioxide. So as far as municipalities, the proposal in the bill now would be for any municipality that qualifies. So it wouldn't be restricted to a certain number. It's really a benefit that the Tug Hill Commission is supportive of as well.

[Assemblymember Matthew Simpson]: So quickly with my very little time left, do you see any do you have any concerns? Or I have concerns because I don't know enough about this of how it could compete with our forestry products industry and the need for renewable forest or regrowth forest and managed forest?

[Claudia Braymer (Protect the Adirondacks)]: Well, as I said, it's an expansion. It doesn't take that away.

[Assemblymember Matthew Simpson]: Thank you.

[Assemblymember Gary Pretlow (Co-Chair)]: Thank you. Assemblyman Migiglio?

[Assemblymember Jo Anne Simon]: Yes, thank you all for being here so late. So every single New Yorker is a co owner and co protector of the Forever Wild Forest Preserve, and through our state constitution, is entrusted with every decision made regarding the public lands within the Adirondack Park. As the state works to restore wilderness character and manage overuse, these efforts must remain consistent with ecological protection and equity goals, while expanding access for people with disabilities is essential. It should be achieved using existing authorities without introducing motorized uses into the park's most ecologically sensitive areas wilderness, canoe, and primitive lands. If every New Yorker is a co owner, why should the access for people with disabilities be limited? Shouldn't part of the funding and subsequent plan provide a sustainable motorized access for all? And I'm the ranker for people with disabilities in New York State. And I think that our parks provide a great place for people with disabilities to explore. We're doing a lot on Long Island to allow access for people with wheelchairs and that really can't make it through. And Adirondacks is such a beautiful place that should be open to everyone, including people with disabilities. Can you please address this?

[Assemblymember Gary Pretlow (Co-Chair)]: I could have six minutes.

[Claudia Braymer (Protect the Adirondacks)]: Does that mean? Do you

[Kate Donovan (Natural Resources Defense Council)]: want to go?

[Kathy Pedler (Adirondack Mountain Club)]: Sure. I'll just say there's an exciting opportunity open right now. There's an OPDMD policy that just DEC has put out a draft policy. And there's a public meeting, I believe, on February 4 and comments until March. But this was something that all of the groups asked for just to ensure that people with disabilities have sense of what opportunities are available, especially in the Adirondack Park, because it can be very confusing. And DEC has also recently created a map with all of the accessible opportunities in the Adirondacks as well. So we definitely agree that accessibility is extremely important. And there's lots of opportunity in the Adirondacks and the Catskills. And, you know, we would like to see that expanded. So thanks for your comment on that.

[Claudia Braymer (Protect the Adirondacks)]: I just want to say specifically with respect to wilderness, primitive, and canoe, those are areas of the park where motor vehicles are not allowed. And part of the fundamental nature of that area is that people with disabilities can experience that too. And wheelchairs are allowed in those areas. And then this policy could open up other areas like wild forest areas that make up about half of the forest preserves. So there's going to be plenty of, we believe, opportunities.

[Assemblymember Jo Anne Simon]: I really thank you for that.

[Kate Donovan (Natural Resources Defense Council)]: Thank you.

[Senator Liz Krueger (Chair, Senate Finance)]: Here today and this evening and for your work on behalf of the Adirondack Park, I guess every day. Thank you. All right. And our next panel is I, Sure We Can, Allegheny Beverage and Redemption Center, Creek and Sustainability Solutions, Alliance of Independent Recyclers of New York City. Sorry. We need eight chairs for this one, I believe, if not nine. Natural Resources Defense Council. No? Sorry. We already had that one in earlier panel.

[Assemblymember Michael J. Palmesano]: Excuse The

[Assemblymember Gary Pretlow (Co-Chair)]: Empire State Redemption Association.

[Senator Liz Krueger (Chair, Senate Finance)]: Yes, indeed. Turned the wrong page. Empire State Redemption Association. Let's let's see if everybody has stayed to the this evening. Okay. Right. Is it okay? Right. And we know that one of the people with us has a translator. Thank you so much. And that we know we'll need to give you a little more time to do the translation. So for whichever of you is doing the translation along with your specific client, There'll be six minutes for you instead of three minutes for you. Okay? Alright. So glad everybody could still be here this late. So should we just go down the list the way it's on the piece of paper? So our first speaker will be Sure Can, followed by Allegheny Beverage Redemption Center.

[Ryan Castalia (Sure We Can)]: Good evening. My name is Ryan Castalia. I'm the executive director of Sure We Can, a Brooklyn based redemption center and nonprofit serving independent recyclers. Thank you so much for the opportunity to testify today. You might think that the incredible urgency around the waste crisis would translate into swift action by the state. Yet Governor Hochul failed to even mention solid waste in her State of the State address or propose any meaningful initiatives around this important issue in her budget. New York struggles to support even the simplest, most effective, and longest standing recycling system we have, the bottle bill, and the workers who drive its success. The bottle bill works, period. It's demonstrated its efficacy continuously for decades, resulting in a diversion of millions of tons of waste and vast reductions in litter in our communities. It's the most effective recycling system we have, even generating revenue for the state, as we've heard today. Today, it captures around 65% of the material it covers. It supports small businesses, drives the circular economy, and is even a mechanism for environmental justice, creating a low barrier way for marginalized people from all kinds of backgrounds to become independent recyclers who work, contribute to their communities, and earn a livelihood. Our redemption center, just in one part of Brooklyn, diverts around a million bottles and cans each month and distributes hundreds of thousands of dollars annually in income into underserved communities. In a very basic way, this system makes our state cleaner and stronger. All of this is hopelessly out of sync with the neglect the system has suffered. The bottle deposit hasn't risen in over forty years. And after decades of kicking the can down the road, the system has reached the brink of collapse. Redemption centers are disappearing, making it harder than ever to return materials. We heard from Commissioner Levenberg earlier today the need for a handling fee increase. Marginalized canners who earn on average less than a third of minimum wage are being further marginalized, and our streets, landfills, waterways are filling with beverage containers, new and old, that aren't included in the system. A 10¢ deposit would push our return rates now at under 70% up to 90%, as other states have seen. It would mean more income for independent recyclers, an additional $100,000,000 in revenue for the state from unredeemed deposits, and an increased handling fee would allow redemption centers to flourish instead of suffer, creating new access points and driving local economic activity. More containers included would mean a drastic increase in the volume of material diverted from our landfills and waterways, and even save money from municipalities. The opponents of this system, often polluters who seem to regard the idea of being asked to clean up their mess an unconscionable moral affront, speak as if changing this will cause the sky to crash down on them. They said that in 'eighty two when this was enacted. They said it in 2009. And the sky has never fallen. The sky is falling on redemption centers, our communities, and the system itself. If the state continues not to act, all New Yorkers' lives and wallets will continue to be affected, and we can't afford to take the system for granted any longer. Thank you.

[Senator Liz Krueger (Chair, Senate Finance)]: J. Thank you very much. And next, we will have the Allegheny Beverage and Redemption Center.

[Andrea (Allegheny Beverage & Redemption Center)]: Hi, everyone. My name's Andrea. My family owns Allegheny Beverage and Redemption Center. And it's getting late in the night on a Wednesday, and I wanted to start with truth or dare? Truth, would you like to admit that the senator failed to mention the solid waste crisis in her state of the state? Or dare, do you want to go back and live your life that you have right now on your pay rate from seventeen years ago? Could you do what you're doing right now with your money from seventeen years ago? That is what we are being asked to do right now. So like I said, my family's been in this industry since 2007, and we were ecstatic with the raise in 2009 up to our 3 and a half cents. Since then, we've been rubbing those pennies together, trying to spread them as far as we can. It's getting hard. Pennies are getting thinner. We're not even making pennies anymore. So now, we are looking to what can we do next. It feels like it's become personal. New York State does not care about our small businesses. My family, like I said, has been in this since 2007. My parents are looking to retire. We are trying to see what we can do next. They can't retire on their same income from seventeen years ago. New York State doesn't ask their minimum wage employees to maintain their same minimum wage rate for seventeen years, so it's unfair to ask our small businesses to do the same. And Governor Kathy Hochul's State of the State on the thirteenth, she said, quote, When people work hard, when someone has their back, it can change the entire course of their life. She's right. But who has our back? We're hoping that you today will think about that. Think about our small businesses, and include this in your budget. She talked about the affordability crisis. As redemption centers, we know this. It's been a very long time. The state could gain over 1,000,000 $100,000,000 if they'd modernize the bottle bill. Our redemption center industry could see a raise to allow us to survive. Middle and lower class people can use the system as a secondary or even a primary source of income and see some extra spending money in their pockets to then distribute in other places. Governor Hochul said she wanted to talk to small businesses all over the state of New York and learn about what their barriers are. Well, from the working class city of Olean, this bottle bill, it's a barrier. We are an asset to our community. We aid in fundraising efforts for over 200 different organizations, groups, American Legions, VFWs. They look to us to help them raise their fundraising money through their cannon bottle drives. What will they do if our business can't stay open? How will they fund their open their doors to their veterans, to their community schools? Redemption centers all over the country are closing because they can't afford to keep their doors open. Things are changing. Consumers have different preferences. They like different things than they liked twenty years ago. The potential is endless with the expansion of the bottle bill. Like I said, we serve other parts of our communities. People look to us to pay their medical bills, their children's medical bills, raise money for little leagues. If we can't be around for them to do that, what's going to happen?

[Senator Liz Krueger (Chair, Senate Finance)]: Thank you very much. Okay, thank you. Next we have Peter Baker, Creek and Sustainability Solutions, LLC.

[Peter Baker (Creek and Sustainability Solutions, LLC)]: Peter All right, thank you for having us here today. It's late. I know everyone's tired. Hopefully everything I'm about to say sticks, so I'm probably going to throw away my speech. There's nothing here that my colleagues haven't said eloquently, or data, or stats, or anything like that that you've heard throughout the course of the day. I was here most of the day, and all this stuff's been talked about. And I don't want to bore you guys. But I do I want to make a plea from the head and the heart and kind of toss out the full on speech here. As a small business, we're asking for a handout. We're asking to be a part of a system that can create the next generation of the green economy and do so in a way that puts money in people's pockets, it innovates, it uses the same capitalist principles, dynamics that any other business is looking for. We're not looking to be any sort of case or anything like that, but we are in a unique situation where all of our pricing, including a big chunk of our costs, are dictated to us. I can't raise my prices. Now, if I were a small business and I'm struggling, I could do things with my customers to raise prices, make reductions in certain things, and so on and so forth. But right now, we have all this material coming into the waste stream because, like Andrea said, it people's preferences are different in terms of what they're drinking now. They're drinking a lot of non carbonated beverages, and all that stuff is finding its way into our community redemption centers and is becoming a major problem for us. And that coupled with no raise on the handling of product that we don't even make money on. It's like saying I'm going to mow all my neighbors' yards, but I'm only going get paid for one yard. You wouldn't do that. You would, you, if you were a landscaping business, you would go out of business within a couple of weeks. We hang on with what we got because there's the determination to make this thing work. And again, I plead. I've been at this table last year saying a lot of this stuff and I my operation could do 150,000,000 units a year. I have no doubt within a small amount of time if we're allowed to make investments in ourselves, innovate and train and build with our own people. And I yield back.

[Senator Liz Krueger (Chair, Senate Finance)]: Thank you very much. Thank you. And next up is Alliance of Independent Recyclers,

[Alberto Rocero (Alliance of Independent Recyclers NYC)]: Hello, my name is Alberto Rocero. I live in Brooklyn, and I'm a member of AIR NYC, the Alliance of Independent Recyclers. Today, I'm here to represent all of the members of AIR. I am a recycler. I collect cans and bottles and redeem them for 5¢ each. I started doing this work thirteen years ago. I had another job as a soccer referee, but it didn't pay enough to cover all of my expenses, so I needed another way to make money. One day I mentioned to my wife, Rosa, that I had seen someone outside collecting cans and I said to her, My love, let's see if I can try this. See if it helps us out. We thought we'd try it for the sake of our youngest son, who was seven years old at the time. We decided we'd collect what we could and save money to set something aside that we could give to him when he was older. We started out just collecting a small amount. We'd earn $3 $4 or $5 at a time. And slowly we became aware that if we really looked, we'd find even more bottles and cans. We were able to buy a shopping cart and go out and put all of our effort into this work. And so it stopped being just for our son. We realized it could be income for our whole family. We would do this work, collecting, sorting, redeeming, five hours a day. And we went all in and it made a huge difference in paying for our basic needs, paying for our rent. And this past December, I was able to give my son, who's 20 years old now, the hundreds of dollars we had set aside for him. This is my story: redeeming cans and bottles, one nickel at a time, helped me buy food to care for my children and pay my rent. I know many, many recyclers and their stories are very similar to mine. We're recyclers because this is a way that we can improve our lives and the lives of the community around us. But it also helps our city and our state. It helps us conserve the environment.

[Ryan Castalia (Sure We Can)]: Thank you.

[Senator Liz Krueger (Chair, Senate Finance)]: Thank you very much. And our last presenter is Empire State Redemption Association, Jade. Or Didi? Sorry.

[Jade (Empire State Redemption Association)]: Eddie is correct, yes. Tim Shore, Hilltop Redemption, Hartwick, opened last January because, quote, my legislators assured me they would fix this. He is now closed awaiting action. Aaron Sparks, Toucans, Tonawanda, a mother of five forced to leave her business because she could no longer afford groceries. Val Amadon, Rosadon Enterprises, Manojas and Chitinango, thirty four years in business, closed this past September. The list goes on. Redemption may just be data to you, but behind that data are real human lives being torn apart by inaction, not just business owners, but your communities and your constituents. This is my fourth time testifying before you on this crisis. There comes a point where this is no longer neglect but systemic abuse. Businesses are closing, consumers are losing access, and New York is profiting. New Yorkers are being forced to participate in a system that is being shattered. The handling fee has been frozen for nearly two decades, while minimum wage has increased more than 120%, and operating costs have exploded. Redemption centers can't raise prices to keep up. We can only absorb losses until we disappear. And when we disappear, access disappears. And with it, New Yorkers' money. These are not wealthy people losing spare change. These are families and seniors choosing between groceries, gas, and electric bills. Deposit returns are survival money, and the state is cutting off access to it. When access is lost, deposits stop becoming an incentive and become a penalty. At the same time, the law itself has been allowed to decay. There are now more beverages excluded from the bottle bill than included. Redemption centers are forced to handle, sort, store, and reject massive volumes of non covered containers without being paid. That is unpaid labor created by state inaction. This harm does not stop there. Your community programs are losing bottle drive funding. Municipalities are paying to process containers as waste. Taxpayers are footing the bill while New York profits. New York's own 1985 state commission touted this system's success, but warned that diverting unredeemed deposits would undermine the system and reward failure. Those warnings are now reality. If the state won't repair the system to function as intended, then it should be abolished rather than used as a revenue grab. Legislation has been available since 2017, yet there has been zero progress. At minimum, you have lifeline bills to maintain access and prevent waste. But container expansion is crucial to fully repairing what you've been broken. It's time to take action. New Yorkers are relying on you to finally fix this.

[Senator Liz Krueger (Chair, Senate Finance)]: Thank you. Questions? Questions?

[Assemblymember Gary Pretlow (Co-Chair)]: Yes, Selvador William Giglio.

[Assemblymember Jo Anne Simon]: Yes, thank you all for being here. And you know what? It really is important to recycle and reuse. And I'm just saying, you know, I've been listening to these budget hearings for three years and I've been talking and listening to you. Jade, you inspire me because your testimony but you talk about the cost per square foot for these redemption centers and trying to pay the rent and trying to pay the utilities and trying to keep the lights on. And you're waiting two weeks, three weeks with a full your place is full with materials for people that have redeemed it. And the few companies come and pick up the bottles when they want to. And you are sitting there at full capacity. So do you think that New York State DEC and the rest, all of us, should come up with reuses for these recyclable materials so that you could have private enterprise come and pick up these materials and recycle and reuse them rather than you being stuck with these materials at full, you're loaded.

[Jade (Empire State Redemption Association)]: I think what you're referring to was a temporary crisis a couple of years ago when Tom Ra Recycling had a cyber attack, and it caused massive problems in the industry that has since been resolved. One thing that you should be addressing is the monopolization of third party entities. We used to have competition for those who picked up our containers. We used to have options. Tommy recycling has been allowed to absorb every single option that we had. They've even purchased Clink, which is an operation that runs out of Hannaford grocery stores in Upstate New York, where people can return the containers at the store via a drop off system and get paid through a card days later.

[Assemblymember Jo Anne Simon]: So as a former restaurant owner and speaking to a lot of restaurant owners and the Restaurant and Tavern Association, they have bottles sitting in the back that are causing rodent problems and infestation problems because the people that are supposed to be picking up the bottles, the people that delivered them, are not picking them up. How do we fix that?

[Jade (Empire State Redemption Association)]: You have bar redemption centers. We are there to pick up for businesses. We do pick up services. But with us going down the way that you are causing us to go down, we cannot do

[Assemblymember Jo Anne Simon]: that for this J. You think you see the money that goes into the general fund from the bottle redemption rather than reinvestment into redemption centers. Do you think that the state is being really greedy with the work that you're doing? In the general fund, rather than putting it back into redemption centers and making the recycling efforts and the efforts that you're doing.

[Jade (Empire State Redemption Association)]: When you see an industry dying and you keep leaching money out of it and investing zero money into it, that's wrong.

[Assemblymember Gary Pretlow (Co-Chair)]: Thank you, Jade. J. Assemblywoman Glick.

[Assemblymember Deborah J. Glick]: J. First of all, thank you for coming year after year and asking us to fix something that's not been working for some time. I am touched by the notion that there now are more materials that are out there that are not covered by the bottle bill than those that are. So the expansion of coffee, teas, sports drinks, if we were able to get both houses on the same page. This sort of explosion of materials, could you handle it?

[Jade (Empire State Redemption Association)]: 100%. If we get the proper pay, we can hire people again. We used to have this staff. And the thing is, as far as those containers go, people are already bringing them to us. They think they already paid a deposit. They cannot decipher the difference because it's so confusing. So you are forcing us to perform unpaid labor. And in some cases, we kind of take some verbal abuse from frustrated consumers because they think it's a store policy and not the law that we are forced to follow.

[Assemblymember Deborah J. Glick]: Right. And let me ask you, there's been a lot of discussion of fraud. And I'm just wondering if you could address your perception of how real or not that issue is.

[Ryan Castalia (Sure We Can)]: I agree that the topic of fraud comes up very frequently. What doesn't go along with it is any evidence or any indication of where exactly that happens. I'm prepared to have that conversation in good faith. But if it's not being raised in good faith, we can't even talk about it. What I can say is that the proposal of codifying the DEC's task force on bottle fraud, which is included in your bill, assembly member, is a great idea. That task force has not produced any information that we're aware of. So it's hard to even have the conversation about a fraud when there's no facts to really base on. What I will say is that the representative of the conservation PBA recommended allocating money to DEC enforcement. Think We that's a great idea. We'd love to have those good faith conversations and work together to make a more accountable, transparent system for everybody.

[Assemblymember Deborah J. Glick]: Thank you very much.

[Assemblymember Gary Pretlow (Co-Chair)]: Somebody member Simpson?

[Jade (Empire State Redemption Association)]: Could I add something to that real quick? There's twenty four seconds left. Is that Okay? I just want to point out that because New York State is so far behind, states around us are in better positions with the bottle bill. So we now have businesses in New York City losing volume because the fraud is actually going the other way. People are going to Connecticut, where more things are returnable and things are worth more money.

[Assemblymember Matthew Simpson]: Thank you.

[Assemblymember Gary Pretlow (Co-Chair)]: So Ms. Simpson?

[Assemblymember Matthew Simpson]: Thank you. And this question is for anyone that can answer it. Along with adding additional containers, you know, you have different types, sizes. I'm not sure how that is going to impact. But I've visited many different redemption centers and some are hands sorting. Some are more modernized, which, by the way, I think that there should have been a set aside of money to invest in helping, you know, the infrastructure needs to be modern and more efficient.

[Assemblymember Deborah J. Glick]: It's in the bill.

[Assemblymember Matthew Simpson]: Okay. But it's not in effect right now and there's a lot of money that's is there technology though that is currently available to be able to deal with all the different containers and sorting to accomplish this efficiently and effectively on behalf of the people that are really putting the $05 or $0.10 whatever happens?

[Peter Baker (Creek and Sustainability Solutions, LLC)]: R. Yeah, I'll go first. Just really quickly, there's Europe is way ahead of The United States and way ahead of New York State. And there's a company called Anchor Anderson. There's a beautiful company in Long Island called Recycle Tech that uses AI to help identify the products and properly sort. And it counts. In my store alone and I'm a fully mechanized place, but I've had to come up with that capital myself you know, we can count 1,600 units per minute. We can have eight customers walk in the door. They get their money within two or three minutes, and they're out the door. We can do 600 customers a day in a pretty small space. Now, yes, the technology exists. It's there. There's plenty of companies doing it, both here in New York State company in Long Island, as well as and I'll turn it over to Andrea.

[Andrea (Allegheny Beverage & Redemption Center)]: Andrea Yeah, I'd like to talk a little bit about that, too. So like I said, we're in a small town in Olean, New York, with an 8,000 person population, but we're able to do 25,000,000 containers last year. So the technology's there. We have two Tomer machines that not only have the capacity to count and sort and scan those barcodes that make sure that they are legal redeemable containers, But they also put them in a crushed material that then gets one piece further in their puzzle to reusing that material. It also cuts down on the space it takes up for us. So like the trucks you mentioned earlier, shipping things all over, we're able to fit a lot more in one of those trucks than we are in, you know, if we are bags and bags. We also utilize hand count and sort, too. I don't want to just say that we're a fully automated system. We can service six customers at one time. Our machines can count and crush 1.5 containers a second. And our employees are incredible. And we are just as fast as that if we're not having to sort by each container. You know, if someone comes in with a you know, their favorite thing to drink is Diet Coke, then it's pretty quick for us to count that for them. Almost as fast as a machine.

[Assemblymember Matthew Simpson]: Thank you.

[Andrea (Allegheny Beverage & Redemption Center)]: Thanks.

[Senator Liz Krueger (Chair, Senate Finance)]: So thank you very much for coming today. And I appreciate it Thank you. I know many of us have been working on bottle bills, I feel like, our whole lives. I feel like you have also. So me too. Exactly. Thank you. And we have one more panel. So don't escape completely, please. We have Panel J, Save the Sound, New York State Wildlife Rehabilitation Council, and Humane World for Animals.

[Assemblymember Deborah J. Glick]: Formerly Humane Society.

[Senator Liz Krueger (Chair, Senate Finance)]: It says Humane World for Animals. Is that different?

[Assemblymember Deborah J. Glick]: Formerly.

[Senator Liz Krueger (Chair, Senate Finance)]: Formerly? Oh, I didn't realize they changed their name. Thank you, Deborah J. L. You're very welcome. I thought you were just being creative with Oh, their it wasn't somebody else was being creative with their name.

[Assemblymember Gary Pretlow (Co-Chair)]: Yes.

[Senator Liz Krueger (Chair, Senate Finance)]: Okay. Great.

[Assemblymember Gary Pretlow (Co-Chair)]: Is the humane world no longer the humane society?

[Senator Liz Krueger (Chair, Senate Finance)]: All right. All right. Good evening. And David Ansell, which, right or left? Thank you. Sorry, I just want to make sure I'm saying it right. So let's start with David Ansell and head then to his right, afterwards to Kelly Martin, and then to Brian Shapiro. Good evening. Thank you for being our last panel tonight. DAVID

[David Ansell (Save the Sound)]: you. Ready to go?

[Senator Liz Krueger (Chair, Senate Finance)]: Yes, sir. DAVID A.

[David Ansell (Save the Sound)]: Evening. Thank you for this opportunity to testify. My name is David Ansell. I'm the vice president for the Center for Water Protection at Save the Sound. Our mission is to protect and restore the Long Island Sound. And we work with other water protection organizations in the state on statewide water policy. I, in written testimony, have submitted a lot of information about what an incredible asset the Long Island Sound is to New York, so so I'm not going to get into those details. And we gave other comments on the budget. But I want to focus in my limited time specifically on clean water infrastructure. We have many pollution challenges in the sound. The three biggest are wastewater pollution, then storm water pollution, and climate change. And climate change is, in and of itself, a triple threat because the frequency and severity of the storms is exacerbating the amount of water that's getting into the wastewater system and overwhelming it, and overwhelming our storm water or lack of storm water infrastructure. So for example, in New York City, that causes CSOs. Sorry for the jargon, but time is short. And it's also raising the temperature of the water, which is damaging the ecology of the sound because the warmer the water, the less oxygen it can hold. And then you go back to hypoxia, which was the big problem twenty, thirty years ago and still is, bays and harbors. Good news is we know what the solutions are. We need to mitigate climate change and try to meet our goals under the CLCPA. We need to reduce storm water pollution and invest in green infrastructure. We need to mitigate wastewater pollution mostly through infrastructure. We have a lot of inadequate and outdated infrastructure. We need more infrastructure. And we know that infrastructure investments work. The Sound was in much worse say worse shape thirty years ago than it is now, certainly in the open waters, and that's because of investments in these types of infrastructure. So we know the business model works. We just have to keep doing it. And so that's where the Clean Water Infrastructure Act comes in, which is so important. And I wanna thank the assembly and the senate for continuing to fund and support this program, which is vital to the state of New York and for water protection in our communities. I know you've heard a lot today about the governor's proposal to increase the Clean Water Infrastructure Act money or infrastructure money by $250,000,000 tied to housing. She made a speech before the budget in the State of the State came out, basically announcing $37,500,000,000 for water infrastructure in the state over five years. And what that means, we understand, is that the Clean Water Infrastructure Act is gonna be capped in the governor's mind for the next five years at $500,000,000, and then 250,000,000 will sit on top of that. We urge you to increase the funding for CWIA 600,000,000 or more and take that money from the new $250,000,000 the governor found. Thank you.

[Kelly Martin (NYS Wildlife Rehabilitation Council)]: Thank you for the opportunity to speak before this group. I am representing the New York State Wildlife Rehabilitation Council, also called NICE Work. We are licensed wildlife rehabilitators, licensed by the conservation department. We provide a service in taking care of sick, injured, orphaned, displaced native wildlife. Primarily this is a volunteer effort, though there are a few organizations and centers with paid staff. But most of us do this out of pocket. And there has become an ever increasing need for our services as more and more people are aware of what we do and also just the human wildlife interactions are increasing every year. There are probably almost 2,000 rehabilitators in the state. We get no funding from DEC. We're licensed by them. Many people think we are funded by them, but we are not. There's been very little, actually, financial effort put into our program. And we are asking for some relief in two areas primarily this year. We're new to this, so we're just kind of identified two areas that are a great need. One is a barrier for people who achieve a second license to take care of rabies vector species bats, raccoons, and skunks, with raccoons being the ones we primarily get calls for. Our license to do that actually requires us to get pre exposure rabies vaccination. That is a cost from anywhere from $800 to $1,200 for an individual. Most insurance companies do not cover this. The pre exposure shots are greatly reduced price than what would cost if you had a post exposure and were actually exposed to rabies. But this is a public service that we provide that we are taking these animals out of the hands of the public, putting them into the hands of people who are trained and educated on how to do this properly while also providing humane care for wildlife. The second area we identified were many times because we do liaison and work closely with the DEC, we often are asked to take confiscated animals when they're taken out of the hands of the public. This also becomes a cost incurred by us. And I think everybody's familiar with Peanut the Squirrel. Perhaps let's not forget Fred the raccoon at the same time. These are animals that actually a licensed individual could have taken and it might have had a far different outcome. So those are just two areas where we would like to see if we could get some support at a statewide level, at a program level. Thank you very much.

[Senator Liz Krueger (Chair, Senate Finance)]: Brian Shapiro.

[Brian Shapiro (Humane World for Animals)]: R. Thank you so much. Brian Shapiro, Humane World for Animals, formerly known as the Humane Society of the United States. I'm going to edit this because you've really stuck it out, and you're doing great work for your constituencies. Thank you. We respectfully ask the department and legislature to consider allocating support aimed at improving the rabies vector species licensing program, as was just detailed. It's essential for public safety to have professional wildlife rehabilitators with the RVS endorsement in our communities, particularly in rural communities with a limited number of rehabbers. I think the case was made beautifully. Having an appropriate number of RVS approved rehabilitators available prevents the general public from making bare handed contact that could necessitate expensive and painful post exposure prophylaxis. New York's wildlife rehabilitators, a solid group of DEC stakeholders, are a community represented by NICE work. This is a professional, long established organization respected by the DEC, with members trained and educated with the most effective tools and methods available. We respectfully urge the department to work with NICE work and the legislature to help address this and other obstacles and to allocate funds as needed, particularly on the rabies vector species issue. Thank you.

[Senator Liz Krueger (Chair, Senate Finance)]: SENATOR Senator Markham?

[Senator Pete Harckham (Chair, Senate Environmental Conservation)]: SENATOR Thank you very much, Madam Chair, and thank you all for sticking it out. You really do get a merit badge for that. You get two merit badges. So thank you all. DAVID Thank you. DAVID A question is for David. You've heard us tonight debate and ask questions about the climate law. We've talked about climate in terms of energy policies in New York State. We've talked about goals and targets, pro and con. But you were the first testifier to really bring up impacts of climate change. Can you talk more about because your folks are out in the water every day what climate change is doing right now to the Long Island Sound?

[David Ansell (Save the Sound)]: Yeah, 100%. Climate change is damaging the ecological health of the water, as I stated before. It can hold less oxygen as it warms, and it is warming about a degree every ten years. And that actually is more meaningful than it may sound if you're an animal living in the water. Secondly, we have sea level rise and really serious erosion problems, which damages people, property, businesses. We have serious flooding problems, which damages communities. And people are the storms and the rain events are also really damaging shoreline communities. And people in New York City in low level apartments have died. So there are real serious impacts in terms of the weather, sea level, ecology. And these are expensive major issues. And the resiliency projects to try to address them are also very expensive. And luckily, we've worked on some good policy. We worked with Assemblyman Otis and Senator Mayer a couple of years ago to have DEC be encouraged to use nature based solutions, like living shorelines, for resiliency. But there's so many hardened surfaces that it's very hard to restore all that habitat.

[Senator Pete Harckham (Chair, Senate Environmental Conservation)]: Yeah, thank you. You mentioned resiliency projects. And we sometimes hear that we can't afford to address climate change versus we can't afford not to address climate change. And I just remind folks of just one expense we had in the budget last year, not on the Sound side of Long Island, but on the Atlantic Side, we spent $1,800,000,000 for a sand restoration project from Fire Island to Montauk. And that was just one resiliency project in one small part of the state. So thank you, and thank you all for being here.

[David Ansell (Save the Sound)]: Thank you. Glick?

[Assemblymember Deborah J. Glick]: A couple of questions about wildlife rehabilitation. You are licensed by DEC?

[Kelly Martin (NYS Wildlife Rehabilitation Council)]: J. Yes, we are. J.

[Assemblymember Deborah J. Glick]: Do they provide the curriculum? If they're licensing you, do they provide obviously you're getting some sort of test. So is there a curriculum? And where do you get that training?

[Kelly Martin (NYS Wildlife Rehabilitation Council)]: They do have a study guide and exam in place in order to get the license. And it's never intended to be the endpoint of anyone's education. So our organization, actually since the inception of wildlife rehabilitation in New York State, has provided an annual conference, a quarterly newsletter, where we provide education information to keep people up to date on what's going on in the field. The rabies vector species license has a separate licensing component to it. And again, since the inception of that, our organization has worked with DEC to offer that at our annual conference. That's the next level of training in order to handle those high risk animals.

[Assemblymember Deborah J. Glick]: What do they charge you for the license?

[Kelly Martin (NYS Wildlife Rehabilitation Council)]: They don't charge us. And actually, I would go on record as saying I would not be opposed to being charged a nominal fee to offset whatever administrative costs if it went back into the program.

[Assemblymember Deborah J. Glick]: And you said there's about 2,000

[Kelly Martin (NYS Wildlife Rehabilitation Council)]: Give or take, and that's probably just licensed rehabilitators. A lot of us us do have a separate license that allows us to have assistance under our license that we supervise. That may be another several 100 people.

[Assemblymember Deborah J. Glick]: And so it's a network that somebody finds an animal and they are in Chautauqua County. They go online to find someone?

[Kelly Martin (NYS Wildlife Rehabilitation Council)]: J. Yes. Actually, now that has become a way which is a mixed blessing. People can find somebody that they're not often geographically reasonable, which is a problem. We're not equally distributed across the state, which I wish we were because our workload is huge. Incredibly burdensome for the people that do hold the rabies vector license. Raccoons are one of the most common animals where people are. Right. So they're a high percentage of the calls and animals that we get are raccoons. And unfortunately, if we're not taking them, nobody is going to resist that cute baby raccoon. So we're concerned that they remain in the hands of the public. Puts the public at risk. It also usually ends up with a maladjusted animal raised improperly.

[Assemblymember Deborah J. Glick]: I look forward to having more conversations about what we can do to have more support for the rehabilitators.

[Kelly Martin (NYS Wildlife Rehabilitation Council)]: I would love that. Thank you.

[Assemblymember Gary Pretlow (Co-Chair)]: Assemblymember Giglio?

[Assemblymember Jo Anne Simon]: Yeah. So thank you all for being here and staying until the end. Your testimony is important. But Dave, you know, I really want to thank you for the tour of the Long Island Sound in my district a few months ago where we watched all of these outflow pipes coming into the sound from road runoff, from the rocky hills of Rocky Point and Miller Place, and they were coming directly into the sound and affecting water quality. Do you think there's enough money in the budget to correct those problems of the outflow pipes going into the sound? And what can we do better?

[David Ansell (Save the Sound)]: Thank you for your question. And that was a beautiful area to see from the water. Yeah. I don't think there's enough money. I think that we have a lot of work

[Assemblymember Khaleel M. Anderson]: to

[David Ansell (Save the Sound)]: do in terms of stormwater management, not just around the Long Island Sound, but in the entire state. I think that we need a lot more green infrastructure and better planning, and communities need to be thinking about how to better manage their storm water on a local level and at the state level. But I do believe that the state can provide more funding and guidance to help the communities get this done.

[Assemblymember Jo Anne Simon]: Yeah. And it's interesting because, you know, these are older communities, and they are homeowners associations, and they don't have the money to invest into the catch basins and the storm drains and everything that it needs to mitigate all this the road runoff that's going into the sound.

[David Ansell (Save the Sound)]: Well, the world's changed. That's part of the issue is that we get storms where, an intense volume of water is falling from the sky in a shorter amount of time than it used to. So communities that used to be able to manage their storm water are finding that they can't. And so that's one of the major topics that I raise as an issue, tonight and always.

[Assemblymember Jo Anne Simon]: And I thank you for your efforts. And I know that you need a new boat too, so

[Assemblymember Steven Otis]: That's right.

[Assemblymember Jo Anne Simon]: That should be in the budget also.

[David Ansell (Save the Sound)]: Thank you. Assembly member. Thank you.

[Assemblymember Gary Pretlow (Co-Chair)]: That, I would like to thank you very much for

[Senator Liz Krueger (Chair, Senate Finance)]: your participation, for staying with us all day and evening. And I'm going to officially declare this hearing done. But if you miss us, we will be back soon at 09:30 in the morning to deal with a whole new set of issues for the education of the children of New York State. So turn off your computer and go get some sleep and come on back soon.

[Senator Pete Harckham (Chair, Senate Environmental Conservation)]: Thank you.