» The Wall Street Journal published an excellent article last week about how the economic turbulence of recent years, coupled with $4 a gallon gasoline, has given rise to transit-oriented developments (TOD).

TODs are residential real estate projects built near train stations and commercial districts. They give people easy access to mass transportation, and are situated within walking distance of local businesses.

Sustainable Long Island has been making the case for this type of development for years, and I imagine TODs may be discussed at its 6th Annual Sustainability Conference on Friday, June 1, from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Carlyle on the Green, Bethpage State Park, in Farmingdale.

In fact, Amy Engel, who joined Sustainable Long Island as its executive director in November 2011, said during a recent interview that, when the organization was in the market for a new headquarters a few months ago, she wanted “downtown office space that could be reached easily by bus or train.”

Engel and her group’s six full-time employees moved in March 2012 to 399 Conklin Street in Farmingdale, a short walk from that community’s LIRR station, from their previous location in Bethpage.  Sustainable Long Island’s mission is to “promote economic development, environmental health, and social equity for all Long Islanders, now and for generations to come.”

“We love being in a downtown area,” Engel said, pointing to what she described as the Norman Rockwell-like touches (e.g., hearing the periodic ringing of St. Kilians’ church bells, one of their neighbors on Conklin Street) of being a regular LIRR commuter to Farmingdale from her home in Holtsville.  “I have less than a five-minute walk to work,” Engel said, describing how long it takes her to get to her office after she gets off the train.

“In Suffolk County, you get on the expressway and go somewhere,” Engel said, “In Nassau, it’s different.”  That’s for sure.  There are still some places in Suffolk you can drive for five straight minutes without encountering a traffic jam or a traffic light.

Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone, the June 1 conference’s keynote speaker, was Babylon town supervisor when he worked with Sustainable Long Island, on a redevelopment initiative in Wyandanch. (Engel, with the former County Executive’s office at the time, worked behind the scenes to facilitate road and sewer improvements for the project).

“I feel as though it all came together,” Engel added, when assessing all the positions she held prior to her arrival at Sustainable Long Island.  Before working for Suffolk, Engel was KeySpan’s community development consultant, the Greater Long Island Clean Cities Coalition’s executive director and the Long Island Association’s (LIA) deputy director of government affairs.

The LIA’s current president, Kevin Law, who arrived there long after Engel left the LIA, and Hofstra University president Stuart Rabinowitz, will receive Sustainable Long Island’s ‘Getting it Done’ award at the June 1 conference’s luncheon.  Given each year to those “who move beyond the talk toward implementation,” Law and Rabinowitz are the co-chairs of the Long Island Regional Economic Development Council (LIREDC).  The LIREDC was instrumental in securing $101 million in state monies for Island-specific economic development projects in December 2011.  If any of them take cars off of Nassau’s roadways, they will likely have my support.

“With the generous support of the Levitt Foundation, Sustainable Long Island formally established the Sustainable Long Island High School Fellowship Program in 2009,” said Amy Engel, Executive Director, Sustainable Long Island. “Since then, the program has evolved to include over a dozen students, representing diverse communities and engaging a large population of Long Island’s young leaders. We’re thrilled that the Levitt Foundation has given us the ability to continue this unique and valuable program for a fourth consecutive year.”

Sustainable Long Island’s High School Fellowship engages students in learning about community planning, civic connection, and sustainable development. Participants receive a stipend for their work, which entails a one year part-time commitment including 20 hours a week in the summer and six hours a week during the school year. The students’ knowledge and participation contributes to long-term planning across Long Island, as they build upon skills and recruit fellow peers in the process.

“Levitt Foundation is pleased to support this unique opportunity for Long Island teens to learn about their environment and take action to improve or protect their own communities,” said John M. Brickman, Esq., President, Levitt Foundation.

Some highlights since the inaugural year of the High School Fellowship include:

• Fellows analyzed local and regional water resources; examining what it means to have a sole-source aquifer and equitable access to drinking water, while exploring potential contaminants and opportunities for conservation
• Students researched issues related to food equity at the local, regional, and national level; gaining hands-on experience by helping increase access to fresh food by participating in community-based youth-run farmers’ markets in Nassau and Suffolk County
• Fellows actively participated in the development and execution of youth components of community planning processes in Farmingville, Freeport, and Farmingdale; conducting outreach and facilitating interactive visioning exercises for high school students to learn and discuss what they want their communities to look like, what sustainability elements could be added, and how to integrate smart growth components into the overall plan
• Students attended, participated, and/or presented at the Long Island Regional Planning Council in 2009, the Interagency Partnership for Sustainable Communities event in 2010, and the New York City Community Gardens Coalition Conference on Youth Gardens, as well as the Suffolk County Planning Department and Suffolk County Water Authority in 2011

The students who participate in the fourth year of Sustainable Long Island’s Fellowship Program will participate in a Community Planning and Sustainability Orientation, and will continue to be involved with our Food Equity Program, Mentorship Initiative, and the youth outreach component of a local/regional planning process. High School juniors and seniors interested in the fellowship can either send letter of interest and resume to Janice Moynihan (jmoynihan@sustainableli.org), call 516-873-0230, or apply online.

Sustainable Long Island’s Response:

In his column ” ‘Food desert’ theory of obesity is wispy thin” [Opinion, April 23], Newsday’s Daniel Akst shares his opinion that food deserts are “just a mirage.”

He says that “just 2.2 percent of households live more than a mile from a supermarket.” That’s an interesting statistic. Health department statistics from Nassau and Suffolk indicate that more than 83,000 Long Islanders have limited access to affordable, healthy food. These residents are defined as living on incomes below the poverty level, and more than a mile from the nearest grocery store.

That’s “just” 3 percent of Long Island, but does that mean 83,000 people should be ignored? This measure does not even take into account the more than 50,000 households on Long Island with no access to a vehicle. Trying to prove that food deserts do not exist is faulty in its own right, but to dismiss the link between food equity and obesity is plain inaccurate.

Access to nutritious, affordable food is a human right, and implementing projects and programs, such as local farmers’ markets and community gardens, ensures that right is respected for every Long Islander.

Along with Sustainable Long Island, The Long Island Index, a private data-gathering project, has created a map showing dozens of gaps in, or areas without, supermarkets and large grocery stores throughout Long Island, i.e., food deserts, at www.longislandindexmaps.org.

That’s not a notion “built on sand,” but a reality built on fact.

Original Newsday Column:

The food desert, it seems, is just a mirage.

What’s a food desert? It’s supposedly where many low-income Americans live, a grim neighborhood where the only comestibles you can buy are fattening and unhealthy.

The story has been that poor Americans are fatter than others in part because they are stranded in such deserts, forced to trek through trackless wastes of Big Macs and the like to find a single Brussels sprout.

Michelle Obama, who’s spent quite a bit of energy trying to make the food desert bloom with fruits and vegetables, talked about the problem of access to healthy food last fall. “This is not just happening here in Chicago on the South Side,” she said during a visit. “In so many neighborhoods, if people want to buy a head of lettuce or salad or some fruit for their kid’s lunch, they have to take two or three buses, maybe pay for a taxicab, in order to do it.”

But now we have some strong research suggesting that, in America at least, there are no food deserts. The sociologist Helen Lee reported in the journal Social Science & Medicine that children in poor, minority neighborhoods have ample access to fast food and convenience stores, but also to supermarkets — suggesting that low-income Americans have plenty of places to buy carrots and broccoli. Lee found that distance to food outlets didn’t explain weight gain.

And the health economist Roland Sturm at the RAND Corp., a think tank, studied children in California and found no connection between the type of food they were eating and what food was available within a mile and a half. He looked at national data for middle-schoolers and found the same thing.

In other words, a considerable chunk of the political and public health establishment has been barking up the wrong tree. Or crying about the wrong wilderness.

The chimerical nature of food deserts — which were first “discovered” in Britain — has been demonstrated before, as I’ve noted in a previous column. In 2009, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported that just 2.2 percent of households live more than a mile from a supermarket and also lack access to a vehicle. The year before, a USDA study found that raising the incomes of poor families by 10 percent didn’t increase their purchases of fruits and vegetables, suggesting that affordability wasn’t any more a problem than access.

Yet the food desert mirage persisted, shimmering brightly on the media landscape. Why? One reason is a strong tendency on the part of liberals to believe that people — especially poor people — are victims of circumstances.

To some extent, of course, all of us are. Sooner or later everyone suffers some bad luck in life, and none of us can control our genetic makeup. Fully two-thirds of Americans are overweight, half of them obese. Clearly some powerful circumstances are at work — throughout society — to produce such a change in a mere 30 years.

Today all of us live in an environment that makes it hard to maintain a healthy weight. Changes in business, technology and culture, from the rise of fast food and all-day snacking to the decline of family meals, have played a role. Humans are weak in the face of such forces.

Yet people are far from powerless, and the notion that we are helpless to control our actions is counterproductive and dehumanizing. The challenge is finding ways for people to help themselves without getting distracted by mirages.

There’s no denying that poor and minority Americans suffer more weight problems. But deceiving ourselves about the reasons — which are still unknown — won’t help anyone. The food desert, it now seems clear, was a notion built on sand.

Sustainable Long Island was part of the panel discussion, “Cultivating Food Justice,” which focused on how we can expand the concept of Food Justice, linking it with labor and immigration issues, and bringing in the viewpoints and voices of traditionally marginalized communities. The panel explored initiatives in our region and elsewhere that are helping to highlight inequities throughout the food system and, in so doing, broadening the meaning and impact of food justice.

Some of the points we discussed during the panel:

• There are many challenges facing communities on Long Island with respect to food justice and food equity:
  • For example, the recently released County Health Rankings for 2012 indicate that more than 83,000 people (roughly 3%) on Long Island have limited access to healthy food – defined as living below the poverty level and more than 1 mile from the nearest grocery store
  • This measure does not even take into account the more than 50,000 households on LI with no access to a vehicle, making it even more difficult to obtain fresh, healthy food
  • In a national survey, the New York-North New Jersey-Long Island MSA was ranked 11th worst out of 100 Metropolitan Statistical Areas for accessing affordable, fresh fruit & vegetables among all households from 2008 to 2010

   

• Ways communities can practice food justice:
  • Start by sharing information with those who are not yet aware of food justice issues. For example, within your own community, you might raise food justice issues at community or civic meetings, share what you learn and steps you’re taking with your family. By increasing our own knowledge and talking about what we know, we become ambassadors of a healthier, more just food system.
  • Support local businesses that provide (grow, produce, sell) affordable, healthy, and locally grown – when possible – produce
  • Help advocate or work for policies that can help to transform the local food system, create opportunities for a healthy, local food system
  • Get involved in food projects. Projects that address food equity can help build resilient communities – Not only do they create a sense of place, and improve community health and the environment, but they can be economic drivers as well – boosting local economies by creating jobs and generating multipliers – additional maintenance or supply jobs. Local or regional food projects can also increase revenue for local farms, in turn, supporting supply vendors, employees, distributors, etc.
    • Support community based farmers’ markets
    • Get involved in a community garden
    • Start or get involved in farm-to-school program
    • Improve food in local schools
    • Encourage youth food movement perspectives

♦ Sustainable Long Island has been awarded $45,000 from the Citi Foundation in support of the Hempstead Rebirth Capacity Building Initiative.

The initiative will enable Sustainable Long Island to help expand the organizational capacity of the Hempstead-based not-for-profit, Hempstead Rebirth.

“With the generous funds from the Citi Foundation, Sustainable Long Island will aid Hempstead Rebirth in advancing its revitalization efforts within the Village of Hempstead,” said Amy Engel, executive director of Sustainable Long Island.

Hempstead Rebirth is a faith-based community development corporation that was founded in June 2000 to address the housing needs of the Village of Hempstead. Since then, Hempstead Rebirth has expanded its work beyond housing to include technical and financial support to small businesses and support of community clean-up projects.

“Citi and the Citi Foundation are proud to continue our long association with Sustainable Long Island by providing resources that will allow the organization to further its work transforming Hempstead into a model community,” said Pat Edwards, of Citi Community Development’s Long Island office.

Hempstead Rebirth will receive a finalized mission statement; staff training; an organizational management plan; prepared applications for additional funding; and new partnerships.

Hempstead Rebirth’s immediate goal is to build organizational capacity for implementing its redevelopment plan; operating as a full Community Housing Development Organization and serving as a community resource to increase affordable housing and a number of small businesses in the Village of Hempstead.

» Amy Engel’s enthusiasm is contagious and our region is going to catch on soon now that she’s become the new executive director of Sustainable Long Island. She is pumped up and ready to lead the grassroots organization to its next phase by building on existing partnerships and collaborating with new ones to achieve her mission: rethink, rebuild and renew Long Island. Working with municipal and civic leaders, environmentalists, developers and the general population of Long Island, she wants to bring about a positive change.

Amy has a background that is rich in public service. During her career, this enterprising Holtsville woman has volunteered, interned, lobbied and worked alongside some very influential Long Islanders.

Her passion for advocacy began in the 70’s when she started emulating her mother, Mickie, who was active in the successful “Dump the Dump” campaign in Brookhaven. The contaminated landfill was closed and is now known as the Holtsville Ecology Center, a recreational and educational facility that draws thousands of Long Island families every year to visit the pool complex, fitness course, nature preserve and zoo.

“I’m really proud of the ecology site,”she says.

Amy majored in political science at the State University of Stony Brook and was fortunate to intern with then- Legis. Nora Bredes, a Suffolk County Democrat who was an inspiring leader of the movement to close down the Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant.

Bredes recently passed away and Amy remembers her fondly. “Nora was a huge influence and mentor to me,” she says. After her internship, Amy was hired as the legislative aide to former Democratic state Sen. Brian Foley and became active in the Democratic Party.

Amy wanted to experience other ways to work with the government and politics and spent five years as a lobbyist for the Long Island Association (LIA) under the tutelage of Mitch Pally, now CEO of the Long Island Builders Institute, and the late LIA executive director, Matt Crosson. For the LIA, she frequently traveled to Albany on behalf of their initiatives.

After giving birth to three sons in four years, Amy began working part time in community development for the Greater LI Clean City Coalition and Keyspan. In that position she gained an important insight. “I realized I didn’t have to be a politician to make a difference,” she says.

For eight years she was a senior management analyst for the Suffolk County executive before she applied for the newly open position as executive director at Sustainable Long Island.

“I had the right background,” Amy says. “Their core mission is economic development, social equity and environmental health. The job felt like it was meant for me.”

Though Amy took over the helm of Sustainable Long Island in November, one of the first tasks she had was moving the entire operation from Bethpage to its new headquarters in Farmingdale. Now that she’s settled in, she is busy meeting one-on-one with key people across Long Island to advance the cause of sustainable development.

“I’ve tried to make a difference in every role or job I’ve had,” she says.

Food equity is high on Amy’s list of priorities. Partnering with the Long Island Farm Bureau to establish youth-staffed farmers’ markets in low-income communities has been especially gratifying to her.

“Farmers markets sell out every weekend,” she says. Not only have the markets provided employment for high school students, it’s given them the satisfaction of working together to better their own neighborhoods.

“When you see some of our projects and what we’re doing, they’re really exciting. I love that,” she says. “The kids get fired up. It’s a win/win situation.”

Amy wants to involve even more students in future outreach programs.

Amy’s personal history in politics and her unique background in advocacy has given her a rare insight into almost every level of community and government relations. She sees beyond the progress that Sustainable Long Island has already achieved and the potential for great success ahead.

“I love that I can be part of an organization that makes a difference to everyday people.”

For more information go to www.sustainableli.org, email aengel@sustainableli.org or call 516-873-0230. The 6th Annual Sustainability Conference is Friday, June 1, 2012 from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., featuring Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone as the keynote speaker. To register call 516-873-0230, or email Tammy Severino at tseverino@sustainableli.org for details

]]> http://www.sustainableli.org/blog/fortune-52-honoree-amy-engel-executive-director-sustainable-long-island/feed 0 http://www.sustainableli.org/blog/long-island-colleges-offering-sustainability-courses-networking-magazine http://www.sustainableli.org/blog/long-island-colleges-offering-sustainability-courses-networking-magazine#comments Tue, 03 Apr 2012 13:37:33 +0000 admin http://www.sustainableli.org/blog/?p=418 Continue reading →]]> ♦ Networking Magazine has published an article on how many Long Island Colleges are now offering sustainability courses for one of the fastest growing sectors of the economy. The piece highlights programs from LIU Post, Molloy College, Farmingdale State College, Stony Brook University, and Hofstra University. Below read an excerpt from the article featuring Sustainable Long Island discussing what exactly sustainability is. For the full article view the files at the bottom of this post:

» What is Sustainability? Sustainability, in its most basic form, is using our resources in a way that allows them to stretch as long as possible and remain open to everyone, according to Amy Engel, executive director of Sustainable Long Island.

When choosing a degree program, Engel advises to make sure “it’s not just narrowly focused” on environmental issues. “For instance, most sustainability programs have three prongs (economy, environment, and equity).”

Sustainable Long Island actively recruits interns to work on issues of economic development, environmental health, and social equity. Engel said an important part of their organization is making sure everyone involved with an issue has a seat at the discussion table, and interns gain valuable experience from it.

“It’s great that most of the universities and colleges on Long Island are heading in this direction because it’s training an entire new generation to lead the cause into the next several decades,” Engel told Networking Magazine. “I think the smart use of resources is one of the best things students can learn and I think it helps make them more marketable… it helps set these students apart.”

County Executive Bellone will join Sustainable Long Island in inviting attendees to discuss the “Many Facets of Sustainability” and how change in the sustainability movement has affected Nassau and Suffolk County. Topics and issues to be highlighted include where sustainability has come from, where it is headed, and the planning initiatives it encompasses. Previous keynote speakers include U.S. Senator Charles Schumer, U.S. Congressman Steve Israel, and NY State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.

Following the afternoon keynote, Sustainable Long Island will present its 2^nd Annual “Getting It Done” Awards to Law and Rabinowitz for having led the way in securing over $101 million state funding for various transformative Long Island projects. The “Getting It Done” Awards honor those who move beyond the talk toward implementation and move projects from paper to progress. Additional award recipients include Town of Southampton Councilwoman Bridget Fleming and Mayor of Farmingdale George “Butch” Starkie.

Traditionally, Sustainable Long Island’s Annual Conference attracts over 500 leaders from the business, government, and nonprofit sector. The year’s event will also feature thought-provoking workshops on Long Island’s most pressing issues; a “Sustainable Samplings” luncheon, showcasing local restaurants from across the Island as they provide samples of their signature dishes; and an exhibit hall highlighting local businesses and nonprofits.

Early registration pricing offered until May 1st. Sponsorship, advertising, exhibiting, and restaurant opportunities available.

Visit the Annual Conference Homepage for more information!

Ashif Hassan, 15, is the first Wyandanch student slated to attend the Cambridge College Programme, a rigorous academic program that incorporates in-depth course study through lectures and excursions that will expose scholars to both cultural and historic venues. The total cost, school officials said, is $6,200, but that does not include travel expenses.

Hassan, who has said he wants to attend Harvard to be a neurosurgeon, earned a $500 scholarship for the program. The deadline to raise the funds for the trip is the end of the month.

For more information, contact Principal Paul Sibblies at 631-870-0450.

♦ Ashif is a proud member of the 2011-2012 Sustainable Long Island High School Fellowship. As we enter the last quarter of their fellowship (Year 4 begins this June) Ashif will continue to learn about and participate in community based planning and regional efforts. We wish him nothing but the best and know he will succeed as he continues to grow as a person and young leader of his generation.

From L to R: Holly, Ashif, Emily, Stephanie, Makese

As always you can also find the latest Sustainable Long Island News by joining our enewsletter mailing list and finding us on Facebook and Twitter.