County restarts Climate Smart Task Force
Late last month, Dutchess County was re-certified at the bronze level as a Climate Smart community, a designation given by New York to municipalities that have taken concrete steps to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.
But the county isn’t stopping there: Dutchess recently applied to be certified at the silver level, where it would join a select group of 14 other communities, including Beacon.
In addition, County Executive Sue Serino has approved a Climate Action Plan for Government Operations that builds on the Dutchess County Transportation Council’s recommendations for adapting to a planet rapidly getting warmer and wetter.
Climate action in the Dutchess government had stalled under Serino’s predecessor, William F.X. O’Neil. In his 2023 State of the County speech, O’Neil urged residents to appeal to God to overturn New York’s pioneering climate legislation. Devin Rigolino, appointed by O’Neil in 2023 as environmental program director, said that while mitigation work never stopped at the county level, “what’s different now is that we’re doing a better job of telling the story.”
Rigolino said that the flurry of announcements over the last few months coincided with a surge in state and federal funding. “The county has quite a long track record of environmental work,” he said. “In the 1980s and ‘90s, it was more about natural resource conservation and agriculture. We’re still doing that, but now we’re talking a lot more about sustainability and climate action.”
Related: Beacon Unveils New Climate Plan
The state Climate Smart Communities program was launched in 2009 to encourage municipalities to publicly commit to addressing climate change. It developed into an elaborate system in which communities can earn points for actions such as tracking greenhouse-gas emissions, installing solar panels and even hosting farmers markets. The points translate into priority for state grants.
After also stalling on its climate progress, Putnam County was certified bronze last month, along with the Village of Cold Spring. Beacon was certified as silver in 2020. The state is developing criteria for a gold level.
At least 300 points are required to qualify as silver; Rigolino said that the county’s application includes 367, for actions such as installing geothermal in three buildings, setting up a fund for renewable energy projects and installing a solar panel array to power the Hudson Valley Regional Airport. The county is also hoping to earn credit for its rail trails, sidewalk repairs and shuttle buses and a waste-reduction education campaign.
The waste-to-energy facility in Poughkeepsie, which incinerates 150,000 tons of garbage every year, is operated by an independent board and not considered part of the county’s operations. Dutchess does hope to reduce emissions from its capped landfills, which are typically the largest producers of greenhouse gases because of the methane they release as garbage decomposes. The county and Beacon are each applying for a federal grant to install biofilters.
If that grant comes through, Rigolino said the county would be on track to reduce total emissions by 40 percent by 2030 as compared to its 1990 levels, in line with a New York law that sets that goal for the entire state.
“We’re quite excited about the progress we’ve made,” he said.
