by Philip Gillemot
It felt like the bottom dropped out after the re-election of Donald Trump. As we headed into the New Year, I experienced feelings of dread, depression, fear, sadness, loss, and confusion. I am also looking for and finding the reservoir of strength, intelligence, experience, focus, and perseverance that is within me, and that I know is within all of us. Our world has been in a worsening condition of threatened ecological disaster for decades. We are in an ongoing race between ignorance, denial, fear, and greed versus our willingness to educate ourselves and take the necessary steps to change our hearts and minds and to change our systems of energy production and waste streams in order to avert the worst-case scenarios and work towards climate stability.
I grew up in the West Side of Los Angeles and went to college at UCLA. Both are near Pacific Palisades, which has been devastated by a firestorm. I also lived in Altadena, which too has been devastated by the same. These places, which hold a special place in my heart, were severely impacted and in-part wiped off the map by fire that is largely due to human-caused climate change.
So how do we respond here in the Finger Lakes to the recent election and to the more frequently severe weather-caused disasters that plague our county and world? The first thing is to know that we are not powerless. We have minds that think, hearts that feel, and bodies that can move and do things that make a difference. We have experience, and we have deep love for our region and planet. We have the ability not only to work as individuals, but to network and work as groups, large and small, to make a difference. Yes, Trump and his group of appointees are working to turn back decades of environmental gains, and to investigate and silence his political opponents. Yet we still have voices that yearn to cry out and inform. We still are able to vote. We are still able to influence legislators and regulators. We still are able to mobilize people. Not only must we cherish and defend these abilities and rights, but we must also actively work to exercise them for the benefit of our locality, nation, and world.
Billions of people around the world now and in the past have lived under much more repressive governments that we do now. The grandmother of Ben Jealous, the Executive Director of the Sierra Club, told him often, "Pessimists are right more often, but optimists win more often. I'll take winning." In his article in the Winter 2024 issue of Sierra, he stated that if his grandmother was here today, "she would remind us that hope is a choice and that future generations will benefit from our embracing it."
In our region, we have a full agenda that all of us can work on. The issue of contamination of farmlands and water from PFAS-laden sewage sludge is an ongoing one. The Finger Lakes Group has led in educating local residents and legislators in the town of Thurston, resulting in a moratorium on the spreading of sewage sludge on local farmlands. Bills to eliminate PFAS from our consumer products, water, soil, and food are working through our state legislature.
The pollution of our air and water by the Bitcoin cryptomining facility on Seneca Lake in Dresden continues even though the facility's air permit was denied two years ago. The facility, Greenidge Generation is owned by a Connecticut firm and uses a once shut down coal-fired power plant now modified to burn natural gas to power thousands of mining computers on site to make calculations to award Bitcoin. The process used by Bitcoin is called Proof of Work. Proof of Work requires about 700 times more energy to do their calculations as compared to the Proof of Stake calculation process used by most other cryptocurrencies. The plant is allowed to continue to operate while appealing their air permit denial.
The Greenidge facility says it supplies energy into the statewide electrical grid when demand is high, but this is done only a small minority of the time. The huge amounts of climate warming carbon dioxide emitted by this plant are not justified, since almost all the energy generated, and commensurate pollution could be eliminated by merely switching to the Proof of Stake calculation process. Your vigilance and public comment on this issue will be vital in helping to influence the outcome of this issue.
The issue of closure vs expansion of the Seneca Meadows landfill in Seneca Falls/Waterloo has been going on for years. It was scheduled to stop taking in new waste as of December 31, 2025, but the Town Board of Seneca Falls is entertaining extending the lifetime of the landfill until 2040, and to put the future waste on top of a toxic waste site. The landfill is the largest in New York and receives trash from four states and Canada.
The landfill produces untold amounts of PFAS-laden leachate, which is concentrated and shipped to multiple wastewater treatment facilities around the state. These facilities do not have the ability to filter out PFAS, and so it gets dumped in our waterways and contaminates our water for drinking and agriculture and for our natural flora and fauna. The landfill also produces huge amounts of methane, an extremely dangerous greenhouse gas, 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide in the first 20 years after emission. There is a lawsuit in play to close the landfill on the basis of toxic odors, which strongly impact individuals and surrounding businesses.
The NYS Department of Environmental Conservation is also reviewing Seneca Meadows’s application to continue to operate through 2040. A public comment period on the application should be starting imminently for this, and your input will be vital! Focusing on working towards a zero-waste stream, community composting, and decreasing the level of plastics in packaging are all alternatives to the one-and-done, single-use system of waste management we have now.
Other opportunities for your action include contesting the proposed expansion of the gravel mine adjoining Watkins Glen State Park and contesting the proposed waste transfer station in the Town of Cayuta in Schuyler County.
Join us as a member of the Sierra Club. There’s no pressure. You decide your level of participation. We are all volunteers with lives outside of the Sierra Club. All Finger Lakes Sierra Club members are invited to attend our monthly online meetings. Contact us for access.