Valdi Weiderpass, Chair of the Susquehanna Group in the Atlantic Chapter of the Sierra Club participated in an participated in a roundtable environmental discussion on October 21, 2025 and was received with strong interest from Sen. Lea Webb and Emily Bruggeman, staff member of Senate Majority Leader, Sen. Andrea Stewart-Cousins. Emily Bruggeman took copious notes and was happy to take Valdi's hard-copy list of suggestions and his Susquehanna Group newsletter essay titled "NYS To Be 7 Decades Behind Its Climate Goals" (re 2030 CLCPA goals).
The group covered concern about rising utility rates, the broken ability of the Public Service Commission to effectively regulate them, as well as harmful algal blooms, linked to climate change, and their recent record numbers that have dampened tourism economy, plus requests for more funding to help low and moderate income households with utility bills as well as emergency furnace replacements.
Valdi mainly discussed the need for urgency, given the poor track record of New York State in trying to meet its Clean Energy Standard and superseding CLPA law* requirements, and the rising risks of high consequence events, such as a global famine that can be triggered by worsening climate change.
*The Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act is a plan signed into law on July 18, 2019 to address climate change and reach net zero emissions in New York State. The Act sets the goals to reduce emissions to 40% below 1990 levels by 2030 and then to 85% below 1990 levels by 2050. The remaining 15% of emissions will be offset, such as by planting trees which take carbon dioxide out of the air, to reach net zero emissions.
Some attendees were: Adam Flint, Brian Eden, and Gay Nicholson. Folks from the Ithaca region, attending this Roundtable meeting virtually, brought up several concerns regarding proposals for high energy demand AI/data centers, in particular the one proposed by TeraWulf at the old Milliken Station (Cayuga Power Station shut down in 2019), a former coal-fired electricity generating plant in Lansing, NY on east shore of Cayuga Lake, which could demand as much as 400 MW of electricity, enough to power about 500,000 homes. Besides high demand for electricity, the fears include high level constant noise and possible use of lake water for cooling which would likely be discharged back into the lake at higher temperature than the lake water, which could harm aquatic species and lead to more harmful algal blooms. Here's an article about this: Environmentalists sound alarm as plan to convert Cayuga Power Plant to data center advances - The Ithaca Voice