Superstorm Sandy was a stern wakeup call on many fronts. The never ending gas lines, the massive disruption to the metropolitan region’s mass transit system and the upheaval of thousands of lives will be forever engrained in my memory.

I will also remember Sandy for shining a bright light, not...

Note: Superstorm Sandy's devastating impact has served as a climate change wake-up call, as noted by Bloomberg Businessweek, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and just about everyone but Donald Trump, but none more pointedly than Bill McKibben. This unprecedented storm should also push us to take a closer...

In his Democratic National Convention acceptance speech, President Obama avowed that "new energy can power our future." While his address had a little something for the coal and natural gas industries, overall, the president recommitted himself to the battle against climate change. Several years ago, with the help of...

Food waste. I just can't seem to escape it. I notice it everywhere... at home... at work... in between home and work. Remember that famous, whispered line from The Sixth Sense?

Well, "I see food waste."

Discarded food is one of society's most pervasive problems, and was recently reported...

If Governor Cuomo opens New York State to fracking, experts who analyze its impacts and have studied the toxic and environmental outcomes of Love Canal and the BP oil rig explosion predict similar long-term consequences, affecting potentially more people. Elisabeth Radow is among those experts. Radow, a conservationist and attorney...

Question: What do you get when you cross a majestic 100-kilowatt (kW) wind turbine with a hydrogen fueling station, a solar house, a pair of solar trackers (high-tech solar electric panels that follow the sun's daily path across the sky), a 60-kW solar field, a solar-powered...

Over the last few years, a groundwater pollution Superfund site in my community has generated concern among local residents; that much I'm sure of.

What I'm less clear of is to what extent this danger -- the dry-cleaning fluid tetrachloroethylene has contaminated groundwater in...

I recently wrote about the gas drilling lease issue through the lens of a personal anecdote.

The topic is increasingly in the spotlight as the land grab for gas leases -- by drilling companies seeking to tap shale deposits via high-volume, hydraulic fracturing combined with...

On a weekend trip near Monticello, N.Y. during the summer of 2010, my family and I visited some friends of ours, a married couple we've known for years. Over lunch, I mentioned that we had passed by several anti-fracking signs on our way to their home. Gasland had...

The U.S. Department of Energy may have recently cut its estimates for natural gas reserves from the country's shale formations by 42 percent, but the volume of news coverage that high-volume hydraulic fracturing (aka fracking) -- what Time magazine called "the biggest environmental issue of 2011"...

It's important to understand the many interconnections between the food and energy sectors in order to make good consumer choices and develop prudent public policy. A recent Scientific American article by Michael E. Webber makes a big contribution to this effort by examining the food system...

When electric utilities or companies declare that they will need new power capacity to keep up with the growing appetite for electricity, most people think of new power plants and transmission lines. But some companies are proposing something novel: grid energy storage systems. One such company, AES Energy...

(Originally published at Ecocentric)

One recent, cold and rainy fall day, the Long Island-based environmental group Friends of the Bay officially announced the completion of its Watershed Action Plan for the Oyster Bay/Cold Spring Harbor Estuary (the cleanest estuary in western Long Island Sound and a...

In what may have been the largest environmental protest 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue has seen in decades, 12,000 protesters from across the country surrounded the White House last week to demonstrate their opposition to TransCanada's proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, which would snake its way from...

(Originally published at Ecocentric)

10 Things to Know about Power Plant Water Use:

1) Some things get better with age. Not power plants. The nation's older power plants that still rely on antiquated and damaging once-through cooling systems have a huge thirst for water. These plants...

Rob Weltner grew up on the south shore of Long Island so the South Shore Estuary looms large in his life.

"Ever since I was walking I was always by the water or in the water or under the water," says Rob. "Life for me revolves around the bay and...

(Originally published at Ecocentric)

As a State University of New York (SUNY) alumnus looking back over the past two decades, I can attest to the fact that there has been a sea change in SUNY's campus sustainability initiatives.

SUNY, the largest system of public higher education...

(Originally published at Ecocentric)

On January 5th, in his State of the State address, Governor Andrew Cuomo articulated a bold and ambitious agenda to confront the Empire State's economic woes and reinvent state government.

Recently, to highlight the environmental challenges facing the state, a coalition...

(Originally published at Ecocentric)

The fragile and complex relationship between water and energy resurfaced this summer at the Tennessee Valley Authority's infamous Browns Ferry nuclear power plant in Northern Alabama.

On 40 different days in July and August the three reactors at the Browns...

(Originally published as an op-ed in the Times Union on August 8, 2010).

By Kyle Rabin and Reed Super

The Indian Point nuclear power plant has been grabbing headlines again, this time because of its devastating impact on fish. But that plant is just one of 25 aging...