As a born and raised New Yorker, I cannot help but have an immense pride for my city of origin. I do strongly believe that we are better at almost all things, and no other state can even attempt to compare. I feel the Clean Water Policy in NYC is a clear example of that. Instead of doing what the EPA was trying to enforce upon us (with good intentions, of course) we decided to do it better. It would have cost $9 billion dollars to create a water filtration system, and $300 million dollars per year to maintain it. That is an outrageous amount of money, and I am genuinely curious to know what states have accepted this expensive challenge. (I was having trouble trying to find this information).
NYC decided to avoid this payment all together by attempting to avoid the problem instead of later on trying to fix it. In April 2010, NYC did just that by purchasing 1,026 acres of land upstate for the price of $2.8 million dollars. That doesn’t sound like $9 billion to me. All of this was purchased so that the drinking water of New Yorkers can be protected from the harm industrial chemicals would have caused it. It is because of this that I do not have to worry about lighting up my water to see if flames will arise (Thank God).
But of course, an economic problem always has to arise when something is done environmentally correct. The good ol’ natives from Catskills are upset that all of the land around the water has been purchased, because now that means the area will not be able to rise economically. Would it be selfish of me not to really care about that? I’m sure that most of them want to compromise. They want to be able to have jobs and live a good life while at the same time not sacrifice the health of 9 million people. But when does that actually happen? Whenever we decide to compromise, it ends up just being the economy taking preference, since that provides instant gratification. So I genuinely hope that NYC doesn’t do anything about this. I don’t understand why the area should complain about this purchase once it is done anyways. If they had an issue with it, they should have brought it up beforehand.
I love the idea of LEED. To have a stamp on buildings to let people know that it is environmentally friendly is a great idea. Of course, it would be nice if these buildings were actually environmentally friendly. I have yet to come across a LEED mark on any buildings so far, which I am disappointed about. I think it would also be cool to see a rating done on how environmentally friendly buildings are. The same way the Department of Health does that for restaurants, I think it is now time for that to be done for the environment as well. It will make people more aware of environmental issues every time they see a rating from LEED, or from another organization that wants to do something like this. It will influence many to want to fight for the environment, and this is an easy way for them to do it. Of course, as of now I’m pretty sure every single building ever will probably fail, but then again it takes a lot in order for a restaurant to fail for their rating system too.
But I feel I am going off track here. I just like the change in the past few lessons. I was really getting sad and thinking the apocalypse was approaching with the beginning lessons. It’s good to see that something can be done and is being done, with NYC being awesome with their approaches.
