NYS Voters Pass $4.2B Environmental Bond Act

The votes have been counted, and currently, 67 percent of voters in New York State approved of the $4.2 billion in state borrowing to pay for the Environmental Bond Act. The new act was formally known as the ‘Clean Water, Clean Air, Green Jobs Act’, and it will fund projects addressing climate change mitigation, flood risk reduction, open space land conservation, and water quality improvement.

Sean Mahar, executive deputy commissioner of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, stated: “Making these investments now is critical, not only to putting people to work to make these projects happen but, really, in the face of more intense and frequent storms, we know they’re only more costly to recover from over time…Sandy, Ida, Lee you name it, there’s been many storms, really in the last decade, that have impact New York greatly. And when you look at the tens of billions of dollars in cost that is inflicted in New York communities, we know that these preventive measures are saving us money in the long run.”

Source: 13 WHAM