The Peru Gazette

Highlights Efforts to Build Community Resilience to Flooding, Restore and Connect Healthy Ecosystems, Promote Environmental Justice, and Educate the Next Generation

New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) Commissioner Basil Seggos today released the 2020-2022 Great Lakes Program Report (PDF) that highlights collaborative efforts to conserve, restore, protect, and enhance New York’s Great Lakes land and water resources. The report is prepared every two years and highlights partnerships and achievements completed during the prior two years that support New York’s Great Lakes Action Agenda, including improving shoreline and tributary resilience, restoring and connecting aquatic habitats, educating the next generation of environmentally literate, stewardship-minded citizens and environmental professionals, and building capacity in communities that have been disproportionately impacted by environmental pollution, also known as Environmental Justice communities.

“The Great Lakes are an invaluable source of inspiration, beauty, and recreation, critical to the health and well-being of communities along their shores,” Commissioner Seggos said. “This report details the impact of New York’s Great Lakes Action Agenda and efforts underway by DEC and our many partners to collaborate and protect the shared natural resources in our state and throughout the region.”

The 2020-2022 Great Lakes Program Report (PDF) highlights significant achievements, including:

1. Investing in environmental justice and disadvantaged communities impacted by climate change and pollution by providing funding, training, and education and outreach for these underrepresented areas;
2. Restoring beneficial uses, including recreation, scenic beauty, and fish and wildlife habitat for environmental justice communities in the Rochester Embayment and Buffalo River Areas of Concern;
3. Demonstrating science-informed, ecosystem-based approaches for nature-based shoreline and riparian restoration that enhance resiliency and habitat, and ensure clean waterways;
4. Engaging more than 300 New York State middle school students in environmental monitoring at Lake Ontario parks and tributaries through the inaugural “Day in the Life of Lake Ontario-St. Lawrence River program” supported by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Great Lakes National Program Office; and
5. Securing $40.8 million in federal Great Lakes Restoration Initiative funding for 207 projects to advance the State’s initiatives and build on its commitment to restore the shorelines and waterways of New York’s Great Lakes.