NYLCV Gives De Blasio Mixed Reviews on Environment

For six months, New York City environmental advocates have been left wondering when Mayor Bill de Blasio would pick up the "green" baton from his predecessor Michael Bloomberg. A new report by the New York League of Conservation Voters indicates that the mayor still has some significant ground to make up on advancing the city's sustainability and resiliency goals. 

The NYLCV framed their evaluation of de Blasio around the "Action Plan" announced by a coalition of City Council members, business leaders and advocates in April. The coalition identified three milestones they would use to measure de Blasio's progress: the announcement of his comprehensive 10-year affordable housing plan; the beginning of the 2014 Atlantic hurricane season; and the finalization of the city budget. 

On the housing plan, the League was encouraged by de Blasio's holistic approach and his focus on retrofitting houses for energy and water savings, but found fault with the lack of detail on the rollout process of the plan and the neighborhood-by-neighborhood timeline. The report also suggests adopting explicit sustainability requirements and criteria for new affordable housing.

Superstorm Sandy recovery has not been one of the mayor's strong points since taking office; he waited several months to announce a new team to lead the effort, despite the fact that not a single home had been rebuilt in the year-plus time period since the storm swept through the city. Since then, the administration has taken incremental steps to expedite the recovery effort, mostly on the housing side. But the new report notes that the mayor has yet to articulate a clear follow-up to Bloomberg's plan for upgrading and hardening the city's infrastructure to brace for the consequences of climate change. The report is also critical of the mayor for not naming a director for the Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability, especially with next year's required update of Bloomberg's comprehensive sustainability plan, PlaNYC 2030. 

The recently-enacted budget was praised for extending the city's $1.35 million Clean Heat Program to improve air quality and for its additional funding to the capital program, but the NYLCV lamented the lack of the requested $27 million increase to Parks Department budget to address "maintenance inequities" (the department received a $16.3 million increase). The report adds that despite the additional capital commitment, the city's overal capital contribution is behind the rate of inflation, leaving the city's transit system without the resources it needs to upgrade the underground infrastructure.

To read the full report, click here.