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Brian Slattery |
Jan 31, 2024 9:40 am
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Brian Slattery Photos
Davis and Burgess.
On Tuesday morning, Peter Davis, a volunteer river keeper with the city parks department, and fellow volunteer David Burgess were over the edge of the slope off Diamond Street in Beaver Hills, lugging a dilapidated couch out of the woods. Around them was a thin carpet of other discarded objects. Among the trash bags were a fan, a decaying rug, a mattress, a rusting wheelchair.
It was a lot of garbage. Davis and Burgess were taking it one piece at a time.
by
Nora Grace-Flood |
Jan 29, 2024 4:03 pm
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"Just look at this place": State Attorney General Tong, Mayor Elicker, State Sen. Looney, and DEEP Commissioner Dykes on Monday.
State officials stumbled across the littered grounds leading up to English Station to announce a lawsuit filed on the same grounds as other failed threats against United Illuminating — seeking to re-energize the company’s long-delayed remediation of the site.
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Allan Appel |
Jan 29, 2024 10:03 am
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Allan Appel Photo
Anthropology major Chris Kowalski (above) and Aaron Goode (below) de-vine by Beaver Brook.
Brian Slattery Photo
Clip high, clip low, create a window. Also don’t be a Tarzan and pull on those cut vines lest you disturb insect habitats or the birds high in the trees above.
Those were among the illuminating arboricultural tips offered for some serious de-vining of New Haven’s invasive-threatened native oaks, maples, sycamores, and hackberry trees growing on a beautiful but under-loved patch of city-owned forested greenspace.
Parks staffer Janice Parker, right, explains the department's current structure.
A public-private funding structure. A “superintendent of fields.” A department divided into geographical districts, each with a point person for neighbors to contact.
Those ideas are all on the table as the city moves forward with a plan to un-merge the Parks and Public Works Department.
by
Brian Slattery |
Dec 20, 2023 8:36 am
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(23)
Thomas Breen file photo
A public bus on Dixwell Ave.
Strengthen incentives for people to buy electric vehicles. Build more, and more varied, charging stations. Replace school buses with zero-emission vehicles. Make public buses electric. Expand public transit into more rural parts of the state. Cut down on truck idling at highway construction sites.
Those are just some of the ideas at the center of state and regional planning efforts for how Connecticut can reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to 80 percent below 2001 levels by 2050.
A federally funded competitive grant program has state and regional environmental entities readying proposals on that very topic — with a focus on reducing climate change-exacerbating emissions, especially in low-income neighborhoods.
In the process, data is being collected, and lessons learned, about just what the biggest sources of greenhouse gas emissions are.
by
Nora Grace-Flood |
Dec 8, 2023 4:08 pm
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The Yale Golf Course, as pictured in a City Plan presentation.
Yale has won city permission to cut down more than 1,000 trees and renovate its Upper Westville golf course as part of a plan that university officials pitched as making 200 acres of fairways and tees more “sustainable” — and that local activists criticized as environmentally backwards.
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Nora Grace-Flood |
Dec 7, 2023 9:07 am
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URI's Chris Ozyck solicits public parks feedback at 200 Orange.
Pick up more litter, clean the bathrooms better, and designate more point people to deal with public park concerns.
Those are some of the top priorities New Haveners have for their city’s green spaces, as documented in a community input process overseen by the Urban Resource Initiative on behalf of the Elicker administration.
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Maya McFadden |
Nov 22, 2023 8:29 am
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Maya McFadden file photo
Student composters at work in Cross's cafeteria back in June.
This Thanksgiving season, Wilbur Cross sophomore Manxi Han is thankful to have a home that is not routinely submerged in several feet of water as sea levels rise, for access to food despite climate change-related disasters destroying farm lands, for healthy and clean air year-round, for minimal heat waves as the earth’s temperature rises, and for biodiversity as rates of extinction increase.
A splash pad, swing set, and children’s play area are en route to Fairmont Park, thanks to playground upgrade plans for the Fair Haven Heights greenspace.
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Brian Slattery |
Nov 21, 2023 9:07 am
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Dishawn Harris, a.k.a Farmer D., at Saturday's workshop.
Putting your hands to soil to plant garlic. Chewing on a leaf of fresh oregano. Noticing the sun on your face. At “Rooted Youth,” a collaborative event between the Dixwell art center NXTHVN and the garden-creation outfit Root Life, held at the Goffe Street Armory Garden, participants learned about how these simple experiences can open up broader pathways to understanding more about our relationship to our environment, and how we can adapt to climate change.
by
Brian Slattery |
Nov 14, 2023 3:35 pm
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A Yale-owned research station that is an experiment in “regenerative architecture” poses a profound question about the future of making, and unmaking, buildings: how can new construction not just have zero impact on the environment, but also reverse some of the damage humans have done?
by
Maya McFadden |
Nov 14, 2023 9:16 am
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Maya McFadden Photo
Hill youngsters and Crystal Fernandez install signage at Kimberly Park.
Ten-year-old Cristian Estrada and his brothers Joshua, 9, and Jeremiah, 5, took turns plunging a shovel into the dirt on Kimberly Avenue to bring more beauty to their neighborhood park — this time in the form of installing a Friends of Kimberly Park sign.
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Brian Slattery |
Nov 13, 2023 9:00 am
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Six Lakes, a.k.a. the Powder Farm, from Treadwell Street.
On Sunday afternoon a crowd of nearly 100 people, from citizens to activists to numerous elected officials, converged on the parking lot of ACES Whitney High School North on Leeder Hill Drive in Hamden. The purpose of the visit was the land behind the high school — 102 acres of forest, lakes, and wetlands, closed off from the public for decades because of its use as a place to test firearms and munitions and dispose of toxic waste.
Cool Amps' Lonnie Garris III and Nick Anderson, with their company's "laminar flow extraction module" prototype.
Retired Air Force colonel and eco-entrepreneur Lonnie Garris III returned to his home city Thursday evening to help show that the path to a climate-friendlier future — and a less carbon-intensive means of recycling lithium-ion batteries — goes through Chapel Street.
by
Karen Ponzio |
Nov 9, 2023 9:25 am
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Karen Ponzio photo
Map sketching and nature journaling in East Rock.
East Rock Park on a sunny November Saturday was an idyllic setting for the most recent New Haven Nature Journal Club meet-up. The biweekly event focuses on gathering in natural settings to witness, observe, and document the surroundings through drawings and writings, with a bit of guidance and a bunch of support.
The group, led by Madelyn Neufeld, meets on Saturday mornings twice a month: once in East Rock Park and two weeks later at another location that changes each time. Neufeld started this club back in August after researching the Wild Wonder Foundation — which provides free nature journal resources — and finding no groups in Connecticut.
Tashi at work planting cherry blossoms in Wooster Sq.
Drenched in sweat, Tashi loaded up a wheelbarrow with nutrient-dense wood chips and mulch from a truck, ready to wheel it to his tree planting crew in Wooster Square. Although the work wasn’t glamorous or pretty, it would be worth it in the spring when the cherry tree’s blossoms come into bloom. Until then, the newly planted trees would have to rest and gain their energy under the autumn sun.
URI Director Colleen Murphy-Dunning and Mayor Justin Elicker.
The Yale-affiliated environmental nonprofit that already oversees city tree plantings has been tapped to help figure out the future structure of New Haven’s parks department.
The following opinion essay was submitted by Meredith Polk on behalf of the New Haven Climate Movement.
Mayor Justin Elicker has stated that New Haven’s goal is to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2030. In 2021, the New Haven Board of Alders City Services and Environmental Policy Committee passed a resolution outlining the importance of electrification and the actions the city would take to electrify. This resolution was an important step towards net-zero, but it has been two years and the city has not made enough progress. New Haven has the opportunity and responsibility to save lives by implementing the promises in the resolution.
Two dozen eager and antsy King Robinson School first graders joined the mayor in pouring bucket after bucket of water atop a newly planted lacebark elm tree — to help grow a federally funded canopy expansion program that will see an extra 2,500 trees take root in New Haven over the next five years.
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Brian Slattery |
Oct 25, 2023 12:01 pm
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Nora Grace-Flood file photo
Recycling do's and don'ts, clarified at library talk.
You can recycle the thick cardboard container that soup stock comes in when you buy it at the store, but you can’t recycle ice cream containers. You can recycle plastics in the shape of containers, but not a toy made out of the same kind of plastic. You can recycle pizza boxes — but not paper plates.
