There was a time not long ago when Dutchess County legislator Joel Tyner was viewed by some as an environmental extremist; hardworking and intelligent, yes, but with views well outside the mainstream. That depiction no longer fits, but it’s not that Tyner has changed that much. Rather, the mainstream has caught up with Joel Tyner. So much so that last month, he was named the chairman of the Dutchess County Legislature’s Environmental Committee.
Tyner (D-Rhinebeck/Clinton) is in his third two-year term, and joining a Democratic Party majority in the Legislature for the first time in about 30 years. Knowledgeable and articulate, he does not respond to questions in political sound bites but in rapid-fire and fact-based mini-tutorials on subjects diverse as petroleum products contaminating Dutchess County water, supplies the logic behind outlawing certain plastics found to harm children and fetuses (a step, he notes, already taken a decade ago by the European Union), and the need to raise money for open space protection as a way of keeping property taxes under control.
Tyner is comprehensive but also realistic and even politically astute. Asked for a list of his top concerns for the Dutchess County environs that would guide his actions as the Environmental Committee chairman, he sent a list of 30 items, featuring 15 issues and 15 methods to “green” county operations from an environmental standpoint. And each item has links that provide background explanations and evidence buttressing their importance.
“I think they are all common-sense and would love to get legislation dealing with all of them passed,” said Tyner. “But I’m not sure I’ll be able to convince everyone even in the majority caucus to agree with everything on that list. I’d be ecstatic if I can get five of them passed this term.
“Once word gets out I’m not looking to do anything foolish or crazy, that I’m just saying ‘Look at these other places in the country that have already moved on these good ideas,’ we can make a lot of progress in Dutchess County,” said Tyner.
Foraging for votes
Tyner said that his strategy will be to “pick low-hanging fruit,” by initially raising resolutions for ideas that may once have seemed far fetched but are now law elsewhere in New York or the nation.
For example, by Earth Day in April, Tyner wants Dutchess County to enact a law already enacted in Suffolk County requiring food stores over 10,000 square feet to provide bins for recycling plastic bags. “Here’s the thing,” he says: “There are about 86 billion bags manufactured annually, which by itself needs 26 million barrels of oil. But right now, only 2 percent of plastic bags are recycled.”
He is already again pushing for the idea of a pesticide notification bill, requiring notice to neighbors prior to applying certain pesticides in residential settings. “I’ve been pushing for it for four years,” he said, saying he hopes the new Democratic majority will support the idea.
Another top priority in a sense goes back to the future, raising yet again the issue of testing wells. “I echo County Legislature Chairman Roger Higgins’s comments yesterday about the need for strong well-testing legislation to be passed; I heartily agree the time has come,” said Tyner.
But he goes further, noting that the county needs to take concrete steps to grapple with the petroleum additive MTBE, which was banned from gasoline several years ago but which, according to county Health Department data cited by Tyner, is still present at dangerous levels in the vicinity of 66 gas stations throughout the county.
Tyner says that through Freedom of Information Act requests to the county Health Department and through sources such as Toxics Targeting – an online registry of hazardous waste sites throughout New York State that is run by a scientist who grew up in Dutchess County – he has found that either there are continuing leaks of MTBE, or more likely, the known pools of contamination are not being properly cleaned up once they are found.
“It’s been found repeatedly throughout the county, and been found repeatedly in rural parts of the county,” such as Stanford, Wappinger and Lagrange, he said. “So it’s either the same stuff that was not remediated, or new spills over and over. We have to deal with this. Failure to act is inviting people to play Russian roulette with their health.”
Politically safe ideas
Tyner has above-ground concerns as well, and tops on his list of 15 issues is the need for a referendum by county voters to either approve or shoot down increased funding for farmland and open space protection. The funding could come from a countywide three-quarters of 1 percent real estate transfer tax surcharge on sales of properties over $500,000.
“Out of all the stuff, (on the list) that is the one I listed first; it’s kind of like mom and apple pie. How are you going to be against it? It keeps property taxes from skyrocketing by protecting open space and forests,” Tyner said.
“I’m not married to the idea of a real estate tax, but I’m halfway married at least to the idea of a referendum.” he said, adding that the method by which funding is raised could be through bonding or some other measure.
He said that Dutchess County already puts up $2 million annually for open space protection, a figure he called “pretty good.” But he said the county should up the ante because many towns in the county have thus far not received any funding for open space protection. He called the notion of a referendum on the idea, “not only politically safe, but its good for the towns in Dutchess County, because there are plenty of towns that never saw a cent of that money.”
To prevent ground and drinking water contamination, especially from coliform bacteria, Tyner wants to follow the lead of Westchester County, which this week began requiring contractors who pump out septic systems to file reports with that county’s health department about every septic collection they make. A contractor who sees that septic discharge has leached into the ground is obligated to report the leak.
He cites a Rockland County law requiring permits for excavations and work near streams as an effective method to help control silt and other pollutants ruining rural streams, and says Dutchess should enact a similar requirement.
He wants the county Highway Department to investigate and perhaps purchase a product manufactured in Canada called Magic Salt, which the company claims does a better job thawing roadways without the detrimental environmental leftovers of sodium and chlorides in the water supply.
Support from soccer moms
Tyner looks further afield than the Hudson Valley for his ideas, and his list of concerns is literally global. But he said that his long, lonely stint as a prophet of doom regarding climate change is now over, saying almost where ever he goes in Dutchess County, “people are coming up to me and saying, ‘We have to do something about this, right away.’”
He cites Woodstock across the river and Westchester down the road as two governments that have pledged to make governmental operations “carbon neutral,” and says Dutchess County should do the same. But he waxes lyrical about how such an effort, rather than being an economic burden, would be a boon to the local economy as well as the environment locally and globally. “It is a fact that protecting our environment protects public health – and so saves tax dollars,” he said.
Tyner adds that studies have found that investing in alternative energy and conservation reduces energy costs while putting money in the pockets of local workers and contractors. “Its really is true that being green saves green,” he said.
He is not afraid to venture into subatomic realms when advocating policy. Perhaps the best example is his call for the county to follow the lead of the European Union and the City of San Francisco, and ban products and especially children’s toys that contain a plastic compound called bisphenol-A or certain kinds of phthalates (pronounced “THAL-ates”). The ban is a no-brainer, he said, once citizens and legislators understand that alternatives are available and that the substances mimic estrogen and other body compounds and begin harming children and fetuses at levels that are almost immeasurably miniscule.
And like so many of his ideas that once seemed beyond political reality, the banning of certain plastics is now a mainstream one. “The phthalates are doing nasty things to your children’s hormones,” Tyner said. “So that’s a soccer mom issue, right there.”