SUFFOLK CLOSEUP: Do You Have A Right To Clean Air, Water & Environment

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman 

Maya K. van Rossum, the leading figure nationally behind the Green Amendment, a constitutional amendment declaring “that each person shall have a right to clean air and water and a healthful environment” came to Suffolk County to give a keynote address at a three-day “Docs Equinox” celebration dedicated to Earth Day week. 

The Delaware Riverkeeper for three decades, van Rossum is the author of the 2017 book “The Green Amendment, Securing Our Right to a Healthy Environment.” She coined and defined the term Green Amendment as a constitutional guarantee equivalent to other constitutional guarantees.

She founded the national group Green Amendments For The Generations which is working for inclusion of the amendment in every state constitution in the United States and becoming part of the U.S. Constitution, too. 

Attending “Docs Equinox” was the prime sponsor in the New York State Assembly of the state’s Green Amendment, former Assemblyman Steve Englebright of Setauket. The amendment, which was on the state’s election ballot in 2021 and passed by 70% of the vote, took effect at the start of last year. Englebright said that it was “already making a difference” by providing the legal basis constitutionally in New York for a clean and healthy environment. 

After van Rossum spoke, Jacqui Lofaro, founder and executive director of Hamptons Doc Fest, declared: “I hope some of your passion rubs off on all of us.” The keynote address of van Rossum was indeed passionate and inspiring.

At the “Docs Equinox” celebration, which ran between April 14^th and 16^th, the documentary film “The Grab” was screened. In it, a team of investigative journalists, led by Nathan Halverson of The Center for Investigative Reporting, based in California, exposes manipulations now underway by several nations, including China and Saudi Arabia, to obtain and control water resources, land ownership and food production all over the world. It was directed and produced over a six-year period by Gabriela Cowperthwaite and released last year.  

After its showing, from the audience, Nigel Noble, himself an Oscar-winning filmmaker from East Hampton, declared that it was “the most important film I’ve ever seen in my life and everybody in the world should see the film.”

It is stunning and shocking, a must-see documentary.

After “The Grab” was screened, Cowperthwaite and Halverson were interviewed by Lofaro via Zoom. They detailed the difficulties of making the film and the importance of what it reveals. Halverson said what is going on is “still solvable” to stop, but if that does not happen it will be “disastrous for the human species.” Cowperthwaite said it was critical to “get the word out” about what is happening and for people to act. She described investigative reporting as “completely crucial to our democracy.” 

In her keynote address, van Rossum related how it was through the battle in Pennsylvania against the “highly polluting” process of fracking that the vision of a Green Amendment was born. An attorney as well as environmental champion, she said a long-overlooked Environmental Rights Amendment added in 1971 to the Pennsylvania Constitution protecting people’s rights to “pure water, clean air and a healthy environment” was how the vision of the Green Amendment was born. It was used in Pennsylvania by the Delaware Riverkeeper Network to bring a lawsuit against fracking. Fracking or hydraulic fracturing is a process in which 600 chemicals, many of them cancer-causing, are injected into the earth under high pressure, along with huge amounts of water, to break up shale formations and release gas and oil in them. The result has been widespread and serious contamination of groundwater all over the U.S. 

She said “we breathed legal life” into this amendment to the Pennsylvania Constitution and that has led to the campaign to have “that kind” of amendment “in every state constitution” and the U.S. Constitution. Such a “Green Amendment,” she said, would “lift up environmental rights to other rights such as the rights of religion and free speech.” 

Also shown at “Docs Equinox” celebration was the documentary film “Invisible Hand.” It focuses on the “rights of nature,” a concept that a river or watershed or ecosystem, as examples, shall be granted personhood in courts of law and be provided with legal standing in their defense. Its executive producer is the environmentally committed actor Mark Ruffalo. A director, Joshua Boaz Pribanic, was interviewed via Zoom by Christina Strassfield, executive director of the Southampton Arts Center.  

The theme of this “Docs Equinox,” said Lofaro, was “All in for the Aquifer.” She noted that on Long Island, “We stand above our water. It’s all [the potable water] we’ve got. We have to preserve it.” And, also participating in “Docs Equinox” with tables in an area which Lofaro called “Water Central” were five area environmental groups: Group for the East End, The Nature Conservancy, Peconic Baykeeper, Peconic Estuary Partnership and the Surfrider Foundation.

Karl Grossman is a veteran investigative reporter and columnist, the winner of numerous awards for his work and a member of the L.I. Journalism Hall of Fame. He is a professor of journalism at SUNY/College at Old Westbury and the author of six books.