SUFFOLK CLOSEUP: Electric Vehicles Are The Future

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

“The great American road trip is going to be fully electrified,” declared President Biden in a speech at the Detroit Auto Show last week. His administration’s aim, he said, is to have half the vehicles sold in the United States by 2030—that’s less than eight years away!—be electric-powered. It a central part of the fight against climate change with carbon emissions from cars and trucks a major cause of global warming.

Only five percent of Americans now drive electric cars. Under the Biden program—which provides for an array of auto industry and consumer incentives including rebates—that percentage is to be dramatically increased.

 “It is all changing,” said Biden. “Today, if you want an electric vehicle with a long range, you can buy one made in America.” He pointed to the many new “zero-emission” (of carbon) cars on the floor of the show and drove one of them, an electric Cadillac.

As to charging stations—vital if the plan is ultimately for everybody in the U.S. to be driving electric vehicles—a program was announced at the show involving the installation of 500,000 electric chargers through the nation by 2030 using $7.5 billion authorized by Congress. “Charging stations will be up and as easy to find as gas stations are now,” said Biden.

The transportation scene in Suffolk County will be deeply altered by the change.

An example: already, the New York State Department of Transportation has altered its “Clean Pass” program for Long Island’s main thoroughfare, the Long Island Expressway. This past February, it announced that “new Clean Pass stickers will only be issued to Plug-In Electric and Plug-In Hybrid Vehicles.” This would impact on the use of the LIE’s HOV lane.

My “hybrid” Toyota Prius doesn’t have a “plug-in” component so after 210,000 (trouble-free) miles, my next car will be a “plug-in.”

Electric cars have taken a long time coming. In the early 90s, I did a show on electric cars in one of the nationally-aired “Enviro Close-Up” TV programs I’ve hosted for more than three decades. Featured was a car manufactured by a small company in Massachusetts, and I was amazed, driving it, by its fast pick-up and substantial power. 

Today one sees many electric cars manufactured by that now giant company Tesla, with the stylized T on their nose (for inventor Nicola Tesla who did so much of his visionary work in Suffolk at his laboratory in Wading River). Jumping into building electric cars before the major auto manufacturers (these days they’re actively joining in) was key in making Elon Musk, founder of Tesla, Inc. the richest man in the world as of last year.

This summer, an excellent hour-and-a-half event titled “Electric Vehicles: Everything You Need to Know” was held at the LTV television studios in Wainscott, aired on LTV and via Zoom, and is now also on YouTube. You can view the event on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSeV7SFMSm4  

It was moderated by journalist Biddle Duke who opened it by saying “America’s transportation fleet is undoubtedly going electric…This is going to be cleaner and more efficient, less expensive, quieter and user friendly. There was a panel including experts in electric vehicles and folks who own EV’s who told of their experiences, speaking with affection about their electric cars. The event in July was organized by the Town of East Hampton’s Natural Resources Department in cooperation with the Energize East Hampton initiative.

East Hampton Councilwoman Cate Rogers told of how “I leased my first electric vehicle in 2017. Its range was 100 miles…Fast forward a few years and the improvements are staggering.” She just ordered, she said, a 2022 Volkswagen electric car “with a range of 275 miles and a fast-charger time of 70 miles in 10 minutes.”

Many of the new electric cars have ranges of 500 miles and more.

Rogers said of the LTV event that people linking to it and learning about electric vehicles is “an important step both for yourself, your family and our planet.” 

Check it out. The information about what will change in our way of traveling—and do much to combat climate change—is important indeed.

Says Gordian Raacke, co-founder of the Energize East Hampton Initiative and executive director of Renewable Energy Long Island: “Electric vehicles are the future. We will all be driving them in the next couple of decades if we choose to drive a car.”

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. 

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP - Suffolk's Red Flag Laws

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

Amid the latest series of mass shootings in the United States, The New York Times ran a front-page story headlined: “Taking guns From Those in Crisis: A County’s ‘Red Flag’ Lessons.”

Guess what county was being reported on? It was Suffolk County.

The article, which also covered a full page inside the newspaper, started with: “The boy made his threat aboard a school bus.” And it related how in “late March, “a 16-year-old in Suffolk County, N.Y…told fellow students that he wanted to shoot their heads off, according to court records. He told the police that he wanted to hurt himself with a shotgun at his house.”

“What followed happens more often in Suffolk County than any other county in the state: a judge issued a ‘red flag’ order that would allow authorities to take weapons from the home,” it continued. “The judge acted after finding that he posed a danger. Two shotguns were taken. The judge later wrote that the boy ‘admitted that not having the shotguns in the home is helpful to him.’”

The June 10^th piece said: “In the wake of horrific mass shootings at a Buffalo supermarket, a Texas school and an Oklahoma hospital, many policymakers are grasping for ways to keep guns out of hands of people in crisis.”

And it noted that during that week President Biden “implored Congress to pass a federal red flag law, though such measures face stiff resistance from Republicans who contend the red flag process can be abused to take away an innocent person’s fundamental right to own guns.”   

            Legislation—titled the Federal Extreme Risk Protection Act—providing for a “red flag” process involving federal courts passed in the House of Representatives, but not in the U.S. Senate. Still, an 80-page safety bill subsequently passed both two weeks later—described by House Majority Leader Chuck Schumer as a “breakthrough” after decades of no major federal gun control legislation. 

It included a variety of elements tightening gun sales in the U.S. including expanded background checks for gun buyers under 21—and allocated $750 million over five years for “crisis intervention programs” by states including red flag programs.

It passed with several Republican lawmakers giving support, thus it was titled the Bipartisan Safety Communities Act. It was signed into law by President Biden on June 25th. “While this bill doesn’t do everything I want,” said Biden, “it does include actions I’ve long called for that are going to save lives. It funds crisis intervention, including red flag laws.”

However, what about states not interested in red flag laws?

As of now, 19 states have them. But there has been resistance in some states. In the House last year, Representative Dan Crenshaw of Texas went as far as introducing a bill titled: Preventing Unjust Red Flag Laws Act. Under it, there would be a “prohibition” on federal “funding for implementation and enforcement of red flag laws or rules.” It sat in committee.

The first red flag law in the U.S. was enacted in Connecticut in 1999 after a seething Connecticut Lottery employee went on a rampage at its headquarters killing four lottery executives—including its president—and then turned the gun on himself and committed suicide. 

In Suffolk County, as The Times related, since a New York State red flag law took effect in 2019, “more than 100 red flag cases” handled here “shows how” the law “has defused dozens of dangerous situations…Initiated by police officers, school officials and panicked family members, the Suffolk County cases sounded a drumbeat of domestic mayhem and potential disaster. They led to the removal of more than 160 guns, including at least five military-style rifles.”

Last month in Newsday, former Suffolk County Police Commissioner Geraldine Hart and Gail Prudenti of Suffolk, the former state chief administrative judge, authored a guest essay headed: “Red flag laws can protect communities.” They wrote: “Extreme risk protection orders, or ERPOs—better known as ‘red flag’ laws—empower a limited group of people, such as law enforcement officers, household members and school staff, to petition the court for an order to temporarily confiscate guns from individuals deemed a danger to themselves or others and bar them from obtaining a firearm.”

They noted that New York Governor Kathy Hochul after “the massacre” in Buffalo directed the state police “to file for an ERPO whenever they have probable cause to believe that an individual is a threat, similar to the way doctors and teachers must alert authorities to potential child abuse.” 

 Red flag laws—notably successful in Suffolk—should be a national standard.

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. 

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP: Sharks They're Out There And Have Always Been There

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

“People swim with sharks all the time, they just don’t know it,” Hans Walters, a shark expert at the New York Aquarium, told WCBS 880 news amid the recent series of sharks biting people in this area.

I saw this quite clearly—and surprisingly—a number of years ago from our sailboat heading from Long Island to the Elizabeth Islands off Massachusetts.

We were sailing along the coast of Rhode Island and, passing a busy beach, I steered closer to shore to see what a Rhode Island beach might be like. Holding the tiller with my left hand, I looked out at the folks frolicking in the water—and between me and them, 10 feet from our boat, the fin of a shark appeared. I doubt any of those swimmers knew a shark was off shore.

Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone says of the shark situation here, “there may be a new reality that we’re in.” It’s a scary “new reality” for those who like to swim in the ocean.

Governor Kathy Hochul in Suffolk last week announced stepped-up shark surveillance efforts. “Whether it’s land, sea or air, we are going to be having more robust patrols on the shorelines,” she said. Drones and state police helicopters will be utilized, and there’ll be more lifeguards at state beaches.  

A website named “Xplore Our Planet” which describes itself “as a resource for wildlife enthusiasts and those who love to explore the world” declares: “Swimming with sharks sounds dangerous, but it isn’t—relatively speaking anyway. All things in life carry risk, but swimming with sharks is very low on the list. Only five people [worldwide] are killed each year—that’s 100 times less than by elephants—and these attacks are often either accidental as a case of mistaken identity or provoked by humans.” OK, but to be considered, too, are injuries, such as in Florida this month requiring the amputation of part of a young woman’s leg.

“It is safe to swim with sharks if you do it properly,” says the website. But “how do you swim with sharks safely?” First, it advises “Be Careful Around the Big Three.” It says: “Almost every serious or fatal incident is caused by a collection of just three animals: great white sharks, bull sharks, and tiger sharks.” OK, but how can an average person identify those among the more than 500 shark species said to be in the seas of the world?

Then, it says, “A floundering fish or a panicking seal tells them it’s meal time, and they’ll charge in for an easy kill. If you get into difficulties and start flapping about, or jump in and out of the water with too much enthusiasm, you’ll mimic the sensations of injured prey and invite the opportunity for confusion and an accidental attack.” But not “flapping about” or being enthusiastic in the water, is that always possible?

Then there’s “Consider Water Conditions.” “Xplore Our Planet” says: “Despite popular misconceptions, sharks have excellent eyesight. But, that eyesight doesn’t work in murky waters….Good visibility is essential for safe shark swimming, if only to let the sharks know you aren’t on the dinner menu.” OK, but the ocean off Long Island isn’t so clear usually, not like the Caribbean, for example. Murkiness is common. 

And then there’s “Dive in Groups.” The website says: “A lone target, by nature, is less of a threat and more vulnerable. By swimming in groups, you present what you might call a united front against aggression.” OK, but not so easy if there is scant attendance on a beach.

A big question for this area: why suddenly so many shark attacks?

Explanations being given focus on climate change and warmer ocean temperatures luring sharks to Long Island’s ocean waters—and that, I think, is indeed the main issue. Another explanation: an increase in bunker fish on which sharks like to feed. A further explanation: ocean waters are cleaner these days off Long Island and this encourages sharks to come here. 

Newsday just ran an editorial titled, “Now our woes include sharks.” It began noting that to “the pressurized fire hose of catastrophic problems shot into our lives daily, let us add sharks.” But, it stressed, “There are an average of five shark deaths annually worldwide, and about 236,000 drowning deaths. And the shark-centric resources being thrown at Long Island beaches—including drones and patrols—can only serve the big question in the affirmative: Yes, there absolutely are sharks out there. But in many ways shark attacks are the danger best fixated on, because sharks likely won’t get us.” OK people, stop fixating.

I learned to swim mostly in the Long Island Sound, off Wading River. Shark-wise, it’s not the Atlantic. But still, a 10-foot great white shark was spotted in the sound off Connecticut in 2019. It was tagged in 2018 so later in 2019, CNN reported, “was detected…in the New York Bight, south of Long Island.”

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP: Carbon Emissions The EPA And The Supreme Court

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

The word “resilience” is a word being used and acted upon in Suffolk—indeed all over the United States—these days to try to deal with results of climate change: for us a rising Atlantic Ocean.

But unless the cause of the problem—primarily the burning of fossil fuels warming the atmosphere causing climate change—is fully challenged and dealt with, efforts at seeking to react to the effect, resilience, will not work in the long run or even the medium run.  

The recent 6-to-3 ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court in the West Virginia v. EPA case that will limit the Environmental Protection Agency’s power to regulate carbon emissions from power plants substantially weakens dealing with the main cause.

And environmentalists here—and across the nation—have good reason to be highly disapproving.

The EPA has been tackling carbon emissions under the Clean Air Act. 

Notes Kevin McAllister, founder and president of Suffolk-based Defend H20—which has a major focus on the impacts of climate change on our shorelines, “the effectiveness of the Clean Air Act is because the EPA has had the regulatory authority to impose tough restrictions on carbon emissions.”

“The Supreme Court ruling limiting EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gases from power plant plants is a setback with protecting air quality and mitigating climate change,” says McAllister.

“Subordinating science-based climate policy to a gridlocked Congress will surely stall momentum on climate action.” McAllister told me last week.

This, he stated will be reflected “in terms of reducing emissions from a major source of greenhouse gases—power plants—and a dampened enthusiasm of the international community watching the United States back off its commitment to slash CO2 emissions.”

As Coral Davenport, who covers energy and environmental policy for the climate desk of The New York Times, wrote the day after the Supreme Court ruling, “The Clean Air Act, which some legal experts call the most powerful environmental law in the world, was enacted in 1970, at the birth of the environmental movement.”

“Since then, it has been the source of scores of landmark regulations on air pollution, including soot, smog, mercury, and the toxic chemicals that cause acid rain,” she noted. The ruling by the six-member arch-conservative majority on the Supreme Court “is part of a larger legal fight over whether and how far the Clean Air Act can be used to combat climate change. The outcome could handcuff President Biden’s plans to lower the United States’ planet-warming pollution.”

The vote in 1970 in the U.S. Senate for the Clean Air Act was 73-0. The House of Representatives earlier passed its version 374-1. The final bill was signed by President Nixon. 

“As we sign this bill in this room,” Nixon said, “we can look back and say, in the Roosevelt Room…we signed a historic piece of legislation that puts us far down the road toward a goal that Theodore Roosevelt, 70 years ago, spoke eloquently about: a goal of clean air, clean water, and open spaces for the future generations of America.”

The Roosevelt link has special meaning to we on Long Island considering TR’s residence in Sagamore Hill on Long Island from 1885 until his death in 1919.

Bob DeLuca, president of the Suffolk-based Group for the East End, said the ruling “flies in the face of sound science and effective environmental policy. The decision essentially ties the EPA’s hands from developing a nationwide regulatory strategy for carbon emissions on a theory that Congress could not have intended to empower the EPA to address matters of substantial national consequence without further action by Congress. By arguing that Congress could have never intended the EPA to actually do its job comprehensively—an odd view given the existence of a national Clean Air Act—the court significantly diminished the authority of the EPA when it comes to one of the most consequential environmental issues of our time,” he said. 

“Moreover, by dropping the matter back in the lap of a Congress mired in conflict and endless stalemates over substantive legislation, the court assured its decision would hold indefinitely,” he continued. “These are very smart people and they surely knew what the outcome would be.”

“For those of us in the conservation community and I assume many concerned citizens in general, the weakening of government’s authority to address climate change comprehensively is a blow to important progress that needs to be made immediately, and places substantial new pressure on state and local governments to fill the void,” DeLuca told me. 

In the current issue of The New Yorker, Jeannie Suk Gersen pointed to former President Trump, whose three appointments of Supreme Court justices turned the court radically conservative. She wrote “in addition to an attempted coup, we have him to thank for 2022’s becoming the turning point of the Supreme Court’s conservative revolution. In a single week in late June, the conservative justices asserted their recently consolidated power by expanding gun rights, demolishing the right to abortion, blowing a hole in the wall between the church and state and curtailing the ability to combat climate change.” (Through his candidacy and presidency, Trump routinely dismissed climate change as a “hoax.”)

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. 

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP - 9/11, Commack's Rob Vasiluth And EEL Grass

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

For Robert (Rob) Vasiluth, it began on 9/11.

The operating engineer from Suffolk County was in Manhattan hoisting a section of a sign high up on the Renaissance Times Square Hotel when just a few miles to the south he saw the World Trade Center being struck. 

“I saw the second plane hit,” recounted Vasiluth last week.

“I went home to my family” in Commack, he said, feeling “so terrible.” And the next day he was at Ground Zero, part of a “bucket brigade” that hand-to-hand was moving debris. Soon his task was “cutting steel” so corpses could be found in the pile.

“This was the city I love,” said Vasiluth. And he was “seeing what the world destroyed looks like.” From that experience, he committed himself to “saving life.”

Several weeks later, he was at Sunken Meadow State Park, and an alewife, a species of herring which returns to where it was born to lay eggs, had jumped out of the water and “was wriggling on the ground.” It had been blocked from getting to where it was born by a dam. He picked up the alewife “so it could get back on its way.” It “swam away. I couldn’t get it out of my head. This fish needed help.”

Since, Vasiluth has been pushing for pathways so alewives can get around the dams which, he said, exist now on Long Island in virtually all waterways in which alewives seek to return to spawn. 

Then he joined with the organization Save the Sound to plant spartina grass to restore wetlands. And, he began thinking about the vegetation beyond wetlands: notably eel grass.

He asked himself: how could eel grass beds best be restored?

Eel grass “is the foundation in the shallow sea,” notes Rob. “It’s a nursery ground for juvenile fish. It’s where scallops can thrive. Eel grass produces oxygen. It slows down erosion. It’s a natural buffer. It neutralizes acidification. It absorbs carbon.” 

But “95 percent of eel grass in New York waters is gone,” he said.

There have been attempts to plant eel grass seeds but they have largely been unsuccessful. He studied the issue for months.

And then he came up with an idea: using a glue to affix eel grass seeds to clams. The clams with the seeds would, he figured, bury themselves in the sea bottom and this way the seeds could far better germinate rather than just being scattered in the water as was being tried. 

Chris Pickerell, marine program director at Cornell Cooperative Extension of Suffolk County, opened its laboratory in Southold to Rob for experimentation of the concept. And it worked.

The glue used? Cyanoacrylate.

That’s the stuff that is the basis for Crazy Glue.

The germination rate of gluing eel grass seeds to clams—five to 10 per clam—to produce eel grass has turned out to be “phenomenal,” said Vasiluth. Eel grass seeds, he explains, “are very similar to caraway seeds on the everything bagel.”

He has been involved—with Cornell Cooperative Extension, Save the Sound, The Nature Conservancy, Seatuck Environmental Association and the Stony Brook University School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences—in the planting of eel grass seeds on clams widely in waters off Long Island. These include waters of the Long Island Sound off Stony Brook, in Sterling Harbor off Greenport, in the Great South Bay off Fire Island, and in Shinnecock Bay, assisted by the Science Club of Hampton Bays Schools. 

Last year, a major eelgrass seed collection initiative furthering Rob’s concept began off Fishers Island, the little island two miles off Connecticut that’s part of Suffolk County. Save The Sound, in an online article on the project—which includes a photo of Rob in a mask and scuba gear in the water holding up a bag of eelgrass seeds—notes that it is aimed at increasing “eelgrass propagation…by using clams as an alternative to traditional planting methods.” Fisher’s Island, the piece says, “is the home of the last best eelgrass habitat in the Long Island Sound due to the work of the Fisher’s Island Conservancy Eelgrass Management Program.” 

An operating engineer skilled with working heavy equipment, age 53, the father of three, Rob has invented a hugely important process for bringing back that vital aquatic vegetation: eel grass. 

From the devastation at Ground Zero, he is bringing back life to the sea. 

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.