Bedford Passes Ambitious Climate Plan

The Bedford Town Board has unanimously approved the Bedford Climate Action Plan, a move that launches the town into the forefront of local solutions to global environmental challenges.

Three years in the making, the plan sets ambitious goals to lower the town's carbon footprint and offers innovative ways to get there, including a new low-cost loan program for homeowners to make dwellings more energy efficient. The vote came before a sizeable audience at Tuesday night's town board meeting.

The passage of the plan makes a commitment to reduce community-wide greenhouse gas emissions by 20% below 2004 levels by 2020 and includes specific efforts that can be undertaken by nearly every sector of town life, from schools to religious institutions. Read the complete plan here.

The nine-member Bedford Energy Advisory Panel, created in 2007, has spent years inventorying the town's greenhouse gas emissions, talking to experts, researching best practices and engaging the community through a series of town-wide events to bring the plan to fruition. 

"From the beginning we made sure we engaged not only the political leadership but also the community," said panel chair Mary Beth Kass. The vote, she said, was "really significant. We have the support of our leadership and the community and we have a plan for reaching our goal."

Also noteworthy, she said, is that Bedford is the first municipality in Westchester County to amend its master plan to incorporate the action plan's recommendations.

"We think we might also be the first in New York State," she said. 

Janet Harckham, a member of the advisory panel who worked on waste and recycling with Bill Abranowicz, said she was heartened by the community's broad support for the measure, especially local students.

One of the most unique aspects of the plan is a low-cost loan program whereby town residents can get financial assistance in upgrading their home's energy efficiency. Crafters of the plan believe this is the first of its kind in the state and note it has sparked national interest.

The plan focuses on four sectors — energy, transportation, land and water use and waste and recycling — and offers specific recommendations for each.

There were some detractors at the meeting, mainly discounting the scope or urgency of the global warming issue in general.

Environmental concerns have long been at the forefront of the civic conversation in Bedford. Last year's Bedford Environmental Summit drew some 1,000 participants.

"Wow! That's great news," said Antonia Bowring, chief operating officer of the Open Space Institute, a New York City-based advocacy group that has supported Bedford's efforts, upon learning of the green light Tuesday.

"What I find very inspiring is that basically they did this Green Summit last January and the Bedford Energy Advisory Panel was one of the co-sponors with the Garden Club. They were two of the key movers of this Environment Summit. What happens often, it seems to me, is after these types of events no one knows what to do next, how to harness that energy and move things forward," Bowring said.

But in Bedford, she said, "they skillfully leveraged that Green Summit and partnerships with the groups involved in the summit to work to pass the Climate Action Plan and they have this whole organizational structure in place to mobilize citizens and get them involved. That's what I think is really amazing."

So what happens next?

"Now we roll up our sleeves and get to work on the implementation," Kass said. 

That will fall to the Bedford 2020 Coalition, a newly formed not-for-profit, which will be working the town and the community to oversee implementing the plan. Eleven different tasks forces will be working closely with all stakeholders to move forward, Kass said.