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About RochesterEnvironment.com:
(Or,
why does RochesterEnvironment.com exist?)
Welcome to the most comprehensive
listing of environmental services and web sites on the Internet for the
Rochester, New York area. This site is a non-profit, non-commercial portal for
all Rochester-area environmental links. Use this web site to monitor the health
and find ways to get involved in sustaining of our area's environment using your
Internet connection.
The mission of RochesterEnvironment.com
is give a complete online snapshot of one community and all the
environmental information online that can be obtained for this Northeast city
and archive it so that (as environmental problems go) when someone is ready to
tackle an environmental issue that information will be retrievable. This site
is vast and has many features that link it to all environmental recourses that
could conceivable influence Rochester. I’ve tried to make it easy to search
this site for information, while at the same time display to those not familiar
with our environmental issues the full range of possible online information
necessary to sustain our environment. The Internet, I believe, is especially
suited to learning about and sharing critical information about how to keep our
environment healthy and RochesterEnvironment.com has been active since 1998
doing just that.
Goal: My goal is to get the
public, politicians, and scientists to view our present day environmental
situation in a new way: If you think that it is obvious that our environment is
in trouble and you are not doing anything about it –You Don’t Get It!
RochesterEnvironment.com is my attempt to demonstrate by the example of one
specific community that environmental issues at this point in time are
extraordinary. That is to say, that I believe that there is no other time in
man’s history where the simultaneous compromises to our environment (where man
needs to survive) have occurred before and thus no model for us to use to get
our environment back to a healthy balance. My position is explained in detail
in my companion book to this site: We
Don’t Get It! I am not trying to make money on this book; in fact you
can go directly to
Iuniverse.com (the book’s publisher) and read all of the contents on line.
I had no control over the price of purchasing the book ($16.95), I merely
wanted to put my views in a context that were easily assessable by anyone.
Also the goals of RochesterEnvironment.com are specific:
- To increase independent and objective studies of our
environment to find out the affect of industrial pollution, sprawl, invasive
species and other assaults that would affect our environment.
- To keep the Rochester-area continually informed of events
that would affect their environment and explain why.
- To gather all information pertaining our our
Rochester-area environment as provided by the Internet so as to inform and
to allow visitor's to communicate directly with the sources of governmental
branches, studies, reports, etc.
Purpose: The purpose of this site
is to give an example of one specific community's entire environmental compass.
Though I focus sharply on Rochester, NY, on this web site, there is nothing
particularly ominous about this mid-sized, upper New York State community’s
environmental situation. I merely use Rochester as an example of one
community’s entire environmental scope because I live here and have better
access to much of the information needed to demonstrate my position than I would
another.
As a matter of fact, albeit from my limited knowledge, I
believe that Rochester, New York is probably doing better on our environmental
problems than most communities. Just recently in the
Democrat & Chronicle,
our city has been singled out as a very livable city in many respects:
Rochester rated 6th-most livable U.S. city &
Rochester quality of life ranked No. 1 of 50 metros
- (July 11, 07)
Democrat & Chronicle. We have and continue to have many capable and
concerned leaders working towards a better environment. Also, Rochester has
many inherent environmental features that might help propel it into one of the
greatest sustainable environments in the future. We have almost unlimited fresh
water, because we already draw most of our drinking water from Lake Ontario—one
of the Great Lakes, which together contain about 20% of the world’s fresh water
supply. We also have a confluence of trails along the Erie Canal and around
Rochester that could be a way of increasing bike comminuting. We have many
colleges and universities that are deeply involved in monitoring and developing
new technologies (like fuel cell research) to save energy and increase fuel
efficiency. A natural resource that we have not used much before, but probably
will in the future is wind power—and many surrounding communities around
Rochester are considering a major shift to this renewable and non-polluting
energy source. And while, Rochester has many environmental issues that need
immediate attention, like the continual reports of air quality being
compromised, and brownfields that need to be cleaned up—so do all US cities.
Finally, it is not my desire to have you drop everything you are
doing and become a rabid environmentalist, but rather to acknowledge that our
times are extraordinary and allow that knowledge to influence how
you vote, how you purchase, travel, what news sources you get your news from.
Remember; only a few years before the Katrina Hurricane disaster, the
New Orleans Times-Picayune had run a
complete scenario of the probable consequences of a probable force-four
hurricane if it hit New Orleans and its levees. The information was there, but
few acted on it. Similarly, much of the information we need to know about the
state of our environment already exists, but it is not, for various reasons,
reaching the public and those in power who are responsible for keeping our
environment healthy. We the public have to begin paying attention to our
environment and make sure our political leaders act so that our environment
remains healthly for our children.
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RochesterEnvironment.com’s Specific Missions
The mission of
RochesterEnvironment.com is to: |
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Encourage all media (radio, TV, cable, Internet, newsprint) to
present local environmental news every day and archive those stories
freely for future research.
Connect all the dots with Rochester’s environment and that of the
world at large.
Create a sustainable environmental philosophy to help citizens,
public officials, and industry decide future environmental projects
and solutions based on science and a practical philosophy.
Encourage all branches of government and private industry to solve
similar environmental problems in the same comprehensive way.
Recycle everything, not simply collect every by-product we produce,
but create new industries and resources for existing industry.
Promote continual objective and preemptive research on probably
environment problems.
Assist all communities to create and maintain environmental portal
sites like RochesterEnvironment.com for every city everywhere.
Encourage all governments, educational facilities, private and
public institutions to archive all pertinent environmental
information.
List all environmental events for the largest public participation.
Create an atmosphere on environmental issues that are nonpartisan
and nonpolitical.
Provide the best references to the best experts and problem solvers
for the public and others.
Promote local citizen groups who are organizing to protect their
environment.
Monitor
climate change in our area and offer the best solutions for this
on-coming change.
Accomplish all of the above free of charge and open to the public
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* Remember: You don't have to check back
to this site often to get the benefit from RochesterEnvironment.com services.
You can subscribe to our monthly
RENewsletter.
E-mail - FrankRegan@RochesterEnvironment.com
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