about REcom

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:

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.

RochesterEnvironment.com’s Specific Missions

The mission of RochesterEnvironment.com is to:

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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