Tag Archives: Earth Day

Family Fun, Nature Centers, Park Volunteers, Stewardship

Celebrate Earth Day with State Parks!

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This week we celebrate Earth Day! The first Earth Day was held in 1970 to draw attention to ongoing environmental issues in the United States, such as water and air pollution. Since then, Earth Day has become a global event held every April 22nd in honor of protecting the environment. With over 350,000 acres of park land and waters, NY State Parks play an important role in the protection and stewardship of New York’s natural ecosystems. If you would like to join in the celebration and participate in hands-on Earth Day activities, check out the list below for a sampling of Earth Day events held in State Parks across the state! If you can’t make any of this week’s Earth Day events, join us for Arbor Day programs next week and I Love My Park Day on Saturday, May 7th!

Long Island

Brookhaven National Lab Climate Van
Jones Beach Energy & Nature Center
Friday, April 22, 2022 09:00 AM – 04:30 PM
This pioneering mobile laboratory consists instruments used in their climate research to measure atmospheric variables. Come explore and get a glimpse into the science of forecasting atmospheric conditions. The talks will be on Zoom as well as in person.

Protect the Pollinators Event
Jones Beach Energy & Nature Center
Saturday, April 23, 2022 12:00 PM
Build your own bee or insect house; Guided tour of our Pollinator Garden; Springtime Storytime; and Pollinator Relay Races

Earth Day Celebration Project
Connetquot River State Park Preserve
Saturday, April 23, 2022 09:00 AM
In celebration of Earth Day, please join Friends of Connetquot to plant native plants and ferns along the main road to the Clubhouse. Meet up by the Kiosk in the main parking lot starting at 9 am. Please dress appropriately and bring gloves. To register, please visit www.friendsofconnetquot.org.

Earth Day Hike
Hallock State Park Preserve
Saturday, April 23, 2022 09:00 AM – 11:00 AM
Celebrate our earth home by taking a 3 mile hike through the trails of the Preserve observing all that nature can share with us! All programs meet in the upper parking lot unless noted. Programs led by MaryLaura Lamont. Call for details, reservations at (631)315-5475. Snow/rain cancels programs!!!

Earth Day Festival
Hempstead Lake State Park
Saturday, April 23, 2022 11:00 AM – 3:00 PM
The event will include alternative energy activities, up-cycling t-shirt into aprons, make native pollinator seed bombs, and more!

Come to Hempstead Lake to up-cycle a t-shirt!

Niagara

Earth Day Walk
Buckhorn Island State Park
Friday, April 22, 2022 10:00 AM – 11:30 AM
Happy Earth Day everyone! Joins us for a relaxing walk through the woods and along with Niagara River. For information and registration call (716) 282-5154

Arbor Day Walk
DeVeaux Woods State Park
Friday, April 29, 2022 01:00 PM – 02:30 PM
Happy Arbor Day! Enjoy a walk through old growth trees. Registration required, please call (716) 282-5154.

Thousand Islands

Celebrate Earth Day!
Point Au Roche State Park
Saturday, April 30, 2022 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM
Celebrate Earth Day with us! Go on a Scavenger Hunt! Play some Earth Day themed games! Plant a seed to take home! Help clean up the Park! Activities available 10am-12pm. All ages welcome!

Earth Day at Zoo New York
Minna Anthony Common Nature Center
Saturday, April 23, 2022 10:00 AM – 03:00 PM
Come join the Earth Day celebration at the Thompson Park Zoo! Learn about the natural world around you and the importance of protecting our natural resources. Discover new places and ways to enjoy the outdoors. There will be numerous family friendly activities and many different organizations at the event, including the Nature Center! For additional information, please call the Thompson Park Zoo at (315) 782-6180. Preregistration recommended. Please call (315) 482-2479 to register. Face covering encouraged when indoors.

Arbor Day at TILT’s Sissy Danforth Rivergate Trail
Wellesley Island State Park
Saturday, April 30, 2022 10:00 AM – 02:00 PM
Celebrate Arbor Day and the Thousand Islands Land Trust’ (TILT) 9th Annual “For the Trees” Celebration by planting trees at the S. Gerald Ingerson Preserve along the Sissy Danforth Rivergate Trail. Bring the whole family to get their hands dirty! There will be numerous family friendly activities, workshops, games, and exhibits from TILT and many different organizations, including the Nature Center! For more information, please visit tilandtrust.org or call (315) 686-5345. Preregistration recommended. Please call (315) 482-2479 to register. Face covering encouraged when indoors.

Trees and Climate
Point Au Roche State Park
Saturday, April 30, 2022 02:00 PM – 03:00 PM
Join the park naturalist to explore trees, their important role in the ecosystem, and what they do for us. How can trees help with climate change? What can we learn by studying tree rings? What threats do trees face? Also, learn about Wangari Maathai, a very inspiring conservationist and activist, and how we can follow her example to help trees! Please note this will be an indoor program.

Finger Lakes

Beach Cleanup Event
Sampson State Park
Friday, April 22, 12:00 PM – 4:00 PM
Looking for a good way to give back to your community this Earth Day? Come out to Samson State Park from 12:00pm to 4:00pm on Friday, April 22nd and help us clean up trash and debris along the beach front and cobble shoreline of Seneca Lake. Did you know that the beautiful and State Threatened grows right here at Sampson? Twinleaf is just one of the unique and important species that call Sampson State Park home. Come help us protect this important ecological community and learn about conservation efforts around the state! Feel free to bring work gloves, or borrow ours! Meet us near the beach and look for the FORCES table!

Saratoga/Capital Region

Earth Day Clean Up
Saratoga Spa State Park
Friday, April 22nd, 10:30 AM
Celebrate Earth Day at Saratoga Spa State Park with our most recent park partner, the Children’s Museum at Saratoga! We will work together to make the park a little more beautiful.  At 10:30AM on April 22nd, we will meet at the Lincoln Bathhouse where the Museum’s new Nature Backpack program will be demonstrated. At 11:00AM everyone will head out to help clean up one of the park’s many pathways. Come share in the reward of making a greener, cleaner world! Gloves and bags will be provided. No registration necessary.

Trout Discovery Day
Grafton Lakes State Park
Thursday April 21, 2022 11:00 AM to 1:30 PM
Grafton Lakes State Park is hosting its annual Trout Discovery Day. As the weather gets warmer it is the perfect time to stock long pond with trout. The DEC will be providing trout and Grafton will be providing activities. Come on your own or bring out the whole family, Trout Discovery Day is the perfect event for all ages. Enjoy trout shaped treats, crafts, and educational booths highlighting the wonders of trout! Learn about their habitats, school programs and micro and macro invertebrates. Come help to stock our ponds. The event will be held on April 21 from 11am-1:30 pm, $2 cash per child, ages 6-15. Ages 5 and under and adults are free to enter. DEC will bring trout at 11:30 am. Park at Rabbit Run.

Earth Day Festival
Grafton Lakes State Park
Friday, April 22, 2022 5:00 PM-8:00 PM
Join Grafton Lakes for a family friendly Earth Day festival. Learn about the migration of monarch butterflies, the importance of pollinators, the impacts of invasive species, and much more. Partake in activities, demos, and crafts. This year’s Earth Day theme is to Invest in Our Planet’s Future. Each one of us can make a positive impact from the small to the tall. No registration required. The Festival will be held Friday, April 22nd from 5-8pm. The charge for the festival is $3/person cash, ages 5 and under free.

Taconic

Earth Day Celebration
Rockefeller State Park Preserve
Saturday, April 23 from 10:00 AM – 4:00PM

Earth Day was first celebrated in 1970 as an act of support for environmental protection. Now, more than 50 years later, Earth Day events are attended by over a billion people worldwide. What better way to celebrate this year than to visit your local Preserve!

Immerse yourself in nature and stop by “education stations” along Brother’s Path from 10 am – 1 pm to learn about topics such as clean water initiatives, sustainability, native plants and pollinators, wildlife conservation, and more!

Start your own native plant garden with our seed planting activity, which will take place every half hour from 10:30 am to 12:30 pm beside Swan Lake. (While supplies last.)

Learn about birds of prey and get up-close and personal with a few of them in a LIVE demonstration from 1 – 2 pm on the Overlook trail. (Please note: no dogs or horses will be allowed on Overlook during this time.)

Participate in a “BioBlitz” to learn more about biodiversity within the Preserve and contribute as a citizen scientist by logging your observations using the iNaturalist app. We’ll meet at the Swan Lake kiosk at 2 pm and venture from there.

Cost: FREE! No registration required. You may want to bring cash for raffles and merchandise. Proceeds support the maintenance of our beautiful carriage roads and landscape. Appropriate for all ages. Rain date: April 24

Cool Science, Park Projects, Stewardship

Solar Power Keeps Growing in State Parks

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While there aren’t public events in State Parks this week to mark the 50th anniversary of Earth Day on Wednesday, some of our facilities are still helping the planet every day in the fight against man-made climate change.

Each year, Parks use more than 50 million kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity to power some 5,000 buildings, including offices, comfort stations, maintenance barns, nature and visitor centers, cabins, historic sites, and other unique facilities like golf courses and pools.

To feed more renewable power into the grid and reduce its demand for fossil fuel-fired electricity, Parks has been installing photovoltaic (PV) solar arrays since 2012. There are now 32 arrays in place, with more expected this year in the Hudson Valley and Long Island regions.

The rooftop solar array at Hallock State Park Preserve on Long Island.

Once the new arrays are completed this year, State Parks will be covering 15 percent of its total statewide energy consumption through solar power, up from the current 4 percent.

These new arrays will offset all the power demand in the Park’s Taconic Region on the eastern side of the Hudson River, which includes 14 parks and eight historic sites in Columbia, Dutchess, Putnam and Westchester counties.

Adding solar power – which unlike natural gas or other fossil fuels does not produce the greenhouse gases that are driving man-made climate change – also saves Parks money on its utility bills. Each year, solar arrays are trimming nearly $340,000 from what Parks would otherwise pay for its electricity!

To perform this work, which both fights climate change and saves money, Parks have trained 100 staff members to design and install our solar arrays.

Parks selects locations for PV arrays that will not disturb natural areas of the park or areas of recreation. They are often installed on rooftops, the back of parking lots, or in other areas that have previously been disturbed.

Parks also applies for financial rebates from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYERDA) to lower the cost of each project, with savings then reinvested to fund future PV projects. Parks also coordinates with private utility companies to connect its arrays to the grid.

Due to such efforts, three Parks are now electric-energy neutral facilities, and produce enough power for the grid to cover what the consume: Robert Moses State Park, Captree State Park (both on Long Island) and Allan H. Treman State Marine Park in Ithaca in the Finger Lakes. Additionally, Parks has an off-grid PV facility that provides power directly to Bennington Battlefield State Historic Site.

Completed in 2017, Robert Moses State Park made history as being the largest PV installation built by state employees _ its 2,432 American-made panels cover the length of two football fields! This array generates about 950,000 kWh annually, saving more than $100,000 in electricity bills. (For comparison’s sake, the average household in New York State uses about 8,000 kWh annually, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration).

Solar power made made Robert Moses the first electric energy neutral state park of its size in the country. The array even covers the energy usage of Captree State Park which makes it the second electric energy neutral state park.

Parks also funded, developed, built and managed the first PV installation on the roof of a building listed on the National Historic Register at Peebles Island State Park, headquarters of the Bureau of Historic Sites and Bureau of Historic Preservation Field Service.

The rooftop array at Peebles Island State Park.

The 450 panels installed on the roof of Peebles’ historic Bleachery Building are projected to generate more than 188,000 kWh and save about $22,500 in utility bills annually. The array covers approximately 30 percent of the building’s energy use. The array at Peebles Island is also used a training location for students from  Hudson Valley Community College and the Glenmont Job Corps.

Students from Hudson Valley Community College receive training at the solar array at Peebles Island State Park.

And there will be much more to come. State Parks intends to aggressively increase its solar footprint in order to cover half of its statewide electrical consumption by 2025.

From our smallest arrays to our largest arrays, each PV installation is working to create a greener state parks system every day and for many Earth Days to come!

Cover Photo- Robert Moses State Park solar array. All photos by NYS Parks.

By Caity Tremblay, Parks Energy and Sustainability Bureau

Park Projects

Parks Goes Solar

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As we celebrate Earth Day we’d like to tell you a little bit about some of the projects our Energy & Sustainability Office is working on that benefit the environment. Particularly we’d like to tell you how they are developing renewable energy projects all across the state. State Parks has developed several solar arrays over the last few years. Solar arrays use panels to catch sunlight. You’ve probably seen them on the roofs of houses in your neighborhood or maybe even your own house. The panels catch the light from the sun and turn that into electricity for use in the house or building.

NYS Parks has completed 13 solar installation projects to date. Our goals is use the sun to power part or all of our Parks. As a result of their work State Parks is recognized as the leading renewable energy agency in the state. Most installations were completed by trained in-house State Parks employees after they went through a solar power training course at HVCC. By training employees to install solar arrays, Parks is able to save money and give employees the opportunity to learn valuable skills that give them a better understanding of the project. State Parks currently has about 50 staff members with this training and continues to train more each year.

Beginning in 2012 with the construction of the rooftop array on the Niagara Falls Discovery Center State Parks renewable energy projects have grown in number and size. State Parks Staff have installed arrays in several parks across the state including, Niagara Falls, Letchworth, Robert Moses, and Grafton Lakes.

The 13th solar installation was at Robert Moses State Park in Long Island, and will become the first energy neutral State Park in the United States. The nearly 700 kilowatt solar array will save more than $100,000 each year. Built with 2,432 panels, this pole-mounted array is located in the back of parking field 4 of Robert Moses State Park. The solar panels are made in the United States by SolarWorld and supplied by National Solar Technology in Buffalo. This is the largest solar installation by State employees in the State’s history.

Currently Parks is installing a new solar system with a 144 kW capacity at the headquarters of the Historic Preservation Office, Peebles Island State Park in Cohoes. The array will account for more than 20% of the electricity used by the complex. Parks is also constructing a solar array on the roof of the Bathhouse at Lake Taghkanic State Park.  This 40kW solar array will provide more than 25% of the buildings electric need.

Happy Earth Day!

Niagara
Niagara Falls Discovery Center System Output: 8.74 kW Annual Output: 10,940 kWh, photo by State Parks
Letchworth
Letchworth Visitors Center System Output: 25 kW Annual Output: 29,200 kWh, photo by State Parks
Robert Moses
Robert Moses State Park, Field 4 System Output: 693.12 kW Annual Output: 920,000 kWh, photo by State Parks