City trees healthier than in Hudson Valley

Did you know that cottonwood trees grow twice as fast in New York City than they do in the Hudson Valley? It may seem unlikely, but old coal burning power plants, like Danskammer in Newburgh, pump serious amounts of pollution into our air and water. The result: ground level ozone is  much higher here in the Hudson Valley than in the city. The Poughkeepsie Journal recently ran an editorial calling on Governor Pataki to live up to his promises to limit these emissions.

And now there's an online petition you can sign to pressure our county legislature to pass a recently introduced clean air resolution. This seems like the least we can do when, according to the  New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, the coal-burning Danskammer power plant put 122 pounds of mercury into our air in 2002 (51 pounds more than in 1997), and there are are only three power plants in the state with higher recorded mercury emissions. The Danskammer plant put 2,564,063 tons of carbon dioxide into our air in 2002 (32,279 more than in 1997), and 12,120 tons of sulfur dioxide into our air in 2002 (892 more tons than in 1997.)