(Empire State Future Executive Director Peter Fleischer gave testimony before the State Assembly Environmental Conservation Committee in Albany on May 27, 2009 in support of the proposed "Green Roots Bond Act." The text of his remarks follow:
Thank you Chairman Sweeney, I am most appreciative for this chance to address you and this distinguished committee. My name is Peter Fleischer, and I am here to speak in favor of "Green Roots" -- the proposed 2009 Environmental Bond Act.
I am the Executive Director of Empire State Future, a not-for-profit, coalition of business, planning and civic organizations that hail from places as diverse as Buffalo, Syracuse, the Adirondacks, the Hudson Valley, New York City and Long Island.
Empire State Future and its members are dedicated to the economic revitalization of New York's older industrial cities, and to the promotion of Smart Growth principles in regard to land use and development decisions.
I am here to support the proposed bond act, particularly that portion that would help fund -- and in fact, be the New York State match for -- a "higher speed rail" effort here, funded primarily by the Federal Government.
Empire State Future also supports community revitalization, centered on main streets, town centers and in vibrant urban spaces, particularly along our lake fronts, coasts, rivers and canals.
We also support water and sewer system upgrades and watershed land protections. These are our green roots.
Empire State Future supports a bond act at this difficult economic time because investments in the future are always needed, and because there will be a prosperous future in New York only if we properly plan for it, and make the hard choices and do the important work needed to ensure it.
In 1817, our predecessors were determined to build a water route from the Hudson River near Albany to Lake Erie near what is now Buffalo. We were not a wealthy country then -- we had just fought a war and even George Washington had cast doubt on the project years earlier. Still, through the wilderness and the doubting, the legendary route was dug, and New York's greatest and most significant public works project was completed eight years later.
The Erie Canal -- financed by New Yorkers -- laid a path toward prosperity from one corner of this state to the other. In connecting the urban to the rural -- Downstate to Upstate, the Atlantic to the Great Lakes -- that one project, with community, economic development and transportation benefits flowing together, made us the Empire State.
In 1840, the construction of the New York City water system, the state's second greatest public works project, ended a public health crisis in that crowded, fast growing metropolis, by providing reliable and copious quantities of fresh New York water for man, beast and machine. That flow, in turn, allowed for the nation's greatest city to grow to its current size and world prominence. That amazing system now provides water needs of roughly half the state.
In the 20th Century, even in the face of a crippling depression, we built the Empire State Building in just over one year. Planned during prosperity, but constructed even as the lights on the economy were dimming for a decade, this monument -- soaring above all others -- restored hope to many. Even today, it remains a symbol of what New Yorkers can achieve in both good and hard times.
So, build, we must -- it's in our roots. The question today is not whether we should build. It is what we must build. Today, as before, we must marshal our resources, and we must use them now, and use them wisely.
Failure to build and invest in our future would condemn us to a smaller, less robust world of tomorrow, when compared to our emergent world of today. But to continue to grow wisely, we must invest wisely.
Investments are expenditures carefully chosen. They are efforts that bear fruit and grow. Not all spending does this. So we must choose.
And let's be clear, in choosing what we invest in, we must make choices about what we can, and cannot, afford. Choosing is, of course, part of your job, and in many ways it puts you in an unenviable position.
We believe that rail is a superior choice, and it is a high-quality investment. It is an enormous engine of economic development. It will surely help revitalize and restore our Upstate cities and rural communities, one by one.
Higher speed rail can shrink the six-hour trip from Buffalo to Albany to three hours, and in so doing induce a host of new riders. With a competitive plan for rail, and a state match as a major enticement, New York will become eligible for up to $13 billion of new Federal funding. And if we receive $1.5 to 2 billion -- our proportional share -- and provide a reasonable match, then 110 mile-per-hour service from Albany to Buffalo is said to be doable within five years.
Perhaps most importantly though, service born of this proposed investment need not mirror Amtrak's current level of service -- rather, it can easily be first-rate, on the level that rail customers in Europe experience every day!
To do that, new service should be bid out competitively, so that New Yorkers can travel fast, reliably, frequently, and directly to our city centers in the comfort that only rail service can provide.
Higher speed rail will trigger resurgence in our downtowns, even as it better connects the economies of our Upstate cities.
From Poughkeepsie to Kingston, Catskill, Hudson, Troy, Albany, Schenectady, Amsterdam, Utica, Rome, Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo and Niagara Falls -- a bright green bracelet linking six million New Yorkers can shine.
And if we dare to build this service -- we may soon be followed by others who decide to connect to us. From Ontario and Toronto, they will come to connect to Niagara Falls. From Chicago and Cleveland, they will reach out to Buffalo. Perhaps too, Montreal and Boston will look down the track to Albany. And in this way, we will re-build this Empire State.
And rail, as an alternative to the car, will induce ridership that is green and better for the air we breathe, better for the congestion we fight, and better for the wear and tear on our aging bridges and roads.
Higher speed rail will provide green routes across this state, even as it raises speeds, shrinks distances, and strengthens local economies. For all these reasons, rail must be part of our green vision.
It is said that civilization follows transportation. And if we are to create green jobs, these jobs need to be where we have workers laid off from less-green jobs. Importantly for our future, New York has a skilled workforce with a proven ability to manufacture many things.
And we must also "green" our energy future by focusing the effort where we already have the infrastructure, vacant properties, a skilled and educated work force, and in Upstate at least, inexpensive land.
New York has always been a center for innovation -- from the steam ship to the micro chip. Today as we energetically and urgently try to do more with less, we need to devote ourselves to making more energy with new and fewer resources. And we need to do this in gray places where we once made things, not in our natural, undisturbed green places and farms.
The successful civilization provides for the needs of the present, without eroding the prospects for its future.
To that end, we must ensure that the water systems and sewer infrastructure, the pipes that make civilized living possible, be repaired and upgraded through renewed investment such as is proposed in this bond act.
These green roots, the ones we never see but nevertheless depend on each and every day, need to be tended to, nurtured, and adequately funded to ensure that the lifestyle we know today will be available to our children tomorrow.
And to that end, we must also aggressively protect the lands and the watersheds that provide our food and water. Encroachment upon these lands through sprawl, and degradation through neglect, will be costly in the future, and will impose a heavy tax on our future.
To avoid such a fate, we need to invest now, and that's the aspiration of the Green Roots Bond Act -- we certainly must grow, but we must grow in the right ways, in the right places, for the right reasons.
If you vote to allow this bond act to appear on the November ballot -- and we certainly hope you will -- and if the people of New York vote favorably, as polls suggest they will -- you, as legislators, will need to fund the debt service that such borrowing necessarily entails. The amount, a few tenths of one percent of the state budget, is relatively small, but not inconsequential. Hopefully, that support for our economic future can be gained by identifying less important needs that we can do without, in a "revenue neutral" way.
The point of an investment is to choose that which will grow, and nurture it to fruition, while weeding out that which grows unproductively, or at the expense of the greater growth that is required. We can match a sense of fiscal sustainability with the urgent needs encompassed within the bond act, to provide us with energy, infrastructural and economic sustainability.
That is how together, we can grow a prosperous Empire State future, along and among the green routes we already have.
Thank you.
