Long Island pioneered sprawl. Long ago its leaders built the nation's first motor expressway, its first supermarket, its first suburban housing development, and one of its first shopping centers. Later, developers swamped almost all of Nassau County with housing subdivisions and shopping centers, triggering world-class traffic congestion which titanic roadbuilding efforts could never loosen up. Now the bulldozer claws relentlessly eastward into Suffolk County toward the relatively bucolic East End. The number of stores on the island grows far faster than its population, which has all but stopped increasing.

Under such development pressures, the island also came to lead the nation in per capita garbage production and in household energy costs. Other environmental problems proliferated. Smoke from incinerators fouled the skies, trash-hauling trucks cluttered the roads. Pollution and brown tides shut down beaches and fisheries. The biologically important pine barrens, which act as a natural filter maintaining the quality of the water in the underground aquifers on which almost all citizens of Nassau and Suffolk Counties depend, came under unprecedented stress.

All this seemed more tolerable during the first four post-World War II decades when Long Island enjoyed a healthy and diverse economy. Its strength came from a strong farming and fishing core, a 100,000-job defense industry, big salaries earned by commuters to upscale New York City jobs, and a boom in recreation and high-end second homes at the island's eastern end. But with the end of the Cold War early in the 1990s and corporate downsizing in town, harder times set in for most Long Islanders. Factories, farms, and houses went on the market. With little likelihood that heavy industry could be persuaded to return to the island's high taxes, power and labor costs and its transportation bottlenecks, there loomed a dismal future of boarded-up downtowns, abandoned shopping centers, stagnation and capital flight--and an urgent need for a new economic scenario.

Especially if funds are invested in preserving the research base at such magnet institutions as SUNY-Stony Brook and the Cold Spring Harbor and Brookhaven laboratories, the island can still attract high-tech businesses such as the 33 biotechnology companies that have recently settled there. Each second home or home office is itself a cottage industry helping to support a complex of local services. Tourist opportunities abound. But the kinds of people and institutions the region most needs to fill these slots will shun an expensive place that is also dirty. They seek streets lined with trees, not karate parlors or K-marts. So safeguarding such environmental assets as open space, clean water, clean beaches, and good fishing has become an urgent economic imperative. Even without a deliberate effort to promote environmental quality as an attraction, the region already provides far more jobs in these sectors of the economy than were lost when the old defense industry industry crashed. 

A Peaceable Kingdom: Scenes like this, not even more shopping malls or commercial strips or traffic, will attract the strongest people and companies to the Long Island of the future.

Pressures for traditional forms of "progress" remain heavy everywhere, with much power remaining in the hands of town board and planning board members who rarely see a shopping center proposal they do not like. This reality heightens the importance of developing regional, ecosystem-level approaches to managing the island's growth that have solid economic logic to them. It is fortunate, therefore, that the outlines of an environmentally grounded grand design for the island have begun to emerge in a variety of documents that public agencies and private groups have recently put forward. Among these:
 
 

• Blueprint for our Future, a report presented in 1993 to then Governor Mario Cuomo by a volunteer group, the Economic and Environmental Task Force for the East End of Long Island, that he created. The report contains numerous detailed recommendations, many of which were subsequently implemented, for actions to improve conditions for the East End's agricultural, fishing, and wine industries and for the recreational and second-home sector.
• The 644-page Long Island Sound Comprehensive Management Plan (LIS CMP), that was published in 1994 by New York State's Departmwent of State. This remarkably thorough document builds on previous scientific and policy work, and constitutes a benchmark effort to design a new future for the Sound. Included are many recommendations affecting Long Island's North Shore and East End.
• The Long Island Action Plan, a wide-ranging document issued in 1994 by the Long Island Association, a business group. The plan proposes a variety of actions to spur business development and tourism, improve conditions on the island in such sectors as health, housing, and transportation. An environmental section is also included.

In 1993, citizen pressure prevailed over political antagonism and brought about the important Long Island Pine Barrens Protection Act. It establishes 52,500 acres of the precious barrens as the state's third largest protected area of open space. As originally designed, the legislation accords a new regional commission considerable power and money to influence development in adjacent "compatible growth" areas. In 1995 the Central Pine Barrens Joint Planning and Policy Commission, the body that the 1993 law created, published a highly detailed environmental impact assessment and land use plan for its area of concern.

All these studies contain valuable information and ideas. But some deal only with regions rather than with the island as a whole. Some pull punches for political or economic reasons, or out of the conviction that outmoded, environmentally destructive forms of "progress" remain viable. None fully recognizes what has become apparent: that the island's competitive advantage is its environmental quality, and that environmental considerations should therefore not be presented separately, but integrated broadly into any overall development scenario. If the island is really going to get moving again, in short, it will need to show a level of environmental determination that no current plan or policy achieves.

In the light of all these considerations, and building on the impressive body of information assembled in previous documents, the Sustainable Development Institute proposes a 57-point program for action on Long Island that incorporates these elements. Each recommendation is numbered in bold-face type in the following paragraphs.

Central Pine Barrens

Long Islanders must do everything possible, through legal action and at the ballot box, to assure that the plan for the pine barrens gets implemented in a manner consistent with the original landmark legislation (1). Already, watering down has occurred. Suffolk County is using, for budget-balancing general purposes, funding that had been earmarked to safeguard the barrens and the island's drinking water. The 1995 plan strengthens, far beyond the intent of the 1993 law, the ability of towns to make decisions about land use in the barrens without consulting the regional commission. Such deviations must stop. The integrity of the island's drinking water must be preserved.

Here Today, Gone Tomorrow: Commercial and residential developers alike should be obligated to their properties and communities for the long haul, not be allowed as they are to buy, build, sell, and vanish.

Residential and Commercial Development

Individual citizens and landowners should not have to subsidize sprawl-provoking developers. Such people must be forced to become long-term stakeholders in the communities they attack, and believers in a more orderly development process. Both the carrot and the stick can be usefully employed to control the clutter they create.

With regard to fees, policymakers have ample opportunity. Developers, not the general taxpayer, should have to pay not only for infrastructure within the development, but the full cost of all roads, power lines, and waste disposal facilities their projects require (2). What they pay up-front should reflect how far the development is from the previously existing community center: the further away, the higher the levy.Developers should also have to pay some share of the ongoing extra cost of services -- fire protection, public transportation--that they impose on nearby municipalities (3).

Developers already gladly pay such charges, known as "impact fees," since they occur just once and represent but a fraction of total development cost. At the very least, these levies should rise to the point where they begin to make the developer question the economics of the scheme. But this is not all. They should have to pay not just to build the school or the fire station, but commit to a fair share of maintaining the facilities and their staffs over the longer term (4) . Such payments should come as a result of agreements with the original developers that make them responsible even after they have sold off the developed properties and withdrawn from the scene. Developers should be obligated for the long haul.

Incentives can play a big part in the game, and with more than one thousand taxing authorities in place on the island, there are plenty of instruments to choose from. Since developers install their own carefully-structured environments anyway, they should be rewarded for concentrating on already degraded areas or those with low aesthetic or scenic value (5). There should also be strong policies favoring the recycling of abandoned shopping centers, already commonplace along the Jericho Turnpike and already in parts of in Suffolk County, and imposing tax penalties, as well as stiff fees, for breaking new ground (6).

By means of a strengthened statewide real property tax law, developers (and individual homeowners as well) should be rewarded with tax abatements for including environmental amenities in new construction, or adding them to existing units (7). Tax breaks should be offered to projects that do not invade pine barrens or disfigure other biologically important areas such as saltmarshes, that do not require extensive construction of new roads or bridges, and that have relatively easy access to public transportation (8). Leaving public open space in subdivisions should carry tax benefits, and so should developments requiring land and store owners to leave high percentages of their properties in natural vegetation.

In the current climate on the island, new taxes are hardly popular. Yet the idea of a real estate transfer tax on all major transactions (9), which had been tried before, should be resurrected. If the proceeds are allocated to acquiring open space, funds become available to do so just at the time when it is most threatened.

Clusterization: Zoning should favor low densities, clustering, downtown revitalization and preservation of open space.

Zoning lies at the heart of the matter. It is far beyond the limits of this project to recommend specific zoning guidelines for each of Long Island's towns. Hempstead's needs are far different from those of Brookhaven or Riverhead. Each zoning dispute anywhere commands the detailed attention of many lawyers, aspirants, and public officials. But some general guidelines apply everywhere on the island. Among them are these:

Thought about zoning should begin with consideration of the land, its contours and its resources. Since population growth on the island has slowed to almost nil, zoning should favor low rather than high densities (10). Towns should provide fast-track permitting for developers who lower densities below the allowed limits (11).

Most applications for commercial or industrial zoning should be denied since there is already plenty of commercially zoned property in degraded downtowns and new but already abandoned or disintegrating shopping centers (12). Twenty-four percent of the commercial space in the town of Brookhaven is vacant. In Suffolk County alone, far more land is already zoned for industry than the region is ever likely to need.

Mandatory clustering within subdivisions will both preserve open space and increase property values (13). Towns should especially find ways to encourage developers to site affordable housing subdivisions in village-center "infills" and other downtown locations that are convenient to public transit. Allowing higher than normal zoning densities (14) is one available technique. 

Another Farm Land Sale: Many techniques need to be used to preserve the island's lucrative farming traditions, not compel farmers through punitive taxation to sell to developers and move to Florida.

Agriculture

Preserving open space has long been accomplished by acquiring farmland outright for parks or nature reserves. As land prices continue upward, however, more and more dollars used this way will buy less and less. An equally important and less expensive method is to enable farmers to carry on through purchases of farmland development rights. In this manner several East End towns, as well as Suffolk County, have preserved some 7,000 acres as open space. These admirable local efforts should be reinforced through state action to purchase development rights to an additional 10,000 farm acres in Suffolk County, or initiate a new development-rights transfer mechanism for productive farmland (15).

There should also be a mechanism to make it easier for banks to make annual cash-flow loans to working farmers (16). A public revolving fund could provide banks with loan guarantees. Development rights could support the guarantees. As land values continue to rise, however, development-rights purchase or transfer programs will become ever more expensive and ever less effective. Modifications in state and local tax policy on farmland are also required: though abatement programs are in effect, they need to be extended to small and low-income farmers who do not now qualify.

Most urgent is the need to change federal inheritance tax policy on farmland (17) which is the single biggest reason why Long Island's farm heirs sell to developers and move to Florida. Currently the Internal Revenue Service penalizes heirs to farm properties by assessing them for their "highest and best use," and demanding that the tax of 50 percent or more be fully paid during the first year it is due. Ideally, there should be a special, lower inheritance tax rate for working farms based on the land's current use. At the very least, heirs should be allowed to spread their payments over five or more years in order to lessen the likelihood of their having to bail out.

Long Island needs not just farms; it needs clean farms that do not send polluted runoff into the Sound, the bays of the South Shore or, worse yet, into the aquifers. Long Island's farmers have greatly reduced their use of toxic chemicals over the past two decades. They are currently relying on biological controls and the techniques of integrated pest management to a far greater extent than before. To encourage this trend, publicly-supported research and communications efforts should be expanded (18).

Attracting New Industry

Planning's objective should not be to try willy-nilly to lure industries to the region by figuring out a way around the Central Pine Barrens legislation, developing the Calverton airstrip for civilian passenger and freight traffic, or by expanding MacArthur Airport in Islip. Instead, the island should continue to deny incentives for any business activity that generates a significant amount of pollution, and in fact make it so expensive for industrial polluters to operate (19) on Long Island that they will refrain from even trying.

This is not to say, however, that the effort to attract industry should be abandoned altogether. The island as well as New York State should intensify efforts to bring in high-tech, high-quality industries that do not pollute--and work hard to keep in place the qualities that attract them. Calverton should become an Environmental Enterprise Zone with tax benefits for appropriate investors (20).

Maintaining and increasing the levels of public and private support for the island's best scientific research facilities is an important priority for business development (21).

Long Island should also take steps to make it easier for industrial and commercial developers to recycle previously-developed "brownfields" sites--dumps or abandoned industrial areas -- without forever inheriting pollution burdens from previous users (22). Release from further liability, after an initial cleanup, should be the rule. Programs of this sort have worked in many large metropolitan areas, with no adverse consequences for citizen health and safety, and Long Island should be no exception. The now largely vacant Grumman site at Bethpage, in the center of the island, is a prime candidate for this form of redevelopment.

The Most for Boats?: Everything possible should be done to enhance recreation on the island. It is already a $5 billion industry and has major potential for growth. But valuable waterfront property should not become very part-time parking lots for boat trailers like this one.

Tourism

Long Islanders need to find ways not to keep tourists out, but to draw them in. Boaters, fisher, hikers, bikers, and beachgoers already spend $5 billion a year to enjoy just the Sound, let alone the South Shore's barrier beaches, and will gladly add to this tab if given the proper incentives. Public money should help the development of this sector through policies that maintain a healthy balance between tourism and other interests.

To replace the bedraggled old Long Island Railroad car that lies unvisited beside the Long Island Expressway, Suffolk County should build a network of visitor centers and other tourist amenities (23). One such center should introduce tourists to the Central Pine Barrens, another at Riverhead should preview the East End. Special signs, color-coded like those of the National Park Service, should be highly visible (24). Towns should support farmers' market programs (25) such as those that have successfully been installed in Port Jefferson and in Islip. Albany can help through promotional efforts and by attaching dollars to its "historic maritime community" designations (26).

Regional planning authorities should also establish rewards for those tourism entrepreneurs seeking to reinforce existing recreational downtowns rather than add sprawl or clutter (27). A prime example is deepwater Port Jefferson, which merits a future as Long Island's Annapolis, a place where boaters, ferry passengers arriving from Connecticut, and road or rail travellers can all converge and find vibrant waterfront life awaiting them. The village should make every effort to back the development of tourist facilities, providing tax breaks as required and moving inland other land uses such as waterfront parking for boat-ramp customers (28).

A marine museum would be a logical new magnet (29), as part of the maritime cultural center that a local group is currently trying to develop on a stretch of the shorefront now owned by Mobil.

Another anchor for tourism should be established at Riverhead, gateway to the island's east end. Excursion boats already depart from there on cruises out into Peconic Bay. They could extend their range to pause along the North Fork for visits to the region's cluster of wineries. Riverhead's current effort to revitalize a decaying downtown with an aquarium, which even in embryonic form was attracting twice the nummer of visitors anticipated, deserves political and financial support (30). This would be a wonderful place for a shopping and eating complex with produce from local farms and fresh seafood (31) from surrounding waters to offer both tourists and weekenders traveling to or from their second homes on the East End.

There is still open space at many of the lesser-known beaches in the region. The tendency of towns has been to pave over much of this, in order to provide sticker parking for local folk, and make everyone else feel unwelcome. In some instances, a more rewarding approach would be to open underutilized beaches for non-resident use (32). Shuttle service or valet parking to inland parking lots is better than asphalting the shoreline. 

Bumper Car Alley: Building more roads and lanes will never improve the island's traffic. We simply must look to alternative forms of transportation.

Transportation

In a Citizen Action Plan issued in 1995, the non-governmental Tri-State Transportation Campaign called for a number of steps to reduce Long Island's highway congestion. Use of "smart cards" at toll booths, premium pricing for peak-hour travel and benefits for non-peak road use, and "smog fees" are among the sensible remedies proposed. Above all, if Long Island has learned anything over the past four decades, it is that widening its main highways simply does not work. "We should not be building more wholesale road capacity," states the Regional Plan Association's Third Regional Plan. "That era is over."

Construction of HOV lanes on the Long Island Expressway, which do not work, should stop (33). Plans to widen Route 25A, the Southern State and Northern State Parkways should be scrubbed (34). There should be an island-wide moratorium on this kind of road construction except in instances where public safety is in jeopardy (35) without such construction or where there are obvious bottlenecks of long standing.

Direct subsidies to motorists--paying to build or fix roads out of general tax revenues--should end. Politically difficult as it is, it is high time for New York State to press for dedicated gasoline taxes and other user fees to cover the cost of road improvements (36). Within subdivisions or shopping centers, developers should have to maintain the roads they build (37).

All Long Islanders would benefit from implementation of the Third Regional Plan's many recommendations for improvements in rail service. Suggestions include the desperately needed rail links from Manhattan to Kennedy and La Guardia Airports, access to Grand Central as well as Penn Station for Manhattan-bound Long Island Railroad passengers, and new north-south light-rail lines in Nassau County. Just opening up train service to Manhattan's East Side, the Regional Plan states, would take 6,000 cars a day off of Long Island's highways--and save commuters half an hour a day in travel time. The idea of summer shuttle-trolley service along the South Shore, from Hampton Bays to Amagansett, is an excellent one that should be implemented (38).

Long Island needs better facilities for the bicycle, a staple for vacationers even along the narrow and dangerous roads of Nantucket or Bermuda and a means of recreation for growing numbers or urban or suburban folk in many places. The Rails-to-Trails Conservancy and other groups are busily creating bikeways in areas far more densely populated than eastern Long Island. Along both forks of the island and within the Central Pine Barrens, for example, there remain splendid opportunities to fashion bike trails (39), whose presence would spawn an entire new cottage industry in the region.

Long Island, where driving distances tend to be short, is an excellent venue for the electric car, much maligned by Detroit executives but still a beacon for clean-air activists. If the initial price can be made competitive, surely there are subsidies to be made to the Long Island Lighting Company (LILCO), and to drivers, that would increase popularity and usage (40). In return for a tax break, LILCO could provide free charge-up stations at key downtown and shopping center locations. Residents could receive a property-tax deduction, or the equivalent, in return for joining LILCO in helping enable the jurisdictions avoid expensive compliance with provisions of the federal Clean Air Act.

There are too many full-sized public buses wheezing half-empty along Long Island's suburban and even country roads. Such services should be reduced in favor of a more flexible and sprightlier system of licensing private mini-van drivers to cover lightly-used routes (41).

Paved Over Paradise: Too much of the island is paved over to make parking spaces in malls that are rarely occupied. Developers should have to pay penalties to build places that look like this.

Parking

Employers must stop subsidizing parking for their employees, and provide an even break for those using public transportation (42). Transportation vouchers and paybacks to workers not using free parking are among the ways that employers have used to decrease single-occupancy driving to and from work, and comply with provisions in the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990. But this is not all there is to be done. To level the playing field between downtown and mall shopping, residents of towns could also be obliged to buy parking stickers entitling them to park in any legal space. Those not possessing these would need to use meters or paid parking lots, or get tickets (43). Revenues from the program would go for downtown revitalization projects. Towns unwilling to go this route should level the playing field another way: by removing downtown parking meters. Shopping-mall developers should have to pay stiff penalties for not providing multi-level enclosed parking, and given strong incentives to do so (44).

Wasting Waste: This island simply must stop ranking among the nation's highest per capita producers of municipal waste, and get far more creative about using less and disposing of it better.

Garbage

There should be an island-wide "don't bag it" ban on residential lawn clipping pickups by public garbage carters (45). "Don't bag it" programs for retail stores should also be launched. Already catching on fast with regard to recyclying, Long Islanders should try hard to reach the state-mandated goal of recycling 50 percent of all municipal waste by 1997. Householders should pay not a flat rate for trash collection, but a fee per bag collected (46). Towns should follow the successful example of Bellport and start home composting programs (47). By means of such measures, and tolerance for curtailed use of high-tech incineration technologies, the island would be able to phase out most congestion-causing usage of trucks to haul solid wastes off-island.

Coastal Waters and Adjacent Lands

Nothing could improve the East End's economy more dramatically than to end the recurring brown tide plague, whose precise cause remains unknown. The research effort to track down the causes of this highly destructive phenomenon needs to become less traditional, more creative, and more aggressive. This probably means an influx of federal dollars, for which the East End should press (48).

On their own, the towns of the East End should emulate Southampton's successful $2 million coastal water quality program, which has resulted in the construction of several dozen stormwater recharge basins, and adopt similar preventive measures to reduce flows of nutrients and toxics into waters under threat of brown tide (49). These should be presented as part of an economic development program rather than as steps to provide environmental protection. Riverhead's application to increase nutrient discharges in wastewater should be denied on economic grounds (50).

The "no net loss" principle to conserve wetlands should apply island-wide (51). Very low densities, such as those of Maryland's "Critical Area" law forbidding more than one building per twenty acres, should be set for coastal areas of special environmental importance (52). Though tight standards should be maintained to prevent excess bulkheading and riprap construction, rules should be streamlined and single-stop permitting procedures established (53).

It would be foolhardy to propose an outright ban on beach replenishment programs for privately-held areas such as Westhampton's infamous Dune Road. But landowners (or their insurance companies) should carry the cost of this work, not their fellow taxpayers living inland or the federal flood insurance program (54). As to publicly-owned portions of the barrier islands, no effort should be made to counter their natural tendency to "migrate" northward.

Protection for Town Boards

A way to offset the threat of litigation would be to press for legislation to insulate town boards (as well as individual members, who already have legal immunity) from "slap suits," as they are called (55). While such relief would not dispose of wrong-headedness or corruption, it might encourage some boards to stand up more resolutely to insensitive developer proposals.

Environmental Education

As recommended in the Long Island Association's 1994 Action Plan, there is a need for a comprehensive environmental education program for children of all ages and for adults. A central component of this should be a regularly scheduled public television program highlighting the island's environmental values and the various threats to them (56). Public radio and the World Wide Web should also carry a steady flow of well-documented information about local environmental issues (57).

So what are the broad principles that could set the island on a more promising future course? One way to start is to revisit the concept of growth. All that is currently growing is the amount of the island allocated to retail shopping, as new stores drive old ones out of business, and to new housing for non-resident immigrants. While inveigling newcomers to move to the island might be good for developers, however, the new arrivals almost invariably cost the towns more to serve than they pay in taxes. Study after study shows that most such forms of "progress" drain the community's resources rather than augment them.

What must be discarded, then, is the badly blemished idea that indiscriminate "growth" in housing subdivisions or shopping centers makes things better by increasing the "ratables" forming the tax base. Planning should thus begin with the assumption that construction of any sort should no more than keep pace with a "natural" rather than with an "induced" rate of population increase. Stability should be the goal. The new design for Long Island's future should be shaped around the idea of creating new economic opportunities by accentuating environmental positives: safeguarding the biological diversity, the open space, and the coastal viewsheds that remain, and using zoning, fees, and tax incentives to make it happen.

Suppose, then, that we have abandoned conventional aspirations for growth and a bigger tax base, and embarked upon an exercise in ecosystem planning for stability-based economic progress. What, broadly stated, are the changes in policy and practice that would encourage the island's sustainable future?

Left to their own devices, vested interests will never push for such innovations. It is easier for developers and more lucrative for public officials to follow the time-worn pathways of conventional practice. The public will be best served only if the rank and file, which according to poll after poll is fed up with traffic jams, shopping-center redundancy, high costs, and pollution, mobilizes a major effort to get what it wants. This worked during the battle to achieve the pine barrens legislation. During the current election season, Long Islanders have a chance to lead the nation again--in the direction of environmentally-based economic security.
 
 

This report was prepared and distributed by the Sustainable Development Institute (SDI), which is solely responsible for its contents. A non-profit research and communications agency based in Washington, D.C., SDI seeks improvement in the environmental quality of economic planning in coastal and in tropical forest regions. Since 1992, in the belief that the clash between heavy development pressures and high environmental values on Long Island constitute a model of national and even international interest, SDI has been conducting research on this interaction.

In May 1996 a book-length version of SDI's findings, by SDI Director and President Roger D. Stone, was published by Waterline Books of Great Falls, Virginia. The book is entitled "Fair Tide: Sailing Toward Long Island's Future." Currently SDI, in partnership with a number of Long Island institutions, is conducting an ongoing effort to secure implementation of this report's recommendations.

For financial assistance that made the entire project possible, SDI expresses its keen appreciation to the following donors:

• The Bernhill Fund
• The Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust
• The Armand G. Erpf Fund
• The Marion O. and Maximilian E. Hoffman Foundation

• American Philosophical Society
• Averell Harriman School of Management and Policy, SUNY-Stony Brook
• Center for Regional Policy Studies, SUNY-Stony Brook
• Central Pine Barrens Joint Planning and Policy Commission
• Citizens Campaign for the Environment
• East End Economic and Environmental Task Force
• Environmental Defense Fund
• Full Sea, Inc.
• Group for the South Fork
• Long Island Association
• Long Island Farm Bureau
• Long Island Maritime Museum
• Long Island Pine Barrens Society
• Long Island Regional Planning Board
• Long Island Research Institute
• Long Island Studies Institute, Hofstra University
• Marine Sciences Research Center, SUNY-Stony Brook
• New York Sea Grant Extension Program
• New York State Department of Environmental Conservation
• New York State Department of State
• North Fork Environmental Council
• Peconic Land Trust, Incorporated
• Regional Plan Association
• Scenic Hudson
• Suffolk County Planning Department
• The Nature Conservancy
• Tri-State Transportation Campaign
• Waste Reduction Management Institute, SUNY-Stony Brook

Sustainable Development Institute
3121 South St., NW
Washington, DC 20007

Phone: 202 338 1017

E-Mail: susdev@igc.org 
 

I Summary

The best way to rebuild Long Island's wounded economy is to nurture, restore, and promote what the region's politicians and developers have for half a century so carelessly squandered: the quality of its once-splendid environment. This pamphlet outlines the rationale and guiding principles for such an effort, then offers 57 specific recommendations for environmentally-based policies or programs that would also stabilize and strengthen the regional economy. The report's conclusion argues that since political leaders are not likely to tackle the proposed agenda voluntarily, success will require the leadership and action of the island's rank-and-file citizens.

1996