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NYDEC invites input from Great Lakes work groups

Work group members are encouraged to label their highest priorities.
Veronica Volk
/
WXXI News
Work group members are encouraged to label their highest priorities.

The New York Department of Environmental Conservation is collecting input from local groups associated with the Great Lakes.

Shannon Dougherty is the Great Lakes Watershed Coordinator for the DEC. She says they're holding meetings with work groups throughout the region, and including environmentalists, landowners, and representatives from local government.

"It's a lot of diversity at these meetings which is very exciting. I kind of describe it as putting the puzzle together, kind of figuring out where the priorities are, who is working on what, and where we can work together better and leverage some of our resources."

The DEC is in the process of putting together a Great Lakes Action agenda, which will include goals for improving the health and sustainability of the lakes and surrounding areas. The agenda also includes some of the projects and plans underway working toward that goal.

She and other other representatives met with stakeholders of the Lake Ontario region at the Seneca Park Zoo.

"For this particular one, one of the things that has really come out on top is just the need for more riparian buffers."

A riparian buffer is an area of trees or plants along a stream that acts as a barrier on the waterline. It protects the water from the land's other uses that might cause pollution, and it also creates habitats for the animals that live there.

Dougherty says they've been partnering with programs that restore these buffers, such as Hudson Estuary Trees for Tribs, "tribs" as in tributary, which provides land owners with free trees and shrubs to plant along streamlines.

Dougherty says they will take the priorities and concerns of the work groups into account when creating the agenda.

Veronica Volk is a senior editor and producer for WXXI News.