Energy Efficiency for Buildings - NYC - Community Environmental Center

Help for Brooklyn Home Ravaged by Hurricane Sandy

Alexis Greene — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 22:01:47 +0000

Stella S. remembers when the ocean invaded her home in Sea Gate, in Coney Island, Brooklyn.

“My basement was totally destroyed,” she said during a recent telephone interview. “Five feet of water. You can still see the water line. It was very scary.”

It has taken 7 months, but Stella’s basement has finally been repaired, largely with the assistance of a grant that the Robin Hood Relief Fund made to the nonprofit Community Environmental Center (CEC). Rapid Repair provided a new boiler and a new water heater, says Stella, who for most of those seven months could not live in the house she and her late husband had bought 25 years earlier. She rented a place at the home of a friend.

Since Hurricane Sandy struck in October 2012, Robin Hood has made more than $71 million in grants to nearly 400 organizations in the tri-state area, including $100,000 to Community Environmental Center (CEC) to help repair 20 homes damaged by Sandy.

“When we first saw the house, the mold that the water saturation produced had finally been removed,” said Irving Jackson, one of the CEC crew members that worked on Stella’s three-story home. “But due to the storm, this basement was unlivable. There were no studs along the walls, no sheetrock and in some cases no flooring – just earth.”

Over the course of three days, the CEC crew installed studs, a plywood floor, cellulose insulation for all the external walls, and new sheetrock.

There is still work for Stella to do, in order to bring her house back to pre-Sandy condition, and she will never recover items such as her late husband’s tools, which the ocean swept away. Before the flood, the basement contained a kitchen and two bathrooms. “This is just one big open space now,” she says.

But, she says, “I am very appreciative of all the work CEC did. I have a wooden floor. I am happy.” And then she adds, “I hope it will never happen again.”

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Climate change and NYC non-profits

webmaster — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 22:11:59 +0000

Josh Wolfe

“Climate is what you expect, weather is what you get” –Mark Twain

Ever since Superstorm Sandy, all we can talk about in NYC climate circles is the next storm. Are we prepared, can we prepare, is it practical to prepare? All are valid and important questions that need to be asked on a city-wide level, but for the average non-profit in the city there are more important questions: What do we expect from our climate and how will we cope with changes?

The first thing that comes to mind is vulnerable populations. Small changes can be devastating for those already living on the edge. Three key areas to look at in preparing to serve those populations in a changing climate are temperature, extreme weather and flooding.

Temperature: A recent study in Nature Climate Change, by Taintain Li at Beijing University, and Radley Horton and Patrick Kinney at Columbia University, predicts that deaths from heat waves will increase in NYC by as much as 10-15% by 2050.

That suggests we need to expand cooling-center opportunities and make sure vulnerable populations have access to, and can afford, air conditioning during the summer months. The non-profit communities’ ability to identify vulnerable populations and direct resources their way during heat waves is crucial to safety during extreme temperatures. The 1995 heat wave in Chicago that led to approximately 750 deaths is a devastating reminder of the consequences of not preparing for the summer heat.

Extreme Weather: This applies to winter storms and tropical storms/hurricanes/superstorms. Some in climate circles have argued that instead of “global warming” we should say “global weirdness,” because weather events of all types are doing unusual things. This is especially true of snowstorms. The Associated Press phrased it best in a headline: ‘Climate Change could mean less snow but more ‘knockout punches.’ Essentially, the snow season will be shorter in a warmer world, but warmer air with greater moisture content will produce a stronger snow event when temperatures get cold enough for a snowstorm.

As with their approach toward the extreme temperature events associated with climate change, non-profits can play an important role in identifying vulnerable populations, making sure these at-risk men, women and children have the heating they need, as well as access to medical care and sustenance in case a storm paralyzes the city’s infrastructure. Travel during storms is hazardous, yet the need to check-in on vulnerable populations continues. It’s important for non-profits to develop plans and work with city agencies to make sure their winter-weather plans are sound.

When it comes to storms like Superstorm Sandy, the next one will be different: When Hurricane Irene hit in 2011, we prepared for another Hurricane Irene. Instead we got Sandy. Now, as we prepare for the next Sandy, there is once again a danger of preparing for the wrong storm. Adam Sobel of Columbia University and Tim Hall of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies have a paper under review that calculates the chance of another storm with the same trajectory hitting our region to be 0.14 percent or a 1-700 year chance.

That said, climate change does affect weather events in a variety of ways, and we need to prepare for the extreme weather that will hit our region. There are many possibilities for how the next storm might hit us, and preparing for previous storms isn’t the same as learning the lessons of previous storms. For the non-profit community, the focus should be on basic preparedness. Emergency kits, flash lights, evacuation procedures for vulnerable populations, communications systems that can operate in a power outage — possibly even backup generators. But above all, just because the next storm won’t be another Sandy or Irene, means that we have to prepare for something we’ve never experienced before and that is a daunting challenge.

Flooding: Another lesson of Sandy, which translates to any storm, is the climate vulnerability of more extensive areas of NYC than we anticipate. Areas of the city that had not seen rising water in at least a generation were inundated. It’s important to look at buildings for climate vulnerability now, so that, when the next storm hits, we are prepared. Among other lessons, Sandy showed the vulnerability of HVAC systems in basements, leaving some buildings without heat for weeks.

We often think about the federal, state and local officials’ responsibilities in terms of climate change, but community organizations have an important role in protecting our city from the worst effects of climate change. These suggestions are in no way exhaustive, but a starting point for non-profit climate planning.

When it comes to climate change and NYC non-profits, it is not important to worry about fixing everything, but to create practical plans that utilize each organization’s strengths in an era of climate instability.

Joshua Wolfe is the owner of Skypunch Creative, a Brooklyn-based firm that specializes in energy, environment and climate. He has spent more than a decade crafting projects that tackle some of the most important issues of our time, including sustainable energy, the environment and climate change. Along with Gavin Schmidt of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Josh is co-author of Climate Change: Picturing the Science (W.W. Norton & Company, 2009). According to NPR, “It’s an important subject, and Wolfe and Schmidt make a compelling case that we should care.”

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BIG!Compost — Composting NYC Style

webmaster — Wed, 29 May 2013 20:53:33 +0000

They look like icky food scraps now, but soon they will help make a rich compost

BIG!Compost, a program of Build It Green!NYC, is adding 4 new food scrap drop-off locations to its network of existing sites where New Yorkers can bring their food scraps for local composting. New sites include the Forest Hills Greenmarket, Commuter Composting at Vernon Jackson Ave 7 train in Queens, Commuter Composting at Greenpoint Ave G train, and the Build It Green!NYC Warehouse in Gowanus, Brooklyn. With many seasonal sites opening in June as well, there will be a total of 15 locations (bignyc.org/drop-sites) open throughout the week, for New York City residents to make a difference in their communities through composting.

The Commuter Composting Greenpoint Avenue G and Vernon Jackson Ave 7 train drop-off locations are part of a new initiative that was started in March 2013 at the Broadway N/Q train stop in Astoria. “Our goal is to make composting as easy as possible for residents,” says BIG!Compost Development and Public Engagement Coordinator Gina Baldwin. “By setting up food-scrap drop-offs in locations where residents are walking past every day on the way to work, we hope to engage New Yorkers who may not be aware of how easy and fun it is to divert food waste from the landfill.”

Each year, NYC residents throw away 650,000 tons of food scraps, most of which is transported hundreds of miles away to landfills through a system that disproportionately burdens low-income neighborhoods and permanently discards potential assets. In these landfills, the food breaks down anaerobically, generating local air pollution and methane — a powerful climate change gas. Meanwhile, street tree stewards, conservation groups, parks, and community gardeners are confronted with the enormous challenge of growing their projects in soils of poor quality, and are forced to source healthy growing mediums from outside the city. BIG!Compost’s work tackles these challenges simultaneously by providing a local solution for recycling organic material, and producing a source of remediation and revitalization for NYC’s urban soils: compost.

Residents can participate in food-scrap drop-offs by bringing scraps from vegetables, fruits, coffee, and tea (full list at http://www.bignyc.org/what-compost-0). Meat, oily foods, dairy, and bones are not accepted. Freezing food scraps is recommended to keep odors down both in the kitchen and at drop-off sites. An easy way to transport materials is in a paper or plastic bag, or reusable container.

BIG!Compost is made possible through generous funding from the North Star Fund’s Greening Western Queens Fund and is a partner with the NYC Department of Sanitation’s NYC Compost Project Local Organics Recovery Program (bit.ly/nycLORP).

Community Environmental Center is the parent company of BIG!NYC. Gina Baldwin is the BIG!Compost Development and Public Engagement Coordinator

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Epoch Times Profiles Richard Cherry

Alexis Greene — Mon, 20 May 2013 13:43:29 +0000

This is New York: Richard Cherry, Engrossed in Solving Problems
By Amelia Pang, Epoch Times | May 3, 2013

NEW YORK—When they were kids, Richard Cherry and his best friend used to dream of becoming lawyers. They would sit on the steps of his friend’s house in east Brooklyn and try to find simple solutions to complicated problems.

Little did Cherry know at the time that one day he would work for the Pentagon, and then stumble upon urban environmental sustainability before it became a mainstream concern.

Although Cherry, 70, graduated with a philosophy degree from Cornell and a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania, his first job was as a foreign policy analyst at the Pentagon.

In the 1960s, during the Cold War, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara was looking for fresh ideas. “I was hired as a new mind that had never done anything with foreign policy, to come and think bright thoughts about foreign policy,” Cherry said.

During two years at the Pentagon, Cherry’s work varied from helping to curb nuclear proliferation to planning who the ambassador should have dinner with in Britain.

“Before I left, they drained everything out of my brain,” he said, adding that overall Washington had been a frustrating experience.

“Sometimes just being bright isn’t good enough. People were very resistant to me,” he said.

After leaving foreign policy, Cherry worked for the U.S. Court of Appeals, before getting hired as a lawyer for a major Wall Street firm.

“I loved solving problems. Somewhere as a kid I must have got the idea that law was the way to [solve problems]. But as I found out, law mainly consists of drafting papers,” he said.

“You don’t work that much with people. You work with corporations,” he said. “That is one of the things that was missing in law practice.”

“Other lawyers there got very excited about working in a multimillion-dollar building, even though we were just drafting papers,” he said. “That was not exciting for me.”

One day at the office, the Urban Affairs Coalition (UAC) came in asking for discounted assistance with some legal issues, and Cherry’s firm assigned him to take on the work. Initially, he thought that it would be temporary, and that he would return to his previous work in two years’ time.

“As you can see, I still haven’t found my way back yet,” Cherry said.

Now Cherry says he enjoys solving intellectual challenges that directly deal with interpersonal relationships in the real world.

Cherry spent over 20 years at the UAC, “doing things the city had never done before.” He works with community groups, creating affordable housing for the needy.

“Government used to not fund rehabilitation housing, only new developments,” he said. “I led the way in getting [the need for] the rehabilitation of housing understood.”

“Where there is a will, there is a way. You can make it happen even if it’s never been done before,” he said. “But you need to understand that fate can change plans, and you need to be responsive.”

Due to a chain of events, the UAC board of directors decided to dissolve the coalition at a time when Cherry was the acting president.

“I was 50 years old then and trying to figure out what to do next with my life,” he said.

Starting Over at Age 50

Cherry got involved in environmental work at first more to have a job than out of interest.

“I just needed a job,” he joked. As it turned out, the job was exactly the way to solve more problems.

In 1994, Cherry founded the Community Environmental Center (CEC), a nonprofit that focuses on urban environmental issues. Cherry was in his early 50s at the time.

“It was scary. It was really starting over with things I had never done before,” he said. “I wasn’t sure whether it would last or whether we could be successful, but a brave group of 18 people came with me from the coalition.”

For the first five years, prior to receiving government funding, it was very difficult to accomplish any initiatives at the CEC, he said.

Twenty years ago, caring about the environment used to mean dealing with a forest or a jungle, Cherry said. “I became environmental about New York at a time when no one thought of urban nature.”

“We were one of the first organizations to focus on environmental issues in the city,” he said.

After about five years, the government began to recognize CEC’s work and provide funding. In 2009, CEC installed the first energy-efficient solar hot water systems in multifamily buildings in Brooklyn.

From 1994 to 2011, CEC retrofitted 17,752 housing units through New York state’s Weatherization Assistance Program, which provides financial assistance to needy households to improve energy efficiency using advanced technologies. The CEC weatherized a total of 9,611 low-income family homes.

A Warm Work Environment

Using the stimulus money the organization received, Cherry hired and trained unemployed New Yorkers.

“I heard them say it gave them hope. … That’s the most exciting thing to see,” he said.

The CEC has not only received the 2013 Environmental Quality Award, but has also made it onto Crain’s 50 Best Places to Work in NYC in 2010.

“I think I’ve proven here that one can be caring about people and still be successful,” he said.

“I grew up in a time when there was peace—people weren’t fighting everywhere in the world, and there was lots of hope,” Cherry added.

“As young people, we grew up feeling that if we did our homework and we were good people, we would succeed,” Cherry said. “We didn’t have to worry about anything else.”

“I really wish things could turn around so that people who are starting out now can feel that help that I grew up with.”

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Bronx Girl Cheers On the EcoHouse

Alexis Greene — Wed, 15 May 2013 19:37:18 +0000

Bronx students visit the EcoHouse
This week the Community Environmental Center EcoHouse is in the Bronx. In the Soundview neighborhood of the South Central Bronx, to be exact, opposite Holy Cross School at 620 Thieriot Avenue. It’s Bronx Week, after all – a celebration of “The Best of the Bronx” – and the EcoHouse will be there through May 22 to help local residents learn about saving energy in their homes and apartments, and protecting the environment.

Noëlle Santos, Human Resources Manager for Community Environmental Center (CEC), grew up in Soundview.

“I had a great childhood,” Noëlle recalls, talking one spring morning in the conference room at CEC’s offices in Queens.

She grew up on Thieriot Avenue, in fact, across the street from the Monroe Houses. Her family was one of the few that lived in a privately owned building, surrounded by public housing developments. She relished the greenery in nearby Soundview Park and liked going to school (including Holy Cross School, for one year). She appreciated the discipline.

“It was a great upbringing, despite the challenges of the environment,” she says. “I had dedicated teachers, like-minded friends and involved parents. Not everyone was so fortunate. You could easily become a negative statistic. But I was exposed to greater possibilities and taught to balance things.” Then this attractive, personable woman laughs. “I knew I needed to get good grades or my butt was going to get whipped.”

Through a combination of what Noëlle calls “my support system” and “personal will,” she got a day job after high school and attended Lehman College at night, graduating with a Bachelor’s in Business Administration. There followed an accounting position in the Human Resources department of the East Side House Settlement, on Alexander Avenue, where Noëlle developed her passion for Human Resources work. She returned to Lehman to earn a Master’s in Human Resources Management.

Noëlle’s family still has a presence in Soundview, where they own and run daycare centers and after-school programs for youngsters. A few years ago, Noëlle herself returned there to live, after a fire destroyed her apartment in Parkchester.

“The neighborhood has changed,” Noelle notes sadly. Although the neighborhood around Holy Cross School and the EcoHouse is dotted with well-kept houses and pleasant streets, Noëlle reports that things are not as great as when she was growing up. A number of schools have vanished, and unemployment and crime are up. “There’s nothing for kids to do there now,” she observes.

So she was especially pleased to learn that Community Environmental Center was bringing its free, mobile EcoHouse to her neighborhood.

Designed and built by CEC in 2012, the EcoHouse looks, on the outside, like a red-brick house on wheels. Inside are hands-on exhibits about how to keep your home or apartment energy efficient. There’s a lighting display that shows how much money you save by using energy-efficient bulbs, and a shower that you can actually walk into (and not get wet). CEC’s expert guides talk about the energy-efficient boiler, wall insulation and energy-efficient appliances.

“You have to make people proud of where they live,” says Noelle. “And helping people learn about their homes, and how to take care of them and save energy and save money, is a wonderful way to start.”

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The EcoHouse on News 12 The Bronx

webmaster — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 21:43:28 +0000

News 12 The Bronx visits the EcoHouse in Soundview – Click through to view the feature on News 12′s website, for a firsthand look through the EcoHouse’s interactive exhibits.

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EcoHouse Earth Day

Katherine Gloede — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 20:10:42 +0000

Students enjoying the EcoHouse
Over the next week, millions worldwide will celebrate Mother Nature and protecting our planet for Earth Week. The Earth Day Network has named this year’s theme climate change, and with that in mind the Community Environmental Center will celebrate EcoHouse Earth Day with a day-long event for all ages at Foley Square in downtown Manhattan on Monday, April 22nd.

EcoHouse Earth Day will feature tours of the Community Environmental Center EcoHouse, eco-friendly painting of Earth Day banners, an interactive electricity demonstration, and more. Educators are invited to bring their classes for a morning or afternoon visit filled with educational crafts and games appropriate for any grade level. Students will learn the basics of energy efficiency and conservation through an EcoHouse tour, which allows visitors to see behind the walls and beneath the floors of a model home, and teaches how to think sustainably and why it’s so important to conserve our natural resources.

From 2:00 PM to 5:00 PM EcoHouse Earth Day will be open to the public, and visitors will be able to tour the EcoHouse, participate in family-friendly activities, and learn the many ways to go green this spring from organizations such as Build it Green!NYC and Green Mountain Energy.

Community Environmental Center invites everyone to join us for this unique celebration about preserving our resources and limiting the effects of climate change through the simple choices we make each day. EcoHouse Earth Day is free for all visitors.

For more information and to sign your class up for an EcoHouse Earth Day visit, contact Katherine Gloede at kgloede@cecenter.org or by calling (718) 784-1444 ext. 181. To learn more about the EcoHouse and see our current location and hours, visit us online at www.cecenter.org/ecohouse or like us on Facebook: EcoHouse NYC.

We hope to see you for EcoHouse Earth Day!

Katherine Gloede is the Project Manager for the Community Environmental Center EcoHouse

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Teaching Young People to Save Energy

Alexis Greene — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 21:06:44 +0000

Students crowd around the EcoHouse in Brooklyn
Brooklyn students study the light display at the EcoHouse
The 8th-graders from Brooklyn’s I.S. 364 sat at Community Environmental Center’s EcoHouse light display, mesmerized. They gazed at compact fluorescent lights side-by-side with LEDs, side-by-side with an incandescent bulb. Flip a switch, and a meter revealed how much electricity each bulb used. “My favorite part about the EcoHouse,” one boy later wrote, “is when they showed us the energy-saving light bulbs and the ones that use more energy, even though they aren’t any brighter.”

The nonprofit Community Environmental Center (CEC), a Queens nonprofit that has brought energy efficiency to the city’s residential buildings and homes for 20 years, believes that teaching people to save energy on their own is essential.

And so in 2012, CEC designed and built the Community Environmental Center EcoHouse. Resembling a red-brick house-on-wheels outside, inside it’s a 21st-century environmental classroom: there’s a shower you can walk into, to compare the rates at which a low-flow shower head and the old-fashioned kind provide water; there’s an energy-efficient heating system, a display comparing three kinds of insulation (including shredded denim) – and much more.

“’Energy-saving’ is pretty important in these days of climate change,” says Richard Cherry, CEC’s president. “Especially in a city like New York, with nearly 1 million buildings. After all, buildings and homes use at least 1/3 of the energy consumed in the United States.”

“What’s really terrific,” says Cherry, “is the eagerness that young people bring to the EcoHouse. They are fascinated by the light exhibit, by the insulation display, the water-conservation display. And they are the ones who, when they grow up, will really have to deal with the effects of climate change.”

Of the more than 4,000 visitors that have come to the EcoHouse since it began traveling around New York City in October 2012, the majority have been students from the city’s public schools, especially schools with dedicated environmental education programs.

In January and February 2013, the EcoHouse was co-hosted by I.S. 204 Oliver W. Holmes in Queens, which includes The Magnet School for Living Green in a Global Society. The I.S. 204 Magnet theme involves energy conservation, reducing consumption and practicing sustainability.

Says Yvonne Leimsider, I.S. 204’s Principal, “The ideas behind ‘Reduce, Reuse, Recycle’ should be used everywhere in our homes. They should guide our choice of light bulbs; heating and cooling systems; the materials we use to insulate the walls; the cleaning products we buy. So the EcoHouse is a terrific tool for bringing these ideas to life for our students.”

Indeed, the principles that guide I.S. 204’s Magnet curriculum also guide the EcoHouse. Basically, as students learn more about conserving energy, they will practice saving energy in their daily lives and know the value of developing alternative resources such as sun and wind and biofuels.

Habits are set early, and it’s never too soon for students to learn how their actions, for good or ill, can affect the health of our planet.

From April 10 through April 23, the EcoHouse will be at Foley Square in lower Manhattan. To become a corporate sponsor for the EcoHouse, please contact Alexis Greene: agreene@cecenter.org.

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Gillibrand Hails Queens Non-Profits As Environmental Champions

Alexis Greene — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 22:07:50 +0000

After Gillibrand Nomination, Community Environmental Center and the American Littoral Society Win Prestigious Environmental Award

Long Island City, NY – March 21 – The Community Environmental Center (CEC) is pleased to announce that it will receive the 2013 Environmental Quality Award, along with the American Littoral Society. Nominated by New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, both non-profits will receive the Environmental Protection Agency’s prestigious honor for their commitment and significant contributions to greening the city.

“I congratulate these outstanding Queens groups for their dedication to creating a cleaner New York,” said Senator Gillibrand. “From improving the city’s quality of life, to creating new local green jobs, these environmental champions will help lead the way towards a green energy future for our city and our country.”

“Community Environmental Center is honored to receive this award from the EPA and we want to thank our great Senator from New York, Kirsten Gillibrand, for nominating us,” said Richard Cherry, President of the Community Environmental Center. “Community Environmental Center has been bringing energy efficiency to New York City residents for nearly 20 years. We deeply believe that there is a need to keep fighting the effects of climate change by making our buildings and homes sustainable. We all have an enormous challenge ahead of us, but with help from organizations such as the EPA and from our elected officials, if we work together, we can protect this earth for our children to live on. Our motto is: ‘Helping to save our fragile earth, one building at a time.’”

“As stewards and advocates for Jamaica Bay and New York’s coastal environment we greatly appreciated the nomination from Senator Gillibrand and are thrilled that we are being recognized for our restoration and educational work,” said Don Riepe, Director of the American Littoral Society’s Northeast Chapter. “I and my staff look forward to receiving the award on April 19th.”

Established in 1994, the Community Environmental Center is a non-profit leader in the growing field of energy efficiency. Located in Long Island City, Queens and serving the entire New York Metropolitan Area, CEC has been a major provider of construction and technical services for green buildings, and a proponent of green living and working conditions, especially for underserved populations. CEC recently unveiled EcoHouse, a mobile environmental learning center showcasing energy efficiency building technologies that travels to schools and community events. From 1994 to 2011, CEC retrofitted 17,752 housing units through New York State’s Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP). In 2003, CEC founded Solar One, NYC’s first solar-powered Green Energy, Arts, and Education Center; and, in 2005, Build It Green!NYC, NYC’s first not-for-profit program committed to salvaging building materials and furnishings.

Headquartered in New Jersey with a northeast chapter located in Broad Channel, Queens, the American Littoral Society has promoted the study and conservation of marine life and habitat and empowered citizens to care for the coast through advocacy, conservation, and education since 1961. Following Hurricane Sandy, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation commissioned the Society to coordinate a regional assessment to evaluate environmental impacts the storm had on coastal habitats and its species. The resulting study identified both region wide impacts, changes to specific habitats, and a focus on protecting conservation areas such as national wildlife refuges.

Awards, which recognize individuals and organizations that have improved the environment and public health in EPA Region 2 (New York, New Jersey, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and seven federally-recognized Indian Nations), will be formally presented to New York organizations in a ceremony on Friday, April 19th at the EPA Regional Headquarters in Lower Manhattan.
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The EcoHouse at Inwood Hill Park

Alexis Greene — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 18:14:39 +0000

Youngsters explore the lighting exhibit at the EcoHouse
When Hurricane Sandy struck last October, the water rose 4 ½ feet inside the Inwood Hill Nature Center, at Inwood Hill Park in Northern Manhattan. Exhibits were destroyed, and the heating system was ruined. The building is still closed.

That’s where the Community Environmental Center EcoHouse comes in. At the suggestion of the City of New York Parks and Recreation, the EcoHouse – a free, mobile, environmental exhibit — will be at Inwood Hill Park from March 16 through April 5, right across from the Nature Center near the entrance at 218th Street and Indian Road. Co-hosted by the Nature Center, the EcoHouse will be open to school groups M-F, 10am – 3pm, and open to the general public M-F, 3pm – 5pm and Saturday, 11:00am – 4pm.

“The Community Environmental Center EcoHouse is a terrific tool for teaching all of us about saving energy in our homes and protecting the environment,” says CEC’s founder and president, Richard Cherry. “It’s really a 21st-century classroom. We hope the EcoHouse will draw visitors and help revitalize this very special park in early spring.”

The 196-acre Inwood Hill Park is one of the oldest areas of New York City, according to the City of New York Parks and Recreation web site. Caves, valleys and ridges were formed by shifting glaciers, and archeologists date human settlement in the area to prehistoric times.

Community Environmental Center (CEC), the Queens nonprofit that brings energy efficiency to residential buildings and homes throughout New York City, designed and built the EcoHouse in 2012 and takes it to sites all over Gotham. Outside it resembles a red-brick house; inside are exhibits about conserving water, saving electricity, heating and cooling a home — and much more.

“Energy efficiency really depends on people,” says CEC’s Cherry. “We can insulate buildings, but unless the people who live in them understand why it’s vital to use energy-efficient light bulbs or conserve water – then we haven’t really done our job. That’s the mission of the EcoHouse.”

Fun as well as educational, the EcoHouse is an ideal experience for both youngsters and their parents. Wall signs explain all the displays, but to really get the full EcoHouse effect, listen to CEC’s expert guides, or bring your cell or smart phone and listen to the audio guide.

For more information about how to visit the EcoHouse at Inwood Hill Park, or to arrange a group tour, contact Katherine Gloede, kgloede@cecenter.org. Press inquiries, please contact Alexis Greene, agreene@cecenter.org and/or 718-784-1444, ext. 156.

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