New York Archives - Environmental Law Monitor

October 30, 2025 Climate Change / New York

New York to Invest $26 Million to Address Climate Change and Protect Water Quality

Gov. Kathy Hochul recently announced two grant opportunities totaling $26 million for projects aimed at addressing the impact of climate change and protecting water quality across New York State.

Twenty-four million of these funds will be made available through the Climate Resilient Farming Grant Program (CRF), and the remaining $2 million will be provided through the state’s Ecosystem Based Management Program’s Stream Corridor Management Pilot Program.

Climate Resilient Farming Grant Program

The CRF Program is funded through New York’s Environmental Protection Fund and is also …

August 21, 2025 Emissions / New York

Posted by: Kerry L. Jones

New York Moves Forward with Ban on Fossil Fuels in New Constructions

On July 25, the District Court for the Northern District of New York in Mulhern Gas Co. v. Mosely ruled that New York has the power to enact the All-Electric Building Act (AEBA). The decision clears the way for the AEBA to take effect in 2026, making New York the first state to require (most) new buildings to be all electric.

The AEBA was passed by the New York Legislature and signed into law by Governor Hochul back in 2023. Under the AEBA, new single-family …

Recyclable plastic materials stacked at waste sorting plant and sky

July 10, 2025 Legislation / New York

Posted by: Daniel L. Klein

NY Packaging Legislation Gets Wrapped up in Red Tape Again

Last month, the New York State Assembly demurred from taking up a vote for the second time on the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act (“PRRIA”). The PRRIA was designed to cause a restructuring of the life cycle of packaging within the state by fundamentally shifting the burden of handling packaging waste from municipalities and consumers to the corporations manufacturing them in the first place.

As a threshold matter, the PRRIA was intended to reduce plastic packaging by 30 percent within the next 12 years, …

July 3, 2025 New York / Nuclear Power Plants

Posted by: Karen Cullinane

New York State Goes Nuclear

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced June 25 that she is directing New York Power Authority to add at least one gigawatt of new nuclear power generation by building a zero-emission nuclear power plant somewhere in upstate New York.

This announcement, four years after the 2021 closure of the Indian Point nuclear plant due to safety concerns pertaining to nuclear waste disposal, came as a surprise to many who expected the governor to, instead, recommend cap-and-invest regulations pursuant to the Climate Leadership and Community Protection …

June 26, 2025 Legislation / New York

Posted by: Larry D. Mason

New York State Legislature Fails Again to Pass Extended Producer Responsibility Legislation

Influenced by laws in existence in multiple states, including California, Colorado, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, Oregon, and Washington, the New York State Legislature has examined in recent years extended producer responsibility (EPR) legislation intended to hold producers accountable for managing their packaging at the end of life.

The Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act (PRRIA), aka A1749, was proposed to create an EPR program for packaging.

PRRIA would:

Reduce plastic packaging by 30 percent incrementally over 12 years.
Require that by 2052 all packaging

March 13, 2025 Emerging Issues / New York

Posted by: Daniel L. Klein

New York Fighting the Federal Government to Clear the Air on Congestion Pricing

Ask any New Yorker what their top five complaints are about the city and either “traffic” or “gridlock” (or both) are all but certain to be represented.

Indeed, you don’t get to be called “the Business Capital of the World” without piling enough people on to the Island of Manhattan to get that business done, and the result has been that the ‘City that Never Sleeps’ has ‘Traffic that Never Moves.’

At least, until recently, when, on January 5, after six years in development, the …

October 5, 2023 New York

Posted by: Goldberg Segalla

New York City Planning Commission Approves Zoning Changes Aimed at Meeting City’s Climate Goals

On September 11, 2023, the New York City Planning Commission (CPC) approved the first of several rezoning proposals from Mayor Eric Adams aimed at reducing carbon emissions to reach the city’s climate goals. Specifically, New York has set the year 2050 as the target date by which it hopes to reduce its carbon emissions by 80 percent. The rezoning proposal, called the “City of Yes for Carbon Neutrality,” includes 17 citywide zoning changes that are designed to remove “barriers to greener energy, buildings, and water …

July 20, 2023 New York / Regulations

Posted by: Karen Cullinane

NYC Proposes New Indoor Air Quality Regs to Combat Orange Dystopia

In the fall of 2020, when New Yorkers saw photos and videos of orange skies over San Francisco caused by the Bay Area’s infamous fog, combined with heavy smoke from what seemed like non-stop wildfires raging throughout California, it looked like a dystopian movie landscape, or even another planet. Even more surreal, Californians in these vivid images were often wearing masks — not necessarily as protection against the smoky skies, but, rather, as protection from a global pandemic. With time, however, the memory of those …

March 16, 2023 Emerging Issues / New York

Posted by: Goldberg Segalla

New York May Adopt Extended Producer-Responsibility Laws to Combat Consumer Waste

New York may be on board to be the fifth state in the nation to hold producers responsible for packaging products.

Thus far, Maine, Oregon, Colorado, and California have enacted extended producer-responsibility laws. The EPR laws assign both financial and operational responsibility for the end of life of products, and are an important tool for managing and lowering consumer waste. In other words, the programs require the producers of packaging products to finance the costs of recycling or disposing of products that consumers no longer …

Aerial view to industrial zone and technology park.

January 5, 2023 Legislation / New York

Posted by: Karen Cullinane

New York State Passes Landmark Environmental Justice Legislation

On the final day of 2022, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed into law the Cumulative Impacts Bill (CIB), which both houses of New York State’s legislature had passed eight months earlier in the year (language here: S.8830 and A.2103D). The legislation amends New York’s Environmental Quality Review Act by now requiring the State to consider during its permitting approval and renewal processes an analysis of the “cumulative impacts” on overburdened communities that could result over time from the introduction or expansion of facilities …