Environmental Funding

State environmental programs provide a wide array of environmental education, recreation, protection, and conservation programs from supporting open space acquisition to municipal recycling to drinking water protection. CCE works with our partners to ensure adequate and consistent funding.

Since 1993, the Environmental Protection Fund (EPF) has funded a wide variety of programs in every region across New York State. EPF projects improve water quality, protect air quality, conserve open space, save family farms, bolster recycling programs, revitalize waterfronts, build community parks, and much more. CCE fights for robust funding for the EPF in the state budget year after year.

In 2022, New York voters approved the Clean Air, Clean Water, and Green Jobs Bond Act, which is now allocating $4.2 billion to environmental projects that protect clean drinking water, upgrade water infrastructure, preserve open space and family farms, fight climate change, and keep communities safe from extreme weather.

Farming Future

Agriculture sustains our communities, our bodies, and our environment. Over the last 200 years however, the agrarian ideal has changed drastically. Large concentrated animal feeding operations produce waste that can contaminate drinking water, sicken individuals recreating in our nation’s waterways, and lead to massive fish kills. However, this potential for destruction should not force farming out of our great nation.

Preventative and sustainable solutions are available, such as nutrient management plans, encouraging policies that allow smaller farms to thrive, and providing financial assistance to farmers to implement needed farm lot improvements.

CCE is working to help shape important agriculture environmental management policies and decisions by actively participating at the table, engaging key agency staff, educating decision makers and the public on the threats from industrialized agriculture operations and the benefits and solutions for long term agriculture sustainability. Additionally, CCE actively works every year to provide resources for New York State farmers through the Environmental Protection Fund.