ALBANY (AP) -- As a young lawyer, Pete Grannis helped organize the first Earth Day celebration in New York City a few months before he was hired to put teeth into enforcement at a new environmental agency created by then-Gov. Nelson Rockefeller.
In 2007, after 30 years representing upper Manhattan in the state Assembly, Grannis came full circle to rejoin the Department of Environmental Conservation as commissioner. This week, he's traveling around the state in an electric car, visiting the sites of environmental success stories to mark the 40th anniversary of both Earth Day and the DEC.
In a recent interview in his office overlooking the Hudson River in Albany, Grannis looked back at those heady early days of the environmental movement, and ahead at the challenge of protecting the environment with a staff reduced by 400 people and a budget slashed by $32 million in the state's fiscal crisis.
"It was really a magical moment in time," Grannis said. "There was a coalescence of all these interests into something very positive. The (federal Environmental Protection Agency) was created, this agency was created. The Clean Water Act was passed, and the Clean Air Act after that."
As a result, the country's air, land and water are in far better shape than they were four decades ago.
"Forty years ago, there was stuff floating in the Hudson River that you wouldn't want to talk about," Grannis said. "Today, it's swimmable."
The idea for the first Earth Day, celebrated by 20 million Americans on April 22, 1970, was conceived by Sen. Gaylord Nelson, D-Wis. Grannis and four other people were recruited to organize New York City's event.
New York's Mayor John Lindsay shut down Fifth Avenue for a parade and built a massive stage in Union Square.
"It was an amazing outpouring of emotion," Grannis recalls. "The sun came out; the place was packed with people."
Grannis had been a tax lawyer, but Earth Day changed his course. He was hired at the new DEC to oversee a staff of 20 lawyers who were previously used to dealing with polluters with a wink and a handshake.
"Our goal was to change things," Grannis said. "That was the message of Earth Day. People weren't happy with the old ways of letting polluters pollute."
There was resistance from agency lawyers, Grannis said, but the conservation officers, water engineers and others in the field were thrilled. "They were glad to have somebody up there who was prepared to take their work and translate it into real action," he said.
The past four decades in New York have seen the cleanup of about 1,700 polluted sites; rebounding of mountain lakes poisoned by acid rain; preservation of millions of acres of open space and wilderness; modernization of wastewater treatment plants; and resurgence of vanished species such as bald eagles, peregrine falcons, moose and wild turkeys.
"Grannis has been a strong and very thoughtful commissioner who's done a tremendous amount, given the lack of resources in a time of economic crisis," said Rich Schrader of the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Schrader credits Grannis with taking a lead role in developing the 10-state Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, the nation's first carbon cap-and-trade program created to reduce power plant emissions linked to global warming. Quarterly carbon auctions under RGGI have brought the state more than $200 million for sustainable energy programs, half of which was used for a "green jobs" program.
Now the DEC is crafting extensive regulations for natural gas drilling in the state's portion of the massive Marcellus shale formation under the Appalachians. Those regulations may serve as a template for other states dealing with the environmental repercussions of expanded gas drilling.
But Alison Jenkins of Environmental Advocates said DEC is losing steam because of budget cuts.
She said the agency will have 700 fewer employees this year than 20 years ago, with "twice the responsibility" because more laws are being passed that require enforcement.
"The DEC is falling down on the job when it comes to water pollution discharge permits," said Katherine Nadeau of Environmental Advocates. "They've devised a bureaucratic system where 90 percent of polluters only have to fill out a two-page self-evaluation to get their permit renewed for five years."
Grannis admits is the agency is "on a big backslide.
"Every one of our divisions and bureaus is understaffed," he said. "They don't even have gasoline to make site visits."
Grannis sees the groundswell of action against global climate change as reminiscent of the anti-pollution sentiment of the first Earth Day.
"We made huge strides in the past 40 years on the natural environment, and we have to make huge strides even more quickly on climate change if we're going to save the world," Grannis said. "I think citizens actually get it."
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