Name: Charlie Cloud

Social Justice Group: 2018-2019, Ocean Health

Date of Fieldwork: January 28, 2019

Name of Organization: Environmental Law Division of New York City

Person (people) with whom I met and their job titles: Hillary Meltzer the Chief of the Environmental Law Division of New York City

Type of Fieldwork: Interview

What I did:

We talked with Hillary Meltzer who is the Chief of the Environmental Law division of New York City. She talked to us about all the things that NYC is doing to help marine life and to stop pollution.

What I learned:

I learned that NYC has saved massive amounts of water. 30 years ago, NYC used roughly 1.5 billion gallons of water every day. 30 years later, NYC uses around 1 billion gallons of water everyday. They saved half a billion gallons of water. This was mainly accomplished by investing in water saving toilets and other devices in all kinds of places that didn’t do much individually, but together made a big difference.

What I learned about Social Justice “work” and/or Civil and Human rights “work” from this fieldwork:

I learned about how much NYC is doing to help the issue of climate change and pollution. NYC is one of the leading cities in the world the is fighting against these issues. They have tried to cut down energy usage, water usage, pollution, and a lot more. There is one big thing that they have done to preserve energy that I believe is amazing. Almost all of New York water (comes from upstate) comes into the city, not by pumps, but from pure gravity. The amount of energy that has been saved from what would have been pumping billions of gallons of water is astounding.