North Country towns and villages are becoming increasingly interested in conversion to LED street lights, says Clean Energy Communities Coordinator Jamie Rogers of Adirondack-North Country Association. Communities in St. Lawrence, Franklin, Essex, Clinton, Lewis, Jefferson and Hamilton counties are studying LED lighting issues and working to identify the steps they need to take. ANCA is providing outreach to planning departments and elected officials to supply needed information.

The towns of Belmont, Westport, Elizabethtown, Franklin and Malone along with the villages of Canton, Champlain and Crogan have expressed an interest in converting their street lighting to LEDs. Conversion to LED street lights in New York State requires a host of decisions in each community. Among them is determining whether to wait for the utility to develop an LED street light tariff, or to start proceedings to buy the street lights from the utility. In New York State, the Public Service Commission does not require utilities to sell their street lights if asked. In the North Country, National Grid has an LED tariff for communities that wish to continue renting their lights and has not yet begun working with those that wish to purchase their street lights.

ANCA is working with the Town of Westport in Essex County and with the County of Lewis to achieve other High Impact Action items. Upcoming activities for these two communities include completion of benchmarking work, finishing up their energy code training, working to approve clean fleet agreements and kicking off a solarize campaign this spring. Frank Pace has been appointed by the Lewis County Legislature to act as the county liaison to the CEC program.

In the Village of Canton, energy champion Carol Gable serves as chair of the Canton Sustainability Committee. In that capacity, the St. Lawrence University executive works closely with Mayor Michael Dalton and with volunteers like herself who are dedicated to advancing the Village’s sustainability work. “The mayor has been so supportive of our work,” noted Gable.

St. Lawrence University offered to help the Village develop a Sustainability Committee several years ago. Today, there are three subcommittees: Energy, Transportation and Food/Composting. The committee has supported the Village’s retention of Solar City, which is structuring a Power Purchase Agreement for a 2MW municipal solar project that will come on line this summer. The remote net metered project, which will power the Village’s municipal buildings, is being built on a 16-acre site on Route 11.

With the advent of NYSERDA’s Clean Energy Communities program, the Village decided to compete for that funding stream because it has been moving forward on a number of fronts that dovetail with the required High Impact Actions: Solarize, Unified Solar Permit, Code Enforcement Training, LED street lights and Benchmarking.

The Sustainability Committee includes Village Trustee Carol Pynchon, Doug Welch, Anne Heidenreich and Village Superintendent (public works) Brien Hallahan. Louise Gava also served on the committee when she was the sustainability coordinator at St. Lawrence University. Gava now works for the Municipal Electric and Gas Alliance (MEGA).

Gable said she appreciates the help offered to Canton by ANCA’s “circuit riders” David Bradford and Matt Bullwinkle, who provide technical assistance to communities, including Canton.