Sessions
Sustainable New Jersey - Can we go Green?
This special section will look at where New Jersey stands (and where we need to be) in the sustainability of our air, water, land, transportation, energy and agriculture. The panel will showcase other regions of the nation and world that have implemented plans to improve both their environment and economy and how we can strategize and overcome obstacles to improve the quality of life in New Jersey citizens.
Featured Speakers:
CHAIR
Global Warming and Clean Energy Advocate
Suzanne Leta Liou
Environment New Jersey
Suzanne directs the energy program for Environment New Jersey, a
statewide, non-profit, non-partisan citizen-based environmental advocacy
organization that is the new home for NJPIRG's environmental work.
Suzanne is currently heading up Environment New Jersey's Global Warming
Solutions and New Energy Future campaigns.
Suzanne co-authored "Consolidation of Power: How Exelon's Takeover of PSEG Could Raise Rates, Reduce Reliability and Risk Public Safety" and "A Blueprint for Action: Policy Options to Reduce New Jersey's Contribution to Global Warming," which was released September. She has also organized campaigns to stop Exelon's proposed takeover of PSEG, the largest electricity buy-out in the country, and to close the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant on schedule and directed citizen outreach offices in Princeton and New Brunswick.
Suzanne graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 2003. She is a
member of the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities' Clean Energy Council
and a Senior Associate in the Delaware Valley Environmental Leaders
Program.
Karen Anderson
Northeast Organic Farming Association of New Jersey
Karen Anderson is the executive director of the Northeast Organic Farming Association of New Jersey. She joined NOFA-NJ in November of 1997 as certification administrator and was appointed executive director in February 1999. She currently serves as co-chair of the National Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture, and on the boards of the NJ Environmental Federation and the NJ Agricultural Society. She was appointed by Gov. Jim McGreevey as a public representative to NJ State Agriculture Development Committee in 2004. From 2001-2003 Ms. Anderson was a Food and Society Policy Fellow, writing and lecturing on organic agriculture, community-based food systems and farm and farmland preservation. She has an M.S.L.S. from Catholic University and a B.S.F.S. in International Affairs from Georgetown University.
President
Richard S. Dovey
Atlantic County Utilities Authority (ACUA)
Richard S. Dovey is President of the Atlantic County Utilities Authority (ACUA), a position he has held since 1990. Mr. Dovey oversees a staff of 250, an annual operating budget of $60 million, and a capital budget averaging $6 million yearly.
The ACUA operates a wastewater treatment plant in Atlantic City, NJ, and a regional sewerage collection system serving 14 municipalities in Atlantic County. The ACUA also operates an extensive solid waste management system in Egg Harbor Township, NJ that includes a landfill, a recycling processing center, a vegetative waste composting facility, a waste transfer station, a vehicle maintenance center, and a recycling and trash collection system serving 100,000 homes and businesses in Atlantic County.
While Mr. Dovey has served as president, ACUA wastewater and solid waste operations have been nationally recognized for excellence in innovation, efficiency, and environmental stewardship. Mr. Dovey has been a strong proponent of alternative energy and has initiated many green projects at the ACUA, most notably the construction of New Jersey’s first windfarm in Atlantic City.
A leader in the New Jersey environmental infrastructure and utility community, Mr. Dovey has served as chairman of the New Jersey Solid Waste Advisory Council and on the Board of Trustees of the New Jersey Association of Environmental Authorities (AEA). Mr. Dovey is also active in numerous community organizations.
Prior to joining the ACUA, he was department head of Regional Planning and Development for Atlantic County Government for eight years, and manager of the Rutland County, Vermont, Solid Waste District for two years. Mr. Dovey graduated from the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, Pomona, NJ, with a bachelor of arts degree in urban studies. Since 1986 he has resided in Egg Harbor City, NJ, with his wife Mary and their three children, Kate, Luke and Scott.
Dr. Melvin S. Finstein
ArrowBio
Melvin S. Finstein (B.S. 1959 and M.S. 1961, Cornell University; Ph.D. 1965, University of California, Berkeley) served as Professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, from 1965 to 1999, and is now Emeritus Professor. He is author or coauthor of many scientific and technical publications on microbial aspects of environmental pollution, with emphasis on the control of solid waste treatment processes.
In 2000 while giving guest lectures at the Israel Institute of Technology,
Haifa, Dr. Finstein visited a developmental version of the ArrowBio
process for unsorted municipal solid waste (MSW). Its unique approach to
preprocessing, use of advanced anaerobic digestion, and integration of the
two, was so intriguing that, upon further investigation, he came to
represent the system in the USA and elsewhere. Since then, a full scale
ArrowBio plant came into operation at the Tel Aviv MSW transfer station,
and a 100,000 ton per year facility is under construction near Sydney,
Australia.
Sales Account Manager
Mike Fisher
Community Energy
After nearly ten years in the renewable energy and energy efficiency fields, Mike joined Community Energy in 2004 in the Commercial & Industrial Renewable Energy sales division. Before CEI Mike served for one-year with Americorps Green Light’s program where he was able to save more than $750,000 for public schools in Montana, Oregon and Washington through energy efficiency upgrades with a payback under 5 years. On the policy side, Mike was the lead researcher and co-author of a novel three-year energy efficiency pilot program that was ratified and funded by the capital city of Olympia, WA. After having lived off-grid in a solar home installing residential solar and wind systems, Mike moved back to his hometown to be closer to family. In CEI, where evangelizing the message of clean energy and linking customer demand to new wind farm development, Mike has found a marriage of personal and professional missions.
Community Energy is proud to have built New Jersey’s first wind farm and the nations first commercial scale coastal wind farm in Atlantic City. Community Energy is working with Fortune 500 companies and over 60 colleges & universities, including the top two and six out of the top ten green power purchasers nationally, to commercialize America’s vast wind resource to ensure a clean and secure energy future.
Executive Director
Captain Bill Sheehan
Hackensack Riverkeeper, Inc.
Captain Bill Sheehan, the Hackensack Riverkeeper, is a lifelong resident of the Hackensack River area, having lived most of his life in Union City and Secaucus, New Jersey. He is a dedicated, active conservationist who founded Hackensack Riverkeeper in 1997 and serves as the organization's Executive Director. Captain Bill, as he is known to most people, holds a Master of Inland Waterways license from the US Coast Guard.
In June 2006, Captain Bill was elected to the Board of Trustees of the Waterkeeper Alliance, the international coalition of clean water advocates. Earlier that year, he was named co-chair of the NY-NJ Harbor Estuary Program Citizens Advisory Committee, a bi-state agency that oversees federal management efforts in the region. He is a founding (and current) member of the Bergen County Trust Find Public Advisory Committee and is the current Chair of the Meadowlands Conservation Trust; the latter being the agency charged with acquiring, holding and managing conservation properties in the New Jersey Meadowlands and throughout the Hackensack River watershed.
Captain Bill has been recognized for his work on numerous occasions by the media, government and the environmental community including the New Jersey Audubon Society's 1996 Conservationist of the Year Award and the 1999 Annual National Clearwater Award for excellence on the waterfront from the Waterfront Center in Washington, DC. In 2002 the US Fish and Wildlife Service recognized him for his work on behalf of Meadowlands conservation.
In 2003, he and the organization received an Environmental Excellence Award from the NJ Department of Environmental Protection. Also that year, Captain Bill was named Bergen County’s Person of the Year by County Executive Dennis McNerney. In 2004 River Network honored him as one of America’s River Heroes.
When he is not conducting Eco-Cruises aboard the vessel Edward Abbey, chairing meetings, or otherwise advocating for the Hackensack River watershed, Captain Bill enjoys rock n’ roll music, movies and fishing for Striped bass in his favorite river.
