Happy Hour October 15 and Training October 20 |
NO KINGS Rally October 18 |
Clean Air is a member of the Buffalo United Coalition and one of the groups organizing Buffalo’s No Kings Rally on Saturday October 18 at Niagara Square from 11am-1pm! We want to be loud and visible in the crowd – please reach out to Bridge if you would like to join fellow Clean Air members and supporters with your tee shirt size, and they will send you meet-up details for the morning of. Registration is NOT required to attend, but if you would like an email reminder, you can sign up here. |
📢BIG ANNOUNCEMENT📢 Clean Air is Bringing the Midwest Academy to Buffalo! |
We are immensely thrilled to share that we are bringing the Midwest Academy to Buffalo January 20 – 24, 2026! Midwest will lead a cohort of 30 WNY organizers and member-leaders in the professional certification course January 20-23, and the cohort will then lead the general public in a one-day training on Saturday January 24. Seats are limited for the full course, so it will be application-based and each organization will be initially limited to three participants. Applications are due October 31. https://actionnetwork.org/forms/midwest-academy-buffalo-hub-training-application/ This certification course, which ordinarily costs $660-1570 plus housing and travel, will not only be FREE for participants, but we also have budgeted for stipends for grassroots volunteer organizers who will need to take time off their regular job to attend. We strongly encourage Clean Air members who are interested in full-time organizing as a career to submit an application! Regardless of whether you would like to join us for the full course, please pencil in Saturday January 24, 2026, as we aim for ~100 attendees for the one-day class. We anticipate publishing the registration page for Saturday the 24th in early December after the cohort is selected. On a related note, we also urge Clean Air members and supporters to check out Beyond Plastic’s free virtual grassroots advocacy classes, available October 25, 28 or 30. |
Ranked Choice Voting Petitions |
Indigenous Nations Solidarity |
Join members of the Buffalo and Erie County Lead Safe Task Force (LSTF) and the UB Lead Research Group on Saturday, October 25th from 9 am to 1 pm at Hayes Hall at 3435 Main St. for the Task Force’s annual meeting and mini-conference! They will be highlighting our work over the past year and outlining new initiatives moving forward to reduce the incidence of childhood lead poisoning in our region – click here to register. |
Winter Emergency Preparedness Events |
The Buffalo Common Council has announced a series of Winter Emergency Preparedness events – click here for details. Similarly, the NYS Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services has announced several dates in Erie County in October and November for their Citizen Preparedness Training series – click here to see all the dates and to sign up. |
Erie County Department of Health |
There are several current comment periods on Brownfield Clean-ups in the Buffalo Area – Additionally, DEC has also published a Notice of Availability explaining changes in the PCB contamination clean-up plan for 1318 Niagara Street in Buffalo. The DEC has also increased the level of drought notices across the state – outside of the NYC metro area, all parts of the state are currently under “Watch” or “Warning” drought levels. Hold off on those end of season bonfires this year! The DEC, Attorney General, and Buffalo Sewer have also come to an agreement around the delayed implementation of the 2014 Long-Term Control Plan, which is being replaced with the Queen City Clean Waters Initiative. Finally, at the EPA trouble continues – of note, as this article by two environmental history academics published in The Conversation covers, the Trump administration is on track to cut 1 in 3 EPA staffers by the end of 2025, decreasing the EPA’s ability to regulate polluters, and, as the article also notes, this is also part of a long term trend, with ~4000 fewer staff members in 2024 versus 1999. |
New Research Tools – ClimateTrace and Drawdown Explorer |
Al Gore’s Climate TRACE emission tracking network recently added Particulate Matter tracing! Check out the website by clicking here. Of note, this program uses Artificial Intelligence to process the massive data sets – a good example to point to for lawmakers of positive public benefit research uses for AI to contrast with poorer uses of the technology that are causing public harm. Project Drawdown also recently launched a new tool, the Drawdown Explorer, which helps highlight solutions at both the individual as well as societal level for reducing, eliminating and even removing greenhouse gas emissions from the atmosphere. Check it out here! |
Huge congratulations to organizers in Niagara County who after 20 years of advocacy are celebrating the decision by the NYS DEC’s Hazardous Waste Landfill Siting Board to deny certification for CWM Chemical Service’s proposal to build a 43.5-acre hazardous waste landfill in the Town of Porter. We particularly want to shout out the years of work of local resident Amy Witryol in opposing this proposal! We also want to shout out Abigail Friedman, Charlotte Schultz and all the youth organizers who organized and held a Right to Read rally in Amherst yesterday in opposition to book bans! As part of a $1 billion climate action investment plan, Governor Hochul announced this month that NYS is making a $200 million investment to expand thermal energy networks at SUNY campuses, including at the University at Buffalo – while we feel this investment plan can go further, $1 billion is hardly anything to sneeze at, and expanding TENs, particularly at SUNY campuses, will yield immense benefits both in the short term and in the future. Finally, we want to shout out all of the work of residents everywhere resisting the authoritarian invasions of US cities. Here in Buffalo, residents have launched the Buffalo Immigrant & Refugee Defense (BIRD) hotline, a rapid response hotline for reporting ICE raids – 716-222-2190 We also wanted to share this action by residents of Portland, who plan protest the presence of ICE and other military branches in a very Portland way – by organizing an Emergency Naked Bike Ride! |
Pray for the Dead, Fight for the Living! |
Headlines in Environmental Justice, Climate Justice, and the Just Transition |
Naveena Sadasivam, Grist Magazine – How low oil prices turned Trump’s call to ‘drill, baby, drill’ into a pipe dream Colin Kinniburgh, New York State Focus – Why Your Energy Bills Are Going Up — Again Josh Saul et. al., Bloomberg Magazine – AI Data Centers Are Sending Power Bills Soaring Jody MacPherson, The Energy Mix Brad Reed, Common Dreams – ‘Red Flag’: Analysts Sound Major Alarms As AI Bubble Now ‘Bigger’ Than Subprime Tina Nguyen, The Verge – Silicon Valley’s latest argument against regulating AI: that would literally be the Antichrist Jackie Flynn Mogensen, Mother Jones Magazine – RFK Jr. Promised to Take On Plastic. Now He’s Part of an Administration Embracing It Vu Le, Nonprofit AF – Let’s try to be nicer to ourselves and one another while we fight against fascism |
CACWNY Events Upcoming Training Opportunities, Conferences and New Resources Are you a Clean Air member or supporter who is engaged with a current campaign, and is there a training opportunity that you would like to pursue to strengthen your organizing? Please let a staff organizer know, as we budget to support leadership development! All Clean Air members and supporters also have free access to trainings from the Advocacy Institute. New This Month – Public Comment Deadlines and Hearings Also see our regularly updated list of events at bit.ly/CleanAirEvents and linktr.ee/cleanairwny |
Do you need a N95 mask? We have a limited supply available at the office for our members – send us a quick email and we’ll send a few your way! We encourage wearing masks at our in-person events, particularly during seasons of peak COVID transmission. |
Interested in connecting with CACWNY generally as an organization, have an emerging campaign or issue you’d like CACWNY to consider? Interested in supporting Clean Air’s grassroots fundraising efforts, know of a grant opportunity that might support our work, or want to join our events or membership committee, including our Rapid Response Team? |
Interested in joining our Tonawanda Just Transition campaign teams, our work to regulate cryptocurrency mining, our Energy Democracy work, or have a submission for this monthly newsletter? |
Want to join our American Axle campaign or support our work in the Delavan-Grider neighborhood and greater East Side, or support our statewide climate justice work with NYRenews? |
Interested in donating to support our work? |
The Clean Air Coalition of WNY 371 Delaware Avenue Suite 6 Buffalo NY 14202 |
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