With Indian Island County Park's scenic Peconic River as a backdrop, leading environmentalists, lawmakers and community activists came together as Legislative Majority Leader Jon Cooper (D-Huntington) announced his plans to champion an historic initiative that will put Suffolk County in the vanguard of the national movement to preserve our natural environment. If approved by the voters in a ballot referendum this November, Cooper’s measure will protect the last of Suffolk’s available open space, preserve critical habitats, save local farms, protect Long Island's aquifer, improve the county’s tourism-based economy and safeguard our unique quality of life.

At today’s General Session of the County Legislature, Cooper introduced a bill that would extend and accelerate the borrowing on Suffolk County’s current Quarter Cent Drinking Water Protection Program. The measure would generate an estimated $475 million to fund various environmental protection programs, with $350 million dedicated to open space and farmland preservation and $125 million committed to water quality protection and land stewardship initiatives. Cooper’s proposal dwarfs that of any previous environmental protection program in Long Island’s history.

Before any of those monies can be allocated, the plan will require an approval process that will challenge the environmental commitment of Cooper’s legislative colleagues, New York State lawmakers in Albany and the voting public. If approved by both the County Legislature and the State Legislature, which must pass State enabling legislation, Suffolk residents will be able to express their support for this bold project in the voting booth on Election Day 2007. Cooper is confident his constituents and their neighbors all across Suffolk County will come together and approve this initiative. "Abraham Lincoln once said, ‘If given the truth, the people can be depended upon to meet any national crisis.’ The truth is our County faces dire consequences for generations to come if we do not make this investment in our future today. "

Cooper's plan would use funds that come from borrowing on a proposed extension of the County's existing Quarter Cent Drinking Water Protection Program, which accounts for 1/4 of one percent of the County's sales tax. That program is scheduled to expire in 2013. Cooper's proposal would extend the sunset to 2030 and would authorize advance borrowing on those anticipated revenues. There will be $322 million available to borrow as early as 2008 for environmental initiatives, with a total of $475 million available by 2030. Since the debt service associated with the borrowing will be repaid from the dedicated sales tax revenues, there will be no adverse impact on the County’s debt service or bond rating.

Cooper, the first elected official ever to be named the Long Island Sierra Club's Environmentalist of the Year, enthusiastically took up the gauntlet that was thrown down by the Long Island Pine Barren’s White Paper entitled "On Course for Failure: A Call to Action on Land Preservation". Issued by the Long Island Pine Barrens Society last month, the report predicts that unless Suffolk substantially increases the rate at which it acquires open space and farmland, the County faces "serious, even catastrophic environmental and economic threats."

"This initiative is a culmination of my efforts to not only protect what’s left of our open space from development but to improve our environment, increase the stability of our tourism-driven economy and safeguard our treasured way of life," Cooper said.

Environmentalists and government analysts agree that of the 70,000 acres of undeveloped and unpreserved land on Long Island today, we need to acquire at least half –and soon–to protect our environment and economy. The report estimates that the 35,000-acre goal can be obtained at a total cost of about $3 billion. Cooper’s legislation makes huge strides toward achieving that goal.

"For over twenty years, Suffolk County's landmark Drinking Water Protection Program has served to protect our open spaces, critical wildlife habitat and quality of life while ensuring that future generations will have clean water to drink," said Kevin McDonald, Director of Public Lands of The Nature Conservancy on Long Island. "The Nature Conservancy applauds this balanced proposal for expansion and extension of the County's critical conservation funding -- with more money for land purchases and a broader mandate to fund stewardship of our land and water resources."