Utility Hires Ecologist To Care For Native Plants And Wildlife: Video

PEARL RIVER, NY — A new biodiversity program provides Orange & Rockland Utilities with an innovative approach to the habitat management of its properties, specially targeting ecologically fragile O&R locations.

"We’ve been doing these projects since about 2017," O&R Senior Ecologist and wetlands scientist Casey M. Tompkins told Patch. "So we’ve been in full swing for the last six years. Then two years ago, we really increased the amount of projects, steadily increasing throughout our territory since about 2020."

That new approach fills the O&R sites with colorful fields, rich with acres of flowering native plants and pollinating buzzing bees. A study of an O&R biodiversity site in Middletown last month identified 28 different bee species and 40 different native plants. For a closer look, watch this video.

There are sites under transmission lines and around facilities. Now any time the company puts up a new substation, Tompkins said, the biodiversity program is implemented.

"And then we manage it for wildlife," he said.

Improving biodiversity and protecting the large swaths of land O&R owns or leases throughout its service area makes O&R not just an industry leader but also a prudent planner. The program often substantially reduces O&R costs, not only for property maintenance but also because it improves electric system reliability.

The program fits right in with the storm-hardening work O&R, a subsidiary of Consolidated Edison, is doing to protect from outages during extreme weather events the Hudson Valley is experiencing more frequently, like the July 9 storm that dumped 8 inches of rain in a couple of hours on parts of the region.

"One of the many community advantages of native plant species is that they spend an extensive amount of time and energy in building their root masses. Some native species will spread their roots over six feet below grade, which ultimately allows for better water infiltration and a reduction in water runoff, which would otherwise lead to soil erosion and particle-filled waterways," Tompkins said.

In fact, he told Patch, during this summer's frequent heavy rains, the sites full of native plantings escaped damage.

"We had no evidence of erosion," Tompkins said. "They did an incredible job, soaked up tons and tons of water."

The weather was even beneficial.

"They had the best flowering display I’ve ever seen in our territory this year. The amount of rain really enhanced the color we’re seeing in the meadows along our right of ways," he said.

You can read Con Edison's Climate Change Vulnerability Study

In the long term, native vegetation —that isn’t regularly cut like a lawn — captures 500 percent more carbon from the atmosphere. "These systems are quite actually carbon capture machines," Tompkins said.

Also in terms of sustainability, soil health is improved in the process of water infiltration, reduction in mowing, and capture of carbon.

If the company starts a new site that is troubled with invasive non-native plants, they'll seed it at a much higher rate, which helps the native plants compete, he said.

"You’re never going to completely get rid of them, but the goal is to keep them down to 10 percent in your management area at any time," he said.

Of course, numerous wildlife species benefit from the native ecosystem.

"We tailor seed mixtures to benefit birds and bees that are along the right of way. We really think about it from a sustainable approach," Tompkins said.

A study of an O&R biodiversity site in Middletown in August identified 28 different bee species and 40 different native plants, from black-eyed susans to common tickseed.

"The goal is to produce flowers from April to October every year to benefit feeding from a long term perspective," he told Patch. "One of the species we always put in our mixture is milkweed, for the monarch butterflies. We really try to pick and tailor the species to benefit wildlife, especially bees."

And while honeybees aren't native (American beekeepers' hives have European honeybees), they are indeed among the bee species Tompkins sees at the sites, because they thrive in a healthy ecosystem.

So he's happy to nurture other people's honeybees throughout the service territory — "no charge!"

"Our primary goal is to create, enhance and protect native habitat, whether it be scrublands, meadowlands or forest lands," he said.