My God! Someone must have wrote the article who doesn't live here...they listed Binghamton NY as number 9 on the list of "green" cities. I can't tell you how many chemical spills have happened here. Including the state office building back in 1980 that took 13 years to clean up.
http://www.pressconnects.com/apps/pb...WS01/703090336
Binghamton has made its share of lists through the years -- not always with enviable rankings.
By some accounts, it's the seventh-cloudiest city in the United States with an annual average of 212 cloudy days. In 2005-06, Binghamton finished third among five upstate cities for the Golden Snowball with 74.9 inches of snow, compared to Syracuse's 124.6-inch top tally.
Contrary to those somewhat infamous distinctions, Binghamton has made a Top 10 list that the Chamber of Commerce could actually tout to outsiders.
Country Home has ranked the Binghamton metropolitan area in the ninth spot among the Top 10 "Best Green Places" in the United States in a survey to be published in the magazine's April edition. Ithaca was ranked second behind Burlington, Vt., which claimed the top spot as the country's most eco-friendly community among 379 metropolitan areas.
"We thought to ourselves, 'If we could live anywhere in the U.S., where would be the best green place to live?'" said Grant Fairchild, managing editor. "That was the kicking-off point. We thought it would be a fun thing for the readers and fit right in with our theme."
A magazine spokesman did not return a telephone call Thursday seeking details about the survey's criteria and Binghamton's statistics. The Associated Press reported the rankings were based on air and watershed quality, mass transit use, power use, organic producers and farmers' markets. The magazine analyzed data from several private organizations and government agencies, including the Census Bureau and the federal Department of Agriculture.
"When you stand back and look at the area, we don't have a lot of sprawl; we have a lot of green space," said Chip McElwee, executive director of the Broome County Soil and Water Conservation District.
McElwee was not surprised that the area scored well in watershed quality. He said 65-70 percent of the region's watershed is undeveloped land. "The contribution to the watershed from these forested areas is good, clean water," McElwee said.
The magazine's good ranking of the Binghamton area for organic producers pleased Lisa Bloodnick of Bloodnick Family Farms in Apalachin. She saw it as affirmation of a local trend toward using organic products.
"There is a tremendously deep interest in not only organically grown food, but also in buying local," said Bloodnick, who also runs the Vestal Farmers' Market in the summer. "As much as we are a fast-food nation, there is a growing segment of the population who are returning to fresh cooking ... It's back to basics."
Country Home, with a circulation of roughly 1.25 million copies, is published by Meredith Publishing Group. Meredith also produces Better Homes and Gardens, Ladies' Home Journal, and American Baby.
This makes me LAUGH...Touting Binghamton like that. HAHAHAHA. The farms they mention aren't even here in town-but other towns instead. And as far as the water goes-I wouldn't drink the water here If I had a gun to my head. Our sewage treatment plant goes down often and they don't alert the consumers till three months later. This place is a ghost town and are doing everything they can to get people to move here..to bad they didn't mention that we are the sex offender capital of NYS, or the fact that the public schools here test the lowest in all of the state in reading, math, and history. YES PLEASE-BRING YOUR FAMILIES-BRING YOUR MONEY. WE ARE DESPERATE!~
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