2011 Service to Sustainability Awards

The first Service to Sustainability Award was awarded in April 2011 to three people for provided outstanding leadership in protecting New York City's Drinking Water from the catastrophic threat of gas drilling and hydro-fracking within the protected watershed region.

  • Amy Goodman

    Amy Goodman, founder of "Democracy Now!" is a leading news organization with a non-corporate cultural perspective, Ms. Goodman and the DN! staff are working hard to protect citizens’ constitutional rights. In doing this important work of the "fourth estate," her very early reporting on the hydro-fracking issue helped spark debate that resulted in the first ever state-wide moratorium on fracking in New York. Her continued reports about peak water, public health, and energy-related issues offers citizens around the world the accurate information required to make well-informed decisions. Her continuing interviews with independent journalists, experts, filmmaker Josh Fox and other local grass root organization leaders provided a critical counterpoint to the massive media campaign of multi-national corporations.   
     

  • Yoko Ono

    The life's work of Yoko Ono has been in the service of peace, which is being undermined because of our addiction to fossil fuel. As nations struggle to maintain the flow, wars and revolutions continue in the Middle East. Sustainable energy systems can not be developed while treasure and global resources are wasted on the battlefields. The “Lennon/Ono Grant for Peace” was given to Josh Fox for his film, “Gasland,” which reveals how destructive our addiction to fossil fuel is, and helped build important momentum for the historic work to protect New York City’s drinking water from the catastrophic risk of hydrofracking.
     

  • Rebecca Wodder

    American Rivers is the leading protector of our rivers. Rebecca Wodder is a leader in addressing the impact of hydro-fracking and mountaintop removal upon our fragile river systems. Ms. Wodder, organization president until 2011, and American Rivers  have generated highly important visibility about the catastrophic risk facing the watershed region, the source of drinking water for seventeen million people in New Jersey, New York City, and Philadelphia, by designating the Upper Delaware River the "#1 Most Endangered River in America."


     

 

  • Founded by inventor, industrialist and philanthropist Peter Cooper in 1859, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art offers education in art, architecture and engineering, as well as courses in the humanities and social sciences.

  • “My feelings, my desires, my hopes, embrace humanity throughout the world,” Peter Cooper proclaimed in a speech in 1853. He looked forward to a time when, “knowledge shall cover the earth as waters cover the great deep.”

  • From its beginnings, Cooper Union was a unique institution, dedicated to founder Peter Cooper's proposition that education is the key not only to personal prosperity but to civic virtue and harmony.

  • Peter Cooper wanted his graduates to acquire the technical mastery and entrepreneurial skills, enrich their intellects and spark their creativity, and develop a sense of social justice that would translate into action.