The digital extension of our newsletter — workshops, current-issue commentary, and stories from the watchdog beat.
A retired Warwick schoolteacher explains why she's renewed her Orange Environment membership fifteen years running — and where she watches her $25 turn into monarch habitat.
Read Member Spotlight: Eleanor Vasquez on why one $25 check keeps her going back
A New Windsor family became $40 Family members after reading OE's Quassaick Creek work. Here's what convinced them — and how their dues fund the watershed profile.
Read Member Spotlight: The Ramírez family joined for their kids' drinking water
A small-farm owner in the Town of Wallkill on why he sends the $100 Anniversary check every year — and what happens between the mailbox and the hearing room.
Read Member Spotlight: David Okafor renews at $100 to keep the technical work funded
Hyperscale warehouses and data centers are landing across Orange County under zoning built for a very different era. Here's what OE is pushing local boards to require before the next approval.
Read Warehouses and data centers are reshaping Orange County — and our land-use rules haven't caught up
The Quassaick Creek drains one of Orange County's most rapidly developing corridors before emptying into the Hudson. OE is tracking the pollution, sedimentation, and land-use pressure the watershed is absorbing.
Read Protecting the Quassaick Creek watershed in Newburgh and New Windsor
OE and volunteer watershed stewards have begun a systematic outfall inventory and land-cover analysis of the Quassaick — the first step toward a defensible, board-ready restoration plan.
Read Mapping the Quassaick: our watershed profile takes shapeA 50–100 foot band of trees and shrubs along the Quassaick and its tributaries would do more for water quality than any single treatment upgrade. Here is what OE is asking towns to adopt.
Read Riparian buffers on the Quassaick: the cheapest water-quality tool we have
Volunteer stewards documented sediment plumes at four separate points along the Quassaick after a single June storm. It is a case study in why minimum-compliance stormwater programs are no longer enough.
Read After the storm: what a single Quassaick rain event tells us about our stormwater program
OE is training a volunteer stream-monitoring corps for the Quassaick — simple, standardized observations that build a long-term record no one else is keeping.
Read Help us watch the Quassaick: volunteer monitoring launches this season
Hyperscale data centers are quietly becoming the region's largest new consumers of electricity, water, and open land. Orange Environment is calling for a countywide pause until real safeguards are in place.
Read Why the Hudson Valley needs a moratorium on new data centers
Our ever-popular backyard mushroom workshop returns to Warwick Valley Winery & Distillery on April 18, 2026.
Read "Growing Mushrooms In Your Own Backyard" returns 4/18/26
DHS is advancing plans for a detention center in our region. Here is OE's response and the environmental concerns we're tracking.
Read OE vs. DHS Detention Center
OE board member Dr. Joe Grizzanti and the Hudson Valley Pollinator Project are converting turf lawns into habitat for monarchs, bees, and birds.
Read Turning lawns into lifelines
A brand-new OE workshop pairing home gardening with cooking — a hands-on session connecting soil to plate.
Read New OE workshop on home garden to table cooking!