GreatEasternEnergy
Photos by Tara Eisenberg.

Superstorm Sandy was indeed a very big storm, caused a large amount of destruction and affected millions of people, everything about it was big. On May 17, 2013 a small company made a very big effort in the restoration work still taking place around NYC. Great Eastern Energy, headquartered in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn partnered with National Wildlife Federation to help continue our important restoration projects in Gateway National Recreation Area. This spring NWF has been working with large corporations to get these recovery projects underway, but our event with Great Eastern Energy was different. They not only contributed materials and volunteers, they closed down their whole business for the day to make the project happen. This restoration work was very personal to them as their office almost borders the National Park land where we planted American Beach Grass to help build sand dunes that were leveled by the storm.

These volunteers were working in their own backyard. Included in the group was Rich Carmody, whose house (which flooded during the storm) is 1 mile from the spot where everyone was planting new grass shoots in the sand. After seeing the missing barrier dunes that stood 15 feet prior to the storm, he told me how important the natural beach area is to the community; providing recreation, a home to the endangered Piping Plover and as protection from the sea.

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As big as Hurricane Sandy was, it has been matched by the effort of NWF’s recent partner Great Eastern Energy. The company is small but everything they brought to help us protect wildlife was big.

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