District office participating in cell phone recycling program

I am pleased to announce that my office is participating in an effort by a Maple West Elementary School third grader, Mariah Nablo, to help our local environment by keeping used cell phones and the toxic materials they contain out of local landfills where they could contaminate our drinking water.

Mariah's project will benefit a program that she and her friends have embraced to help protect an endangered species of African gorilla.

My Williamsville District office will be one of several drop-off sites for discarding cell phones to be collected and recycled through the No Landfill Cell Phone Recycling Program, which will also donate up to $15 to the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International for every phone collected, to help save the endangered Eastern Lowland Gorilla in the Congo.

With the help of friends, family and teachers, Mariah, who began the project as a second grader, has already collected more than 300 cell phones as well as started a Web site www.MariahSaves Gorillas.com to promote her mission.

Cell phones contain toxic materials that are harmful if they get in the water supply, which is why it is important to properly dispose of them through recycling programs.

They also contain the rare and valuable metal tantalum, which is essential in the production of capacitors for electronic devices, including cell phones, because it is highly-resistant to corrosion.

Tantalum is processed from minerals mined on several continents, but it is the illicit mining of the mineral coltan in the Democratic Republic of Congo that threatens the gorilla habitat, according to National Geographic Magazine. Proceeds from smuggled coltan have also been cited as fueling a long civil war that has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. The phones collected in the program are recycled by Eco-Cell.

One of the best things about my job as your Assembly member is that I have the opportunity

to hear about and encourage the accomplishments of young people in our community. And I am happy to help and applaud Mariah Nablo's interest and enthusiasm for helping our environment.

If you have an unused cell phone, please recycle it by bringing it to my office or one of the other locations listed on Mariah's Web site.

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As the ranking member of the Assembly Ways and Means Committee, I am helping lead budget hearings in Albany. These are lengthy, but important sessions, especially this year as the State faces an unprecedented deficit. We are listening to literally hundreds of witnesses, including top elected officials and agency heads, who are being asked to detail their plans to balance budgets and hold down spending. I am more than ever convinced that first and foremost the state must make even greater efforts to root out waste and inefficiency in government and not look to overburdened taxpayers to put the state on a sound fiscal footing. High taxes kill jobs. And raising taxes will only delay economic recovery.

Please feel free to contact my local office at 634-1895 or write to me at 5555 Main Street, Williamsville, NY, 14221 or via e-mail at hayesj@ assembly. state. ny. us