By ANDY GARDNER

MASSENA -- A congressional candidate for the 21st District, which covers the entire North Country, spent Wednesday touring Massena and went before the Town Council at their meeting that night to tout her clean energy goals.

Dr. Lynn S. Kahn is running to represent the district on the Green Party ballot line and as an independent. She faces Democrat Tedra Cobb and incumbent Republican Elise Stefanik.

"I came to Massena, I spent all day here ... specifically to make a statement about transitioning to green renewable sustainable energy," Kahn told the board during public comment.

"I'm especially interested in the plants have been closed and what that property and land looked like, and the potential," she said. "You have this amazing set of resources to do something pretty phenomenal."

She said she is interested in "what kind of sustainable energy manufacturing can be done here," "how to use the power of the St. Lawrence River ... with the generator that's been shut down" and "what are the alternatives for economic development, job development, community development that can leverage the resources you already have."

Kahn, an organizational psychologist and strategic planning consultant, said she is running as a Green because "I don't think Republicans and Democrats can get past hating each other."

At the meeting, she handed out a news release that talked about her platform of pushing clean energy alternatives in the face of worldwide climate change that a vast majority of climatologists agree is being hastened by humans' dependence on fossil fuels.

"The core of our response to climate change is building economic, transportation and housing systems based on clean, sustainable, renewable energy. New York District 21 and the Massena area in particular have extraordinary opportunities for the development and manufacture of these clean, energy alternatives, such as hydrogen fuel production from the vast unused water power of the Robert Moses Saunders dam," her statement said.