Dan Telvock

Dan Telvock is Investigate Post's environmental reporter. A native of the Finger Lakes region, he was an award-winning newspaper reporter in Virginia for 13 years, including stints at The Free Lance-Star in Fredericksburg and The Winchester Star, before joining Investigative Post. He founded and operated The Landry Hat, a blog that covered the Dallas Cowboys, from 2005 to 2008, while also working as a reporter.

Jan 16

2014

Distrust in the air at Peace Bridge

State environmental officials have been mum for two months about their plans for a second round of air monitoring at the Peace Bridge after they misrepresented the flawed first round of testing. In the face of that silence, community activists and a key lawmaker who represents the neighborhood near the Peace Bridge agree that the Department of Environmental Conservation needs to take a different approach. “There’s a lot of distrust here,” said Assemblyman Sean Ryan. “We need to bridge the distrust. I think we bridge it by having more honest and open communication and less gamesmanship.” The DEC should let[...]

Posted 11 years ago

Jan 15

2014

Another call for probe of Peace Bridge project

Tuesday’s Buffalo Common Council meeting could be an interesting one when it comes to Peace Bridge matters. That’s when Council is scheduled to vote on North District Common Council Member Joe Golombek’s resolution that calls for a federal investigation of the environmental review process undertaken by the state Department of Transportation for its proposed project at the Peace Bridge. The $28.5 million project would reconfigure roads and ramps leading to and from the Peace Bridge plaza. Perhaps more noteworthy is the review concluded the project would not improve air quality, countering claims made months earlier by proponents of the work. The[...]

Posted 11 years ago

Jan 8

2014

Big price to saving Great Lakes from Asian carp

Experts say the Asian carp’s threat to the Great Lakes is a serious one that could topple the $7 billion fishing industry and wreak havoc on the ecology of the nation’s largest group of freshwater lakes. Asian carp don’t have natural predators and feed on the same food as native fish, which makes them dangerous to the Great Lakes. The debate has been whether an expensive physical barrier between the Great Lakes and Mississippi River in Chicago, which is already infested with the invasive species, is the most effective way to stop an invasion or if the electric barriers already[...]

Posted 11 years ago

Jan 7

2014

60 Minutes critical of Soraa investor Khosla

Billionaire venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, who was the subject of a controversial 60 Minutes program that aired Sunday, is a chief investor in one of the two cleantech companies moving here under the Buffalo Billion program. Soraa, which makes LED lighting, lists Khosla Ventures as one of its three top investors. Khosla Ventures general partner Samir Kaul is a member of Soraa’s board of directors. Manny Hernandez, a former operating partner with Khosla, is also on Soraa’s board. The 60 Minutes program “The Cleantech Crash” has come under scrutiny from environmentalists and cleantech supporters on claims that it misrepresented the health of the industry. Khosla, who Forbes called the “Man With the Golden Touch,” has invested more[...]

Posted 11 years ago

Dec 17

2013

Peace Bridge project won’t improve air quality

State officials proclaimed in March that their plan to reconfigure roads leading to and from the American side of the Peace Bridge would improve air quality in adjoining neighborhoods where residents in one-third of the households suffer from asthma and other respiratory illnesses. “We are moving the traffic further away from the neighborhood where the residents are and where the people in the park are and believe just instinctively that that is going to improve air quality,” Sam Hoyt, regional president of Empire State Development and vice chairman of the Peace Bridge Authority, said when the project was announced. “The[...]

Posted 11 years ago

Dec 12

2013

Erie County bans hydrofracking

The Erie County Legislature today banned high volume hydraulic fracturing on county land and imports of any drilling waste to its water treatment facilities. The legislation passed 9-2. The vote comes almost three years after Buffalo became the second city in the nation to ban the controversial gas drilling practice, also called “hydrofracking.” On Dec. 3, the County Legislature received a petition with 3,845 signatures supporting the ban. The legislation also includes a ban on importing drilling waste to county water treatment facilities and using the waste on county roads to melt snow and ice. Hydrofracking is a practice that injects millions[...]

Posted 11 years ago

Dec 10

2013

Politics in the air at the Peace Bridge?

Although there’s a lack of bulletproof evidence that political influence spoiled the Department of Environmental Conversation’s air monitoring testing at the Peace Bridge, there are anecdotal references worth mentioning. We reported last month several flaws in the Department of Environmental Conservation’s air monitoring program, one of which was the agency concluding that air quality at the Peace Bridge was no worse than anywhere else in the city. That conclusion flies in the face of an overwhelming amount of independent research. Two days after our story aired, the DEC agreed to expand the air monitoring program. The DEC, however, has yet to answer any questions since[...]

Posted 11 years ago

Dec 9

2013

Great Lakes restoration success stories

Of the four federally funded Great Lakes restoration projects in Western New York, none is as big as the cleanup of the Buffalo River. The nonprofit group Healing Our Waters-Great Lakes Coalition created a map with details of each of the projects across the Great Lakes. Roughly $44 million will be spent on removing decades worth of historic industrial pollution in the Buffalo River, making it one of the largest river cleanups in the country. The bottom of the river is polluted with PCBs, heavy metals and other toxic chemicals. In total, 1 million cubic yards of toxic sediment will[...]

Posted 11 years ago