Categories for Co-produced with WGRZ

May 17

2017

Regulators at cross purposes at 18 Mile Creek

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Eighteen Mile Creek in Niagara County is so polluted that the state Department of Health doesn’t want people to eat the fish caught there. It’s one of only six waterbodies in the state with such a warning. This hasn’t stopped another arm of the state, the Department of Environmental Conservation, from stocking the contaminated creek each year with an average of 160,000 of what are considered among the most desirable of fish: salmon and trout. As a result, a section along Eighteen Mile Creek in the Town of Newfane has become a fishing hotspot, part of the Lake Ontario watershed’s[...]

Posted 8 years ago

May 12

2017

Most new jobs in low wage sectors

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The good news: Buffalo Niagara is adding jobs at a faster clip than it has in a long time, albeit at a slower pace than the nation as a whole. The bad news: three-quarters of these new jobs are in sectors that generally don’t pay well. The biggest job creator across the region is restaurants and bars. The problems don’t end there: There’s been precious little growth in middle-income jobs and the region is actually losing technology jobs that tend to pay well and spin off a lot of business activity. Experts say the biggest economic challenge facing the region[...]

Posted 8 years ago

May 11

2017

Buffalo Niagara’s middling job gains

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To hear Gov. Andrew Cuomo tell it, the Western New York economy is a “national success story.” Indeed, there has been improvement during his six years in office, including the addition of 29,500 jobs and a drop in the unemployment rate. But while Buffalo Niagara is faring well against its sorry history, the region’s recovery is modest by national standards, an Investigative Post analysis found. Its job growth during the Cuomo years is one-half to one-quarter the national average, depending on which statistics you use. And half the drop in the unemployment rate can be attributed to a shrinking workforce,[...]

Posted 8 years ago

Apr 28

2017

A threat to Scajaquada Creek – and neighbors

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It’s not the view from Virginia Golden’s front porch of the former General Motors plant that bothers her. It’s the toxic gunk – up to 110,000 gallons of it – that’s underneath the plant. Neighborhood residents have been waiting – and worrying – for a decade since state environmental regulators declared several acres of the plant on East Delavan Avenue a significant threat to public health. The contaminant of concern are PCBs – so toxic that the federal government banned the manufacturing of them in 1979. The residents want the property cleaned up, but have instead endured inaction from state[...]

Posted 8 years ago

Apr 24

2017

National focus on Buffalo lead poisoning

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Investigative Post has reported for years that Buffalo is Ground Zero for lead poisoning in upstate New York. But a new report by Reuters designates Buffalo as among the “most dangerous lead hotspots in America.” WGRZ’s Michael Wooten interviews Investigative Post reporter Dan Telvock about his investigations and how President Trump’s proposed cuts to lead programs could impede progress. Click here to read all of Investigative Post’s reporting on the city’s serious lead poisoning problem.

Posted 8 years ago

Apr 17

2017

Cuomo: Expand study of Wheatfield landfill

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Gov. Andrew Cuomo directed state environmental regulators to move “quickly and thoroughly”on an investigation of a toxic landfill with a Love Canal legacy in the Town of Wheatfield. Cuomo wants the Department of Environmental Conservation to collect soil and groundwater samples from residential yards in the neighborhoods closest to the landfill “to determine whether offsite migration of contaminants has occurred.” The DEC, so far, has maintained that chemicals have been confined to the landfill. Current and former neighbors of the landfill, and their attorneys, have contended in a lawsuit that their soil tests show that landfill chemicals already have contaminated their properties. “We[...]

Posted 8 years ago

Apr 6

2017

Woman threatened over lawn signs

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An Amherst woman with a lawn sign that declares “Black Lives Matter” has been threatened by an anonymous letter writer who invoked the name of a right-wing news site. Ivy Yapelli received the letter two weeks ago stating that she had been placed on a “database of homeowners who may be deemed dangerous.” According to the letter writer, the “Black Lives Matter ” and “Resist” signs on Yapelli’s lawn promote “hatred and violence.” “It was clearly an attempt to intimidate me,” Yapelli said. No return address was provided, but the letter was signed, “Truth Revolt, Buffalo, NY Chapter.” The editor of Truth[...]

Posted 8 years ago

Mar 2

2017

State still behind the curve on lead poisoning

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The state Department of Health is providing free testing for lead in drinking water, but the $1.5 million allocated to the pilot program won’t go very far. At $70 per test, the program would provide testing for some 21,400 households across the state. Nonetheless, the program is a step in the right direction that will inform people about the dangers of lead poisoning and lead in drinking water. Lead is a toxic metal harmful to the developing brains and nervous systems of young children. But the state still falls short when it comes to combating lead poisoning, which remains a serious problem in[...]

Posted 8 years ago
Investigative Post