Categories for Co-produced with WGRZ

Feb 28

2022

State historically not a big funder of stadiums

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Many fans and politicians are expecting, even counting on, the state to put up most of the money the Buffalo Bills want from the public to help finance construction of a new stadium.   The state has played no such role, however, in the construction or renovation of major league stadiums and arenas in the recent past.  The Bills have proposed a $1.4 billion, 60,000 seat stadium in Orchard Park and published reports have suggested the team’s owners want public financing to cover the “vast majority” of the cost.  “That’s certainly a step beyond anything else that’s been going on in[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Feb 24

2022

Study links Tonawanda Coke to toxins

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Soil contamination near Tonawanda Coke most likely comes from the now-shuttered plant, a just-released study has found. A previous phase of the study of soil samples taken from the town and city of Tonawanda, Grand Island and Buffalo found elevated levels of toxins. The second phase of the study, released Thursday at a virtual meeting, evaluated 95 soil samples.  An unspecified, but small number of those samples contained elevated levels of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs, which are carcinogenic chemical compounds produced as a byproduct of burning coal and other fossil fuels.  Researchers determined with 85 percent confidence that Tonawanda[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Feb 20

2022

‘Completely stupid’ burning of toxins

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A Niagara Falls waste incineration plant burned almost 13 tons of firefighting foam over a three-year period, potentially releasing into the air and water insidious toxins linked in studies to infertility, birth defects, developmental disorders, compromised immune systems and cancer.  When questioned by state officials, Covanta Niagara at first denied it. Eventually, the company admitted burning “a small amount” of the material — aqueous film-forming foam, or AFFF — but claimed it didn’t know what it was burning. “That is not a small amount,” said David Bond, a Bennington College professor who fought to stop a waste incinerator doing the[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Feb 8

2022

School attendance continues to slide

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Attendance in Buffalo schools has gone from bad to worse this school year. Last year, when instruction was mostly remote, 34 percent of students attended class at what the state considered a satisfactory rate. So far this school year, that number has dropped to 18 percent. Conversely, the share of students with “severe” attendance problems – that is, they miss school at least one day a week, if not more – has jumped from 34 to 40 percent.  District officials said there are many reasons for the increase: Ongoing transportation issues, inclement weather and, especially, an increase in COVID-19 cases[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Jan 25

2022

How a stadium can benefit the community

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This is the first of a three-day series in our continuing in-depth coverage of issues related to a proposed stadium for the Buffalo Bills. Before the NBA’s Los Angeles Clippers broke ground last summer on a new arena, the team’s owners, elected officials and civic groups made certain the $1.8 billion project would benefit the entire community. In September 2020, the parties signed a community benefits agreement, or CBA, that outlined who would get jobs and contracts during and after construction, how much those jobs would pay, what the project would look like, and how the city and its residents[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Jan 17

2022

The hidden costs of housing the Bills

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There was a time when Erie County made money from Buffalo Bills games in Orchard Park.  From the opening of the football stadium in 1973 through 1997, the county collected millions of dollars from parking, concessions and the sale of stadium naming rights. No more.  Erie County in 1998 made major concessions that gave all the revenue from parking, concessions and naming rights to the Bills.  The county and New York State also agreed to take on a host of expenses previously covered by the Bills, ranging from stadium maintenance to the cost of ushers and ticket takers. The bottom[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Jan 10

2022

Buffalo schools struggle to catch up

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 Most students attending Buffalo public schools had fallen behind academically before the pandemic struck. Only a quarter of elementary and middle school students received proficient scores on their state standardized tests for reading, writing and math.  The learning gap got worse when instruction went remote in March 2020 and continued through most of last school year, when only one-third of students attended class regularly. Yet, the district only held back 546 of its 29,918 students for the school year that started in September. Most of them were high schoolers. Only 43 pupils in the elementary grades were held back.[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Jan 5

2022

Samsung turned down subsidies worth $1.9B

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Think the $950 million the state doled out to build and equip a factory for Tesla in South Buffalo was a lot of money? State and local officials offered Samsung twice as much to build a semiconductor plant in rural Genesee County. The $1.9 billion subsidy package would have been the second-largest deal in state history if the company had accepted it. It ranks high nationally, as well. “It would be right in the top dozen of all time in U.S. history,” according to Greg LeRoy, executive director of Good Jobs First, a national subsidy watchdog group.  Still, New York’s[...]

Posted 3 years ago
Investigative Post