Tag: Environment

Jan 16

2014

Distrust in the air at Peace Bridge

Published by Dan Telvock

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

Published by Dan Telvock

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

Published by Dan Telvock

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

Gallagher Beach exposé voted top story

Published by Jim Heaney

Readers voted Dan Telvock’s story on potentially contaminated water at a proposed state beach as Investigative Post’s story of the year. The story, which aired Oct. 3 on WGRZ and published in Artvoice and on InvestigativePost.org, garnered 37 percent of votes in an online poll. Telvock reported that the beach, off Route 5 in South Buffalo, is adjacent to two Superfund sites and that an Erie County Health Department consultant had concluded that opening the beach for swimming was “probably impractical from a public health standpoint.” State officials responded to the report by first refusing to commit to testing the water[...]

Posted 11 years ago

Dec 17

2013

Peace Bridge project won’t improve air quality

Published by Dan Telvock

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 16

2013

Goodyear ignored chemical threat to workers

Published by Investigative Post staff

The Center for Public Integrity references a yet-to-be-published federal study that found 50 cases of bladder cancer at the Goodyear plant in Niagara Falls through 2007. A chemical called ortho-toluidine is believed to be the trigger, but Goodyear didn’t reduce employees’ exposure for over a decade, and by that time it was too late.

Posted 11 years ago

Dec 12

2013

Erie County bans hydrofracking

Published by Dan Telvock

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 9

2013

Great Lakes restoration success stories

Published by Dan Telvock

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