Tunnel Project Suspension Continues in Buffalo, New York
A state judge on Friday extended until November 15 a temporary injunction prohibiting any work on the Kensington Expressway project, a controversial initiative to put a segment of the highway under a tree-lined cap and create a tunnel into downtown Buffalo.
The East Side Parkways Coalition has been fighting the proposal since it was first introduced. The group has argued that the tunnel not only would fail to reunify the neighborhood severed by the highway, but that residents who live closest to either end of the tunnel would face serious adverse health effects caused by increased pollution concentration from reduced air flow. Pollution rates already are high in that area due to the high amount of traffic on that stretch of the 33 each day, a recent report from the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation shows. At the heart of the coalition’s handful of lawsuits against the Kensington proposal is the insistence that the state Department of Transportation should be required to conduct a full environmental impact study on the project in order to determine the real health risks that would be faced by the tunnel. Adam Walters, an attorney for the coalition, said the project should be thrown out unless and until a full impact study is done. Further, he argued the DOT is misleading the public by saying the $1 billion project would not cause any traffic delays in the surrounding area during construction.
“Common sense says there are going to be huge impacts,” Walters said in court Friday. “This is a massive project. They are going to shut down the Kensington to two lanes in each direction maximum during the morning commute. And their own reports, though very hard to figure out, because they are less than three, suggests that the backup is going to go to the city line every morning.”
Judge Emilio Colaiacovo compared the Kensington project to another high-profile transportation initiative, the ill-fated redesign and redevelopment of the Peace Bridge, in asking the state’s attorneys “why should we accept the representations that are made by the respondents here that this will not have significant environmental impacts.”
Patrick Omilian, an attorney for the state, replied that the size of the project alone is not the only factor that weighs into a project’s overall impact. “What informs the answer is the analysis, the hard-look analysis, the environmental assessment that the DOT actually did perform on this project,” he said.
In deciding to extend the injunction on all work related to the Kensington Expressway project, including a recently awarded contract to work on the Best Street Bridge, Judge Coliacovo also announced he’s requiring the East Side Coalition and other plaintiffs to post a $10,000 bond within the next few weeks. This is in response to the DOT’s stated concern that the work stoppage is costing the state an estimated $445,000 monthly. If the attorneys for the East Side Parkways Coalition fail to provide that bond by November 15, he will void the injunction and allow work to begin.
Supporters of the coalition were in attendance Friday afternoon and were happy with the judge’s ruling for now.
“This community has been misled in the past. We have a community that is full of illness, respiratory disease, cardiovascular diseases, low life expectancy. I think the judge is sensitive to it, but we await his final decision,” said Alan Bozer, one of the coalition’s attorneys.
“This is about a large infrastructure project in an urban, residential neighborhood,” added Michael Gainer. “We have a problem with this project because it is in a dense urban neighborhood. It has been for decades impacting this community, and not just any community, a largely disadvantaged community.”
The case is due back in court on November 18.
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