Categories for Co-produced with WGRZ

Jun 1

2017

State lawmaker’s plan to combat lead poisoning

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Lead poisoning in Buffalo is a public health crisis. In fact, Investigative Post reported in November 2014 that the city is “ground zero”  for lead poisoning problems. Even low levels of lead in children’s blood can cause permanent damage, such as learning and developmental disabilities. On Thursday morning, Assemblyman Sean Ryan announced his plan to combat this problem. Ryan cited in the speech Investigative Post’s reporting in proposing a package of state legislation that he said will help prevent exposure to lead in paint and water. His first proposal would amend the state’s definition of elevated blood lead level to match what the federal[...]

Posted 7 years ago

May 23

2017

Heaney discusses homicides on WGRZ

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Jim Heaney tells Kelly Dudzik of WGRZ that Buffalo police have a poor track record of clearing homicides – generally solving a quarter to a third of murders in recent years. Departments nationally clear about 60 percent of homicides. Heaney’s comments were made in the context of plans announced by Common Council President Darius Pridgen to launch a newsletter that will feature murder victims. Pridgen, pastor of True Bethel Baptist Church, hopes the newsletter and a digital companion will help in some way to solve murders. Heaney and Steve Brown of WGRZ did stories in March of this year and[...]

Posted 7 years ago

May 23

2017

Perks of LPCiminelli’s Buffalo Billion contract

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It was an expensive dinner after a long day of meetings on the SolarCity project. A senior executive at LPCiminelli, the company building the factory, ate at an upscale Italian restaurant in Albany, joined by two architects working on the project. The cost of the meal topped $120 each. That night, LPCiminelli picked up the tab. But, ultimately, state taxpayers footed the bill. A few months later, the company listed the meal as a reimbursable expense under its contract to build the vast solar panel factory, the marquee project of the governor’s Buffalo Billion initiative, and was paid back, in[...]

Posted 7 years ago

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 7 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 7 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 7 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 7 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 7 years ago
Investigative Post

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