Categories for Featured

Nov 11

2014

Buffalo is ‘ground zero’ for lead poisoning

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Young children in Erie County, mostly from Buffalo’s inner city, are testing positive for lead poisoning at more than triple the state average. As a result, hundreds of children enter Buffalo schools every year dealing with the impacts of lead poisoning, which can include lowered IQ and behavioral problems. The chief source of the problem is lead-based paint chips and dust in Buffalo’s old housing stock. “Buffalo is ground zero in the entire country for lead poisoning,” said David Hahn-Baker, a local environmental activist who has studied the lead problem for three decades. Yet City Hall treats lead poisoning as[...]

Posted 11 years ago

Nov 10

2014

Buffalo’s big lead poisoning problem

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Investigative Post, in the first of a three-part series, examines the danger posed by lead paint contamination in Buffalo. Buffalo children aged five and under test positive for lead poisoning at more than three times the state average. Erie County’s rate is the worst of the 11 counties that test 10,000 or more children a year. “Buffalo is ground zero in the entire country for lead poisoning,” said David Hahn-Baker, an environmental activist in Buffalo. Dr. Stanley Schaffer, director of the Western New York Lead Poisoning Resource Center in Rochester, said the consequences can be dire: Reduced IQ, learning disabilities and[...]

Posted 11 years ago

Nov 5

2014

State fails to follow sewage ‘right to know’ law

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Want to know if your local waterway is fouled by sewage after a heavy storm? New York has a law for that, but the Department of Environmental Conservation isn’t enforcing it, Dan Telvock of Investigative Post reports in the current edition of City & State. Telvock writes: Seventeen months after the legislation was enacted, New Yorkers still do not “know if they are swimming, boating or fishing in raw sewage,” Adrienne Esposito, executive director of Citizens Campaign for the Environment, said in a prepared statement. Cuomo signed the legislation two years ago to great fanfare from environmental groups that advocated[...]

Posted 11 years ago

Oct 29

2014

Sabres score big subsidies at HarborCenter

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The Buffalo Sabres like to point out that HarborCenter, which opens later this week, is privately financed to the tune of $172.2 million. Left unsaid is that the complex is also publicly subsidized, enjoying an estimated $57 million in local and state tax breaks. That makes HarborCenter one of the most heavily subsidized downtown development projects in recent history. The project – which includes two ice rinks, a hotel, two restaurants, shops and a parking ramp – is projected to employ the equivalent of around 425 full-time workers. The $57 million in tax breaks works out to about $134,000 per[...]

Posted 11 years ago

Oct 9

2014

SolarCity’s shaky foundation

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Gov. Andrew Cuomo is investing $750 million of taxpayer funds and the hopes of a community desperate for an economic recovery in a company that is losing money, weathering two federal investigations and facing, by its own admission, an uncertain economic future. To hear Cuomo tell it, the construction of a solar panel manufacturing plant operated by SolarCity Corp. will be a “game changer,” a catalyst to reviving the Western New York economy. Indeed, the company is regarded as a leader in the burgeoning solar energy industry, has acquired promising technology to manufacture solar panels and has enjoyed soaring stock[...]

Posted 11 years ago

Oct 9

2014

Unfinished business for Buffalo’s Outer Harbor

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Buffalo, which has suffered over the years from a series of planning mistakes, is nearing a decision on how to develop its Outer Harbor even though the state agency managing the project hasn’t completed its homework on key legal, financial and environmental issues. These unresolved issues, particularly whether to build five-story condos, shops and restaurants near the environmentally sensitive Times Beach Nature Preserve, are at the core of a dispute that boiled over last week. Rep. Brian Higgins and Assembly Member Sean Ryan went public last Friday in their opposition to the Erie Canal Harbor Development Corporation’s development plan for[...]

Posted 11 years ago

Oct 6

2014

Higgins, Gioia split on Outer Harbor

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Two prominent politicians have endorsed a nonprofit environmental group’s Outer Harbor development plan that significantly scales back the residential and commercial footprint proposed in the state’s version last month. Congressman Brian Higgins and Assemblyman Sean Ryan both said at a press conference Friday at Gallagher Beach that the state’s proposal does not have broad public support. “The current plan put forth by the Erie Canal Harbor Development Corporation would not create an Outer Harbor that Buffalo and Western New York had been longing for,” Ryan said. As a result, they both backed Buffalo Niagara Riverkeeper’s plan that focuses the residential[...]

Posted 11 years ago

Oct 1

2014

Schumer calls for end to Buffalo’s dust bowl

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Federal, state and local authorities are intensifying their efforts to force an embattled construction and demolition debris plant in South Buffalo to clean up its operation. Senator Chuck Schumer visited the Seneca Babcock neighborhood Wednesday  to urge the Environmental Protection Agency to send a message to Battaglia Demolition that “we will not stand by and allow this company to pollute our community without any consequences whatsoever.” The business, owned by Peter Battaglia, has been the target of neighborhood complaints about the dust, truck traffic spewing diesel fumes and health problems for a decade. Schumer called on the EPA to require[...]

Posted 11 years ago
Investigative Post