Categories for Featured

Jul 24

2014

Disgust and outrage along Scajaquada Creek

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Two state senators are demanding the Department of Environmental Conservation take aggressive action to address sewer overflows that have contaminated Scajaquada Creek. Senators Mark Grisanti and Tim Kennedy, whose districts include the creek, called for action Monday after witnessing a repulsive scene that included trash filled creek water, three dead ducks, and a fourth paralyzed and gasping for air in a pool of garbage and sewage. Grisanti and Kennedy, sickened by what they saw in the creek near Delaware Park’s Hoyt Lake, said they will make it a priority to clean up Scajaquada Creek and advocate for more money to[...]

Posted 11 years ago

Jul 24

2014

State complicit in defiling of Scajaquada Creek

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Way back in 1993 the state Department of Environmental Conversation told the City of Buffalo to dredge Scajaquada Creek to remove decaying human excrement and other sludge that was up to five feet deep in some places. The city refused — and the DEC did nothing. In 2008 the DEC used an enforcement order to force the Town of Cheektowaga to submit a plan to reduce sewer overflows into the creek. The DEC rejected that plan in 2010—and has done nothing since then to force the issue. In the interim, Cheektowaga has dumped more than one billion gallons of raw[...]

Posted 11 years ago

Jul 24

2014

Battle is joined on Buffalo school reform

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Jim Heaney, in his latest column for City & State, provides his take on the reform agenda being advanced by the new majority on the Board of Education. Heaney, who formerly covered Buffalo schools in the 1990s when he was a reporter for The Buffalo News, said he’s struck by the majority’s top priority: contract changes that would enable the district to assign the best teachers to the worst performing schools. He wrote: In Buffalo, as in many districts, that’s a challenge, because of seniority clauses in labor contracts. As a result, veteran teachers gravitate to the better schools, while[...]

Posted 11 years ago

Jul 17

2014

The Scajaquada is a crippled creek

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Gross doesn’t even begin to describe the water in Scajaquada Creek. Municipalities dump more than a half billion gallons of sewage mixed with untreated stormwater into the creek annually. That putrid cocktail has fouled the creek’s water in a variety of ways. Sludge composed of decaying human feces and other contaminants is up to five feet deep in places along the creek bottom. Fecal bacteria is present at levels up to 20 times higher than what’s considered safe for recreational use. Avian botulism, which has paralyzed and eventually killed hundreds, if not thousands of birds over the years, lurks in[...]

Posted 11 years ago

Jul 14

2014

Huge price tag for fixing Buffalo’s buildings

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By Jim Heaney and Pamela Cyran The bill is about to become due for City Hall’s chronic failure to maintain and update many of the 240 buildings and 2,180 acres of parks it owns. Consultants two years ago gave Mayor Byron Brown’s administration a preliminary estimate of $607 million to bring those buildings and parks up to snuff over the coming decade, and said that $253 million of that work ought to get done right away. The bill for leaky roofs alone stretched into eight figures. Administration officials have kept the estimates under wraps, insisting they are too high. They[...]

Posted 11 years ago

Jul 3

2014

Air quality in Buffalo is improving

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Less than 10 years ago the Buffalo region’s nitrogen dioxide levels were on par with larger cities such as Los Angeles, Phoenix, New York and Denver. But the region’s smog has diminished quite a bit since then, including steep drops in nitrogen dioxide. The gas is one of numerous air pollutants that can agitate asthma, a respiratory disease that plagues neighborhoods in both east and west Buffalo, especially near the Peace Bridge. “The gas is produced primarily during the combustion of gasoline in vehicle engines and coal in power plants,” according to NASA. “It’s also a good proxy for the presence[...]

Posted 11 years ago

Jun 18

2014

Solar jobs, entrepreneur headed to Buffalo

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SolarCity is buying Silevo, which last fall announced plans to bring 475 jobs to the city under the Buffalo Billion Program. SolarCity is a much bigger operator and has plans to increase the planned manufacturing plant’s capacity five-fold, which would make it among the largest such facilities in the nation. More jobs are also anticipated, a total of anywhere from 1,000 to 2,500. Beyond the jobs, SolarCity brings noted entrepreneur Elon Musk, whose ventures have included PayPal, Tesla Motors and SpaceX. Will the larger manufacturing capacity necessitate the state upping its $225 million investment to build and equip the clean energy[...]

Posted 11 years ago

Jun 18

2014

Buffalo recovery a Tale of Two Cities

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Jim Heaney makes his debut as a columnist for City & State this week with a piece that puts Buffalo’s improved economy in perspective. Heaney notes a great and growing divide between “the haves and have-nots.” Yes, there is the psychological boost thanks to the Buffalo Billion initiative, and construction cranes denote progress at Canalside and the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus. But other aspects of the economy lag. “Any way you cut the numbers—poverty rate, unemployment rate, actual number of city residents working—they lag behind where things stood prior to the Great Recession of 2008–09,” Heaney writes. Meanwhile, the public[...]

Posted 11 years ago
Investigative Post