Dec 20
2013
The tax breaks for the Yahoo data center in Lockport just keep coming. The Lockport IDA on Thursday granted the company a sales tax waiver on equipment purchases for the next 20 years. This is but the latest in tax breaks granted by IDA officials. A report from The Buffalo News.
Dec 18
2013
Dec 17
2013
Investigative Post editor tells Eileen Buckley on Press Pass that the clean energy initiative at Riverbend represents progress, but is not the panacea that project proponents are claiming. He also expressed concern that many subsidized projects, including planned Uniland-Delaware North building in downtown Buffalo, do little to build the region’s tax base.
Dec 17
2013
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[...]
Dec 16
2013
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.
Dec 16
2013
An analysis by the influential rating service on the clean energy project recently announced by Gov. Andrew Cuomo concludes: “The long-term impact to the region may be limited … The clean technology industry is relatively volatile … and its ability to jumpstart a struggling post-industrial economy is untested.” A report from State of Politics.
Dec 16
2013
Dec 12
2013
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[...]