A New York judge has ordered New York State Transportation Department to stop his $ 1 billion project to capture a portion of Kensington Expressway’s road in Buffalo, Nova.
Judge Emilio Colaiacovo issued the decision on February 7 in relation to a case presented by local activists who want the motorway to retire in favor of restoring the route to a local park. He found that the project is likely to have numerous potential impacts, but that the state “lost the brand” by not performing a formal environmental review. Preparation of an environmental impact statement is necessary, as the only way to provide a fair and impartial analysis of all impacts, evaluating alternatives and mitigating the effects. Colaiacovo previously granted a temporary containment order by stopping the project last fall.
“A Tim Hortons cannot be built in the west of New York without making an EIS and having the proper classification of Seqra,” the judge wrote in his decision. “Why did the state think that it could simply entertain a project of this magnitude and not fulfill what otherwise orders others to do is still a mystery.”
State officials have said they expect any impact to be “minimal”. A representative of Nysdot said by email that the Department “is at receipt of sentences and evaluating the next steps.”
The Nysdot Plan was to capture 4,150 feet from the six -lane road, also known as State Route 33, from Dodge Street to Sidney Street, to East Buffalo. The lid would become a public green space. The project would also have involved rehabilitating 9 kilometers of local streets and improved with pedestrian and cyclists, replacing a bridge and building a roundabout instead of an exchange.
The coalition East Side Parkways, the group that filed the request on which the judge issued the decision, wants Nysdot to restore the Humboldt Parkway, who had been a frederick -lined boulevard by Frederick Law Olmsead, connecting two parks. In the 1950’s and sixties, Parkway was replaced by the Kensington Expressway Low Degree, which divided the neighborhoods and moving mostly black residents of hundreds of houses.
At the exit of the road he would have assured that the two parks, Martin Luther King Jr. Park and Delaware Park, would never be connected to a park, according to the coalition. They are also concerned about the exhaust of the vehicle from the tunnel, becoming plumes concentrated at both ends near schools and other public facilities.
This is a concern shared by the New York Civil Liberties Union, who has also sued Nysdot for the proposal, but NYCLU’s demand is focused on the Law on the Protection of Climate and Community Leaders of the State, which requires officials. State “prioritize the safety and health of disadvantaged communities.” Lanessa Chaplin, director of the Center for Racial Justice of NYCLU, says a planned increase of 6% of emissions on the portals of the tunnel.
“This is really alarming and important, because this area already has some of the highest rates of air pollution in the county,” he says.
Chaplin adds that he hopes that the environmental review will examine this figure closer: he suspects that the impact of real emissions may be higher, and to give rise to mitigation measures.
The judge has not yet made a decision in the case of NYCLU. An audience is fixed for April.
“I think this project, increasing pollution in an area that already has more pollution, is in direct violation of the law on climate,” says Chaplin. “The state has a mandate to stop making this behavior that has been systematically made in communities that have less political power, low -income communities, rural communities, mainly minority communities, where it becomes a dumping ground for. to these types of projects. ”
