December 16, 2002
Peace Bridge Expansion workshop #4: NIMBY time
by Pat McNichol, Luis Clay, Mark Boyer and Bill Wachob
The fourth public workshop sponsored by the Peace Bridge Expansion project took place in WNED's largest studio from 8:30 a.m. to about 3:00 p.m. on Saturday, December 7.
The meeting was big—more than 700 people crowded into the studio—and long. Many people spoke and many more would have had the lines at the microphones not been so long.
We asked three longtime observers of and participants in the Peace Bridge Expansion Project (Pat McNichol, Luis Clay, and Bill Wachob) and one first-time participant (Mark Boyer) to send Buffalo Report their impressions of the event. You'll find their comments below, after these introductory background notes. (You can go directly to the report by any of the four by clicking on their name in the previous sentence.)
These workshops illustrate how different the process is now from the process attempted by the Buffalo and Fort Erie Public Bridge Authority three years ago, before Judge Eugene Fahey told them they couldn't simply impose lousy design and vastly increased amounts of traffic and noxious gases on Buffalo in total disregard of New York's environmental law. The PBA would, Fahey said, have to engage in a full environmental impact study, however distasteful they found it and however much it conflicted with their past way of doing business. All these hearings are part of that environmental impact study.
At the end of the process, the PBA board members will go into a room, shut the door, and vote on what bridge they will build and where they will build it. They still have full say over that. But it is unlikely that they will again come up with a plan that is so carelessly inimical to the public interest.
The Peace Bridge is operated by a board equally composed of representatives from the small town of Fort Erie, all of them appointed by a single Canadian federal official, and representatives from the state of New York, some of whom serve ex officio and some of whom are appointed by the governor. In the days when the PBA conducted all its significant business in secret, things went smoothly, primarily because, in the words of one board member, the Canadian members came in with their agendas for the day fully worked out and the Americans came "wondering what was for lunch."
That easy accommodation ended when Judge Fahey insisted on the environmental impact study: if the board cuts a venal deal now, we're going to know about it. Public exposure the is antiseptic for the infection of venal and stupid deals, as every political hustler who's been caught out knows all too well.
Fort Erie's economy is based primarily on the Peace Bridge and the various brokering operations it requires. Fort Erie's politicians and most of its citizens seem firmly dedicated to ensuring that the trucking operations grow in place, that nothing change except the number of lanes available for traffic. There is serious opposition to any bridge design that would totally replace the current bridge, which opened for operation 75 years ago. Fort Erie politicians say that is because their constituents adore the design of the old bridge. Critics suggest that is perhaps disingenuous: if a total replacement bridge is a viable option then so is moving all the truck traffic somewhere else, and that is a conversation the Fort Erie politicians do not want.
The trucks crossing the Peace Bridge have only a small positive impact on the economy of the Buffalo region, and it is not at all clear that the positive impact offsets the damage those trucks do to the area's infrastructure and air quality. Public involvement on the Buffalo side of the river, therefore, has focused on design (we don't want to look at one more ugly piece of public architecture), return of occupied parkland (Front Park and Fort Porter), and decreasing the damage to quality of life done by the big diesel engines and noisy, heavy trucks.
At each of the public meetings, Jake Lamb has asked the projects technical consultants to present their current areas of concern or most recent findings: what are they looking at? Which solutions do they think most promising? And he's asked the public attending the meetings to vote on the alignment options—where the bridge should land on each side of the river and what current or projected roads it should connect to.
We're still a long way, Lamb insists, from any consideration of design. Only after the public and the PBA have settled on an alignment will the project move to the question of what kind of bridge or bridges will be built. Every alignment option currently on the table, Lamb says, can support single or paired bridges. They're nowhere close to resolving the argument that got this going on the American side in the first place: that instead of the steel twin-span proposed by the Bridge Authority and endorsed by the Buffalo-Niagara Partnership, we should instead have the kind of elegant modern bridge suggested by architects Bruno Freschi and T.Y. Lin and endorsed by U.S. Senator Pat Moynihan.
The public meetings alternate between Buffalo and Fort Erie, and the character of them varies accordingly. Far more Canadians attend the Fort Erie meetings than the Buffalo meetings, and conversely. The December 7 meeting seemed the most disproportionate of all. I don't know if that's because the Canadians felt they'd already made their point about location, if they felt they were secure in their primary concern (all of the consultants' recommendations except one had the future bridge or bridges landing in Fort Erie exactly where the current bridge lands now). The low Canadian attendance might also reflect a reluctance to cross the bridge in the face of Attorney General Ashcroft's insistence on increased American harassment of Canadians at the border.
And there was NIMBY—not in my back yard. The meeting was dominated by residents of Grand Island, hardly any of whom had ever attended any of these meetings previously. The reason they were there was that one exception to the consultants' recommendations: the Grand Island proposal first offered by State Assemblyman Robin Schimminger and recently endorsed by Erie County Executive Joel Giambra.
The workshops also illustrate the difficulty of finding a reasonable way for the public in two border towns with very dissimilar interests to provide reasonable and useful input. It is not at all clear at this point how the process will accommodate organized block voting. The results of the December 7 meeting were heavily loaded by the Grand Island contingent, just as the Fort Erie meetings are heavily loaded by the Fort Erie residents. I wouldn't be surprised to see the entire population of Fort Erie—the healthy, the lame, the blind, the dysfunctionally geriatric and the blithefully-ignorant pre-pubescent—hauled in to vote or be voted for in the final design meeting. And no one seems able to explain how any of those votes will be weighed against the recommendations of the technical consultants—the engineers, designers, environmentalists, archaeologists and all the others.
Later in the week Buffalo Report will public a long interview with the Project's director, Vincent "Jake" Lamb, in which Lamb explains where the project is and where it's going and responds to some of the issues raised in the comments below. The final results of the December 7 voting will be available on the project's website— www.peacebridgex.com —shortly after December 17th.
For now, here's what four thoughtful people from the American side of the river thought about the December 7 public meeting.
—B.J.
Some thoughts on workshop #4.
* The Grand Island contingent was extraordinarily large. At his turn with the mike, Mark Mitskovski asked, with a show of hands, who in the room was from Grand Island. Nearly every person in the seated area raised their hand! NIMBYism is a strong motivator.
* Canadian turnout seemed to be very low.
* The consultant recommendations included the South Grand Island location, more commonly known as the "Tonawanda crossing," in addition to three alternatives at the current location. A few weeks ago, Jake Lamb made it clear that they would not recommend any off site alternatives, UNLESS, there was a strong push to do so. Robin Schimminger and Joel Giambra subsequently advocated taking a further look at the Tonawanda crossing and, to their credit, the consultants responded by adding South Grand Island (Tonawanda.)
* Chuck Swanick's time at the mike can be described in one word: grandstanding (to the delight of the Grand Island contingent—they gave him a standing ovation). Swanick spoke against any Grand Island location and severely criticized the consultants for even considering the South Grand Island crossing. "This process is severely flawed," Swanick said. He ended by urging the public to vote for a International Railroad Bridge location.
* Dr. Mukasa [Jameson S. Lwebuga-Mukasa, M.D., associate professor of medicine at UB] presented a PowerPoint presentation that lasted about 20 minutes (interrupted a couple of times by a few rude hecklers). The presentation included findings from his ten years of research. It was very compelling. Lots of graphs showing a significant air quality impact on the lower West Side. A few of us were wondering how Dr. Mukasa was allowed to present. Had Dr. Mukasa asked and Jake said yes? Did someone at a higher level make a call to Jake? Did Jake invite him? (On a related note, the consultants have still not released their air quality study to my knowledge.)
* Most comments consisted of quality of life themes (air pollution, noise, etc.)
* The voting process was a SIGNIFICANT improvement over workshop #2. Instead of trying to plot over 1800 data points in five hours, the public was told to pick their top five out of thirty alternatives by filling in the circle next to their five choices. One piece of paper replaced an entire volume. The public was also given the chance to take the form home with them and mail it back within 10 days, giving folks as much time to think about their choices as they would like. Cheers to Jake and his team.
* Although I was not present to hear it, Jake did tell me he announced that Bruno Freschi was being consulted on his bridge design. Jake flew to Washington and met with Bruno Thursday.
Overall, it was good to see such a large turnout and to see democracy in action. More than 700 voting sheets were handed out.
It was the largest gathering of the great debate over the Peace Bridge that I had attended. The large room at WNED was packed and the standing room at the back barely navigable.
I arrived at 10 a.m. and Jake Lamb was gathering up the end of his presentation. At that point a lot of people were fidgeting on their seats!
I thought Lamb's summary was very surprising:
— all options across the Lake discounted as not feasible (with very little explanation or subsequent dissent)
— all options landing in Grand Island dropped (it turned out that the largest contingent at the meeting, by far, was from Grand Island)
— the monster construction across the broadest part of the river (Alternative Group D, I believe) was to be retained for further consideration
— amazingly, all options to use the railroad bridge were dropped from the process (one reason being given that the Scajaquada and Route 33 were not cut out for commercial traffic)
— various options redeveloping the plaza in the West Side and presumably requiring the construction of another bridge there were to be retained.
And I thought, "SURPRISE!"
Shortly after that, Professor Mukasa of UB gave some detailed information about the increased incidence of asthma on the West Side and how the picture there had deteriorated since September 11, 2001. (Apparently, diesel trucks standing around waiting to be cleared are even worse for your health than diesel trucks whizzing by en route to the industrial US. This surprised nobody but seemed oddly convincing when accompanied by so many charts, graphs and words!)
During Dr. Mukasa's segment the crowd, watching their day evaporate in front of overly detailed presentations, became quite restless and wanted to have their say. The scheduled break was skipped and the routine "discussions" began...
Nobody from Grand Island (there were a lot of them who stood in line to speak) wanted anything to do with a river crossing in THEIR back yard.
Various people from the West Side said they'd suffered enough already.
One person said the Peace Bridge Authority weren't fit to do their jobs and redevelop the bridge. Unfortunately, nobody stood up at that point and said "I'LL develop the bridge then!" so the PBA were as much in charge at the end of the meeting as they had been at the beginning.
Quite a number of speakers asked why the railroad bridge crossing had been dropped from consideration. One lady from Fort Erie stated that development of the railroad crossing would affect her commercial district.
Through it all Jake Lamb stood implacably and apparently wisely listening to the babble. It was messy but it was apparently a great deal more democratic than the way the PBA used to run things.
And the Railroad Bridge option IRR6 made it to third in the popular vote on which options should be retained for consideration.
The turnout for the fourth conference was very high; the man seated next to me estimated that there could have been twice as many people
as the past two events. The first thing I noticed when I entered the PBS auditorium was the lack of diversity of the participants. In an issue that involves the West Side community so greatly, there were no more than five African-Americans to express their views on the location of the Peace Bridge.
The room was packed; during the question/answer segment one man proposed that the next conference be held in the convention center. These people were especially chatty for 8:00 in the morning, I might add. This could be due, in part, to the fact that I was stationed right in the middle of a busload of middle-aged women from Grand Island. Throughout the morning and into the afternoon, this group zealously, and at times obnoxiously expressed their dissatisfaction with the prospect of having an international bridge built in their backyards.
Being completely out of touch with the proceedings of the Peace Bridge collaborative workshops thus far, I was shocked at the number of representatives from Grand Island that were present. Apparently, up until last week, they were completely unaware that there was even a possibility of international traffic shifting north and cutting through their community. These people are outraged, and as a result, they turned out in droves.
What appears to be unfolding is a struggle between the West Side of Buffalo and the community of Grand Island to keep the Peace Bridge traffic out of their communities. The Grand Islanders are somewhat aggressively defending their quiet community, while the people from the West Side are more accepting of the Peace Bridge traffic; they've dealt with it for years.
Jake Lamb's opening presentation explained what progress had been made in the past three meetings, and what recommendations had been made by the PBA board. With the aid of overhead projections, he described the most popular proposals from previous vote tallies. He also touched upon some of the problems and environmental impact issues that had been brought to the table. This portion of the workshop was clear and logically presented. Lamb explained the whole process in a manner that enabled people who had not attended the previous workshops (which probably constituted a majority) to be fully aware of where we stood in the 'scoping' process. Lamb explained that we would not be making any decisions or breaking any ground today, but that this was an 'alternative screening process' in which we would identify alternatives and the potential environmental impacts that would come with these alternatives. The main development of the day would be for the participants to vote on the proposed alternatives, and rate up to five that we considered to be plausible alternatives.
This is where I started to become confused. I understood that the Grand Islanders had made the commute with the objective of nullifying the proposals to build a new bridge in the vicinity of Grand Island. I figured that the Grand Island alternatives must have topped the charts in previous vote tallies, but by the time I had finished skimming through the handouts, it was clear that the existing location was the most popular alternative by a long shot.
The alternatives that utilized the existing bridge and location took the top 8 rankings from the votes that were taken at workshop #1. The ninth and tenth ranked alternatives were to build a new bridge that would connect the QEW to the I-190 through the town of Tonawanda. Sure, this would impact Beaver and Strawberry Islands, and it would definitely harm bird and fish habitats at the southern end of Grand Island, but where the hell were the people of Tonawanda? The Tonawanda town park and Riverwalk were listed as areas that would be significantly impacted, and the Tonawanda river view would certainly be cut down and darkened by the thick fumes of diesel fuel. Maybe they just don't care. Maybe they are uninformed. Either way, they've got their neighbors from Grand Island to speak for them.
Jake's presentation also showed why alternate locations for the bridge were being considered in the first place. If the bridge is kept at its current location, in the West Side of Buffalo, the plaza on the American side (there was little mention of the Canadian side) would have to be expanded in response to increases in commercial and private traffic. The Olmsted Parks want the plaza to be shifted away from front park (to the north or east), but this would require the removal of homes/properties, and the Episcopal Church Home. Moving the plaza north would free up the current 18-acre plaza for parkland, but it would require the destruction of roughly 300 properties. Keeping the bridge where it is sounds like a lose-lose situation, but the degree of loss must be weighed. Alternate proposals are being brought to the table to decide which town would suffer the greatest blow by having the bridge in their backyard.
The other impact to the West Side that was addressed was the air quality and high rates of asthma in the areas adjacent to the Peace Bridge. Dr. Jameson Lwebuga-Mukasa was given the floor to speak on these issues. With several overhead projections of the graphed data that he had compiled, Dr Mukasa showed us that the rates of asthma and gastroenteritis were substantially higher in the West Side than other parts of Western NY because of the high levels of particulate matter in the air. This is largely due to the number of idle trucks and cars at the backed-up Peace Bridge customs. He proved the effect that the Peace Bridge traffic flux has on the air quality of the West Side by showing data from before and after the 9-11 terrorist attacks and the parallels between the changes in traffic flow and the particulate matter in the air.
Surprisingly, Dr. Mukasa's presentation was not warmly accepted. The issues that he came to present were legitimate concerns, but they did not seem to appeal to the Grand Island crowd. During most of his presentation, the crowd chatted freely and loudly, in a blatant attempt to block out the information that was being offered. Towards the end, the noise began to crescendo, at which point a man stood up and demanded "What's the point!" in a harsh tone. Several others in my section chorused in, and the woman next to me informed me that we were being "spoon fed propaganda." Dr. Mukasa rushed through the remainder of his presentation, probably omitting some graphs.
If one thing can be concluded from this little episode, it's that the "scoping" process is the time where people come together to look at proposals, and stubbornly declare, "not in MY town!" Obviously the Grand Islanders' level of concern looked past the struggling West Side community, and saw Dr. Mukasa's data as a forecast for what would become of the Grand Island air quality, should the bridge be moved north.
The only development that seemed to break much ground was the increased popularity of using the existing International Railroad bridge at the foot of the 198 expressway. This proposal would relieve the West Side of bulldozing hundreds of homes, and it would make Front Park more accessible. It would also keep the crossing far away from the resentful people of Grand Island.
To the objection of many, Jake announced during his presentation that the recommendation was being made to drop the IRR from the short list of alternatives. The reason for this recommendation was that all IRR proposals involved connecting the bridge with NY198. Not only is the 198 ill-equipped to handle heavy truck traffic, but it is scheduled to be downgraded to a parkway in the future. Interstate traffic, especially commercial traffic would require a larger road, or an interchange to I-190.
During the Q&A portion, instead of asking questions, many people took the opportunity to claim that the use of NY198 was completely unnecessary, and that a bridge at the IRR site could connect directly to I-190. So many people seemed to agree with this idea, it's a wonder that it hadn't made the short list of alternatives sooner. At the end of the afternoon when more than 700 votes had been tallied, the IRR alternative moved from 18th to 3rd on the list, behind two alternatives to utilize the existing location.
There are many questions that arose and remained unanswered by the time the workshop finally adjourned in the late afternoon. The first being, "What about the other side of the river?" One woman from Fort Erie spoke in opposition to the IRR alternatives because of the commercial and residential land that lays on the Canadian side, but I am left to believe that the rest of the congregation was unanimously American. Is this an American collaborative workshop? Were the Canadians not invited? Will they accept whatever decision we come to?
I want to give you some thoughts and reactions to this past Saturday's public workshop on the Peace Bridge "expansion" or replacement, which was held at the WNED studio in downtown Buffalo this past Saturday, December 7th from 8:30a.m. to 1:30p.m. (but when I left just before 2:00 p.m. was still continuing with "Q&A" period and opportunities to talk with experts about various aspects of the bridge and bridge plaza planning/selection/design/construction process).
I have attended three of the four public workshops, nos. 1, 2 and 4, and have followed this process for what seems like a couple of years, reading all of the coverage in Art Voice, attending several public meetings around town, and attending I believe all but one of the monthly Common Council meetings on this subject. I belong to no group but attend as a private citizen and local resident (currently Eggertsville, previously North Buffalo, the West Side, and Grand Island), honoring a commitment my wife and I made when we first became aware of this issue, to become and stay informed and involved to see this through to a successful completion as positive to the benefit of Buffalo and this area as possible.
Overall it's my belief and feeling that the current process, unlike the process which was used several years ago, is both open and fair. I believe there is definitely an agenda which is to get a bridge built across the Niagara River and to have the site and design chosen within the next couple of years after having as much public input as possible. I tend to be skeptical, given the history of this, about whether there might be a hidden agenda behind this process in the minds of at least some on the Public Bridge Authority as to having this process result in a specific site and/or bridge design. On the other hand I believe that Jake Lamb, who is in charge of managing this entire process, is sincere in having an open process which informs and guides the planners, engineers, and designers.
Saturday's public meeting was very interesting. After Jake gave a very detailed explanation of which design sites he and the planners were proposing be carried forward for further consideration and which not, Dr. Jameson Lwebuga-Mukasa of UB's School of Medicine presented information on the location and incidence of asthma and respiratory diseases in Buffalo and suburbs that shows that people living close to and downwind from the Peace Bridge have 2-3 times the incidence of asthma and respiratory disease as do other people, independent of ethnicity and even smoking. There was also direct correlation to the rates of hospitalization for these ailments and the days following 9/11 when traffic dropped by approximately 50%. Traffic flow slowed to a crawl, and yet with half the traffic the reports/hospitalization of chronic respiratory incidence INCREASED dramatically. In other words, traffic (particularly diesel truck traffic) fumes make people ill and the closer you live to this traffic the more chance you have of becoming ill. Something like 46% of the households in the area near the Peace Bridge have people who suffer from asthma or respiratory disease.
The conclusion I drew from this is that I wouldn't want to be living anywhere near a bridge which carries a lot of truck traffic. It was shown that keeping the traffic moving lessens the amount of particles in the air from that traffic, but Dr. Mukasa pointed out that there is no set threshold at which particles cause or aggravate respiratory diseases.
Jake Lamb presented several proposed bridge sites which he (presumably he and the planners who are working on this) recommended be dropped from consideration. Two were controversial. One was the "SGI" site, or a site South of Grand Island. Probably a good half of the approximately 700 people who showed up at the workshop appeared to be from Grand Island, where Jake had met publicly with residents recently, and were opposed to this site, as well as to the proposed site on Grand Island, which was among those Jake Lamb proposed dropping from consideration. I don't know of anyone who spoke up in favor of this option, though someone may have said that the proposed tunnel at this site might be desirable. One of the things Jake put forward as making this site worthy of consideration was that it could direct the traffic away from the more heavily populated areas east of the present Peace Bridge to the area around the I190/I290 join, which was mostly brown field and industrial, thus alleviating a large part of the public health problem.
The second controversial proposal was the proposed dropping of consideration of a bridge over the old "international railway" bridge site which would fall on the U.S. side near where 198 dead ends on Niagara Street. Jake Lamb said this was being dropped because it would have to tie in with the 198 which would unacceptably route truck traffic through Buffalo: 198 is being considered for downgrading from an expressway to a more leisurely traffic flow. Also, the concept of a signature, gateway bridge to Buffalo would not work as well here as it would closer to downtown Buffalo. No one took exception to the 198 traffic argument (the gateway concept wasn't really subsequently addressed in public comments, to my knowledge); however, numerous people in the audience said they didn't see why the bridge couldn't be located there without being tied into 198. I asked a couple of people at the back table who were collecting the ballots everyone was given to vote on site preference about how to vote for the site location without voting for a tie in to the 198, and their reaction was that if the bridge landed in that vicinity everyone traveling to the bridge from most other Buffalo locations would want to use the 198 to get there, thus increasing its use as an expressway.
My suspicion is that the international railway site will be kept still as a possible alternative site and that more design work will be done to see whether a design could be planned that would not involve tying in to 198 or it's being used as an expressway for those traveling to the new bridge. I am not sure whether Jake and the project team will drop the SGI site or not based on Saturday's response, which was quite negative. If they do retain it they will have to have meetings with folks in Tonawanda (or perhaps it's the Town of Tonawanda). Based on some negative response at Saturday's meeting, the Town of Tonawanda might be as negative as the Town of Grand Island, which reportedly panned the idea completely.
Whatever bridge landing locations are kept on the U.S. and Canadian sides, Jake explained that there would be many, many iterations of specific and different plans once they are narrowed down to those (I believe they want not more than 5 different sites) which would make it to the coming EIS (environmental impact study) stage. In other words, we're still at a very general, broad concept phase.
But given the health information, ANY location for the bridge landing on the U.S., and perhaps for additional truck inspections on the Canadian side which would facilitate flow and reduce pollution on the U.S. side, may be met with resistance. It throws a very interesting curve to the whole process. Would you want to increase the incidence of respiratory disease by 2-3 times in your (or your constituents) neighborhood? One answer could be that the engineers and designers have natural and man-made options to reduce or alleviate the pollution - including buffer zones, increasing traffic flow and even trees on one hand and filters to capture the pollution on the other. You always hear that engineers are people who as a profession find solutions and solve problems: get things done that others want done. This should be a good opportunity to put that to the test.
I would encourage people to become or stay involved as there will be at least one other opportunity for public participation and input into proposed designs in the coming months. I believe that such involvement is productive and effective.