In our weekly segment, "A Closer Look," we feature a story from a BTPM NPR reporter. This week, Assistant Managing Editor Ryan Zunner sits down with reporter Jamal Harris Jr. to break down how certain community groups are responding to a recent Kensington Expressway injunction.
Ryan Zunner: Jamal, thanks for joining us.
Jamal Harris Jr.: Always a pleasure.
Zunner: So, Jamal, we have two groups here in this battle over the future of the Kensington Expressway. We have the East Side Parkways Coalition and the Restore Our Communities Coalition. They both want some version of the previous Humboldt Parkway restored, but they have some major disagreements on how to do that. What are these differences?
Harris: Yeah, I'll just start with ROCC (Restore Our Communities Coalition) here. They've been around since about 2009, so for quite a while now. But again, they are for the restoration of Humboldt Parkway partially; the renderings of that project are on the DOT (Department of Transportation) site. They believe they have the most realistic and viable project. It brings back most of Humboldt Parkway, with Route 33 still being attached underneath all of that. They have support from the federal government. They've gotten the money for that through the Infrastructure Act under President Biden. They have support from the Governor, Leah Halton-Pope and Zeneta Everhart. They have the support of the local government. ESP (Eastside Parkways Coalition) is for complete restoration as well, but no tunnel to completely fill it in. They believe the tunnel is toxic. They were the group that sued the state over this project and won all the technicalities of the EIS (Environmental Impact Study), as we hear from coalition attorney Alan Bozer.
Alan Bozer [Soundbite]: They were told by Judge Colaiacovo to go back to the drawing board. I believe that's what they did. When you look at this expressway, the bridges are now 20 years past their lifespan and the retaining walls, as you drive along, you will see are crumbling. There is asbestos in those retaining walls, so this highway needs work.
Harris: That was about that EIS and even the judge presiding over the trial, who eventually ruled in their favor. He didn't necessarily disagree with what the project did or the legality of the project. It's just the technicality of doing the EIS, which everyone knows, and everyone has that soundbite that you can't even build a Tim Hortons without doing an EIS. So, the state would need to do that too.
Zunner: And there seems to be some major disagreements between those two community coalitions. We hear from ROCC’s Sydney Brown that these aren't necessarily agree to disagree arguments either.
Sydney Brown [Soundbite]: There's nothing to continue to talk about with that. No one in the history of Buffalo advocates for five, ten, fifteen, twenty years, gets a viable project, just for someone to say, “abandon your project and do what we want,” that's ludicrous to say, for us to come and try to compromise on something when we've already done our due diligence to get to the point and actually get funding for it.
Harris: Yeah, Ryan, the frustration is high for ROCC. It seems like they already had this plan approved. They were going to get construction started, I believe, late last year. Now it's all frozen to a halt. Now, a lot of people in ROCC, like its older folks, have been around when Humboldt Parkway was still intact, and the expressway was getting dug out. They want to see progress being made, and for them to run to another roadblock right now is very frustrating. We saw at various community meetings, them taking out that frustration personally on ESP, we saw prominent ROCC members saying some personal things about ESP members. We’ve seen Sydney Brown saying she doesn't really want to collaborate at all. From the ESP side, they just see this as a half measure. People who live there say, “If you're going to do it, do it right.” You don't spend all this money, and you're not going to build a tunnel in and make it toxic, because it can still have the asthma rates and the other rates through the roof, as they mentioned.
Zunner: Right. They're really there for the pre-1960s Humboldt Parkway. That is what they want to see. So, where does this project go from here, with the injunction from Judge Colaiacovo in mind? Is the funding for this just gone? What's the future of any kind of project happening there?
Harris: So, he's ruling that they must complete the EIS. The state said they were doing the EIS, then we just saw yesterday, they went to the ROCC meeting. We believe the former councilman, Rich Fontana, didn't fully commit to doing that. They said they're going to try to compromise and see what they've come up with. Either way, in terms of the funding for the project, state leaders like Crystal Peoples-Stokes and Sean Ryan they're saying that funding is protected.
Zunner: Alrighty. Thank you. That's Jamal Harris, Jr, joining us here on “A Closer Look on BTPM NPR, talking about the status of the Kensington expressway projects. Thank you, Jamal.
