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A recent Buffalo News editorial said Governor
Pataki “deserved praise and support” for his proposal to create a Niagara
River Greenway Commission to help plan and develop a greenway of
interconnected parks, river access points and a waterfront trail along the
Niagara River from Lake Ontario to Lake Erie.” This Greenway Commission
idea also has our state representatives falling all over themselves with
endorsements, even though some of them have actively opposed the greenway
proposal for the Niagara gorge rim being promoted since 1997 by the
Niagara Heritage Partnership. It’s evidently much easier to embrace an
undefined planning concept from the Governor than to support action in the
world of reality.
Just a few months ago, however, when the Governor had
the opportunity through the Office of State Parks, Recreation and Historic
Preservation to create a greenway over a five mile stretch along the lower
Niagara, he chose instead to retain a redundant two-lane commuter route
and to smooth over an additional two lanes of concrete with blacktop.
Hikers and bicyclists are supposed to enjoy this new blacktop alongside
the commuters. And now he wants a commission to plan and develop a
lake-to-lake greenway.
A greenway lake-to-lake along the Niagara River would
be a wondrous achievement, and the necessity of planning for such a
project certainly can’t be dismissed. If Pataki’s idea for this greenway,
however, accepts unnecessary highways through what otherwise could be
restored natural landscapes, his idea is very distorted. A greenway
should be more than highways going past lawns, especially in areas of
ecological, historical, and cultural significance. Such areas are
degraded by the presence of the highway and vehicles.
When OSPRHP falls so much in love with its own jargon,
such as “multi-use” and “interconnectedness,” that it forces these
abstractions onto the real world, the result can be disastrous. Here at
Niagara, for example, occasional hikers walk several feet away from
vehicles whizzing down a highway that defaces the Niagara gorge rim.
Furthermore, the fourteen voting members of the
commission proposed by the Governor will be comprised totally of his
appointments. The idea of this extensive greenway is too important to be
placed solely in the hands of political appointees and career
bureaucrats. Beyond the perfunctory inclusion of “advisory committees” to
the Commission, the environmental community has been ignored. There
should be an additional fourteen voting members coming from grassroots
environmental organizations who have much to offer.
Since there are plans for the Commission to remain
intact beyond the approval of its greenway plan by the Governor, and to
meet quarterly, there should be questions about the need for its continued
existence. Will the commission function as a quasi-State Parks in charge
of greenway development? Will it then be funded? Is the proposal for the
Commission an attempt to create an entity that will then request
mitigation or settlement funding soon becoming available to our region?
Is there a strategy to position the Commission to administer the millions
that may eventually come to our region via a National Heritage Area
designation?
Based on the track record of State Parks and other
Niagara Commissioners appointed by the Governor, the Greenway Commission
will be non-responsive to citizen concerns. Documentation of this lack of
response is provided at www.niagaraheritage.org under “Response to the
Robert Moses Parkway Pilot Project Evaluation Report.”
The day after the News editorial appeared in favor of
Pataki’s Greenway Commission, one of the items in the newspaper’s trivia
quiz was “Name the governor of New York State.” That may have caused a
few smiles in our region, but it’s not trivial at all when decisions are
being made at the highest levels of state government that will impact the
natural environment and the quality of our lives years into the future.
Because of Pataki’s high interest in a greenway for
Niagara, the Niagara Heritage Partnership expects the Governor to revisit
the State Park’s decision regarding the Niagara gorge parkway, and to
encourage a more rational direction to be taken, one closely aligned with
the enormous grassroots support for a genuine greenway. If he does
nothing to redirect the recent unwise conclusion of State Parks and
persists in maintaining his greenway commission proposal in its present
form, then the last trivia question in that same issue of the newspaper
becomes relevant. That question asked the meaning of “chutzpah.”
Bob Baxter, Conservation Chair
June 2004
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