And All We Are Getting Is This Lousy Tunnel!

By Betty Jean Grant

Betty Jean Grant

The People in Syracuse, NY would not allow Gov. Kathy Hochul and their bought and sometimes, paid for politicians, to keep an outdated highway in place. Only in Buffalo, New York, would Black voters allow the 33 Expressway to to stay and to continue to divide the community and to kill the homeowners on Humboldt Parkway with toxic fumes.

Worse yet, they are spending a billion dollars with out-of-town contractors, to build an outdated and unneeded tunnel, while holding a few training classes with a few local youths who will be offered a few jobs paying $25 an hour. Nevermind the fact that workers who are unionized, will be getting over $100 per hour working alongside them! The NYSDOT knows how desperate the community is for job opportunities, so they sit back and say nothing while the governor, NYSDOT, local politicians and a few compromised, self-serving neighborhood groups exploit them.

In a few years, if this project of installing a tunnel is allowed, a loud chorus of I TOLD YOU SO will be heard and this writer will be yelling the loudest!

I know people are sick and tired of me writing about some East Side residents agreeing that keeping the Expressway is a good idea and adding the tunnel would be even better. I don’t know about you, but I think people that think like this are either been bought off, trying to sell their allegiance, or are just plain crazy!

Who in their right mind would put a few minimum wage jobs over the health and well-being and safety of the residents of Humboldt Parkway?

Currently there are over 60 plaintiffs who have filed at least five lawsuits challenging the Democratic Governor and NYSDOT from putting a toxic tunnel under their houses and yards without conducting an Environmental Impact Statement.

If the state’s officials were not convinced that an Environmental Impact Statement would show that the residents have indeed been harmed by breathing 70 years of bad and killing air coming off the Expressway and into their houses and apartments – what are you waiting for, NYS representatives? Do the impartial Environmental Impact Statement.

If the East Side Parkways Coalition, their lawyers and the Humboldt Parkway residents are proven wrong by the Statement, that would go a long way in shutting us up. Until then, do the doggone study.