"Let Them Eat Cake!" "Let Them Build that Tunnel!"

By Betty Jean Grant

Betty Jean Grant

What an absolute monstrosity happened when the 1955 Buffalo Common Council voted to put that expressway right down the middle of a thriving and fastly integrating Eastside neighborhood!

What is now even worse is the attitude of the current body of elected officials that this is not a city issue. Never mind the fact the 2025 Common Council will have to vote to take the 33 Expressway out if they were the ones (in 1955) to vote to put it in. Never mind the fact the pollutants have possibly shortened the life span of hundreds of residents living near or going to schools near Humboldt Parkway and the expressway.

Not only are residents of Humboldt Parkway in danger by continuing to breathe the bad and health-destroying air, but the installation of a tunnel will also guarantee that the expressway and tunnel will remain in our community forever.

The Dr. Charles R. Drew School, Buffalo Public Schools 53, 78, and Dr. MLK Cultural Institute probably have the highest number of children sickened by fumes from the Expressway, and yet our city, county, and state elected officials have remained silent while the NYSDOT and the governor's office doubled down by not only not insisting that an Environmental Impact Study be done but also threatening the residents' health by deciding to put a Toxic Tunnel right in front of their front yards.

The residents in the 14208 and 14211 Zip codes, near the expressway, have the highest rates of asthma, heart disease, cancer, kidney failure, COPD, autoimmune illnesses, low birthrate, and infant mortality than anywhere in the entire region. There is documentation of families living in or on our own Cancer Alley where there have been multi-generations of deaths that were caused by or attributed to living on or near that expressway that really came to be by the racist behaviors and attitudes of those who saw integration coming and believed, even back then: Black Lives Didn't Matter!

What I find saddest of all are those few individuals who are "crying" that our community is "going to lose that 1.5 billion dollars if we don't use it to build that tunnel!" My people, take a good look around our beloved Eastside community. We have a raging pothole problem, unpaved streets, cracked and missing sidewalks, senior citizens living with buckets catching the rain pouring down from a leaking roof, children who have been put out of closed community centers due to a shortage of revenue to hire adequate staff, mothers and their children living in homeless shelters—or even worse— sleeping in their vehicle or under bridges.

What is the mindset of the tunnel-lovers who would use, probably, the largest allocation of state funding Buffalo will get allocated, for a while, to cover only a portion of an expressway while leaving some of the residents near the southern portal near Dodge St. and the northern portal near Sidney St., the possibility of becoming more sick than they have been in the past?