— — The Department of Environmental Conservation has declared its intent to designate roughly 120 acres of newly protected wetlands in and around the City of North Tonawanda.

Elected officials past and present have fought for years to keep this day from coming. But their inherent interest has always been in keeping the newly proposed wetlands — located in five separate irregular-shaped areas between Ruie Road south to the canal — open for development.

Millions of dollars in tax-funded infrastructure like roads and sewers has been installed in the area and will be wasted, they say.

Millions more in potential business taxes and development dollars will be cut off, they warn, as evidenced by Twin City Ambulance, which moved from the city last year despite plans to expand because a prior wetland designation was laid atop their property.

Of course, local members of the Sierra Club who have lobbied the DEC for some time leading up to the now disputed addition of five new wetland zones feel very differently. As, of course, does the agency in charge of protecting valuable natural resources for the state of New York.

A sample of the fundamental disagreement sprung up at Tuesday’s North Tonawanda Common Council meeting, when former Council President Brett Sommer — who left politics in a state of mild disgust last year — publicly offered to return to public service as a member of the city’s Environmental Committee.

 His reasons are similar to those of Mayor Rob Ortt, former Mayor Larry Soos, City Engineer Dale Marshall and most everyone else driving public development who have sought to block the move. That is, the city has invested millions of dollars in infrastructure and would lose much of the last remaining land for development within municipal borders.

“It seems like those are the people I constantly fought with and who have cost the city hundreds of thousands of dollars,” Sommer said. “While I do not miss elected office I believe I can still serve the City of North Tonawanda ... to balance environmental issues with what is best for the city.”

That includes a years-old plan to extend Meadow Drive to service the mid city business district that would be squashed by one of the proposed wetlands it would run through. It is a plan that Sommer and others championed for years. Most of the project’s cost would be covered by a $1.6 million federal grant obtained by former Rep. Tom Reynolds in 2006, as well as other grant money.

The project has been in the city’s comprehensive plan since 1971 and has recently seen a flurry of approvals from the Department of Transportation (court ordered) and a project plan adopted by the city.

Resident Susan Wilke offered a public rebuttal from a conservationists’ standpoint at Tuesday’s meeting:

“Many of you might live in homes that are on wetlands,” Wilke told the gallery full of students on student government day. “And many of your parents might have to deal with sump pumps and flooding.”

The city continues to invest in flood relief projects.

She touched on the need for wetlands for drainage and other ecological issues like providing a habitat for misplaced deer and other critters that are a common sight in backyards throughout the city. Sprawl, she said, will lead to a “very compromised environment” for future residents like those seated in City Hall Tuesday night.

“We cannot keep developing sprawl. It makes a lot of people very wealthy at the cost of your future,” she said.

In the midst of the weeks-old news of the DEC’s intent, Ortt has drawn fire over a recent e-mail to the chairman of the city’s environmental committee. The message, which suggests they issue a declaration of no adverse environmental impact for the Meadow Drive plans, specifically regarding wetlands, was leaked to the Buffalo News.

Ortt said the only intent of the message to committee Chairman Brian Murphy (appointed by Soos) was to open dialogue with the advisory committee, which is not a voting organ of the city.

“Brian’s feelings ... he was apologetic for the fact that the e-mail got out. He understood the e-mail was just me asking for their input, which didn’t happen going several years back,” Ortt said. “He did agree that they would issue a letter in support of the project. I want to make clear, this committee is only an advisory committee. This was just getting them involved and getting them on the record ... If Brian had said we can’t support this for whatever reason, that would have been OK.”

Marshall, who also met with Murphy the same day, echoed a similar sentiment:

“I think the whole thing from my perspective is getting blown out of proportion. (The mayor) asked the committee for their input. He’s the only mayor since I’ve been here who has asked their opinion on anything.”

But committee member, NT resident and Sierra Club’s state wetlands Chairwoman Liz Kazubski, according to Marshall, may have felt Ortt’s words were a mandate to issue a negative environmental opinion.

Ortt and Marshall affirmed the city will contest the new designations on the grounds that they don’t meet the DEC’s own guidelines, which call for 12 contiguous acres for each zone. Marshall said the wetlands is broken up by millions of dollars in storm sewers, sanitary sewers, roads and other infrastructure taxpayers have paid for and that have been installed in the general area. Marshall said furthermore, pending development projects had already been approved there by the DEC years ago, in the very area now being reclassified. The infrastructure the city installed in the late 1970s, early 1980s and early 1990s was all approved by the state agency.

“They can’t have it both ways,” Marshall said. “The state of New York can’t come back after the fact and say this is an emergent wetland and now all that investment (goes to waste). We’re fighting for the right of the city to be a city and to protect its infrastructure ... So now we’re going to have to spend money to fight it, which irks me.”

He and Ortt, however, said so far that does not mean a lawsuit.

The city did obtain outside legal council, however, when some 30 acres of potential wetlands was cited in June behind Erie Avenue and Walck Road, part of what’s called wetland TE 39.

Council members in October permitted Soos to retain legal council from the law firm Harter Seacrest & Emery to challenge the basis for wetlands designations in the city, which at that time included the land factoring into Twin City Ambulance’s scuttled hopes to relocate their headquarters there.

Halting the Meadow Drive extension and other projects would effectively squander 30 years worth of high-volume road and sewer infrastructure taxpayers have paid for in the area from Wurlitzer Park/Martinsville south to the canal, the city says.

It is in that zone where five new splotches of protected land are proposed, one stacked virtually on top of the other in a vertical fashion, if one were to study a map of the city.

“In 1978 when they came in and mapped wetlands ... they did not recognize that land as wet,” Marshall said. “To come back later and say other areas have become wet and we want to protect them forever when now we’ve got a storm sewer draining them ....”

Though former Mayor Larry Soos had worked to bar the agency from coming into the city on foot, aerial mapping by the state agency was conducted anyway.

In the aftermath of the DEC’s intended new zones, city officials and area representatives like Sen. George Maziarz, R- Newfane want answers and clarifications. 

A public meeting tonight was scheduled by City Clerk-Treasurer Scott Kiedrowski and Sen. George Marziarz, R- Newfane, demanding clarification from DEC officials.

The 7 p.m. meeting will take place at the North Tonawanda High School Alumni Student Activity Center, 405 Meadow Drive.

Marshall has more than once called the recent aerial mapping “ridiculous” and a land grab.

Ortt said the impending extension of meadow Drive to serve the city’s mid city business district near the high school is a top priority that would be prevented by what the DEC calls Wetland TE 43.

Another zone, TE 40, encompasses a private parcel approved in 1980 for what was supposed to be the Woodstream Subdivision. The project however, hasn’t taken shape in the years since. However, the DEC’s stamp of approval is on the cover of the plans, Marshall said.