By Neale Gulley
The Tonawanda News
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Outbursts of frustration erupted Thursday evening from North Tonawanda residents angry about plans to add roughly 120 acres of restricted wetland to the City of North Tonawanda.
The protected land runs through private companies like Ascension Industries, now looking to expand, breaking buildable land into three far-flung smaller sections. It runs through an almost $2 million city plan to extend Meadow Drive to serve the mid-city business district, years in the making. It includes an already approved subdevelopment (but which has not materialized in almost 30 years) and portions of more than 100 private properties.
Several representatives from the state Department of Environmental Conservation were called to the public meeting at 7 p.m. at the Student Alumni Activity Center by city officials and state Sen. George Maziarz, R-Newfane. The purpose of the meeting was to clarify restrictions resulting from the recent re-mapping of wetlands as it pertains to some 125 land owners whose properties are included in portions of the five newly designated zones.
After a presentation by DEC Senior Wildlife Biologist Ken Roblee on the water and soil conditions that justify the designations, question cards were collected from the audience.
“Some of these are less questions. I apologize if I don’t get to all your comments,” said Regional Wildlife Manager Mark Kandel in addressing the cards. “That one’s clearly a comment,” he said sorting though the pile.
One card asked what tax-funded infrastructure will be wasted.
“That’s a loaded question,” he replied.
City Engineer Dale Marshall has previously asserted some $6 million in road/sewer infrastructure has been installed in the last 30 years to serve developments that won’t ever be realized if the wetland additions stick.
Another question inquired into the impact on property values.
“That’s all in the eye of the beholder, if your house is on the market,” Kandel said.
Residents must disclose the presence of wetland on their properties, effectively reducing the “best use” potential of the land.
Though Kandel stressed there is no change in ownership resulting from the new designation of the land, residents felt they’d lost something.
“It’s all a clay soil base, what do you want,” one woman shouted, referring to the city’s geography as a former lake bed.
“And that’s why we’re really here,” Roblee said. “Because of those soils and (the conditions) they produce.”
Many other comments were made regarding previous maps that didn’t include the newly selected areas and from those who remember the city’s former agriculture industry, which dug drainage ditches for years to drain the city.
“No one’s arguing these area’s weren’t wetlands 50 years ago. We’re require to map what is there now,” Kandel said.
Though he said the department actually surveys the land on foot when possible, they were essentially kept off city land by former Mayor Larry Soos and the new designations are based on aerial photos and soil data compiled as long ago as 2005.
Kandel then listed activities both allowed and disallowed under the new designations in those areas (roughly from Ruie Road south to the canal). Filling, grading, constructing drainage ditches, cutting of vegetation etc., are some examples of disallowed activity.
He said existing structures are grandfathered and recreation, moveable structures, gardens and such are allowed. Then comes the permit process when homeowners want to consider changing their properties. The permits come with a fee.
“In some cases modification of existing structures might require a permit,” he said, after which one resident shouted “heil Hitler!”
It was a sign of things to come.
The new wetland zones themselves also include a 100-foot buffer area around the designated delineation, also falling under restricted use, which has caused much confusion among homeowners who aren’t sure if what portions of their property are now considered wetlands.
The areas are already considered protected, Kandel said, although the mapping has not been finalized and residents have until April 23 to ask the department for clarifications or amendments. DEC Attorney Maureen Brady said lawsuits against the state have historically not been successful until the mapping is declared final — a process she said has in some cases taken years.
City officials are asking the 30-day period be extended to the maximum 90 days. Maziarz announced his intent to have the department personally survey each and every residential property to be affected. Homeowners seeking permits for variances on affected portions of property will encounter the DEC first working to prevent the impact, then seeking to mitigate it.
“This is your property and you should be the one to make a decision on what will happen to your property,” Maziarz later told the crowd.
He pointed out the DEC rarely seeks such new zones, and that they were likely contacted by an individual or group.
Fairfield Drive resident Liz Kazubski, of the Sierra Club, promptly raised her hand.
“I’m the one who put the letter in,” she said before drawing some angry remarks from others seated in the auditorium.
Kazubski said she has lived in a flooded home for 28 years because “the city did what they’re trying to do now — they didn’t tell us (it was wetland).”
She said, however, that the recent DEC action is based on a letter she sent to officials including her own mapping back in 2005.
Kazubski is the Sierra Club’s state wetlands chairwoman, representing some 45,000 members statewide.
Of the millions of dollars in threatened projects, she said the DEC is willing to work to mitigate some proposals.
She said the Meadow Drive Extension, perhaps, could be moved slightly to the west to circumvent Wetland TE 40, for instance.
She and DEC officials point to the important role wetlands play in reducing flooding citywide, providing a habitat for animals and regulating surface water flow, among many other things.
For Kazubski and others, they’re also simply not fit for development.
“Nobody should have to go though what I’ve gone through,” she said.
