Lake Tonawanda
(This column was first published in
the June 27, 2004 issue of The Buffalo Sunday News.)
Turn time back 11,500 years and look
down on western New York. Then more slowly wind forward again perhaps a hundred
years at a time. You'll see the last of the half-mile thick Wisconsonian ice
sheet retreat through the area. First the melting glacier will create Lake
Iroquois, the beginning of what will later become Lake Ontario. But then as the
glacier backs still further to the north and the water level drops, a smaller
lake will form between two east-west ridges, the Niagara escarpment and the
Onondaga escarpment. That long shallow pond, rarely more than thirty feet deep
and a few miles wide but extending all the way from Lewiston east to Holley,
was Lake Tonawanda.
Everyone assumes they know the
Niagara escarpment. That's the cliff over which Niagara Falls drops. But what
fewer of us understand is that it extends east and west from there as well. You
can dine atop it at Schimschack's Restaurant in Pekin or follow it along the
north edge of Lockport. The Onondaga escarpment is less evident. One of its
most obvious outcrops is in the Escarpment Sanctuary along Greiner Road in
Clarence.
Lake Tonawanda pooled in the flat
region between those two ridges roughly centered on what is now Tonawanda Creek
between North Tonawanda and the Iroquois National Wildlife Refuge.
As your time machine continues to
reel forward you'll see that lake slowly dry up, leaving layer upon layer of
oozy sediment, some of that soft admixture of sand, silt and clays still later
turning into a kind of quicksand trap for homes built in those wetland areas.
That's the history; the problems are
today.
Homes in the towns of Amherst and
the Tonawandas have been most in the news with over 500 houses settling into
this ooze and a state estimate of almost $5 million in damages so far. But
other buildings located in the wetlands left by this Pleistocene lake may some
day soon face similar difficulties.
Much has been reported about
remediation of these serious current problems but too little attention is being
given to prevention of the same kind of disasters in the future.
Unfortunately, our state and local
governments have failed us. New York, for example, is behind all New England
states in its definition of wetlands. Because of a 2001 Supreme Court ruling,
the Federal government now only protects wetlands connected to tidal,
interstate and navigable water bodies. So-called "isolated wetlands",
defined as those not so connected (and thus most of them), are now protected by
New York only when they are 12.4 acres or greater or "of unusual local
importance." No other state in the Northeast has a similar acreage
requirement and a national estimate indicates that between one-fifth and
one-half of all wetlands are less than 12.4 acres.
Local builders and the
municipalities that cater to them have taken advantage of such requirements to
develop housing projects in areas with foreseeable problems and without
notifying the homebuyers.
That's the bad news; happily, there
is good news as well.
Much to the credit of the Sierra
Club and other conservation organizations, a bill (A7905-S4480) is, as I write,
working its way though the state legislature to address this and other shortcomings
in our wetlands protection laws. It has already passed the Assembly with only a
single "No" vote recorded. The same conservationists together with
organizations like the Audubon Society are, as of this writing, pressing hard
for Senate consideration and approval.
This bill would afford protection to New York
wetlands of at least one acre and regulate them if they meet the environmental
criteria, regardless of whether they appear on a wetland map. So-called
"grandfathering" of subdivisions that are not yet built, but that
were proposed prior to 1975 to be developed in wetlands, will be eliminated.
These are the loopholes in current laws that allow homes to be built in
wetlands and sold to unsuspecting buyers.
Given
the sad recent disclosures of legislative impropriety, our representatives need
to work to regain moral standing. Passing this bill to protect hundreds of
future homeowners can represent a small but important step in that direction. Whether or not this bill makes it
through this legislative session, it is most worthwhile and I hope that it will
eventually be signed into law by our governor.