BUFFALO, N.Y. — A group of residents who live near the Kensington Expressway have filed a lawsuit against New York State in hopes of stopping plans to cap a section of the expressway and convert it into a tunnel.
The NYS Department of Transportation plans to spend $1 billion or more to cover just three-fourths of a mile of the expressway and plant grass and trees on top of what would be a covered section of a currently below grade section of the limited access highway.
The East Side Parkways Coalition is being represented by Adam Walters, of Phillips Lytle LLP.
"The suit seeks to require the DOT to prepare an environmental impact statement, first and foremost. If they do an environmental impact statement one of the things they must to is to look at alternatives," Walters told WGRZ-TV.
The alternative residents demand in their lawsuit is not only to scrap the tunnel, but to eliminate the Kensington entirely and for the state to restore Humboldt Parkway to the way it was prior to the expressway being built 60 years ago to, as the suit notes, connect downtown Buffalo to the airport in Cheektowaga.
In the past the DOT has dismissed wiping out the expressway entirely as impractical as it is used by 75,000 vehicles daily.
"Would it be the end of the world, though, if we don't have the Kensington running through the middle of town?" Walters asked. "When they built it they thought Buffalo was going to have a population of 1 million people, and so the idea that it has to stay forever is just silly."
The suit also claims the expressway was built illegally in the first place, without required state legislative approval to discontinue public parkland, and that it now stands in violation of the of the state's Green Amendment which states everyone has a civil right to clean air, water ,and a healthful environment.
"It's hard to do that with a highway running through your front yard," Walters said.
The suit further claims that residents of nearby neighborhoods have suffered deleterious health effects from pollution, which has caused "a frightening magnitude of illness" among them.
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