BUFFALO, N.Y. — Residents living near the Kensington Expressway who were not at the table when discussions were held about putting a tunnel in place now say they want to be heard.
Dr. Jennifer Roberts — a tenured Associate Professor in the Department of Kinesiology, School of Public Health at the University of Maryland — highlighted environmental injustices.
"It's not just about contaminated water or contaminated air. It really is about how communities of color are targeted in terms of having to burden environmental stressors such as a how Humboldt Parkway was removed and replaced with the Kensington Expressway and the east side had had to shoulder that responsibility for decades and that is a form of environmental racism."
Sherry Sherrill of We Are Women Warriors said the fight will continue in "opposition against the Route 33 Kensington Expressway project. The movement did not die. We're coming harder, we're going strong and we're not going to stop."
She called the state's plan "a mandate on top of an environmental disaster, the Kensington Expressway is an environmental disaster. The state wants to plant a three foot park with trees that grow sideways and somehow think that we ought to settle for that. In addition to Humboldt Parkway having a high prevalence and an incidents of persons reporting various environmental illnesses."
Dr. Roberts said, "when you have ideas like the Interstate Highway system to advance our nation, to make it so, it's more efficient and you want to say, well, where are we going to put them? Do we want to put them into this neighborhood or do we want to put in this neighborhood? A lot of times that burden. Shouldered or communities of color or impoverished community, and we see this going on over and over again. 5:32 We even see the reverse of it now in terms of gentrification.
Over 100 people attended an event at the Frank E. Merriweather Library on Jefferson Avenue for an event hosted by We Are Women Warriors and the East Side Parkways Coalition.
One billion dollars has been approved by the Federal Highway administration to cap a portion of the expressway as a way to reconnect communities and add green space.
According to the NYS Department of Transportation website, "The purpose of the Project is to reconnect the community surrounding the defined transportation corridor and improve the compatibility of the corridor with the adjacent land uses, while addressing the geometric, infrastructure, and multi-modal needs within the corridor in its current location. The transportation corridor is defined as NYS Route 33 (Kensington Expressway) and Humboldt Parkway between Best Street and Sidney Street.
"We don't have a problem with traffic being on that thoroughfare, just like the Scajacuada corridors got their wish come true. We think that Kensington and Kensington Expressway corridor, Humboldt Parkway neighborhood, east side Buffalo community residents living in the middle of the heart of our fair city deserve the same quality of life."