TONAWANDA, N.Y. — Things have turned frosty between groups once united in their goal to improve the environment after decades of pollution by the now-closed Tonawanda Coke facility.
The cold war that erupted between Citizens Science Community Recourses (CSCR) and the University at Buffalo (UB) has also left a County Legislator seeking to broker a détente in the dispute,
“We want a seat at the table. Plain and simple," CSCR founder Jackie James said.
After finding it had violated clean air statutes, U.S. District Court Judge William Skretny ordered Tonawanda Coke to fund health and environmental studies, as well as community projects aimed at helping those who may have been affected by the company’s decades of polluting the surrounding area.
This included $700,000 for a soil study, based largely on leg work done by CSCR.
“But at the time we were not a nonprofit, so these funds had to move through a not-for-profit agency," James explained.
The choice was the SUNY Research Foundation via the university at Buffalo.
However, James felt the soil study in particular was getting off track and claims she was rebuffed by officials at UB when she sought to express her concerns.
“They were testing for different chemicals that never came out of Tonawanda coke,” James told WGRZ-TV.
“I spoke to UB officials and told them this was supposed to be a collaboration and that I felt more things were going away from the community and to UB. A Vice President at UB turned around and told me, ‘This isn’t a collaboration. …this is a dictatorship.”
James declined to identify the person who allegedly made the remark but said it felt to her like she was being told that “I needed to shut up and listen."
In a lengthy statement regarding the controversy, and accusations that it's running roughshod over the process, UB said it "strongly disputes such claims” and that “the University is working diligently with these stakeholders and their respective communities."
UB also addressed several other criticisms being lodged in the statement that can be read here.
“If anyone deserves a seat at the table it is Jackie James,” said Erie County Legislator Kevin Hardwick, who represents residents of Tonawanda and other areas that Tonawanda Coke was found to have polluted.
“Jackie James is to Tonawanda Coke what Lois Gibbs is to Love Canal or what Erin Brockovitch was to PG&E,” Hardwick said. “If not for her, then Tonawanda Coke would still be spewing its noxious emissions over the Tonawandas and Grand Island."
Hardwick organized a discussion of the matter before the county legislature’s Government ASffairs Committee on Thursday, to which UB officials were invited but did not attend.
“What I would like to see and facilitate is a meeting between the two groups to get them on the same page because I think they have common interests,” Hardwick said. “There ought to be common ground.”
When asked if he believed that might actually occur in the not so distant future, Hardwick said, "I have no indication that it might not happen. I’m very hopeful.”
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