* Club Opposes Klydel Development*

by Richard Lippes

Sierra Club�s- Niagara group announced today its opposition to a proposed development threatening the Klydel Wetland near Meadow Drive in North Tonawanda. These exemplary wetlands (that total about 70 remaining acres) have been targeted by as many as five proposals since the controversial Benderson development project announced in November 1996.

Indications are that the latest threat may be a proposal by People Inc. to utilize a federal department of Housing and Urban Development award that exceeds $3.5 million dollars to construct a new, 39 unit senior housing project in the wetland. The complex appears from published reports to be slated for the same piece of property as many previous projects that were either rejected or withdrawn after public outcry.

The value of this wetland as a community asset and in containing localized flooding far outweighs the benefits of an apartment complex.

What makes this proposal particularly egregious is that federal funds from HUD are to be involved in destroying a portion of a federal and state protected wetland.� This would be in direct violation of presidential executive order No. 11990 that states in part -- Each (federal) agency shall provide leadership and shall take action to minimize the destruction, loss or degradation of wetlands, and to preserve and enhance the natural and beneficial values of wetlands in carrying out the agency�s responsibilities.

All of the various projects that have been targeted in the Klydel Wetland since 1996 have been proposed for the same property. The owners who purchased that property did so in 1995, well after regulatory laws had been put into place to protect wetlands. The property contains both federal and state protected wetlands, according to records reviewed from the offices of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and the Buffalo District of the US Army Corps of Engineers. As recently as July 21, 1999, in a Public Notice published by the US Army Corps of Engineers, the Klydel Wetland was singled out for special protection under the Corps regional permitting conditions, the only wetland in Niagara County to be so designated. About 25% of the original wetland has already been destroyed by development, thereby severely affecting the wetland�s flood control capacity.� This environmental destruction cannot be allowed to continue.

Sierra Club strongly encourages People, Inc. and HUD to work together with concerned citizens to find an alternative site for the complex, as suggested by the Niagara Newspapers Editorial Board in an editorial published in the Tonawanda News on November 24, 1999.� The Meadow Drive / Klydel Wetland�property that was originally proposed should�be eliminated from the list of possible sites.

(Mr. Lippes is an attorney based in Buffalo.� He is chairman of the Sierra Club Niagara Group.)