I’ve attended every Niagara River Greenway meeting and I’ve read all of the documentation on the Niagara Heritage Partnership’s (NHP) website. If my understanding is correct, NHP advocates the removal of all four lanes of the Robert Moses Parkway from Niagara Falls to Lewiston, approximately 6.5 miles of pavement, in order to reclaim the natural environment of the land because doing so would protect and provide for native flora and fauna unique to the gorge rim, the old growth forests at NYS Park’s Deveaux Woods, and the small, ancient trees in the gorge walls; to incorporate hiking and biking trails—a useful marketing incentive strategy—to encourage eco-tourism, heritage tourism, and cultural tourism by honoring Native American and African American historic sites, while providing a living classroom which would enhance the ecological, environmental, and horticultural programs taught at Niagara University and Niagara County Community College through the construction of a native plant greenhouse on the face of the New York Power Project. Road removal, reclamation, and restoration would also once again allow residents access to their waterfront. Eliminating the Robert Moses Parkway entirely would help revitalize Niagara Falls’ Main Street as well as other business districts through the redirection of traffic.

If NHP’s proposal can be erroneously perceived by some as detrimental and lacking quality of life merit and economic value what then is the widely accepted, genuine, definition of a greenway?

The Conservation Fund’s American Greenways Program and book, Greenways: A Guide to Planning, Design, and Development, answers that question. “First, greenways offer a way to preserve vital habitat corridors, and to promote plant and animal species diversity. A greenway serves as a critical filtering zone, absorbing contaminates in surface runoff, and trees, shrubs, and cover vegetation along the corridor cleanse and replenish the air. Greenways provide much-needed space for outdoor recreation. A greenway is ideally suited to such popular outdoor activities as jogging, walking, biking, fishing, and canoeing. Greenways provide safe, alternative, non-motorized transportation routes. Greenways link us to our communities and, by lessening our dependence on the automobile, can improve air quality and reduce road congestion. Greenways offer a way to protect our nation’s cultural heritage. They give us access to buildings of historic and architectural significance. Greenways allow us to look back at our past and our traditions—to revisit remnants of settlements and the industrial centers that define our history. Greenways can help preserve the rural character of a community or safeguard areas of visual interest by protecting ridgelines, river corridors, and scenic resources. A greenway offers visual relief; its wooded breaks can frame and distinguish neighborhoods. Greenways are community amenities with an economic value. Greenways enhance the quality of life and can increase the value of surrounding properties. Greenways have been shown to draw tourists and have been the catalyst behind new commercial development and the revitalization of former town centers.”

Clearly, what NHP has been advocating for nearly ten years would be enthusiastically embraced by the Conservation Fund’s American Greenways Program. Why hasn’t the Niagara River Greenway Commission endorsed NHP’s visionary proposal? It’s a true greenway.

Wallace Stegner once said, “If you don’t know where you are you don’t know who you are.” According to The Conservation Fund’s book and the American Greenways Program, “Unplanned growth is severing our connections with a place, our essential orientations, our sense of roots. Yet today a person suddenly dropped along a road outside of almost any American city wouldn’t know where he or she was because it all looks the same. Is it Albany or Allentown, Providence or Pittsburgh? Who can tell? If the character of the land is changed, what about the people?”

At each greenway meeting, citizen advocates ask for consideration, suggest information, and provide supporting environmental data. Yet, some Commissioners maintain an on-going refusal to be educated about environmental issues. Why is this?

State Parks and several Greenway Commissioners were involved stakeholders in the NYPA relicensing process. Why would NYPA greenway monies, specifically earmarked during relicensing as reparation for environmental damage, fund renovations to the Deveaux Woods’ campus for a high school’s administration offices? How is this reparation? How does this promote tourism? Wouldn’t creating an ecological center, a native plant botanical garden, and a bird observation area at that globally significant birding site be a better, wiser, environmental and economic gateway project?

If officials honestly intend to create a greenway, they should be eager to formulate a genuine definition based on work already accomplished and to then educate residents, the public, and the tourist and business sectors about every beneficial aspect. NHP called for such a definition, which has been thus far lacking, at the first Citizens’ Advisory Committee meeting.

Several east coast states, and many others across the nation, have adopted and implemented The American Greenways Program’s definition as their mission. All are successful and endorse their genuine greenways on websites, citing outstanding economic, environmental, and quality of life benefits. They protected their unique landscapes and we should do the same.

March 7, 2006

Michelle Vanstrom

Niagara Frontier Wildlife Habitat Council

www.nfwhc.org