BUFFALO, N.Y. (WKBW) — Dozens of people showed up to the Northland Workforce Training Center to come face to face with the NYSDOT to get some answers on the $1 billion Kensington Expressway project.
Emere Nieves tells 7 News reporter Yoselin Person about the impacts of living along the expressway.
“I developed asthma, and, I'm on the spectrum of heart disease, and I'm living an example of what it is to grow up in front of the Kensington Expressway, and we need to eradicate it,” Nieves says. “We shouldn’t have any more people going into sickness as they age. as young people. I'm 32-years-old."
Others say they want an environmental impact statement from the DOT.
“We need to have a community benefit agreement to find if we put the tunnel there, what's the benefit for our community,” says Betty Jean Grant, a former elected official. “What's the benefit for those homeowners who live in Humboldt Parkway.”
The proposed blasting for the tunnel is also a concern.
“We don't know the devastation that a tunnel will do with the blasting, the asbestos and there’s a lot of things that we don’t know,” Grant expresses.
Susan Surdej, a spokesperson for the NYSDOT, says they’re trying to finish up the environmental assessment.
“We are doing our due diligence working with the DEC, working with the Federal Highway Administration, following all the guidelines,” Surdej says. “We’re going to have strict rules during construction. There’s going to be communication planes during construction.”
Those strict rules are having no blasting from 9 p.m. to 7 a.m. and suspending operations if air quality exceeds a certain level.
“It's a project that aims to connect the community and still be able to move traffic in a sensible way and be sensitive to the community at the same time,” she says.
The DOT plans to develop local jobs around this project.
“So people in the community can be represented in the workforce that’s hired to construct this project. so that's very important to us too,” says Surdej.
The NYSDOT says work will begin at the end of 2024.
Major construction is scheduled to begin spring of 2025.
