House Passes Bill With Higgins’ Amendment Requiring
Risk Assessment of Proposed Nuclear Waste Transport
Across Peace Bridge
Congressman Brian Higgins (NY-26) announced approval of HR 2200, the Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear (CBRN) Intelligence and Information Sharing Act of 2015. The bill includes an amendment, introduced by Higgins, which requires the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis to examine and share information about the risks associated with a plan to transport highly enriched liquid uranium across the Peace Bridge.
The Department of Energy has a plan to transport liquid nuclear waste from Ontario’s Chalk River Research reactor over the Peace Bridge, through Western New York and other states en route to the Department of Energy’s Savannah River site beginning next year.
Last July Congressman Higgins called on the U.S. Department of Energy to conduct an environmental review of the plan. He argued, in contrast to spent nuclear fuel, the shipment of liquid nuclear waste is far more complicated, more radioactive, and therefore a breach or contamination would be significantly more dangerous. Despite the fact that the route was approved nearly two decades ago, the DOE maintained a new Environmental Impact Statement was not necessary.
The bill approved by the House now compels a risk assessment before the plan proceeds.
“The route was approved nearly twenty years ago, and it reflects a pre-9/11 mindset with respect to the threat and consequences of terrorism,” said Congressman Higgins. “This legislation, as amended, would ensure that the Department of Energy has the information it needs to reconsider the wisdom of transporting dangerous nuclear material through high risk areas like Buffalo.”
How our transportation system discriminates against the most vulnerable.
By Corinne Ramey - Slate Magazine
Feb. 27 2015
At the easternmost edge of Lake Erie, where the lake meets the Niagara River, the Peace Bridge connects the
United States and Canada. The two-thirds-of-a-mile-long bridge is one
of the busiest border crossings between the two countries, connecting
Canada’s Fort Erie with Buffalo, New York. Every day, an average of more
than 15,000 vehicles, about 3,400 of which are trucks, drive over its
steel girders.
In the shadow of the bridge sits a small neighborhood called the West Side, where the asthma rate is more than four times the national average,
and residents report a host of other health issues. Advocates say the
thousands of trucks driving overhead spew harmful diesel emissions and
other particulates into their community. The pollutants hover in the
air, are absorbed into buildings and houses, and find their way into the
lungs of neighborhood residents, who are primarily people of color.
“It’s constant asthma problems on the West Side,” says Sharon Tell, a
local resident.
Idling trucks, with their engines running, are a regular presence on
residential streets. “You see them park on our streets now, and sleeping
overnight,” she says. “It’s so much, and we’re right there.” Tell is
one of several residents who wore an air monitor funded through an
Environmental Protection Agency grant. Her device collected more than 1.8 times
the EPA recommended limit of particle pollutants. Tell could only wear
the monitor for eight hours during a single day—the cost of conducting
the air quality test is prohibitively expensive—but the result was
deeply alarming. According to the EPA’s standards, the recommended limit
on particle pollutants shouldnot be “exceeded more than once per year on average over 3 years”.
Far from addressing the community’s concerns, plans are now afoot to
expand the Peace Bridge. A proposed expansion of the bridge’s on- and
off-ramps will further encroach into the neighborhood’s streets.
Residents say their concerns about the constant truck traffic and its
deleterious health consequences are being consistently ignored. “We have
to move past the point where your zip code determines the quality of
your life,” says Virginia Golden, a Buffalo resident and activist.
* * *
Race and transportation have long been intertwined, whether it be
federally funded highways that plowed through, or isolated, minority
neighborhoods; Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott; or segregated
streetcars and trolleys. And there has been tremendous progress within
the past century, particularly when Brown v. Board of Education
struck down “separate but equal,” leading to the eventual desegregation
of public transportation. In the 1990s, two pieces of legislation, the
Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act and the Transportation
Equity Act for the 21st Century, increased community
involvement and awareness of civil rights issues in transportation
planning. But discrimination, while certainly less overt, remains today.
Race and transportation have long been intertwined, from federally fundedhighways that plowed through minority neighborhoods to Rosa Parks and
the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Photo by Glenn Asakawa/Denver Post Staff
Sometimes, as in Buffalo’s case, communities feel cut out of the decision-making process. Those in power make decisions about transportation planning, resulting in ill-planned bus routes, transportation more likely to benefit those with cars than those without, and bleak environmental costs. In some cities, roads continue to pull apart neighborhoods, prioritizing commuters over communities. Nationally, the United States remains a country where many forms of
transportation are effectively still segregated—whites and minorities ride different kinds of transportation, resulting in an unequal ability to reach jobs, education, and a better life.
