Fellow OONA members: This is our first shot at an environmentally-focused short newsletter. We hope to publish future editions as a newsletter. In this inaugural edition, we take on only three topics: 1) the Genesee County STAMP industrial site; 2) info on a nasty invasive weed in our area; and 3) some good news from Rochester about Lake Ontario. Our plan is for future editions covering a wide variety of environmental issues relevant to OONA. Comments, suggestions, questions, and constructive criticism are always welcome.
Dave Giacherio, Frank Panczyszyn, Environment and Preservation Committee
STAMP UPDATE
Below is a link to a LONG and extraordinarily detailed article on the STAMP project by W. Dale Shoemaker in the Investigative Post, a Buffalo-based “watchdog” publication. It clearly has a point of view – with which you are free to disagree – but it is factually very rich, and it provides a great overview of the STAMP issue (and related political machinations). We are sharing this with OONA membership because STAMP has been a topic of interest to many of us concerned with the long-term health of the Oak Orchard River.
Below is a link to a second article from the Investigative Post that looks at the issue from the perspective of the residents of the Tonawanda-Seneca Nation.
INVASIVE SPECIES: JAPANESE KNOTWEED
Below are two links that address a particularly nasty invasive weed in our area. It’s called Japanese Knotweed, and it was introduced in the US as an ornamental plant. It spreads quickly and it is very difficult to eradicate. LO shore residents: It is particularly important to remove this weed from any rocks protecting your shoreline. Its amazing root/rhizome system can change the inter-rock spacing and lessen your overall level of protection. On our near-daily walk to Point Breeze, Cheryl and I pass a couple of “forests” of knotweed, which seem to be spreading quickly. The NYIS-INFO post below mentions glyphosate (tradename Roundup) as an effective herbicide for knotweed. If you choose to go this route, please use great care to minimize your contact with the chemical solution. While Roundup is certainly not an acute poison to humans, there is some data that show a correlation between exposure to Roundup and longer-term health effects. So be careful. The second link addresses some non-chemical means to eradicate the weed. None are easy.
GOOD NEWS: ROCHESTER EMBAYMENT IS SET FOR “DELISTING”
This is great news for our neighbors to the east. The Rochester Embayment – the area of Lake Ontario around Rochester – for decades has been listed as an “Area of Concern” (i.e., a badly polluted area) by the EPA. After literally decades of hard work by the US EPA, the NYS DEC, and the Monroe County Dept of Public Health, the area is ready to be delisted, or removed from the list of problem areas. It took a long time, and the problem was complex and multifaceted, but people and the government working together ultimately accomplished something quite significant. See the link below.
Oak Orchard Neighborhood Association with Friends of the Orleans County Marine Park 