WATERBOARDED – An open letter to the Niagara Falls Water Board
To: Gretchen Leffler, Colleen Larkin, Renae Kimble, Nick Forster and Dan O’Callaghan,
Niagara Falls is being waterboarded.
In general parlance, waterboarding is a form of water torture in which water is poured over a cloth covering the face and breathing passages of an immobilized captive, causing the individual to experience the sensation of drowning.
But in our fair city, it constitutes control of our water supply by a group of political hacks, apparently answerable to no one, who represent a clear and present danger not only to human beings but to every fish and animal living in the Niagara River ecosystem.
Since its creation in 2002 by then-Councilman Paul Dyster, former Mayor Irene Elia, sacked Assemblywoman Francine DelMonte and former State Senator George Maziarz, the Niagara Falls Water Board has been a malignant cancer on the community it was ostensibly designed to serve.
Constant rate hikes and hidden money have been two of the smaller problems. The two years residents in the 72nd Street section of the LaSalle neighborhood endured winters without any running water whatsoever, the stench of the Buffalo Avenue neighborhoods around the Wastewater Treatment plant and, most recently, this past summer’s major, double dip, wastewater spills into the mighty Niagara have been far more serious.
Now, a new study headed up by the University of Buffalo’s Diana Aga, PhD shows that the brains of the fish in the Niagara River show unusually high levels of drugs like Zoloft, Prozac and other antidepressants, essentially turning our fish into drug addicts.
Sport fishing is a major industry along the Niagara River, and anything that harms this important revenue stream can only be more bad news for the embattled Niagara Falls economy.
Take it up with Mayor Paul Dyster, the self-proclaimed “green mayor” who has now become one of the biggest polluters of the Niagara River in recent history.
You, the Niagara Falls Water Board, have allowed this to happen.
And, as usual, the people of Niagara Falls, Lewiston and Youngstown, along with the flora and fauna that depend on the Niagara River for sustenance, have been the big losers.
