[Part 1 of 3 of "THE CURSE OF ENLIGHTENMENT"]
Ithaca is blessed with a treasure trove of natural wonders: abundant waterfalls, cascades and gorges at the southern tip of Cayuga Lake in Central New York's Finger Lakes region. Buttermilk Falls State Park, which abuts Ithaca's southwest boundary, may be the loveliest wonder in the area.
This is a geological time capsule with elegant cascades, rapids and deep glimmering pools. William Ehling describes Ithaca's sacred place, "Unlike most falls which flow over a rock ledge and plunge straight down, Buttermilk Falls is formed by a long, steep incline about the width of a two-lane road. In their descent, the waters dance over the washboardlike rock face and take on a whitish, buttermilklike appearance. A head-on look at this water display from the base of the falls is breathtaking."
Breathtaking it is, and it draws 200,000 visitors each year. But Ithaca's shortsighted politicians, local corporate interests and regional "big-box" developers have long coveted Ithaca's last remaining open space, located on a flood plain in a rich wetlands habitat and just across the road from our beloved Buttermilk Falls!
Fortunately, Ithaca's organized citizen groups and creative individuals have traditionally opposed those inhuman forces that besiege our lives and our environment. Beginning with the anti-slavery abolitionists of the Underground Railroad, Ithaca has been a center of peace, justice and environmental movements for well over a century. Cornell University was a hotbed of anti-war activity during the Vietnam War. In 1983, Ithaca led the nation in per-capita signatories to the Nuclear Freeze Petition. We even created our own local currency in 1991, the now world-famous Ithaca Hours.
The Curse of Enlightenment
In the mid-1990s, Ithaca's environmental community thought we'd finally thwarted development near Buttermilk Falls. In a remarkable display of solidarity and determination to "Stop Wal-Mart," 7,000 people signed a petition insisting that the site be protected-from a smaller development than what is now proposed. When the City's Planning Board turned down Wal-Mart's preferred site plan, Wal-Mart sued the city, and lost in New York state courts. Utne Reader (May-June 97) cited Ithaca's victory over the powerful chain store when the publication designated this "gritty upstate city where the grassroots are green" as America's "Most Enlightened Town."
Ithacans never wore the enlightenment tag easily.
"Ithaca may be the most enlightened place in America; but that only means this whole country needs a lot more light," I thought. Many Ithacans know, too, that blade-runner capitalism usually gets its way here, as it does almost everywhere.
Utne's recognition of our "enlightenment" became a challenge to Ithaca's pro-development forces, and it coincided with Mayor Alan Cohen's ascension to municipal power. This is a slick politician--personable and unprincipled--who operates behind closed doors: scorning dissent, circumventing democracy and promoting monopolistic, corporate "development" to the detriment of the community he supposedly serves.
Alan Cohen
Cohen, 42, is a Cornellian and former restaurateur who first campaigned for office in 1995 as an Independent, defeating three-term socialist Mayor Ben Nichols by 105 votes after 4,725 ballots were cast. This was no easy task in the "People's Republic of Ithaca" in the wake of Wal-Mart's collapse. Cohen pitched multicultural "identity politics" to business interests and social groups, while simultaneously talking "resentment politics" among Republicans and blue collar Democrats who wanted more shopping and increased tax revenues.
In 1999, Cohen ran for re-election against Democratic nominee Dan Hoffman, a grassroots organizer and environmentalist who'd served 12 years on Ithaca's Common Council. Three weeks before the election, 62 "mainstream" Democrats, including members of Council, stunned Ithacans by launching a concerted effort to destroy Hoffman's candidacy.
These "Cohen-Democrats" ran a vitriolic disinformation campaign against Hoffman, falsely accusing him of opposing all development. The distortions became so bad that Democratic Party leaders publicly scolded the heretics. Cohen portrayed himself as "greener" than Hoffman, and never said a word about the crown jewel of his development plans across from Buttermilk Falls. Gannett's Ithaca Journal endorsed Cohen and remained editorially silent about the sleaziest political coup in recent regional memory.
The lies outran the truth to Election Day, and Cohen duped this town into re-electing him, by a 54%-46% margin.
The Rape of the Buttermilk Levee
No sooner was Cohen safely ensconced for a second term than the Widewaters Group (www.widewaters.com), a big-box developer from Dewitt, New York, bulldozed a stately old hedgerow, demolished trees and began dumping fill on the flood plain of the former "Wal-Mart site," all before there was any opportunity for public review and even before its purchase of city-owned land had been approved!
"I felt very upset by the development having already commenced, because it showed that the city wanted to avoid citizen input regarding the development project," says Tim Allen, "Stop Wal-Mart's" campaign organizer. "This came only three years after city hall did an environmental review for the same sort of development proposal at the exact same site. New York's courts upheld the city Planning Board's determination regarding environmental protections for that site. What the city is pushing through now is a blatant violation of those past decisions. The current city administration wants to evade citizen input because, in New York, citizens are the only regulatory agency that bothers to enforce SEQR (State Environmental Quality Review) law."
The Bogus Permit
The public had no idea that Widewaters was preparing to develop the site by Buttermilk Falls until a few days after the 1999 election. We now know, however, that governmental officials knew exactly what was happening, for at least six months earlier, and hid all signs from the public.
Widewaters first disclosed its site-specific plans for a 200,000 square foot shopping center in May 1999 to New York's Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) when it applied to remediate toxic waste at the site (this submission did not become public until seven months later). After going to DEC, Widewaters submitted a permit application to the city, to place 80,000 cubic yards of fill on the site, but indicating that there were no plans for any buildings.
Ithaca's then-Building Commissioner Rick Eckstrom wrote the developer on July 2, 1999, setting preconditions before he would grant the permit. "The fill project is associated with the development of the site. Such development will require the discretionary review of the Planning Board before a building permit or fill permit can be issued.... The City cannot separately conduct environmental review of this small part of the area encompassed by the GEIS (Generic Environmental Impact Study)."
Eckstrom's judgment comports with the City's Environmental Quality Review (CEQR) law 176.3.K.: "Considering only a part or segment of an action is contrary to the intent of CEQR." SEQR law 617.3 likewise strongly disfavors such "segmentation" permits, though courts have allowed it in certain instances when the latter stage(s) of a contemplated action is unknown at the initial application.
Shortly afterwards, Cohen suspended Eckstrom on false charges allegedly unrelated to development concerns. Eckstrom's letter to Widewaters wasn't made public until December, when the document was uncovered by a citizen-researcher.
