Peace Bridge manager, activist make their peace
Jerry Zremski
WASHINGTON – There’s peace at the Peace Bridge, sort of, and two longtime adversaries-turned-collaborators came to the nation’s capital Thursday to spread the word.
Kathleen R. Mecca, the activist who has been fighting for years to remove truck traffic from the bridge, and Ron Rienas, the Peace Bridge general manager, spoke at the 2014 National Environmental Justice Conference about ways they’ve found to work together despite their stark differences.
Those differences still stood out, though, in the presentations of Terrence A. Robinson of Preservation Buffalo Niagara and North District Council Member Joseph Golombek Jr., who stressed that environmental justice seemed to be sadly lacking in the neighborhood surrounding the bridge.
At issue, as it has been for years, is the diesel exhaust that’s spewing from the trucks crossing the bridge or idling on it. Mecca noted, as she long has, that those fumes are responsible for a neighborhood asthma rate that’s four times the national average.
http://www.buffalonews.com/city-region/west-side/peace-bridge-manager-activist-make-their-peace-20140327
