The Tonawanda Seneca Nation accused the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in a lawsuit this week of violating federal laws by allowing a controversial industrial wastewater pipeline to be built through the Iroquois National Wildlife Refuge in Genesee and Orleans counties.
The Tonawanda Seneca Nation, which has thousands of years of ancestral ties to the refuge land and reservation territory that abuts it, asked a federal court on Wednesday to halt construction of the pipeline until the Fish and Wildlife Service complies with environmental and other laws the Nation claims were ignored in approving the project.
Thursday’s public comment period was the latest battle between county officials promoting economic growth and activists fighting for Indigenous sovereignty and environmental protections.
The federal agency in 2022 approved Genesee County Economic Development Center’s plan to build part of a 9.5-mile-long industrial wastewater pipeline though refuge lands to serve its 1,250-acre Science Technology and Advanced Manufacturing Park, or STAMP, in the Town of Alabama. New York State has invested $56 million into the STAMP project to make it a shovel-ready site that it hopes will attract thousands of high-paying advanced manufacturing jobs to Western New York.
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