THE SAGA OF THE GREEN FLOATER
I live in New York.
That is both my greatest blessing and my greatest curse.
The blessing is that this is a beautiful and fruitful place. The curse is that it has evil and oppressive government.
In New York, the government puts its nose into every corner and aspect of life. It is driven by greed and stupidity.
This is an example of the latter.
A state highway runs through the middle of my town. It is our Main Street. A few years ago, the state redid the road, essentially shutting down the village for what seemed like months on end.
As the road leaves town on the north, it crosses a river, the Genesee River. On the other side of the river is the neighboring town. During the day, our ambulance provides service to their people and our two fire departments respond together to structure fires.
That means that, when there’s an emergency, the ambulance and fire trucks take the road across the river.
Via a bridge.
A two-lane bridge with a sidewalk on either side. Maybe 20 or 30 feet above the surface of the water, with the river flowing downstream on one side and over a check dam on the other side. One side looks down on an island, the other side looks up a wooded gorge toward a giant flood-control dam less than a mile away.
The state is going to replace the bridge.
We’re grateful for that.
The engineers from the state Department of Transportation planned to do one side of the bridge at a time, leaving one lane available to emergency traffic. They said they would do this by placing a crane in the river below. It would reach up and over the edge of the bridge and replace girders in each lane as needed.
The water beneath the bridge is typically shallow and muddy. A crane could simply be driven into the river and parked.
That was the plan.
Was the plan.
Now there’s a new plan.
See, in New York, we don’t just have the Department of Transportation, we also have the Department of Environmental Conservation.
Which is where the green floater comes in.
It turns out that, instead of being something you’d find in a public pool, a green floater is a species of freshwater mussel.
A rare freshwater mussel.
And the Department of Environmental Conservation has declared that the Department of Transportation cannot drive its crane into the Genesee River because it might destroy habitat of the green floater.
I kid you not.
No one has ever found a green floater anywhere near this bridge, the riverbed beneath the bridge is completely unnatural – as a result of the construction of the bridge, the check dam and the flood-control dam – and the green floater can’t tolerate an environment anything like the Genesee River beneath this bridge, and yet the Department of Environmental Conservation put the kibosh on the crane.
Why?
Reminder: Greed and stupidity.
What does this mean?
The crane will have to be placed on the bridge itself – in the lane that’s not being worked on.
That means the bridge will be entirely closed off. That means the ambulance and fire trucks will be unable to cross.
That means that for the next couple of years you don’t want your house to catch on fire or your grandmother to have a heart attack.
It means that emergency response times – our ambulance going north or their fire truck coming south – will be dangerously long. It means human life will be imperiled.
To protect the green floater.
Which doesn’t even live here.
Let me tell you more about this stretch of river. I’m not an expert, but I’ve kayaked and fished this river many times, and lived beside it for 20 years, and I can look things up as good as the next guy.
And this isn’t green floater territory.
Green floaters live in sand and gravel – the river bottom is mud. Green floaters need relatively still water – the river beneath the bridge churns with water coming over the check dam. Green floaters need a steady flow of water year round, they can’t tolerate flood or drought – the operation of the flood-control dam leaves the river alternating between a trickle and a raging torrent.
Further, most studies of the green floater’s range say that it, in our part of New York state, lives in the watershed of the Susquehanna River.
Which ends about 15 miles south of our bridge.
Unless this 2-inch bivalve figured out how to climb out of the swampy headlands of the Canisteo and hike down over the Dansville hill, I’m not sure how it got in the Genesee.
One more point.
Here’s what the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission says: “This species is intolerant of strong currents.” Maybe the New York Department of Environmental Conservation should stand on the bridge sometime when the dam is letting out water and look down on the rapids below.
And maybe the New York Department of Environmental Conservation should stand on the bridge on a still day and look down into the water where the crane would park. It is a silty debris field of concrete and rip rap. There may be parts of the Genesee suitable to this mussel, but beneath our bridge isn’t one of them.
And anybody with any common sense should know that.
But this is the government. And in New York, the government doesn’t have any common sense.
Humans will be endangered because of a shellfish. More correctly, humans will be endangered because of the arrogant stupidity of empowered state bureaucrats.
They haven’t found any green floaters under our bridge, they haven’t even looked for any green floaters under our bridge. Yet their word is God.
And we are screwed.
Because this is New York.
- by Bob Lonsberry © 2010
