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Erie Canal named to National Park Service

By United Press International
Sunday, December 17, 2000

President-elect George W. Bush had his first piece of legislation passed by the U.S. Congress — naming New York's Erie Canal the nation's 23rd heritage corridor — and it's something he may not know anything about.

The Erie Canal has been a political football tossed between New York's Republican Gov. George Pataki and U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, for several years.

"This delay has cost upstate New York jobs and money," Cuomo told the Buffalo News. "The designation is very important. It brings a common identity to the canal corridor, a common marketing plan, more tourists, more dollars and more revenues for upstate New York."

Cuomo said he proposed the designation four years ago, which was supported by the Department of the Interior, but opposed by Pataki. Cuomo has been considering facing Pataki in 2002 for governor of New York. Pataki defeated his father, Mario M. Cuomo, for governor in 1994.

A spokesman for the governor said last summer Pataki didn't want "Washington bureaucrats" determining what was best for New York, however, once Bush became the president-elect, Pataki dropped his opposition and the bill was passed in a flurry of legislation passed by the lame-duck session of Congress that finally adjourned Friday.

The law calls for the Interior secretary, who will now be a Republican, to appoint a 27-member commission to implement the heritage corridor plan, which makes it part of the National Park Service.

"Few historic resources in the United States are equal to the Erie Canal in their impact on the creation of the American nation," said Marie Rust, Northeast regional director for the National Park Service.

The legislation limits the National Park Service to spending $10 million over 10 years. However, it allows members of Congress to pursue additional funding for projects connected to the master plan required by the law. Both Buffalo, New York, and Syracuse, New York, have been looking for a funding vehicle for waterfront redevelopment.

Buffalo has been attempting to redevelop its waterfront for the past 18 years, and the recent discovery of the original "commercial slip" from the Erie Canal has stalled the redevelopment once again, because of the needed funds to preserve and display the slip which is currently under water.

The 363-mile waterway that connected Lake Erie at Buffalo, N.Y., with the Hudson River in Albany, New York, was begun in 1816 and completed in 1825. It was built 40 feet wide and 4 feet deep entirely by the muscle power of men and horses and was considered the engineering feat of its day.

The canal spurred the first great westward movement of American settlers, gave access to the land west of the Appalachians and made New York the preeminent commercial city in the United States.

The canal, expanded to the New York State Barge Canal, no longer carries freight, but it slices through upstate New York where jobs and the economy have stagnated for the past 20 years so politicians have hoped it would spark a second economic boom to western and central New York as well as the capital region.