Fighting Westway: Environmental Law, Citizen Activism, and the Regulatory War That Transformed New York City

Intriguing and well-written discussion of a defining case in environmental law. Great read.

In the beginning, Westway must have seemed like a highway project from heaven. While other highways sliced up neighborhoods, Westway was designed to run under a new waterfront park that was to be created by filling in a bit of the Hudson River; the aboveground land was to be used partially for the park and partially for housing and offices. The project's backers (including banks, real estate interests and construction unions) were so powerful that both the mayor of New York City and the governor of New York State campaigned against Westway and then were talked into flip-flopping after the election. How could such a project fail?Buzbee explains how both the law and the balance of political forces eventually turned against Westway. A few local activists feared the impact of the highway on the West Side of Manhattan, and believed that the money spend on Westway would be better spent on repairing New York's crumbling subways. After a few false starts, they discovered that the Clean Water Act might help their case. The Clean Water Act provides that waters may not be filled with land if doing so would harm fish and wildlife habitat. Government scientists discovered that the part of the Hudson River to be filled by Westway was habitat for the striped bass, and the bureaucrats favoring the project were never able to credibly establish that the striped bass could easily go elsewhere. Although the Army Corps of Engineers granted a permit to fill Westway, the scientific basis for its opinion was so wobbly, and their experts so confused and self-contradictory, that the courts repeatedly rejected its decisions.If Congress had favored the highway, it could have overriden the courts by amending the Clean Water Act. But the House actually voted 2-1 to kill Westway. Fiscal conservatives opposed Westway because it was unusually expensive ($2 billion in 1980s dollars). Most New York Congresspeople opposed Westway because under then-existing federal law, the federal subsidies for Westway could be "traded in" for public transit, and New York's subway system needed a lot of help in the 1980s.The ultimate lesson of this book is that even a seemingly unstoppable project can be stopped by a few determined citizens- but only if they have the law on their site and local politicians are divided.

This is no action book. It's not intended as entertainment so much as a scholarly work about a "war" between proponents and opponents of a radical development project. Yet it's so well written that it becomes entertaining and easy to read without delving into the exhaustive footnotes (though some are quite interesting and I confess to some "delving".) I also admit that a couple of court cases in this book kept me reading into late hours.Legal battles abound in books and popular entertainment. What's different in this true story is that it provides insight at yet another level of complexity from the usual stuff on the machinations of our government. Bill Buzbee comprehensively documents decades-long battles that intertwine not just the judicial and legislative processes, but also political influence, regulatory agencies, business interests, environmental peril, conflicting science, and the tireless dedication of common citizens fighting to improve their city. I come away with a much better appreciation for the kinds of pressure the powerful can exert on well-meaning career government employees. I had no concept of "judicial deference" to the regulatory process, nor the extent to which it falls on regulators to interpret laws in writing regulations to implement them. Readers who think that government officials take the creation of regulations lightly may find a new perspective. I have a new appreciation for the power that well written laws can wield, or by contrast, the ineffectiveness of toothless legislation. Judicial action can be an equalizer that even the powerful must respect. More than anything, I marveled at the power the common citizen can wield.