Buffalo HUD funding: What's That Smell?

Yr humble blogmother recalls long-ago family car trips involving a highway route through snow-kissed Buffalo, New York. Thanks to the wealth of heavy industry in that fine municipality, the object was to hold one's breath as long as possible. It was never long enough.

No surprise, then, to read in this feature by a local alternative weekly that the city has no fewer than 20 Superfund sites, and hence a serious gold mine of brownfields redevelopment eligibility. The article takes brownfields funding as a departure point for an extensive cruise through Buffalo's lurid but lucrative history with the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

All of which serves as useful background to the current controversy over a critical federal audit of the city's HUD money management. I can't seem to find the current audit report at the HUD Office of Inspector General site, but the Google cache shows HUD OIG posted extracts from December news reports that laid out the basic allegations. Also, text-searching the word "Buffalo" on OIG's New York State audit page will find a number of previous items.

...While we're in the neighborhood, I've just run into an amazing University of Buffalo archive on everything you always wanted to know about the Love Canal but were afraid to ask. There's also material at the Case Western Online Ethics Center for Engineering and Science, including mention of the site's resettlement under the name of "Black Creek Village."