It's a cool late-autumn morning, and on a field in the Genesee County town of Alabama, the only sound is that of the wind rustling the brown brush and dry grass. Electrical wires crisscross the land, which is barren save for two large, pearly-white hydrogen storage tanks sitting at the edge of the expanse.
This 1,250-acre plot is the Science, Technology and Advanced Manufacturing Park — STAMP for short. It's a project of the Genesee County Economic Development Center, which wants to develop the land into a tech manufacturing megasite positioned to draw from the Rochester and Buffalo labor markets. It sees the effort as a potential economic boon for the rural county, and both state and federal dollars have poured into the project for planning and infrastructure, including a dedicated power substation.
But the STAMP effort is mired in controversy — legal and cultural. The latest flare-ups center on the construction of a 9-mile-long wastewater pipeline that is expected to discharge 6 million gallons of treated effluent each day into Oak Orchard Creek in neighboring Orleans County.
In September, Orleans County sued Genesee County economic development agencies over that pipeline, arguing the agencies are violating state law by financing a project within Orleans County without its consent. State Supreme Court Justice Sanford Church issued an injunction temporarily halting work on the pipeline, which hadn't yet crossed into Orleans County.
“I have never seen anything like this,” said Jennifer Persico, the attorney representing Orleans County in the case. “I have been doing this a long time, and I’ve never run across one county undertaking a project in another county without that county’s consent.”
The Genesee County Economic Development Center, via a spokesperson, declined to provide comment for this story, citing ongoing litigation.
Orleans County's legal challenge follows an earlier one from the Tonawanda Seneca Nation, which unsuccessfully sued the GCEDC to halt Plug Power’s construction of a hydrogen production facility. The STAMP site is located about 14 miles northwest of Batavia adjacent to the Tonawanda reservation, and both are within feet of state wildlife management areas and the Iroquois National Wildlife Refuge, comprising sensitive wetlands.
The Tonawanda Seneca Nation is now suing the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in an attempt to invalidate the permits the agency issued allowing the pipeline to pass through the Iroquois refuge.
“It’s going to affect all living creatures, wildlife, plants, vegetation, that’s what it (the objection to STAMP) is all about,” said Christine Abrams, office administrator for the Tonawanda Seneca Nation. “And our people. Whatever is manufactured there, how is it going to affect the people? Especially if it’s chemically laden production, it’s going to spread. It’s not going to stay within its borders.”
Big dollars and pipeline dreams
The Genesee County Economic Development Center first conceived of the STAMP project in 2009. But the first tenant didn’t arrive until 2021, when Plug Power began construction of a planned $290 million “green hydrogen” production facility.
What little infrastructure has been built on the site largely belongs to Plug Power, which is based in Albany County and has another facility in Henrietta. Another tenant, British pump and exhaust manufacturing firm Edwards Vacuum, announced last year that it planned to build a 50-acre, $319 million factor that would produce dry pumps used in the semiconductor manufacturing process. That project is still in the planning phases.
The state and federal governments have poured a remarkable amount of money into the STAMP site.
For example, in 2014, the state carved out $33 million from the so-called “Buffalo Billion” economic development fund to pay for land acquisitions and infrastructure for the nascent megasite. This past November, the state awarded another $56 million grant to the project to aid in the development of shovel-ready sites.
Then there are the tax incentives. Plug Power plans to create 68 jobs at its STAMP facility and to provide $55 million to advance construction of the business park’s substation. As reported by the Investigative Post, it stands to receive $268.5 million in state tax credits and incentives.
But the legal battle over the wastewater pipeline could serve as a major impediment to STAMP’s future.
Genesee County economic development officials have touted STAMP’s expansive water infrastructure, under the name STAMP Sewer Works, including planned onsite wastewater recycling and treatment systems.
The pipeline is a key component of the treatment system. It would carry wastewater from STAMP north into the town of Shelby in Orleans County, where it would discharge into Oak Orchard Creek. The stream is a vital waterway that feeds the wetlands of the Iroquois National Wildlife Refuge, a haven for fish, predatory animals like mink, and migratory waterfowl.
In its complaint, Orleans County laid out several concerns, including specific worries about whether the site could discharge polyfluoroalkyls, the forever chemicals more commonly known as PFAs, into Oak Orchard Creek. Those chemicals can be toxic in higher dosages and have been linked to various cancers and sterility.
The GCEDC has received 18 land easements in Shelby for the pipeline, and the county’s complaint argued that the agency has overstepped its bounds.
“The respondents are, and have been, conspiring to allow the GCEDC to construct an otherwise illegal nine-mile sewer line into Orleans County without its consent enabling the discharge of polluted water into Orleans County without its consent, without adequate protections for the environment, and over the objections of Orleans County,” the complaint reads.
In a response to the complaint, GCEDC’s attorney Craig Leslie said Orleans County's arguments are "replete with hyperbole about the imagined (but non-existent) environmental harms that the force main will allegedly create," including claims that fish will die, the creek will overflow, and that the county's economy will collapse.
He added that none of the actions Orleans County is asking the judge to take "has anything to do with the environment, for an obvious reason: the force main project was only approved after years of exhaustive environmental review and scrutiny."
Oak Orchard Creek runs through the heart of Medina, a village of 6,000 in Orleans County. Mayor Mike Sidari supports STAMP as an economic development initiative but echoes the county’s concerns over the pipeline.
His major gripe is there are “too many unknowns,” and that it may constrain Medina’s own business park on Maple Ridge Road.
“Who knows how much waste we can put in that creek after STAMP comes in,” Sidari said. “If they put 6 million gallons in, and then we have a business come in that’s putting in a million gallons a day, is that going to be too much for this creek to handle? Nobody can tell us that. It can very much hinder the growth of the business park here in Medina.”
Persico, the attorney for Orleans County, said that in addition to the economic and environmental considerations, the lawsuit is also about Orleans County’s authority over land within its borders.
“I think sovereignty is the right word,” Persico said. “Orleans County is certainly not opposed to economic development in any of its neighboring counties, whether that be Genesee County, Niagara County, Erie County. It really is a matter of the highly unusual situation of Genesee County imposing its will on Orleans County.”
Sacred land and uncertainty
The Tonawanda reservation is a five-minute drive from the STAMP site. A green road sign marks the entrance in the residents’ native tongue: Ta:nöwö:deʼ Onödowáʼga꞉ Yoindzade. The marker is quickly followed by a barrage of white and purple lawn signs proclaiming opposition to the STAMP project. Just about every house, smoke shop, and gas station has one.
The Tonawanda Seneca Nation views any development within STAMP as a threat to the ecosystem and natural areas it sees as fragile. LuAnn Jamieson, Hawk Clan Mother, said the nation views preserving the land as its cultural responsibility.
The project, Jamieson added, encroaches on the little land left reserved for the Tonawanda Nation. The reservation was originally about 46,000 acres, but over nearly 200 years of land acquisitions and treaties, it has shrunk to 7,549 acres.
“Borders are not our concept, we didn’t have borders, they were imposed on us, but this is what we have left,” Jamieson said. “But we don’t ignore other people, we include everybody, because when we include our caretaking responsibilities, it’s for everybody, including us.”
Bordering STAMP to the north and south are wildlife preservation areas — grasslands, forests and wetlands that are popular with hunters and anglers.
On the northern tip of the reservation is a patch of forest known as the Big Woods, a critical hunting, gathering, and ceremonial area for members of the Tonawanda Seneca Nation. It is only a short walk from the STAMP site.
The Tonawanda Seneca Nation’s stance on the STAMP project is without concessions: Scrap the project entirely and find a new location. That’s why it sued to stop the Plug Power facility after it was announced. In its complaint, the Senecas argued that the Genesee County Economic Development Center failed to adequately review “the potentially significant environmental impacts” of the project on the Tonawanda Seneca Nation.
“The inadequate analysis included the failure to take a hard look at impacts to the reservation as a traditional cultural property; the community character of the Nation and the current and planned future uses of the reservation; risks to health and safety, such as the risk of catastrophic explosion and the Nation’s ability to respond; aesthetic impacts, and impacts to the plants and wildlife,” the complaint reads.
The case was settled later that year, and as part of the agreement, 200 acres on the STAMP site adjacent to the reservation were declared off-limits from development.
But there have already been environmental incidents during the pipeline’s construction. A violation notice issued in November by the state Department of Environmental Conservation to STAMP Sewer Works, obtained by WXXI News, alleged that the GCEDC subsidiary broke state environmental laws when it dumped drilling fluid in a freshwater wetland as it bored alongside an access road to the Iroquois refuge.
That spill and others prompted U.S. Fish and Wildlife to demand a halt to the pipeline’s construction. The spills also are the impetus for the Tonawanda Seneca Nation’s new lawsuit, filed against the agency in November. That complaint argues that the project is destroying areas of natural and cultural significance, and that construction work and truck traffic drive away wildlife and affects people living on the nearby reservation.
"We are responsible for protecting our land, community, and future generations from the harms brought on by industrial development,” Tonawanda Seneca Nation Chief Roger Hill said in a news release. “The industrialization of the STAMP site is not just an environmental concern but a matter of human rights for the Nation.”
It’s hunting season on the Tonawanda reservation, a time when pickup trucks dot the sides of the roads and people in camouflage jackets can be seen toting shotguns into the Big Woods preserve.
For Jamieson, pulling from the land is a sacred right. Harvesting plants, hunting animals, and taking from nature’s bounty defines the Tonawanda Seneca Nation. It’s something she believes is in danger, and she has a duty to protect.
“We have a kinship with everything the creator put here for us,” she said. “We don’t have domination over all of them, we’re all equal. And in that same sense, there’s no acknowledgment or respect for our caretaking responsibility.”
