Among the Environmentaloids/Westway Story

...0 : EUROPEAN DOCUMENT In power twenty-nine years, 73-yearold Janos Kadar has ruled Hungary longer than anyone since Austrian Emperor Franz Josef, and longer than any Hungarian since fifteenth-century King Matthias, whose reign was synonymous with the golden age of medieval Hungary...

...A pier is surrounded on three sides by water, while with a park you only get one side," she says...

...However, by selling out not only to the Russians, but to his own countrymen as well, he has won a measure of legitimacy which should be the envy of every other East Bloc leader, past and present...

...It was realistic," says Ketcham...

...Don't build any highway at all...

...WESTWAY STORY In 1973, New York City's West Side Highway collapsed...

...Kadar unlike his Czechoslovakian counterpart, gradually removed his rivals on both sides of the divide: Stalinist ideologues as well as 1956-era revisionists...

...You'd think environmentalists would have been dancing in the streets...

...Public opinion is the one thing they don't represent...

...So the city decided to do things right...

...District Court Judge Thomas P. Griesa, who soon proved to be almost embarrassingly sympathetic to their cause...

...How many nuclear-powered submarines does the Soviet Navy have...

...Ketcham says he, had an in-formal compromise worked out with city and state officials as early as 1974...

...From 1974 to 1979, the gaggle of environmental litigants concentrated on air pollution...

...The values are now the same as in America...

...The study, which includes photographs and detailed descriptions of Soviet ships and aircraft, was prepared by the Offices of Naval Intelligence and Public Affairs for public information as well as internal Navy use...

...Kadar: the devious functionary, who knew just how far the rules could be stretched without alarming the boss in Moscow...

...Look," he said, "we're in the business of stopping this project...

...Is the Soviet Naval Infantry as well-organized and equipped as the U.S...

...The highway would become an Interstate, accommodating trucks, and 90 percent of the project would be paid for out of the Federal Highway Trust Fund (one of the few self-supporting divisions in the federal government, from which New York City historically has taken very little...

...According to Ketcham, the $1.7-billion federal Westway allotment would have been traded in so that one-third of the money would go for a "park-andsurface-boulevard" similar to Chicago's Lake Shore Drive, one-third for arterial roads, and the final third for the sub-ways...

...But Kadar proved more cunning than Husak by half...

...Though Hungarian society may now be in turmoil, Kadar's regime has by no means been discredited...

...In keeping with its educational objectives the Navy League is making available to the general public, at no cost, a limited quantity of this important study...

...17433' — $6.00 of boobiaea Or by mail, tubed, $7.50 (addl $6.00 — From Laguna Saks, Dept...

...It was obvious to anyone.that if the piers were torn down and the outfall capped the fish would just move somewhere else—although Benstock called the effects "potentially devastating" to the entire Atlantic Ocean population...

...What was most important was what was said in the environmental impact statement...

...Such an approach dovetails with a recent party decision to channel funds away from investment and into consumption...

...The city's magnificent Catskill Water Aqueduct, Central Park, Riverside Park—all were designed by people willing to think big...

...Benstock denies this, but admits that by William Tucker she would not have accepted the compromise then or now...

...Some-where in a preliminary draft, a scientist had used the word "significant" to describe the effects of the landfill on the fish...

...In scientific language, this means "not zero...

...Benstock is one of those people that no contemporary community seems to be able to do without...

...asked one Cornell professor...

...The Club had convinced several New Jersey mayors to join the suit on the grounds that Westway would flood their communities...

...All of Lower Manhattan is begging for redevelopment...

...The issue, rather, is whether the truce between ruler and ruled in this Central European nation of 10.7 million can long survive Kadar: His reformist policies have not so much improved the system's performance, as they have sharpened its contradictions...

...Disillusionment is increasing, especially among the young...

...These groups helped defeat a last-ditch effort to save the project in Congress...

...The books will be sent on a first-come, first-serve basis and must be limited to one copy per person...

...Many have become opposed to further reforms, on the grounds that the measures only seem to benefit the class of "new rich...

...in cost odd 6% saes mkart e Soviet Union In the years following World War II, and in particular within the last decade, the USSR has built the world's largest naval and maritime fleet and is using it to maintain an oceanic presence throughout the world...

...The first few years.of his reign were devoted to the physical elimination or imprisonment of those involved in the 1956 revolution...

...What is the Soviet naval/maritime policy...

...If we hadn't gotten Griesa, Westway would be finished today...

...The details of the succession are no longer even crucial...

...The Army Corps realized, of course, that someone was likely to interpret the word as meaning "profound...

...And how can you argue that fish life is going to be harmed...

...So it dropped the word from the final draft and substituted the word "minor...

...But the reforms have left the country virtually unprotected against an invasion of Western influence—the consumer culture is more developed in Hungary than anywhere else in Eastern Europe...

...Kadar, like Gustav Husak in Czechoslovakia, came to power :'.s a Soviet quisling and betrayer of a popular uprising...

...Basically, the professionals can make these numbers come out any way you want," says Ketcham...

...But in Hungary, pressure on the leadership is far less concentrated, since everybody is aware that the wealthy are not necessarily the powerful: Kadar and the members of his politburo live frugal lives compared to those of local entrepreneurs and Communist leaders in neighboring countries...

...New York was built by people with imagination...

...But Ketcham was outflanked by his own radical fringe in the person of Benstock...

...English or Spanish...

...You know that isn't a very biologically active part of the river...

...Environmental impact statements are like the sacred rituals of certain Indian tribes: They have to be done over and over again until they are performed perfectly, otherwise the gods will not accept them...

...The only politburo member with a hardline reputation is Karoly Grosz, and this label could be in doubt, as Grosz has recently been given to making reformist-sounding speeches...

...As any banker will tell you, market-oriented reforms have not improved Hungary's productive capacity as much as was originally thought...

...You can pick any number on the scale from one to ten, and I'll give it to you...

...Everyone is talking about making money," said the dissident author and sociologist, George Konrad...

...Activating production means providing talented people with incentive, so the regime has more and more been sanctioning inequality in every sphere...

...As a result, Benstock soon became the darling of the liberal media...

...Governor Cuomo once said that the Westway would be "this generation's contribution to New York City'sfuture" In a perverse way, he was probably right...

...It is almost unbelievable that public poliey can be made in such a way...

...This wasn't an entirely bad idea...

...Another comer is Kadar protege Laszlo Marothy, a vice premier in his forties...

...Matthias was a romantic figure of whom legends were told...

...It was just luck," says Ketcham...

...For decades, social critics like Paul Goodman had been telling New Yorkers they never should have cut themselves off from their own waterfront...

...The sub-ways are a mess and the Westway probably could have been scaled down, preserving some of the park area while freeing up money for mass transit...

...I admire Marcy and I think she's done a terrific job," says Ketcham...

...You just comb through the environmental impact statement and try to find flaws...

...After quitting City Hall, Ketcham founded an organization called Citizens for Clean Air...

...This disillusionment has given rise to an increasingly autonomous trade union movement...

...The old elevated structure below 42nd Street had been designed to lift traffic over the bustling waterfront...

...What is—and where is—the Soviet Navy...

...So the environmentalists went to court and the delay was on...

...What is this business about flooding New Jersey...

...How can you say there will be more air pollution with an under-ground highway...

...When the Daily News and ABC-TV did an exit poll during the September primaries, only 21 percent Corrective perspective RUN-OF-THE-MILL maps place the US...

...For this assumption to hold true, the regime must keep delivering up THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1986 29...

...Arlington, Va...

...acts in postwar Europe have been as impressive...

...They will fight anything more than the construction of a few new traffic lights along Manhattan's Lower West Side...

...Entrepreneurs and those, like doctors, with marketable skills can live the good life in Kadar's Hungary: a Western-manufactured car, a villa on the Buda side of the Danube, and a weekend house on Lake Balaton...

...Finally Sage had had enough...

...Calling this action a "fraud," Judge Griesa in 1982 ordered the whole project halted...

...It is hard to imagine a greater public amenity than a new "Central Park" around which to reconstruct Manhattan's Lower West Side...

...I'll just deny I said it...

...Government agenciesmust show that they have "explored every conceivable alternative...

...During his six-year stint as unofficial head of the opposition, Ketcham often told inter-viewers, "If I were the only person on earth who was opposed to Westway, I could still stop it all by myself...

...On top would go a magnificent 97-acre.waterfront park, readily accessible to four million people who crowd into the city canyons every day...

...That's right—they argued that an underground highway was going to produce more air pollution than a surface highway...

...above...

...Opponents don't even have to show that they have an alternative—only that the performer hasn't yet reached perfection...

...But the environmentalists were adamant...

...Since East European producers cannot meet Hungary's demand for private autos, the regime has been importing cars from the West at an increasing rate, and has reduced the tax on them from 100 percent to 40 percent to make them more affordable...

...Kadar is a working man of little formal education—deficient of charm or charisma—who has always taken the path of least resistance...

...The Sierra Club doesn't even have anyone answering their phone in New York...

...Are you saying the Atlantic Ocean doesn't have room for any more water...

...Everybody knows this...

...22201 28 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1986 of the respondents said they agreed with the opponents about scrapping the project...

...I asked...

...The cars on the street tell the story...

...In fact, the Westway was probably too good for to-day's New York...

...The Corps had to do another impact statement...

...Why they would have come over from New Jersey, except to do business in New York, is anybody's guess...

...Although some of these hole-in-the-wall operations claim memberships of thousands, most consist of no more than a handful of activist lawyers and publicity geniuses...

...This critical habitat, believe it or not, was the rotting piers of Lower Manhattan, where young bass, attracted by a sewage outfall, have been lingering for a few months of the year since the piers were abandoned...

...with highways...

...It would fill in the rotting pier section with landfill...

...There's not another judge in the entire country who would have gone as far as he did in making demands on the project...

...Ketcham claims it was all on the level, and a subsequent EPA investigation cleared him of any wrongdoing...

...None of them could be built today...

...In any case, it was back to court for another ten years...

...It's become her whole life...

...For years Ketcham had been working with the Environmental Protection Agency to keep cars out of mid-Manhattan...

...But he was "blackballed," he says, by both the environmental community and the city government—which gives him a kind of brutal candor in talking about the whole issue today...

...But she does nothing but work against WestTHE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1986 27 way...

...The piers are now rotting hulks, victims of union regulations and lack of rail access...

...These are among the many questions about Soviet sea power that are answered in "Understanding Soviet Naval Developments," an unclassified 150-page study of Soviet strength on the seas undertaken at the direction of Adm...

...A retreat towards Marxist orthodoxy is neither feasible nor necessary from anyone's point of view, including that of the Soviets, as Hungary's loyalty to the Warsaw Pact in the realm of security and foreign policy is unquestioned...

...But they decided they didn't like the city's plan—or at least that they could find better ways to spend the money...

...The audience was horrified to realize that there was a replacement highway involved...

...It is a losing battle, though: Western-style consumerism will always demand more than what a Marxist economy, no mat-ter how innovative, can offer...

...Last September, after more than ten years in court, they got their way: The plans for Westway, as the project was called, were killed after a 34-day federal hearing...

...Marines are...

...The first Westway media star to emerge was Brian Ketcham, formerly chief transportation coordinator in the administration of John Lindsay...

...A long list of ad-hoc environmental groups headed by the Sierra Club began arguing that the city should "trade in" the $1.7 billion federal grant on funds for subway repairs...

...The Sierra Club had the grace not to appeal...

...Few political Robert D. Kaplan is an Athens-based corespondent for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and ABC Radio News...

...Weaned on a growth economy in the 1970s, they now face a scarcity of good jobs and a wait for an apartment which is longer than ever...

...But of course it was all just part of the chess game that environmentalists everywhere play in court...

...You know, I'm going to quote you on that," I said...

...The politburo has been stacked with Kadar's ideological clones...

...Ketcham was out front until 1981, when it was discovered that the Environmental Protection Agency was about to give his environmental planning firm a $150,000 consulting con-tract that was essentially going to fund his anti-Westway campaign...

...I'm having H homed' — Robert MacNeil 'Helps restore proportion' — A Sc lesinger h. roue Department of Education could send It our — WMNam R Hearst .k Unique gift and conversation piece, in brilliant colas...

...The highway would only take up one hundred feet, which would leave a 150-foot strip for bike lanes, parks, and a promenade...

...The city's politics is now dominated by people with twisted ambitions and small minds...

...One gang of burglars, according to a local police colonel, chose its victims by leafing through the Budapest phone book, which lists occupations as well as addresses...

...Having put power in the hands of middle-of-the-mad Communists like himself, Kadar was able, beginning in 1968, to embark on a historic compromise with his fellow Hungarians...

...The real purpose is just to keep delaying the project...

...As a Hungarian journalist observed, "Our consumption is modern, our production is not...

...What is behind the recent surge in Soviet naval aviation...

...Since 'upper Is equated with 'superior, this has bred misconceptions and del...

...So ended New York's effort at imaginative highway planning...

...The major issue in the battle against Westway became the striped bass in the Hudson River...

...It was not a bad bet for the environmentalists...

...After the meeting, I talked with Sage, who recognized me from other articles I had written about environmentalists...

...San .lose, CA 95135...

...Adoring articles about her have appeared regularly—in the New Yorker, the Village Voice, and the op-ed columns of the New York Times...

...They spend most of the year in the Atlantic, but swim as far north as Albany for their spring mating season...

...Well, to be quite frank, the whole air-pollution thing is kind of a nothing issue," he said...

...The Army Corps of Engineers had filed its environmental impact statement for the landfill in the Hudson River and there was enough there to keep environmental opponents in business for a lifetime...

...Moreover, the burden of proof is always on the person who wants to do something, rather than on the person who simply challenges what is being done...

...But soon Benstock found there was far more publicity in taking on city hall...

...A large portion of a four-mile highway would be built underground...

...at least five people cried in unison after Sage patiently explained the situation...

...In addition, he ruled that, because of the park amenities, Westway was really a "development" instead of a "highway," and therefore should not have received federal funds...

...Sage had just told a meeting of the local chapter, "We can assure you, Westway will never be built...

...Who are the officers and men of the Soviet Navy, and how are they trained...

...Everyone knows how these things work, and nobody knew how to do it better than I did," said Ketcham in an interview this November...

...There is a 250-foot right of way along the shoreline," says Marcy Benstock, director of the Clean Air Campaign, the most persistent opposition group...

...With such a difference between rich and poor, it is no wonder that property crime is growing at the rate of six percent a year...

...When you call you get a recorded voice telling you they will call back, not that anyone ever does...

...By 1979, the federal court decided that air pollution was in fact a nothing issue...

...During the question period, I asked him: "Why is the Sierra Club opposing an underground highway with a park and supporting a surface highway with no park...

...At this point a couple of people standing around us started to get a little annoyed with Sage's performance...

...Almost all of Manhattan is ringed...

...At the hearing last summer, the same objections were raised to dropping the word "significant," and Griesa once again found the impact statement unsatisfactory...

...The basis of Kadar's legitimacy is still the widespread knowledge that—within the confines of Soviet imperialism—he provides the best available option...

...The environmentalists argued that the "critical habitat" of these fish would be destroyed by the landfill...

...But the subways do need money and, if worse came to worst, a modest park-and-boulevard would probably do...

...Three decades of Kadarism have seeped down into all levels of the bureaucracy...

...Leaders of environmental groups, you may note, often talk as if they were heads of small countries...

...We'll use anything we can that will help...

...Still, Ketcham isn't a complete fanatic, or so he claims...

...Benstock also argues that existing piers could be rehabilitated for recreation...

...Go ahead," he shrugged...

...Benstock insists that the city and state were never willing to compromise, and Ketcham may only be having delusions of grandeur...

...K 7060'61a Valverde...

...Along with the Dacias, Ladas, and Trabants, there are Mazdas, Volkswagens, and BMWs...

...Many, especiallyurban dwellers on fixed incomes, live a dreary existence on the borderline of poverty...

...By that time it didn't have to bother...

...James D. Watkins, USN, chief of naval operations...

...Whether or not there could have been a compromise in the early seven-ties is still open to debate...

...I had found that out firsthand a few years ago when I interviewed Samuel Sage, then director of the Atlantic chapter of the Sierra Club, in Ithaca, New York...

...Send your request to: "Understanding Soviet Naval Developments" Navy League of the United States 2300 Wilson Blvd...

...The regulations on a big project like this are essentially impossible to meet...

...tion, unless you include the old tribal chant "We hate cars...

...At bottom, there was nothing rational to the environmentalists' opposiWilliam Tucker is The American Spectator's New York correspondent and author of Progress and Privilege: America in an Age of Environmental-ism...

...You can't ignore cars altogether, and we could have saved the waterfront park...

...A 150-foot-wide "promenade" running next to an eight-lane highway—that's what passes for imagination in New York these days...

...In truth, Westway was probably overdesigned—which is what late in the game earned it the opposition of con-servative groups in Washington, such as the National Taxpayers Union and Pat Robertson's "700 Club...

...The Westway only would have attracted trucks over here from New Jersey...

...A Radcliffe economics major, Benstock started as an environmental writer, but soon became one of those free-lance individuals with no apparent purpose except to wrestle power away from elected officials...

...For a while, the organization concerned itself with the useful but unheroic task of trying to get apartment-house superintendents to burn heating fuel more efficiently...

...Of course, what the fish did was really not of concern...

...AMONG THE ENVIRONMENTALOIDS...

...On the other hand, the mass of largely untalented proletariat—Kadar's real constituency—is not benefiting from the cornucopia...

...I have long argued and will continue to argue that nearly all the money in this project should be spent on mass transit," she says...

...So instead of simply crashing down the West Side with another superhighway, the city opted for a holistic, environmental approach...

...The New Yorker even lamented that the old elevated highway was torn down, noting that it had been discovered by joggers and that wildflowers were starting to sprout through the concrete...

...Through the luck of the draw, the case had already ended up before U.S...

...Much of Lower Manhattan is already built on landfill...

...But New York's environmentalists won't settle even for this...

...After arriving from Buffalo in the early sixties, Benstock took a master's at the New School, and then started the Clean Air Campaign, a small group funded mostly by contributors from family foundations...

...You delay and delay, and pretty soon the project just disappears...

...With that he left...

...When city and state officials introduced such a new plan in October, Benstock and the Sierra Club immediately announced their opposition...

...As in Poland, union wrath is directed upward...

...They wanted all the money to be spent on mass transit, except for a paltry $75 million that would go toward an eight-lane surface highway...

...The Turnabout Map at the Americas offers a corrective perspective...

...His most recent book is Vigilante: The Backlash Against Crime in America (reviewed on page 40 of this issue...

...Sage didn't say much...

...The party congress last March further consolidated the power of the country's economic czar, Ferenc Havasi, a man in his fifties dedicated, like Kadar, to further decentralization of the economy, a process which in Communist systems passes for reform...

...He calls the process "the embourgeoisement of Hungary under the Communists...

...According to him, she sabotaged the arrangement by breaking it prematurely to the press...

...It's also revealing that Westway failed despite support from the city's three major newspapers as well as from former Governor Hugh Carey, Governor Mario Cuomo, Mayor Ed Koch, and most other important elected officials...

...Why this awesome buildup...

...Scratch any Westway opponent and he will tell you what Sally Goodgold, president of the City Club, who spearheaded that group's opposition, told me: "These highways only create their own traffic...