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Asserting rights over the Iroquois National Wildlife Refuge, the Tonawanda Seneca Nation has filed a lawsuit against the federal government in U.S. District Court over the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s approval of a right of way for an industrial wastewater pipeline through the Iroquois National Wildlife Refuge.

The lawsuit asserts that the Nation has standing to sue because the refuge is historically and culturally interrelated with the Nation's ancestral territory, even though it is outside the boundaries of the Tonawanda Indian Reservation. 

Areas in urban communities known as brownfields can sometimes be expensive to redevelop because of the environmental cleanup costs, and that cost drives away potential developers because projects that might turn a profit without the cleanup quickly become unprofitable. 

To address that issue, local agencies, including the City of Batavia