NORTH TONAWANDA—Mayor Robert G. Ortt has drawn criticism for what some consider an attempt to get the city’s Environmental Committee to “rubber stamp” a proposed street extension.

Ortt wrote an e-mail earlier this month to Brian P. Murphy, committee chairman, seeking the backing of the seven-member advisory board for extending Meadow Drive.

The multimillion-dollar project— federal tax dollars are available for most of the work — would extend the road east to Erie Avenue.

“I would like the Environmental Committee to draft a letter stating that there is no negative environmental impacts as far as they are concerned with the project, specifically regarding wetlands,” Ortt wrote in a March 8 e-mail obtained by The Buffalo News.

“I think that this letter would serve as a show of support by our environmental group,” Ortt continued, “and help to alter the notion that our environmental committee is against progress and development.”

State environmental regulators have proposed designating more than 120 acres of additional wetlands in and near the city, including some land that might affect the long-standing street proposal.

Under a new proposal issued earlier this month, the state Department of Environmental Conservation wants to add four areas of wetlands in the city, as well as another area that sits on the North Tonawanda- Wheatfield border.

The state agency, according to Ortt, essentially wants to designate virtually all remaining undeveloped land in the city as wetlands, rendering them undevelopable.

Under a proposal unveiled last year, state regulators said they wanted to declare 39 acres of land between Walck Road and Sherwood Avenue as wetlands. The delineation, still included in the agency’s proposal, halted a building project by Twin City Ambulance on Erie Avenue.

Some residential projects also have been proposed in the area, but the Meadow Drive project is considered the farthest along of all those affecting land slated to become wetlands, Ortt said.

Liz Kazubski, a committee member who stressed she was speaking not in her role on the city board but as state wetlands chairwoman for the Sierra Club, said officials can’t “wave a magic wand” and get rid of wetland areas from their municipalities.

“The mayor was truly only interested in getting his advisory committee to rubber stamp his opinion of the Meadow Drive extension area wetlands,” Kazubski wrote in an e-mail Monday. “His assertion is not based on scientific fact.”

Joseph A. Gardella, a member of the executive committee of the Sierra Club Atlantic Chapter Niagara Group, called Ortt’s e-mail “appalling.”

“The idea that an elected official would solicit an opinion on an environmental impact, but state the conclusion before data is evaluated, shows that Mr. Ortt is woefully uninformed about how environmental impact is assessed,” Gardella wrote in an e-mail.

In response to Kazubski’s issues, Ortt said he was not looking for a rubber stamp; he was anticipating a meeting with state regulators for which he said he wanted to have “as many things in my toolbox as I could.”

“If [the committee] had an issue with it, then they would tell me, and that would be the end of it,” Ortt said. “I wasn’t saying, ‘Do it or else.’ ”

Ortt said he has since communicated with Murphy, the committee chairman, who said he and the committee need to do more “homework” before rendering an opinion.

Reached by phone Monday, Murphy said he did not want to comment until after he meets with City Engineer Dale W. Marshall today.

As for Gardella’s comments, Ortt said he would not respond because he does not know and has not met Gardella.

Federal funding for the project— to the tune of $1.6 million — was approved in 2005. The rest of the project would be financed by state and city funds, city officials said in 2007.

“I think this project needs to happen,” Ortt said. “I think its that important.”

Friday, State Sen. George D. Maziarz, R-Newfane, issued a news release announcing a public meeting on the state agency’s wetlands proposal for 7 p. m. Thursday in the North Tonawanda Alumni Student Activity Center, 405 Meadow Drive.

The written release included statements from Maziarz, who is running for re-election in November, and City Clerk-Treasurer Scott P. Kiedrowski, who is running for election to the position he now holds by appointment — as well as Ortt, who won in a landslide last November.

All three have received calls from residents worried about what a wetlands delineation might mean for them, Ortt said.

That concern doesn’t mean the wetlands proposal should be opposed, Kazubski said.

“None of these politicians are scientists, as the DEC biologists are and as I am,” she wrote, “and none of these politicians are really interested in the truth.”