By Clarke Condé
At a cost to the New York taxpayer of just about half that of the Louisiana Purchase fourteen years earlier, “Clinton’s Ditch” faced the ageless and indestructible rancor of the New York State Legislature and the animosity of the press statewide. It is hard to overstate the impact the investment taxpayers made in building the canal had on the development of Rochester and New York State. Now, it is almost impossible to imagine a project like the canal ever being built in today’s political climate and maybe that is not such a good thing. In this edition of Wear to Where we stop by Lock 33 and ask, “What’s the big idea?”…