By Evan Kaye, Northeast-Midwest Institute Intern and Brown University Student
The Buffalo River, which winds through western New York before emptying into Lake Erie, has a history of transformation. Once a rural creek, then a commercial conduit, and then a polluted husk, the last fifteen years have seen the river undergo yet another change of face in a profoundly positive direction: It has come back to life and enriched the city of Buffalo in the process. The river’s environmental and economic revival is a success story brought about by advocacy, cooperation, and community engagement. While work still needs to be done, the Buffalo River’s progress is an important reminder that bipartisan policy can achieve meaningful results in today’s polarized political climate.
From prosperity to pollution
The city of Buffalo began as a sleepy village named after the shallow “Buffalo Creek,” the etymology of which is uncertain but may originate from the French “Beau Fleuve,” or “beautiful river.”
The town and its waterway were forever changed after the completion of the Erie Canal in 1825, which deepened and widened the river to use as its Lake Erie terminus (Buffalo Blueway, 2019). The canal electrified Buffalo’s economy and the Buffalo River became a major artery for commerce between the Great Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean. Numerous factories, industrial facilities and railroad lines sprang up along the riverbanks in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, catapulting Buffalo to new heights of prosperity and earning it the nickname “The Queen City of the Great Lakes.”
Unfortunately, Buffalo’s industrial might left behind a toxic legacy. For decades, untreated industrial effluents, raw sewage, and chemical runoff contaminated the Buffalo River with lead, mercury, pesticides, oil slicks, acids, and contaminants such as Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) (EPA, 2024). In 1967, the Federal Government declared the river “functionally dead,” and in 1968, it caught on fire after sparks from a welder’s torch ignited the film of oil covering the surface, damaging a bridge (IAGLR). The true extent of the Buffalo River’s pollution was reflected in a damning 1968 assessment by the U.S. Department of Interior (emphasis is this author’s):
“The Buffalo River is a repulsive holding basin for industrial and municipal wastes under the prevalent sluggish flow conditions. It is devoid of oxygen and almost sterile. Oil, phenols, color, oxygen-demanding materials, iron, acid, sewage, and exotic organic compounds are present in large amounts. Residents who live along its backwaters have vociferously complained of the odors emanating from the river and of the heavy oil films. In places the river’s surface is a boundless mosaic of color and patterns resulting from the mixture of organic dyes, steel mill and oil refinery wastes, raw sewage, and garbage.”
–U.S Federal Water Pollution Control Administration, Great Lakes Region: Lake Erie Report, 1968.
The Buffalo River in the 1950s, in an era of unchecked industrial pollution. Photo: Buffalo Niagara Waterkeeper
Furthermore, the completion of the Saint Lawrence Seaway in 1959 diverted shipping away from Buffalo, as the Erie Canal was no longer economically competitive: Annual grain shipments for the city’s prominent flour milling industry topped 200 million bushels prior to the seaway’s opening but declined by over half after the seaway was completed (Malcolm, 1979). The sharp fall in port activity harmed employment and contributed to a significant decline in the city’s population (Buffalo Blueway, 2019).
At around this time, calls for change became widespread. At the urging of Buffalo activist Stanley Spisiak, President Lyndon Johnson and First Lady Ladybird Johnson visited the river in 1966, where they observed the river for themselves and learned about the threat it posed to water quality in Lake Erie. During his visit, the president gave a speech in Niagara Square in which he made an ambitious prediction for the future of the lake, and by extension the river which flowed into it: “This great inland sea will sparkle again” (Klein, 2018). Once he returned to Washington, Johnson issued an executive order banning the deposition of polluted sediment at the river’s mouth, the first real environmental regulation placed on Buffalo’s water resources.
President Johnson investigates a bucket of polluted sludge scooped from the Buffalo River, with Stanley Spisiak leaning over his shoulder at left. After Spisiak informed the President that the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) had been dumping toxic chemicals from the river into Lake Erie, Johnson replied, “why, those bastards!” and “I’ll take care of it.” In a twist of fate, USACE would later play a pivotal role in restoring the river’s natural ecosystem. Photo credit: Defense Visual Information Distribution Service
Conditions on the Buffalo river and other locations across the Great Lakes inspired the adoption of key legislation including the Clean Water Act. Of particular relevance to the future of the Buffalo River was the US-Canada Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement of 1972 (GLWQA), which specified the goal of protecting and restoring the waters of the Great Lakes through binational cooperation.
An Area of concern
Though the passage of the GLWQA set important goals for the future condition of the Buffalo River, the community still did not have the resources to adequately address the accumulation of polluted sediment and abandoned industrial infrastructure. The first step toward solving this problem came through a 1987 amendment to the GLWQA establishing 43 “Areas of Concern” (AOCs) throughout the Great Lakes region in the United States and Canada. An AOC was created for the Buffalo River, covering a six mile stretch of river and its banks starting at the mouth as well as the nearby city ship canal (EPA, 2024).
For each AOC, state and local agencies were required to develop, implement, and regularly update Remedial Action Plans (RAPs) detailing specific restoration actions. Part of this process included determining what Beneficial Use Impairments (BUIs), or kinds of significant environmental degradation, were present at the site. Out of a possible fourteen established by the GLWQA, the Buffalo River had nine (see fig. 1).
Fig. 1: Original and remaining Beneficial Use Impairments for the Buffalo River AOC
*Remaining as of July 2024
Source: EPA 2024, Buffalo Niagara Waterkeeper
The Great Lakes Restoration Initiative
It is one thing to develop a plan, and another to implement it. While the original Buffalo River RAP was created in 1989, a lack of available resources made large-scale remediation impossible at the time (IAGLR).
A turning point for the Buffalo River arrived through the passage of the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, which was passed by Congress and signed by President Obama in 2009. The GLRI massively increased available funding for AOC remediation, from about $50 million per year to roughly $300 million, and made cleanup possible in areas that had long faced difficulties acquiring the resources needed to achieve their RAPs. (IAGLR). Margaux Valenti, the Buffalo River AOC coordinator for Buffalo-Niagara Waterkeeper, says that this legislation ushered in a new era for the river’s rehabilitation. “Until the GLRI came around in 2010, progress on these projects and AOC remediation was very slow, mostly using state funding. Finding money from grants without a dedicated system was difficult.
In Buffalo, a unique coalition of public, private, and nonprofit organizations took advantage of this funding influx. This partnership has included the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Erie County, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, the US Army Corps of Engineers, Honeywell, and Buffalo-Niagara Waterkeeper, alongside additional partners.
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A Diverse Cast: some of the Partners Involved in the Buffalo AOC's remediation
The US Environmental Protection Agency is providing 50% of environmental dredging costs through GLRI grants, approximately $24.25 million, and provided $16.5 million of GLRI grants for habitat restoration.
Honeywell, a private multinational corporation whose predecessor companies contributed to the industrial pollution of the river, is providing the other 50% of environmental dredging costs and redeveloping its former factory site into apartments and entertainment facilities.
Erie County is the recipient of the current RAP Management grant and selected Buffalo-Niagara Waterkeeper to continue coordination responsibilities. The county has also implemented several habitat restoration projects funded by the GLRI.
The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) executed many of the hazardous waste removal portions of the project.
The US Army Corps of Engineers dredged much of the polluted sediment from the riverbed, and contributed to several habitat restoration projects funded by the GLRI. USACE managed navigational dredging with $4.6 million of GLRI funds and $1.3 million of internal funds.
Buffalo-Niagara Waterkeeper, named Buffalo River Remediation Advisory Committee coordinator, is a nonprofit organization that manages much of the on-the-ground work, coordinates with the other partners, and organizes community outreach programs.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Great Lakes Commission (GLC) provided additional funding for specific habitat restoration projects through the GLRI, as well as providing administrative support.
Sources: NYSDEC, Honeywell 2024, Buffalo Waterkeeper, Winkler
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Empowered by the GLRI, this partnership has achieved incredible progress. About 1 million cubic yards of contaminated sediment have been removed from the river, enough to fill a football field forty stories high (NYSDEC). Native plants and fish habitat structures have been placed throughout the restored riverbed. 25,000 feet of shoreline has been restored, and parks of native species take up much of what used to be a tangle of invasive plants on land. (Buffalo-Niagara Waterkeeper, IAGLR). Turtles, beavers, and 30 species of fish now live in a river which decades ago could not support any form of animal life.
The Great Lakes Restoration Initiative
For decades, the pollution and industrial decay of the Buffalo River separated the population from what was once the city’s most cherished resource. Remediation of the Buffalo River AOC has, through restoring the ecosystem, worked to reconnect the people of Buffalo to their river and uplift them in the process.
Education is one pillar of community engagement. Initiatives include the Young Environmental Leaders Program (YELP), in which Buffalo-Niagara Waterkeeper partners with Buffalo Public Schools and other school districts. Throughout the program, high school students learn from environmental experts and activists while touring various locations in the Buffalo River Watershed, allowing them to earn college credits and demonstrating the impact of community action. (YELP). Students are also selected for a summer mentorship opportunity where they learn more in-depth conservation skills. Volunteer opportunities are available for people of all ages to contribute to a healthy river, including the annual “Shoreline Sweep”, which collected nearly 19,000 pounds of trash in 2023 (Buffalo-Niagara Waterkeeper).
Another important pillar is a transparent decision-making process that is accountable to the community. The Buffalo River Remedial Action Committee, which oversees overall progress of the AOC, conducts its business through public meetings and requires thirty-day public comment periods before projects are approved. Wendy Patterson, Erie County Senior Environmental Compliance Specialist and Grant Manager for the Buffalo River AOC project, says “A lot of people were concerned about the restoration of the Buffalo River, and specifically the dredging of the river. Buffalo-Niagara Waterkeeper has done a lot of boots on the ground work, grassroots, organizing door-to-door outreach, and that has built up a lot of community trust. Erie County has been there to support them with that work from the get-go.”
Community members now have access to a wide range of recreational benefits through the Buffalo Blueway, a network of restored natural spaces connected by trails and waterways. “Pocket parks,” fishing piers and boat launches with ADA-compliant designs have been built throughout this network to encourage use by the public and ensure equitable access.
The Buffalo River has also been reborn as a bustling center of commerce. First opening in 2008 and still expanding today, Canalside, a business district at the mouth of the river, has come to life with housing, restaurants, sports facilities, a boardwalk, boat tours, and other amenities occupying what was formerly a vacant industrial zone. While Canalside is not directly affiliated with the AOC, the restoration of the surrounding water and land vastly improved the conditions of the area, increasing its desirability and value. Margaux Valenti calls this relationship “complementary and symbiotic” and says that it symbolizes the river’s new dual status as both natural beauty and economic engine. “We want the river to be a clean and healthy place to sit and enjoy and recreate,” she said. “While the Buffalo will remain an urban working river, you can now see minks, river otters, and these are really good signs of a healthy waterway. Work still needs to be done, but it is lightyears away from when it was poisonous and purple.”
Taken together, these developments highlight how environmental restoration is as much about improving people’s lives as it is protecting nature: Every dollar of GLRI funding spent on the Buffalo River AOC will generate $4.09 in economic benefits through 2036, according to a 2018 study published by the University of Michigan Seminar in Quantitative Economics. In an encouraging sign of the times, the 2020 U.S. census registered a 6.5% increase in Buffalo’s population since 2010, the first decadal increase after seventy years of decline (U.S. Census Bureau, 2020).
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What is the most important thing to consider when ensuring long-term success of the Buffalo River AOC project?
Margaux Valenti, Buffalo River AOC coordinator, Buffalo-Niagara Waterkeper:
“The best thing we can do for the AOC program longevity is to think of the habitat restoration as more than shovels in the ground and more about long term care to mitigate invasive species and other perennial issues.”
Wendy Patterson, Senior Environmental Compliance Specialist and Grant Manager for the Buffalo River AOC project, Erie County
“We have made great strides and the river is in amazing shape, but the AOC program is supposed to end– that is the goal. At that point, there are not many answers for what to do after. How can we work together in perpetuity? The funding situation we have is all grants which are one or two years in length, but habitat restoration is a decades long process, so the model doesn’t quite fit with the reality of ecology.”
Jill Estrada, Project Manager, Coastal Conservation & Habitat Restoration Program, Great Lakes Commission
“We would like to see more long-term monitoring. Currently, once the 3-5 year award has ended, funding is no longer available for continued monitoring to see how effective the project has been, for example, 10-15 years down the road. We want to ensure that the habitat stays restored, and is effectively restored.”
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What's Next
Nearly all of the management actions to improve the river have been completed. In the coming years, Buffalo Niagara Waterkeeper will continue to work with its partners to sample the river and its biota so that the remaining BUIs can be removed, after which the Area of Concern may finally be delisted for good. Of these BUIs, “Fish tumors or other deformities” is on track to be removed next, by September 2024.
Even once the AOC is delisted, the fight for a cleaner, greener Buffalo River will not be over. Certain challenges will require recurrent work to overcome, for example preventing invasive species encroachment from private land and reducing the inflow of litter from other areas of the city. Others require adaptation: Climate change has raised water temperatures in the lake and may have already contributed to oxygen depletion and fish kills in some areas. While such continual care will require less funding than the initial remediation, the city of Buffalo has faced budget shortfalls in recent years (Kelly, 2024) and nearly 30% of residents lived below the poverty line as of 2023. Erie County has started conversations with local agencies to develop long term maintenance solutions, but no specific plan has been developed yet. This long-term funding challenge is something policymakers at all levels should keep in mind to ensure that the Buffalo River and other AOCs can benefit future generations.
Though challenges persist, there are reasons to be hopeful. Great Lakes restoration remains a broadly bipartisan priority in an era when such issues seem increasingly hard to come by. “Resources of the Great Lakes are supported by both parties. This is a resource that brings people together, and everyone agrees that it needs to be protected. We’ve received a lot of support from Great Lakes state representatives,” Jill Estrada attests. Currently, Congress is considering a proposal that would reauthorize the GLRI through 2031, sponsored by a mix of Democratic and Republican senators. When considering the future of this legislation and other Great Lakes protections, the Buffalo River’s story is a powerful reminder of how smart policy can make a real difference both for the environment and for people. For the Queen City, it meant regaining its crown jewel.