Posted on January 24, 2022
WASHINGTON – The Times Beach Nature Preserve, a 55-acre site on Buffalo’s Outer Harbor that has been battered into disuse by frequent storms in recent years, will be restored thanks to one of the first local outlays from last year’s $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure deal.
Rep. Brian Higgins, a Buffalo Democrat, announced Wednesday that the Army Corps of Engineers will receive $10 million in infrastructure funding to restore the site, which is located just south of the current U.S. Coast Guard facility on the city’s waterfront. Under the restoration plan, the break wall that aims to protect the site from violent waves will be fortified, while habitats and public access walkways will be repaired.
“This is a big get for Buffalo,” Higgins said. “This project will go a long way to complement the parkland that’s already there.”
Higgins said he anticipates work on the project beginning this spring and being done within a year.
The Friends of Times Beach Nature Preserve, a volunteer group, had been working to restore a trail on the site. But then the Halloween storm of 2019 destroyed that trail and made most of the site off-limits to visitors, and damage to the break wall left the site vulnerable to further damage. On its website, the Friends of Times Beach Nature Preserve said the storm Dec. 11 was the 12th to damage the site since that 2019 Halloween storm and seiche.
Erie County government just finished writing a check to cover the cost of repairing the Times Beach Nature Preserve boardwalk from last winter’s storm damage. Now, county officials will have to repair it
With the new federal funding, the Army Corps will be able to repair the site, said Lt. Col. Eli Adams, commander of the Army Corps’ Buffalo district.
“The dike wall at Times Beach is a key to the resiliency of Buffalo’s coastal infrastructure and protects 45 acres of wetland habitat and an important bird sanctuary for over 230 species. Unfortunately, it is also in significant disrepair,” Adams said. “The $10 million for federal funding toward this site will provide us the opportunity to partner with Erie County and carry out some much-needed work.”
Erie County manages the site in an agreement with the city of Buffalo, which owns the property.
“Times Beach is a beautiful natural site that hosts thousands of migratory birds and other wildlife, just moments away from the downtown city core,” Erie County Executive Mark C. Poloncarz said in a statement. “It’s a peaceful but fragile ecosystem that is very vulnerable to bad weather due to its location, and the site has suffered extensive damage during recent winter storms.”
Higgins said the Times Beach restoration is the sort of project that’s needed to be done for years, but that is only getting funded now because Congress passed the infrastructure bill.
“This is a great complement to our efforts to create 100 acres of new park and nature preserve land at the Outer Harbor,” the congressman said.
Higgins has proposed a $189 million plan – funded through the infrastructure bill and money from the New York State Power Authority – that would create that new parkland, renovate Erie Basin Marina and build two new parkways leading toward the waterfront.
Part of the Higgins plan calls for moving the Coast Guard’s facilities to the south, to an existing parcel along Lake Erie. Doing so would create new parkland just north of the Times Beach Nature Preserve, along the mouth of the Buffalo River.
The Times Beach restoration is part of $17 billion in Army Corps funding for 500 port and waterfront restoration projects to be started this year under the infrastructure bill.
The Army Corps’ Buffalo district, which manages waterway management programs in New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio, received nearly $24 million of that money. A project at Little Sodus Bay, along Lake Ontario east of Rochester, received exactly as much funding as Times Beach did.
Other Buffalo-area projects that received funding include $300,000 for improvements to Old Fort Niagara, $100,000 to complete construction work at Broderick Park in Buffalo, $100,000 for Scajaquada Creek and $75,000 for the Lake Ontario Golden Hill State Park Lighthouse.
Among the other Army Corps projects announced Wednesday is one that could benefit much of the Great Lakes basin. The Army Corps will spend $226 million for a lock and dam project on the Des Plaines River in Joliet, Ill., that’s aimed to prevent the invasive Asian carp from entering Lake Michigan. That’s enough money to complete preconstruction, engineering and design of the massive project 50 miles downstream from Chicago.
“This is a historic step forward for this critically needed project to add a chain of smart technologies to the waterway that will stop invasive carp from reaching Lake Michigan,” said Molly Flanagan, chief operating officer and vice president of programs at the Alliance for the Great Lakes.
