BUFFALO, N.Y. — The Supervisor of the town of Evans hopes this will be the year in which work will finally begin on what is hoped to be a permanent solution to an annual problem along the town’s Lake Erie Shoreline.
It's the clogging of Sturgeon Point Marina with sand, which makes it inaccessible to boaters.
Like daffodils in the spring, the sand has sprouted again to plug the mouth of the harbor, with an estimated 28,000 cubic yards of it so far and more likely coming, according to Evans Supervisor Mary Hosler.
The town can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars annually to dredge it out for the boating season
“The dredging is a big issue every year…it's just got incredibly more expensive," said Hosler, who noted that in some years generous corporate citizens have stepped up to provide financial assistance. But that well, like the sand, can always run dry.
"The band aid approach just doesn't work," Hosler said.
A more permanent solution has long been thought to be a total reconstruction of the harbor's outer wall, heavily damaged by storms, and through which most of the sand has been pouring in.
Not a simple task, as it requires approval by environmental agencies, and it’s not cheap either.
“The whole project will be about $4 million for about 120 feet of wall,” Hosler said.
However, after years of studies, planning, and scrounging grants from the state and federal governments, they've finally gotten enough to do the job, which the town will put out to bid in anticipation of getting the needed environmental permits, perhaps in the next few weeks.
If that happens Hosler says it’s possible work could begin to rebuild the wall in June and be finished by October.
But the window of time, like the harbor's mouth, is narrowing.
If they don't have everything in order by the second week of May, according to Holzer, they'll have to find the funds to fire up the excavators for another year of dredging and work on the wall will have to wait until 2023.
“We really need to get that wall fixed,” said Hosler. “I don't want to go through another winter with the wall in the condition it's in."
U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) who secured some of the funding for the project agrees.
“Our whole Lake Erie shore from the Pennsylvania border to Niagara Falls is really important to the Western New York community in terms of tourism and the economy,” he said. “But if we let the harbors silt up and the boats can’t come it'll all go down the drain, so to speak."
If the work commences in June, the harbor will be closed for the entire season because of the need to bring in barges and equipment. “Whether it’s this year or next, we will lose an entire boating season,” said Hosler. And along with it, the fees the town collects from boaters who utilize the marina.
As well, if they can start building the new wall in June, they won't bother dredging this year because crews will utilize the sand bar to get equipment across the mouth of the harbor.