Ongoing cleanup of the Buffalo River and the City Ship Canal will continue as the Environmental Protection Agency restored funding for the effort. The final stages of dredging will be funded with $23 million that the EPA could allocate from fiscal 2013. The dredging operation will remove 500,000 cubic yards of sediment from the waterways. Representative Brian Higgins states that the clean-up will take time but that it will provide significant benefits to area residents in the near future.
"It will begin actually this year and extend into next year, and the Buffalo River's come a long way. In 1968, the EPA deemed the Buffalo River biologically dead, and now officials are saying that it be swimmable [sic] within five years and the fish that are caught there fit for human consumption with in five years."
The operation will also involve capping the remaining sediment and restoring natural habitats in the river and along the shoreline.
In another significant move, monies for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative were cut by a House Appropriations Committee, but $150 million will be in the budget for fiscal 2014.
