Visitors to Canalside are getting a look at one of the oldest activities of a harbor, dredging.
For probably as long as sailors have gone down to the sea, harbors have had to be dredged, removing the mud or whatever which flowed into the harbor, making it harder for ships to sail in and out.
Locally, the harbor, the Buffalo River, and the City Ship Canal are dredged to 23 feet in depth for what's called the Federal Navigation Channel. The watery material is dug up and put in barges which take it to a disposal area near the old Bethlehem Steel plant.
"What we're actually doing is finishing up a contract that we started last year," said Program Manager Mike Asquith.
"The efforts that we're getting through this year we're dredging the last 40,000 cubic yards of our contract. Now, the total for the entire contract including the work we did last year is about 550,000 cubic yards."
Asquith says that's perhaps the equivalent of 45,000 tractor trailers filled with the wet muck going to the disposal area.
