Visitors to the Commercial Slip at Canalside can look into the slip and see floating logs and branches and boards and timbers floating. It's part of a constant battle between maintenance crews and Mother Nature.
Wood and trees are a continuing presence in the Great Lakes, product of the seasons and abandonment. Erie Canal Harbor Development Corporation President Tom Dee says there's an awareness of the problem.
"Global Spectrum (the Canalside operator) is on top of that. The problem that we have, every time that we have a rainstorm all the debris comes down the river and it gets sucked into the Commercial Slip," Dee explained.
"The reality of it is that it's a function of the elements. It's a function of the way the wind blows. It's a function of what's in the river. So, it's cleaned out on a regular basis."
Dee says the slip can be completely clean at one point in the day and a few hours later the weather has brought new material floating in.
There were sewage problems in the slip at one time, but the Buffalo Sewer Authority made changes a little inland and solved that problem since the slip is the outflow of an old sewer under downtown Buffalo.
