Another phase of the long effort to turn Scajaquada Creek back into a clean waterway from the eastern end of Erie County to the Niagara River is getting near.
The Buffalo Sewer Authority is taking bids on a dredging project in Forest Lawn Cemetery and the section of the creek between Delaware Avenue and the tunnel which carries the polluted creek around Hoyt Lake in Delaware Park. One noticeable improvement should be the reduction of a foul odor emerging from the creek.
"When we are taking that sediment that has decades old potential contaminants in there, we will be removing that sediment and along with that sediment will go some of the bad things that we definitely don't want in there," said Sewer Authority General Manager Oluwole McFoy.
The project, which carries an estimated cost of around $2 million, will carry other benefits when completed this fall.
"We're really creating an ideal habitat for fowl, for fish to really come in here and to make this creek new again," Oluwole said.
It's the latest in a series of multi-million dollar projects working their way up the creek, matched with some projects east of Buffalo to cut down on the sewage overflow coming into the creek.
This is unrelated to the broken fountain in Hoyt Lake which the Olmsted Parks Conservancy is working to fix. That fountain was installed to reduce the level of algae in the lake.
