$11.8 million Niagara River project could help tiny fish swim to Lake Erie

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers last Monday awarded an $11.8 million contract to Buffalo-based BIDCo Marine Group to design and construct special metal attachments along the seawall at Freedom Park.

The metal attachments, called baffles, will extend 700 feet north along the park’s seawall facing the Niagara River to the beginning of the Bird Island Pier.

Once put into place, the baffles should allow tiny emerald shiners to swim upstream in the Niagara River.

“It’ll provide the opportunity for thousands of fish to be able to make their way into Lake Erie,” said Courtney Winter, one of the Environmental Protection Agency’s coordinators for the Niagara River Area of Concern.

The impacts are expected to be massive.

Emerald shiners are a keystone species, meaning without them, the Lake Erie and Niagara River ecosystems could collapse.

There’s a reason emerald shiners are a big seller in bait shops: popular fish such as walleye, yellow perch, trout and bass are top predators of the minnows. Gulls, terns, cormorants and other birds also flock to the lake and river to feed on emerald shiners.

Emerald shiners migrate downstream in the spring and early summer from Lake Erie to the upper Niagara River to spawn. As the young ones swim back upstream to the lake in the late summer, many can’t make it all the way, said Tim Noon, project manager from the Army Corps of Engineers.

The Army Corps of Engineers, working with SUNY Buffalo State University and University at Buffalo researchers, found that the hardening of the shoreline at Freedom Park caused the emerald shiner population to be disjointed between the group that was in Lake Erie and those trying to swim upstream in the Niagara River. A hardened shoreline means there are no…