Day: July 12, 2023

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Army Corps to begin Scajaquada Creek cleanup study

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Army Corps to begin Scajaquada Creek cleanup study

CHEEKTOWAGA, N.Y. — Lawmakers, clean water advocates and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers all seem to agree: the 13-mile-long Scajaquada Creek that flows through Buffalo's eastern suburbs and the city is gross.

"Fecal bacteria in the creek is at levels that are 20 times the threshold that are considered safe for human consumption,” Assemblywoman Monica Wallace, D-Lancaster, said. “Contaminated sludge is up to five feet deep at some places and the avian botulism has been estimated to have killed hundreds of thousands of birds in our region.”

The pollution, they said, is largely the result of abuse, alterations and poor infrastructure choices which have led to regular sewage runoff into the creek. Tuesday, Buffalo Waterkeeper and the Army Corps signed a cost-sharing agreement to cover a $600,000 restoration feasibility study.

"What it really means is that in the coming years we will be making significant progress in the actual restoration and changing and improvement segments of this creek system. It's what we've been talking about for decades," Buffalo Niagara Waterkeeper Executive Director Jill Jedlicka said.

This quiet lake could mark the start of a new Anthropocene epoch

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This quiet lake could mark the start of a new Anthropocene epoch

The official marker for the start of a new Anthropocene epoch should be a small Canadian lake whose sediments capture chemical traces of the fallout from nuclear bombs and other forms of environmental degradation. That’s a proposal out today from researchers who have spent 14 years debating when and how humanity began altering the planet.

If the proposal is approved, a sediment core from Crawford Lake — which lies in a conservation area near Toronto — would become the ‘golden spike’ marking the beginning of the Anthropocene, the geological epoch in which humanity has profoundly affected Earth. Year after year, particles settle onto the lake and drift to its bottom, forming sediment layers that record environmental conditions much as tree rings do. Among the embedded contaminants are specks of fly ash— remnants from burning fossil fuels — and traces of radioactive plutonium from atmospheric nuclear bomb testing.