Power Authority seeks home for Niagara River ice boom
Buffalo industrial site under consideration
The 1.7-mile-long Niagara River ice boom might have a new off-season home on the banks of the Buffalo River.
The New York Power Authority, the keeper of the massive ice blocker, is targeting an industrial site just off the Buffalo River, along Hamburg Street, as the boom’s new dry land home.
Power authority representatives recently conducted soil borings on a parcel owned by Killian Bulk Transfer, a trucking firm, located near the corner of Hamburg and South streets. Owner Jack Killian confirmed the authority has expressed interest in a portion of his property, but said no deal has been struck.
“So far they’re just looking around and checking it out,” Killian said.
Power authority spokesman Michael Salzman echoed that statement.
“We are committed to relocating the ice boom storage site, but no final destination has been reached at this point,” Salzman said.
The power authority pledged to relocate the current storage site — a 13- acre parcel on the city’s outer harbor, off Fuhrmann Boulevard — as part of its 2007 federal relicensing agreement, which was agreed to in 2005. The power agency had targeted a property on Ganson Street with Buffalo River frontage, but a purchase deal failed to gel.
The Erie Canal Harbor Development Corp., which is overseeing redevelopment of the city’s waterfront, has been urging the authority to pick up the pace of its site search to insure the boom doesn’t return to the outer harbor site next spring.
As soon as the power authority finds a new off-season home for the massive boom, the harbor agency will gain ownership of the land.
Long-term, the land is a strategic piece in the nearly 200- acre puzzle the state-sanctioned agency will oversee on the outer harbor. It abuts a 13-acre site the New York Power Authority has agreed to turn over to the development corporation as soon as it finds an alternative off-season storage place for the Niagara River ice boom. The parcel is also adjacent to more than 100 acres of land controlled by the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority which will be leased to the harbor corporation in the next few months.
The boom, which is composed of 22 500-foot-long pontoons, is strung across the entrance to the Niagara River each winter season to prevent pieces of the Lake Erie ice pack from damaging Niagara Power Project water intakes located downstream.
