waterway · Erie County
Black Rock Canal
Buffalo
Federal navigation channel between Buffalo's west side and Unity Island. The canal receives Scajaquada Creek and urban drainage, and a 2014–15 Great Lakes project removed more than 180,000 cubic yards of contaminated legacy sediment from the Black Rock Channel and Tonawanda Harbor navigation corridor.
The documented story
What happened here?
The Black Rock Canal is an engineered federal navigation channel along the east side of the Niagara River, separated from the main river by Unity Island and connected through the Black Rock Lock. It is both transportation infrastructure and part of the Niagara River Area of Concern.
Scajaquada Creek enters the canal after crossing a highly altered urban watershed. Historic industry, municipal discharges, combined-sewer overflows, tributary inputs, and navigation activity contributed to degraded sediment and water quality, but their histories and present controls differ by reach and source.
EPA identifies the Black Rock Channel and Tonawanda Harbor dredging as a strategic navigation project: sediment that ordinary navigation maintenance was not scheduled to remove was addressed to advance Great Lakes beneficial-use restoration.
Chronology in context
Turning points in the public record
Nineteenth–twentieth centuries
Navigation works, shoreline industry, railroads, sewers, and the altered Scajaquada outlet reshaped the canal corridor.
1987
The Niagara River was designated a Great Lakes Area of Concern, bringing the canal into a binational restoration framework.
2014–2015
A strategic dredging project removed contaminated legacy sediment from the Black Rock Channel and Tonawanda Harbor navigation corridor.
2016
EPA records the project as complete, with 181,532 cubic yards removed to advance benthos, dredging, and wildlife-related beneficial-use goals.
Present
Navigation, tributary water quality, sewer-overflow reduction, habitat restoration, and AOC monitoring continue as separate but connected programs.
Environmental record
Documented impacts
- EPA describes the removed material as contaminated legacy sediment containing industrial contaminants from earlier activity.
- The removal volume applies to the combined Black Rock Channel and Tonawanda Harbor project; it should not be presented as a canal-only parcel or as the quantity remaining today.
- Scajaquada Creek is a documented urban inflow, but its site-specific coal-tar investigations must not be generalized to the whole canal.
Response
Cleanup and controls
- Federal and state partners removed 181,532 cubic yards of contaminated sediment through strategic navigation dredging.
- The project supported removal of beneficial-use impairments involving benthic degradation, dredging restrictions, and wildlife effects.
- Buffalo sewer-overflow controls, Scajaquada investigations, navigation maintenance, and Unity Island habitat projects operate under separate authorities and schedules.
Then and now
The site today
The canal remains active navigation infrastructure and receiving water. Completed sediment removal is a major restoration milestone, not evidence that every contaminant source or water-quality impairment throughout the corridor has disappeared.
Atlas connections
Connected places
These collections explain documented material, facility, waterway, ownership, or cleanup relationships. Inclusion does not imply that every place shares one contaminant source or plume.
Niagara River waterway and tributary network
The Niagara River hub connects altered tributaries, navigation channels, contaminated embayments, residential fill, source-site cleanups, and habitat projects without treating the entire river corridor as one cleanup site.
The river page organizes the regional record by reach, tributary, embayment, source site, and restoration project.
Navigation and sediment-remediation corridorBlack Rock CanalThe canal received strategic legacy-sediment dredging and remains connected to Scajaquada Creek and Unity Island habitat work.
Highly altered urban tributaryScajaquada CreekScajaquada enters Black Rock Canal after passing buried, channelized, sewer-connected, and site-specific cleanup reaches.
PCB source-tracking tributaryTwo Mile Creek — TonawandaTwo Mile and Rattlesnake creeks were included in the 2018–19 USGS/DEC passive-sampler investigation, with local sources not assumed from proximity alone.
Residential fill investigationCayuga Island Industrial Fill InvestigationCayuga Island sits within the Little Niagara River landscape near, but distinct from, major regulated disposal sites.
Lower-river tributary and embayment recordGill Creek / DuPont–Olin Chemical CorridorGill Creek has its own industrial-source, sediment, remediation, and monitoring history within the larger river corridor.
Industrial drainage and river pathwayPettit Flume / Durez OutfallThe Pettit Flume record follows a defined facility-to-river pathway and does not characterize adjoining shoreline reaches.
Waterway connection
See the documented waterway record
The separate waterways map explains the documented relationship among the historic waterbody, fill or sediment, and this Atlas site without crowding the regional map.
Linked research mapBlack Rock Canal legacy-sediment corridor →