waterway · Erie County
Scajaquada Creek
Lancaster, Depew, Cheektowaga, and Buffalo
Highly altered urban creek crossing a 29-square-mile watershed before reaching the Black Rock Canal. Miles of the channel were buried, sewer infrastructure and runoff impair water quality, and legacy industry affected defined sediment areas. Current work combines sewer-overflow reduction, sediment investigation, community planning, and ecological restoration.
The documented story
What happened here?
Scajaquada Creek drains a roughly 29-square-mile watershed from Lancaster through Depew, Cheektowaga, and Buffalo to the Black Rock Canal. More than 100,000 people live in the watershed, and the creek connects neighborhoods, industrial areas, cemeteries, parks, transportation corridors, and sewer infrastructure.
The historic stream was shallow, meandering, and surrounded by wetlands. The Scajaquada Drain project, completed in 1928, buried roughly 3.5 miles of channel; later infrastructure extended the creek's physical and hydraulic connection to Buffalo's sewer system. The buried reach and other channelized sections fragmented habitat and obscured the creek from surrounding communities.
Water-quality problems vary by reach. State records identify combinations of fecal coliform, phosphorus, low dissolved oxygen, and oil or floating substances, associated principally with sewer overflows and urban runoff. Legacy industrial sites add separate, geographically bounded sediment and groundwater histories.
Chronology in context
Turning points in the public record
Before urbanization
A spring-fed creek crossed wetlands and meadows on its path to the Niagara River system.
1928
Completion of the Scajaquada Drain placed miles of creek underground and began a long period of sewer-connected flow management.
1998–1999
The Iroquois Gas–Westwood remedy excavated contaminated sediment in a defined creek reach and installed recovery wells for subsurface nonaqueous-phase liquid.
2014 onward
Buffalo's long-term control program began phased green and gray infrastructure projects intended to reduce combined sewer overflows across receiving waters including Scajaquada Creek.
2023–2026
Waterkeeper's community advisory process and technical team developed a watershed-wide ecological restoration and resiliency plan.
Current planning
Army Corps feasibility work selected a two-stage channel and broad native riparian buffer through Cheektowaga Town Park as a leading ecosystem-restoration project.
News record
Major news events
Coverage selected here marks a turning point in public awareness, policy, enforcement, employment, or cleanup. Links open at the original publisher or archive; WNYAtlas does not reproduce restricted articles or images.
The Scajaquada Drain places miles of the creek underground
The drainage project buried roughly 3.5 to 3.7 miles of channel and tied the creek's hydrology to Buffalo's sewer infrastructure, fundamentally changing habitat, flow, and public access.
New York State Department of Environmental Conservation ↗Contaminated sediment is removed near the former Iroquois Gas–Westwood site
A source-specific remedy excavated affected creek sediment and installed recovery systems for nonaqueous-phase liquid beneath the creek bed. It addressed a defined industrial reach, not every sediment condition across the watershed.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ↗A community process develops a watershed-wide restoration plan
Waterkeeper, residents, agencies, and community organizations are developing a restoration and resilience framework while separate sewer, sediment, park-channel, transportation, and habitat projects advance along different reaches.
Buffalo Niagara Waterkeeper ↗Chemical guide
Chemicals named in this record
These links explain potential hazards and exposure pathways. A chemical named in a record does not establish that anyone was exposed or harmed.
Environmental record
Documented impacts
- Upper, middle, and lower reaches have different classifications and impairment combinations; the creek cannot be accurately summarized by one pollutant list without reach context.
- Sewer overflows and urban stormwater contribute pathogens, nutrients, low-oxygen conditions, and aesthetic pollution in listed reaches.
- Industrial investigation documented PAHs, metals, and nonaqueous-phase liquid in particular sediment or subsurface areas near source properties. These findings do not establish equivalent contamination along the full creek.
- Burial, straightening, bank hardening, culverts, flood-control works, and transportation infrastructure fragmented aquatic and riparian habitat.
Response
Cleanup and controls
- Source-specific remedies have removed contaminated sediment and controlled groundwater or subsurface product at defined industrial reaches.
- Buffalo Sewer Authority projects combine storage, conveyance, treatment, green infrastructure, and new tunnel connections to reduce combined sewer overflows.
- Cheektowaga sewer rehabilitation addresses inflow, infiltration, and sanitary overflow pathways in the upper watershed.
- Current ecological concepts include two-stage channels, floodplain benches, native riparian buffers, wetland and habitat restoration, and improved community connections to the creek.
Then and now
The site today
Scajaquada Creek remains highly impaired, but it is also the focus of unusually coordinated sewer, sediment, habitat, transportation, resilience, and community-planning work. Many projects are still in planning or design, so the Atlas should distinguish funded work, selected concepts, and completed construction.
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 mapScajaquada Creek buried and channelized corridor →