Great Lakes: Spotlight on innovative regional dredging management plan

Orleans County Legislature Chairman Lynne Johnson and Niagara County Legislator David Godfrey presented to the Great Lakes Commission at the group’s annual conference last week at the Strathallan Hotel in Rochester. The legislators were invited to present on the innovative regional dredging management plan, an initiative began by the Niagara Orleans Regional Alliance.

“The Regional Dredging Management Plan (RDMP) is a comprehensive approach for the ongoing maintenance dredging of harbor access channels, utilized primarily for recreational boating, along the south shore of Lake Ontario,” Johnson said.

“Our goal is to have multiple counties working in partnership to help jointly fund dredging projects across our communities through annual appropriations, thereby keeping the cost of any single project manageable for individual counties and ensuring dredging is performed on schedule.”

The presentation covered the formation of the RDMP and the creation of a Lake Ontario regional dredging management council. Initial dredging was funded by a grant from the New York State Lake Ontario Resiliency and Economic Development Initiative (REDI).

Niagara County Legislator Dave Godfrey said that the next step is Wendel Engineering updating the RDMP with information from the REDI Commission to revise dredging statistics and projected ongoing costs.

From there, participating counties will enter into formal intermunicipal agreements and an RFP will be issued to hire a dredging contractor to perform the work.