How has Onondaga Lake improved in the last few years?

     On March 23, 2016, I attended the Sierra Club meeting that covered the Biodiversity and Wildlife of the Onondaga Lake with a guest speaker of Joe McMullen.
   
    The lake is a superfund site that was so polluted that swimming was not allowed since the 1940's and fishing ended in the 1970's.
   
     The information started by explaining that Honeywell is working on cleaning up the contamination from Allied. The improvements consist of 4 major parts.

• Preventing migration of contaminants into the lake from old sites
• Removing materials from the bottom of the lake
• Creating sustainable habitat along the lakes shoreline and tributaries to support wildlife and expanding habitat
• Provide long term monitoring: has to be monitored for at least 5 years in order to be accepted by the government agencies.

      In the Geddes Brook area, they have made Geddes brook into a twisting path to allow the water to be filtered and stored. They also made stable areas with different depths, which will help with diversifying the habitat.  The stream is now connected to the wetlands. They totally excavated the area and removed all of the invasive species.  The channel they created is a low flow channel in the middle to prevent complete dehydration and allow fish and animals to survive during dry spells. The wetlands needed more  structure so logs, brush, and other organic materials needed to be added. In this area they have seen a return of Mallards, killdeer, deer, hooded merganser, mollusks, great blue heron, and bald eagle.

      In working on the 9 mile creek, they completely dregged it out in 2013-2014, then restored it.  They removed the invasive species, cleaned the edges, created back lagoons to create wetlands, made it more sinuous, stuffed root balls into the banks at the curves. These changes creates good habitat for the fish and protects the areas from washing away. Lots of fabric and seeding was done to help maintain the curves in the creek. So far they have documented that the following species have returned to the area:  Salt marsh astor, snapping turtles, brown trout, short billed dowitcher, mink, viceroy, grey tree frog, immature black crowned night heron, muskrat,

      The mouth of 9 mile creek: there is a new west trail. Great views, it’s a cove, and it doesn’t freeze in the winter.  So a low energy area.  In 2015 the physical work in terms of remediation was done, then the restoration will continue with the plantings being done this year.  120,000 plant plugs 1,500 pounds of seeds. They brought the grade up so that it’s shallow.

So far the Ecological successes to date are:

       165 species of fish, birds mammals

       85 species of birds many were threatened or of special concerned.

      More than 50 acres of wetlands restored

            Nine mile creek, gedded brook, harbor brook

            Onondage lakes western shoreline

            lake bottom habitat scheduled for completion in  2017

            Installed 420, 000 native trees, plants and shrubs

1.1 million to be planted in total

For more information, look up Olwp.org  (look for cpwg   Onondaga lake watershed partnership, has lots of info about the clean-up)

Thank you Sierra Club and Joe McMullen for a wonderful update on the lake.