Orleans County Legislature Chairman Lynne Johnson and Niagara County Legislator David Godfrey presented to the Great Lakes Commission at the group’s annual conference in Rochester. The legislators were invited to present on the innovative Regional Dredging Management Plan (RDMP), an initiative began by the Niagara Orleans Regional Alliance.
“The RDMP is a comprehensive approach for the on-going maintenance dredging of harbor access channels, utilized primarily for recreational boating, along the south shore of Lake Ontario,” said Johnson. “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 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 Inter-municipal agreements and an RFP will be issued to hire a dredging contractor to perform the work.
“Recreational boating activities generate nearly $100 million annually for our communities and that number will continue to grow, provided harbor access is maintained,” said Godfrey. “That means we must keep our harbors dredged and the most efficient and cost-effective way to do so is through collaboration among local governments.”
The eight Great Lakes states created the Great Lakes Commission (GLC) in 1955 via the Great Lakes Basin Compact. In 1968, Congress provided its consent to the Compact and the interstate compact agency it created. The eight U.S. states and two Canadian provinces are represented on the nonpartisan GLC by a delegation of government-appointed commissioners.
The GLC recommends policies and practices to balance the use, development, and conservation of the water resources of the Great Lakes and brings the region together to work on issues that no single community, state, province, or nation can tackle alone.
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