Public Meeting May 7 Greece Town Hall on Future of Braddock Bay

Should the Town of Greece and the US Army Corps construct break walls or a 'barrier beach' termed the "Braddock Bay Ecosystem Restoration Project"?  

This is essentially a series of break walls at the eastern mouth of the bay with tons of sand removed from the west spit to create 'habitat for shorebirds'?  

Come to a public meeting Thursday, May 7, from 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm at the Greece Town Hall on Long Pond Rd.  The Town and the Army Corps/Buffalo will present their case.  

They have completed the design phase for what they're calling 'ecosystem restoration' but is it? Contact for Army: craig.m.forgette@usace.army.mil 

What is an Estuary? How do estuarial bays stay healthy? Oxygenated water!

What is an estuary according to NOAA?  Could Braddock Bay receive designation as an estuary like Old Woman Creek on L. Erie and St. Louis River on L. Superior?

According to NOAA, the National Ocean Service, the Estuary is generally where fresh and saltwater mix. Estuaries and their surrounding wetlands are bodies of water usually found where rivers meet the sea. Estuaries are home to unique plant and animal communities that have adapted to brackish water—a mixture of fresh water draining from the land and salty seawater. However, there are also several types of entirely freshwater ecosystems that have many similar characteristics to the traditional brackish estuaries.  FRESHWATER ESTUARIES ON GREAT LAKES:  Old Woman Creek Estuary . . . . . St. Louis River Estuary

For example, along the Great Lakes, river water with very different chemical and physical characteristics mixes with lake water in coastal wetlands that are affected by tides and storms just like estuaries along the oceanic coasts. These freshwater estuaries also provide many of the ecosystem services and functions that brackish estuaries do, such as serving as natural filters for runoff and providing nursery grounds for many species of birds, fish, and other animals.

Estuaries are among the most productive ecosystems in the world. Many animals rely on estuaries for food, places to breed, and migration stopovers. 

Estuaries are delicate ecosystems. Congress created the National Estuarine Research Reserve System to protect more than one million acres of estuarine land and water. These estuarine reserves provide essential habitat for wildlife, offer educational opportunities for students, and serve as living laboratories for scientists.   
~ http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/estuary.html


NOTE:  Bays, estuaries, marshes stay healthy as long as streams/rivers provide intermittent flows and incoming water mixes purging excess nutrients often during storm events.  How to encourage aeration: oxygen in water is very beneficial to its overall health. The value to fish is obvious. Less obvious, but of great importance, is the ability of the marsh to get rid of waste. The waste that occurs includes “deposits” from its animal life - fish and geese, waste material that enter with storm water runoff, as well as plant and animals that die in the pond. Aerobic bacteria work about twenty times faster than anaerobic bacteria in breaking this waste down and putting it into solution. Once in solution it can be flushed out or is available to grow new life.

Oxygenation happens in two major ways: plants and algae do photosynthesis during the day and wind adds oxygen at night. The oxygen plants produce is released into the water and maintains high levels of oxygen;  oxygen exchange with the atmosphere at the surface of the water. The rougher the surface the more rapid the exchange. Also the more deficient the oxygen content of the water the faster the exchange occurs. This process is important at night and is critical for water with a heavy load of plants and animals. At night the plants do respiration instead of photosynthesis the same as the animals.

What's So Great about North Greece?

Life's good in nature-bounded slice of Greece
by Barbara Carder

Originally published 1999 Suburban News, Spencerport NY

North Greece, New York

The 1845 cobblestone on Frisbee Hill at the intersection of North Greece is owned by John Finegan and wife, Jahn Forth-Finegan. Photo by Barbara Carder

On top of Frisbee Hill
As we continue our trek northward on North Greece Road, the environs begin to open up to extensive fields and woods. Three streams cross the road at various points, Northrup Creek, Black Creek and Buttonwood Creek, and flow generally northeasterly toward the marshes that ring Braddock Bay, Cranberry Pond and Long Pond.

But it's Frisbee Hill itself that brings past and present together. The second-highest point in the Town of Greece, it's the site of the Davis-Smith-Bagley 1845 cobblestone, now home to the Forth-Finegans, as well as the 1840s Frisbee Family cemetery on the grounds that lead to the closed landfill, now a compost site. From Frisbee Hill, residents can actually see downtown Rochester. Ask Frisbee Hill Road resident Ann Pearlman, who often walks and cross-country skis on the Hill. "We can see downtown Rochester from our upstairs window," she said, "yet just last week I was walking behind my house and I counted 21 hawks roosting in a tree."
Ann, like many who chose to live close to the lake, relishes the cooler temperatures found there all summer long. They are gardeners, wildlife photographers, birders, boaters, fisherpeople, bicyclists, windsurfers and walkers. The 35-mph speed limit is often enforced by the Greece Police as pedestrian traffic is very common along all these roads. 
Avid walkers Larry and Janet Frisbee, who live on Frisbee Hill Road, stopped one day on North Greece Road. "I remember when 'traffic' was three-to-four cars and a horse and buggy a week," Larry says. His own family farmed the area along with the Beatys, Baumans, Burgers, Hinchers, Flemings, Speers and Posts and he attended Frisbee Hill School #7 which still stands and interestingly, has one of the few, remaining healthy elm trees in New York state in its years.

Long-time friends of the Frisbees, Jack and Pat Quinn, also descendants of early farmers in the area, remember the old apple 'dry house' on the original Quinn farm ... when the DeMay's was called "The Domino" and Cabic and Badge Automotive ruled the northwest corner of Latta and North Greece Road. "My father, Walter Quinn, and my grandfather, Albert Wellington Post, were pioneers out here," Quinn said. "Fun was cutting ice on Braddock Bay, hauling cut flag (bull rushes used for insulation) to the Hilton cannery and fishing with Al Skinner, former Sheriff of Monroe County for over 50 years. Al and I went to the same one-room schoolhouse on Manitou Road." Along with Larry Frisbee, Jack Quinn and about 15 other old-timers meet regularly as the "Cripples Club," not to be confused with anything remotely new age, a club which definitely is casting a nostalgic eye to the past.

Kathy Tetlow, Hogan Point Road homeowner and naturalist, looks for birds from her private observatory overlooking a pond close to Salmon Creek and Braddock Bay. Photo by Barbara Carder

Eco-Friendly North Greece
But to fully understand what North Greece means to its residents, continue driving on North Greece Road until you can drive no farther north. It's there, where the road swings sharply to the west and becomes Hincher Road, that North Greece Road literally bumps directly into a marsh.

Now, close your eyes and imagine the chorus of spring peepers, red-winged blackbirds and other denizens of the swamp, four-foot-long carp coming up for air, otters, mink, muskrat and beaver messing about in the mud and overhead, a Great Blue Heron winging back to its nest after a day of fishing.

"Braddock Bay Wildlife Management Area is of significant ecological value," said NYS Department of Environmental Conservation Senior Wildlife Biologist Dave Woodruff from his office in Avon. "It's 2,467 acres of State DEC-managed wetland, one of the larger wetland complexes on the south shore of Lake Ontario. There is a significant fishery. It's a major migration route on the Eastern Flyway for songbirds and raptors who funnel up through the Finger Lakes, stage there at Braddock in great concentrations before continuing to fly east along the lake shore to their northern destinations. The habitats there are critical for migrating birds going both north and south."

You don't have to tell the Braddock Bay Raptor Research (www.bbrr.com) project, the Braddock Bay Bird Observatory (www.bbbo.org) or the Rochester Birding Association (www.rochesterbirding.com) the meaning of having so many hawks, eagles, cranes, terns, vultures, owls, songbirds overhead in the acres of marshland fringed by shrubs like the satiny dogwood, willow and red osier leading to succession forests of beech, maple and oak. Birders from all over the world flock to the Hawk Lookout in Braddock Park to count the migrating raptors and songbirds of which over 300 species have been identified; to band and release owls and hawks; to honor those birds with the annual "Bird of Prey Week" and support efforts to preserve habitat.

"This year, the D.E.C. is adding 67.9 acres adjacent to Salmon Creek on Hogan Point Road called 'Burger Park' to the Braddock Wildlife Management Area," Woodruff said. "The property was sold to the state by the estate of the Burger Family who maintained the area for light recreational purposes. An access road is planned for this summer."
"Credit for this acquisition belongs to the New York Trust for Public Lands which did most of the negotiations," Woodruff said. Last year the New York State Legislature designated Braddock Bay Wildlife Management Area a "Bird Conservation Area Program" which is granted only to those areas which are a combination of state-owned lands or waters and are judged to be important habitat for one or more species of birds. The American Birds Conservancy has also dedicated Braddock Bay an IBA (Important Bird Area), a "globally important site" for the survival of birds and important birds species.

The Town of Greece, which manages 375 acres of the Wildlife Area for both Braddock Park and Braddock Bay Marina, is currently constructing a 210-ft. marsh boardwalk and canoe launch for visitors, similar to extensive boardwalks on the Great Lakes found at places such as Point Pelee in Lake Erie.

Increased tourism for North Greece
The Town of Greece and the State of New York have begun to link the tourism potential of Lake Ontario including the Braddock Bay area to their planning, development and promotion. Upgrades to the Braddock Bay Marina and Park, including the Cranberry Pond Nature Trail, are first steps in preserving the light infrastructure that already exists in this unique area.

New York state has Braddock Bay on its Seaway Trail as well as War of 1812 promotions. Books on nature, history and biking the area as well as Nautical Seaway Trail Chartbook and Waterfront Guide are available by calling 1-800-SEAWAY-T.

On the bay and its tributaries are several eateries including the Braddock Bay Hotel/Restaurant, Willow Inn, Breakers Restaurant, Docksiders, Forest Hill Restaurant as well as the take-out deli, Stew's, on East Manitou Road. Private marinas dot the western side of the Bay and upstream on Salmon Creek off Manitou Road.

Two families in the area are taking the influx of birders and visitors to the area seriously. One is David and Kathy Tetlow of Hogan Point Road, backyard habitat specialists and owners of Nature Company on Fairport Road, supplier of birding, gardening and landscaping materials; and, Brett and Sheryl Ewald, naturalists and owners of Lakeshore Nature Tours, birding guides who offer tours in the Great Lakes area as well as more exotic locations including to Machias Island off the coast of Maine to see the puffin colonies.
As birders, homeowners and visitors find their way to the area, residents will be interacting with municipalities, state agencies, non-governmental organizations and neighborhood associations to maintain the social ties upon which the community was founded, the rural, agrarian values which take life with the seasons. 

For further information about the history of the area, try Shirley Cox Husted's Images of Greece 2001. To learn more about revisions in the Town of Greece Master Plan and public hearings on those revisions, call 225-2000. To hear peepers at early evening, drive down North Greece Road and just over the bridge on Buttonwood Creek, roll down your windows and enjoy.

Swans on Braddock Bay . . .

Besides the mute or trumpeter swan inhabiting Braddock Bay, one of the few freshwater estuaries on the Great Lakes, there are migrating tundra or arctic swans which swoop down in large numbers in late winter, part of their yearly migration from the south to breeding grounds up north.Emptying into Braddock Bay, Salmon and Buttonwood Creeks drain a huge portion of western Monroe County, as far as the town of Sweden, releasing large amounts of sediment which restores the marshes ringing the bay. Migrating Canada geese, turkey vultures, songbirds, ducks, raptors [hawks] and swans are an essential part of a global ecosystem increasingly threatened by lack of habitat and forage. 

I photographed this trumpeter swan family last summer and was struck by the parents' protectiveness toward their cygnets. You can tell trumpeter from tundra by the orange on the bill of the trumpeter. Tundra swans' bills are all black. If we disregarded, chemically-killed or on other ways altered all the animal and plant 'invasive species' we see, we would have a lot of bare spots everywhere. We humans are also an invasive species as we know from our American history. 

I would hope that we see how genuinely fragile each species is and without invoking 'climate change' which will alter weather and habitat, we make adjustments rather than launching mechanical and chemical campaigns in our most important habitats.

Great Lakes Commons Charter Declaration

We, the people of the Great Lakes, love and depend upon our waters to sustain our lives, our communities and all life in our ecosystem.

It is therefore with growing alarm that we confront a painful reality – that despite decades of effort the Lakes are more threatened than ever. As people from across the Great Lakes, we find this unacceptable. We cannot stand by while our waters are treated as an expendable and exploitable resource when we know they are a source of life.

Moved by a hope that we can yet create a thriving and life sustaining future for our Lakes, we step forward to take up our responsibility to care for and act on behalf of these waters, our Great Lakes Commons. Seeing that the health of our waters is intertwined with our own health and that of generations yet to come, we are called to assert a deeper connection and more powerful role in the future of our waters.

We hereby set forth the Great Lakes Commons Charter, a living document that affirms and empowers the wisdom and rightful role of the people of the Lakes as stewards of our waters.

This Declaration and the First Principles emerge from the collaborative work of people and communities around the lakes. Together we reflect many walks of life, histories and cultures. At the same time, a single purpose unites us: to transition to a mode of Great Lakes governance by which the waters and all living beings can flourish. 

Towards this end, we affirm:

That the waters of the Great Lakes have sustained the lives of the people and communities in their basin since time immemorial and they should continue to do so in perpetuity.

That the waters, ecosystems, and communities of the Great Lakes are entwined and interdependent. Damage to any of these causes harm to the others.

That the Great Lakes are a gift and a responsibility held in common by the peoples and communities of the Lakes and must be treated as such as to ensure their preservation for coming generations.

That the boundaries of states, provinces and nations crisscross the Lakes but do not divide their natural integrity. All decision-making that impacts the Great Lakes must place the well-being of the bio-region and ecosystem as a whole at the center of consideration.

That the inherent sovereignty and rights of Indigenous peoples as codified in treaties and international agreements must be upheld as foundational to commons governance.

Therefore:

We join our voices in affirming the spirit and necessity of this declaration as the foundation for a renewed relationship and mode of governance for our Great Lakes Commons. We welcome the wisdom, standing and power that this document will accrue over time to shape the future of our Lakes. We invest it with our hopes and commitments to that future and to the future generations who will inherit the legacy of our actions.

In signing this Charter, we embrace our responsibility, individual and collective, to act on behalf of these waters and of future generations.

October 28, 2014 ~ Great Lakes Charter was established. The Charter was initiated and incubated as a project by Minneapolis-based On The Commons. A number of organizations and individuals from the U.S., Canada, and First Nations provided leadership and guidance from early on including:

• Great Lakes Commons ~ Minneapolis
• Council of Canadians ~ Canada
• Blue Mountain Center ~ New York State
• Detroit People's Water Board ~ Michigan
• Vermont Law School Environmental Law Center ~ Vermont
• Blue Planet Project ~ Ontario, Canada
• FLOW for Water ~ Michigan
• Food and Water Watch ~ United States