NIAGARA FALLS —

At the edge of Cayuga Creek, near a busy roadway in LaSalle, Kerri Bentkowski checked the green wire fence surrounding some scrawny, bare trees and shrubs.

The young plants needed to be protected through the winter as they have a big job ahead of them. They’re going to help keep Niagara waterways clean.

The little patch, which sits on a narrow strip of grass along busy Cayuga Drive near the public library, is part of an effort by Buffalo Niagara Riverkeeper to fortify the area’s fresh water supply. The effort is vast as the many waterways in the region and the non-profit organization is seeking volunteers to help the cause.

The goal is two-fold; protecting the water quantity and the quality, as well as connecting people to the waterfront.

“What we want to do is have constituency that is aware and loves their water and participates in the restoration,” Bentkowski said as she picked up a full beer bottle and empty tin canister lying in the grass. “It’s about educating the public on how they can help with the rivers ecology and why it is so important.”

Buffalo Niagara Riverkeeper is an environmental advocacy group, established in 1989, and Bentkowski is the citizen action coordinator.

She and the other riverkeepers want people to understand how vital our waterways are and that the Great Lakes and the Niagara watersheds represent 20 percent of all the fresh surface water on earth. Considering that 75 percent of the globe is covered in water and only 1 percent is drinkable fresh water, it’s important for area residents to understand that 20 percent of that fresh water passes through Niagara Falls.

“This water is kind of like a savings account and if you look globally (at) the scarcity of water, you are seeing that fresh water is becoming a rare resource,” Bentkowski said.

 To protect what they consider a precious resource, Riverkeeper members have turned their attention to these small creeks and streams, because they play a large role in the quality of water that follows in the Niagara River.

Bentkowski opened a map showing all the watersheds that Buffalo Niagara River Keeper is interested in protecting and restoring, covering four counties. “All these watersheds are linked and they all eventually flow in the Niagara River,” Bentkowski said.

The group is seeking community members and landowners along these waterways to help fortify the banks of the rivers and creeks.

She pointed across the Cayuga Creek at a neat piece of property with a tidy lawn whose homeowners have built a wooden wall along the riverbank.

“That is not a natural riverbank,” Bentkowski explained. “The barrier looks really nice and so does the yard, but there is not any plant life that would stop land erosion and help absorb some of the ground water that could carry harmful fertilizers or pesticides into the creek, which hurts the quality of water.”

Such examples provide more reasons why the group plants shrubs and trees along the riverbanks.

Bentkowski is leading a program called the Niagara Riparian Restoration Program, and she hopes it will educate and encourage urban and suburban landowners who live on these waterways to develop forest buffers or other habitat features to enhance the vegetation along the water. That might include a rain garden, soft shoreline stabilization, or enhancing meadows, and wetlands on their properties, which fortifies the watershed as well as provides a home to wildlife.  

The restoration program has had some success, Bentkowski said. It has restored 4,570 linear feet of streambank and seen the planting of over 1.43 acres of native plants. But, more work is needed and more help is sought, more so in the Niagara Falls area than some others.

Protecting the fresh water of the Niagara River is especially important to the local economy, according to Thomas DeSantis, senior planner for the Department of Planning and Economic Development in the city of Niagara Falls. He views the bi-national Niagara Region as having an added responsibility of protecting the high profile of the falls in Niagara Falls.

“If we didn’t have water and the Niagara River, then we wouldn’t have Niagara Falls,” he said. “We would just be another place.”

“Essentially Niagara Falls is water and it’s about water and therefore we have this added responsibility locally and as stewards of the Great Lakes to protect it,” DeSantis added.

Those interested in volunteering or seeking more information can contact Buffalo Niagara Riverkeeper at 852-7483 or visit their website at www.bnriverkeeper.org.