BUFFALO, N.Y. — We have plenty of natural resources across the Empire State. The technology to help utilize those in an eco-friendly way is advancing rapidly.

“The general concept about why we’re so concerned about anything that anybody does with the river is because of what you’re seeing right here,” said Niagara Musky Association president Scott Kitchen, driving past the armored banks of the Niagara River.

When you get four larger bodies of water that lead to this, there’s already some wear and tear. It’s directly on the mind of Kitchen, who spends a majority of the year out on these waters.

“When you hear about something like this project with the hydrokinetic, you’re just worried about what other negative impacts it’s going to have on an already fragile fishery,” he said.

He understands how the ecosystem operates and now is keeping on top of plans to potentially install large power turbines on the riverbed. This is relatively the starting point where they’re talking about having the hydroponic generators. Again, it’s kind of a little bit of a pyramid going out.

But there’s more than a few people off these banks that don’t love the idea.

“Is it a solution? Is it a viable solution?” Kitchen asked. “My thought is, if you were to fill the entire river in every area that has a viable current with those, you might not be enough. You probably wouldn’t be able to generate enough power to power the houses in the city of Buffalo.”

That’s just one of the growing concerns that are being brought up in comments and community organization meetings with the proposed installers.

“I’m an I.T. person, so we talk about alpha testing and beta testing, right? So alpha testing is like we’re not even sure this is ready for people to use yet. And then beta testing is what we think it is. And now we can do people actually punch holes in it as a user? I think we’re still in the alpha testing process,” he explained.

For wherever we are in the process, it’s people like Kitchen and Buffalo Waterkeeper’s Kerrie Gallo, who are at least spearheading some of the conversations.

“We’re out here quite often,” she said. “So we have a handful of restoration projects, a handful of projects we call ‘living shorelines efforts,’ which are really to try to erase this hard edge between water and the land.”

While you’ve seen some of the work, they’ve done if you’ve driven by the river up to the falls, it’s just a fraction of keeping the waterway viable.

“Yeah, we have a lot of different tools in our toolbox on an annual basis. We work on about 40 to 60 different types of projects,” Gallo continued. “So water quality monitoring and sampling for sure, the eyes and ears out on the water, but also the policy and advocacy and trying to communicate issues that are important to our community with our elected and public officials.”

Buffalo’s Common Council has put forth a resolution that says more needs to be looked into this before anything is installed and, while Kerrie and company love green energy proposals, they agree.

“We’re a community that is spent a lot of time really trying to undo our industrial heritage and our legacy,” added Gallo. “One of the things that we are concerned about is, you know, how do we prevent our waterways from being re-industrialized? And I realize that this is a green energy proposal. However, what are those impacts?”

Hoping to address those impacts are Ocean Renewable Power Company (ORPC) and Nathan Johnson.

“The stage of trying to collect as much information as possible, seeking guidance from local groups who have been really amazing stewards of the environment in the Niagara River, in particular,” Johnson said. “We are, you know, visitors to this community. We certainly want to be more ingrained than that in the future. But you know, their guidance is really important.”

They have some of these modules in different parts of the world and draw their closest comparison to one in rural Alaska. So they are stressing that this is first a study to see if a larger scope is viable for the Queen City.

“In some of those are urban environments, you know, solar and wind are tricky because of space, but when you have, you know, a river that is like the Niagara River, it really could provide, you know, a really beneficial use of electricity for a number of different applications,” he said.

As talks continue, Kitchen says they are finding some worrying advancements in the plan with the potential for one generator without FERC’s approval by 2025 to help study.

Those with skin in the game and boats on the water are eager to keep conversations going to see if this is a genuinely good option for the Niagara and our communities.

“That takes time to really build that trust and confidence,” Johnson said. “That certainly some folks could perceive that as a challenge. I think we would perceive that as an opportunity as well.”

“Nothing against them personally. It’s not against their company. I’m sure that they have the best of intentions. It’s just that their priorities may not be the same as ours,” said Kitchen. “If, you know, they talked a lot about the fact that it’s a very big priority, them with their fishermen and all this. And that’s great. But at the end of the day, when we have the more pointed conversations, after we get past the niceties and the formalities, that’s when we’re really going to see what their perspective is.”

As of June 2024, ORPC has applied to federal agencies for permits to study if the turbines would be a fit for the Niagara. There is something in the works where one turbine could be allowed by the Army Corps of Engineers to power some EV stations for Buffalo’s Sewer Authority. That is also something that is being applauded as green, but some community concerns about how quick that process could happen are being brought up in community meetings.