Lake Ontario Area Removed from List of Region’s Most Polluted Places

Participants at the Rochester AOC delisting celebration on the Boardwalk at Ontario Beach Park at Port Charlotte. Credit: EPA

After nearly 40 years, the Rochester Embayment Area of Concern—a 35-square-mile portion of Lake Ontario near Rochester, New York—has shed its status as one of the most environmentally degraded places in the Great Lakes region.

Named an Area of Concern (AOC) by the United States–Canada Great Lakes Water Agreement in 1987, the Rochester Embayment AOC was one of the 43 most environmentally degraded Great Lakes sites identified across both nations. Officially delisted on October 3, 2024, the Rochester Embayment AOC became the seventh U.S. site to be delisted—a significant accomplishment for local, state, and federal partners.

“This event really marks decades of effort and amazing amounts of work,” says Amy Pelka, supervisory environmental scientist at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). “It takes a really dedicated, driven set of community members and advocates to get us to this point.”

Pelka credits a “mosaic” of partners with this success, including a local advisory committee comprised of governments, industries, academics, and concerned citizens who helped develop the AOC remedial action plan.

“Sometimes communities are held back by the stigma of contamination and pollution,” Pelka says. “People want to go somewhere that’s healthy and thriving … The best solutions—and the ones we strive for under the Area of Concern program funded by the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative—are these collaborative partnerships.”

Situated in Monroe County, New York, the Rochester Embayment AOC includes the Braddock Bay Wildlife Management Area on Lake Ontario and approximately six miles of the lower Genesee River. Historically, environmental concerns have included shoreline erosion, wetland habitat loss, water and sediment pollution, and the destruction of the barrier beach at Braddock Bay by decades of erosion and storm events.

To evaluate the degradation of AOC sites and determine whether remediation efforts have been successful, the AOC program uses 14 indicators of ecosystem health known as Beneficial Use Impairments (BUIs). These consider fish and wildlife populations, habitat loss, the presence of toxic and nuisance algae, restrictions on drinking water, and health risks posed to humans, among other indicators.

“Rochester is one of the very few Areas of Concern across the entire Great Lakes that when it was originally listed had all fourteen BUIs,” says Pelka. “So, it really had its work cut out for it.”

Alongside support from state, local, and private entities, the Rochester Embayment AOC was awarded $14 million in federal funding from the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative to address these impairments. Approximately $11 million went toward the reconstruction of the barrier beach at Braddock Bay, a primary restoration goal.

Participants learn about the restoration activities that have been completed at the Rochester AOC. Credit: EPA

Chris Seslar, physical scientist and EPA Region 2 lead for the Rochester Embayment AOC, says that without the barrier beach, Braddock Bay faced “a significant amount of erosion” from the waves of Lake Ontario, losing up to an acre of habitat each year throughout the 20th century. In all, an estimated 100 wetland acres were lost.

Exacerbated by encroaching urban development, this habitat loss threatened local fish, shorebird, and wildlife populations, including species like northern pike, lake sturgeon, and piping plover that rely on coastal habitats to reproduce.

The reconstruction of the Braddock Bay barrier beach took place from 2016–2018 and was led by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The rebuilt three-mile beach helps prevent further shoreline erosion and keeps sand deposition from filling in wetland channels deeper in the bay. Comprised of rocky, sandy, and vegetative habitats, the beach also provides homes for local wildlife.

“Braddock Bay is an ecological treasure trove,” says Seslar. “By reestablishing that barrier beach, we’ve noticed that there’s been an increase in species richness, and it’s restored some of the historical wetland ecosystem that was there.”

Other projects at Braddock Bay included reducing the presence of invasive species, planting native species, creating two new acres of marsh habitat, and improving water flow by removing excess sand, sediment, and tangled mats of cattails that were creating blockages in the water.

Jim Lehnen, environmental program specialist at the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, says these changes have made significant practical and aesthetic improvements, contributing to recreational opportunities for residents and visitors.

“If you look at the historical imagery compared to what it is now, you can see the difference,” he says. “We know that clean water, clean sediment, habitat, and open space are very important considerations when people make decisions about where they want to live, raise families, and recreate.”

Pollution in Lake Ontario and the Genesee River originally came from various sources, says Lehnen, including industrial processes, agriculture, and commercial products such as lawn treatments. Substances like cancer-causing polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs); toxic heavy metals like lead, cadmium, and silver; and excess nitrogen and phosphorous that contribute to toxic and nuisance algal blooms were all identified within the AOC.

“It all just went into the water bodies, and it affected, really, every aspect of them,” says Lehnen. “The ecology of them, people’s perception of them, their ability to use them, drinking water, beaches. Everything was impacted.”

Remediation efforts included sediment dredging in the Genesee River, cleanups at six defunct manufactured gas plants, and an extensive combined sewer overflow project undertaken by Monroe County, which installed underground systems to help prevent untreated and partially treated sewage from overflowing into the watershed.

In all, approximately 275 total acres and 30,000 linear feet of wetland habitat were restored across the AOC.

“We hope that even though it was decades long, the spark and the excitement and the investment of all the work that went into the delisting not only continues but grows,” says Pelka. “And that there are new ways and new groups that can enjoy the vibrancy of this Rochester area.”

Additional restoration partners include the Town of Greece, the City of Rochester, the U.S. Geological Survey, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, State University of New York Brockport, the New York State Department of Health, and the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, among other federal, state, and local partners.