Biological Survey — Erie-Niagara Watershed 135 



out into the lake, the sludge deposits get into the nets of the 

 fishermen and cause considerable annoyance. 



Rush creek, as may be seen by referring to the tabulated report 

 of pollution, carries steel mill wastes into the lake. The effect on 

 the lake bottom was to cause an almost total absence of any form 

 of plant or animal life. 



Buffalo harbor and Niagara river : From the Lackawanna plant 

 of the Bethlehem Steel Co., where the water takes on a murky 

 red colour, from the steel plant wastes, one may follow the pol- 

 lution of deposits along the American shore almost to Niagara 

 Falls. The sewage and industrial waste from Lackawanna has 

 hardly started to dispel itself before being augmented by the 

 influx of the turbid, sluggishly flowing Buffalo creek, carrying the 

 industrial effluents and raw sewage of a great part of Buffalo. 

 Through the harbor and ship canal one sewer after another adds 

 its burden causing the bottom to be covered with foul-smelling 

 sludge and furnishing ideal surroundings for the growth of such 

 foul-water organisms as Tubifex, pollution forms of blue-green 

 algae, etc. Below the government lock additional sewage from 

 Buffalo, wastes from textile plants, paper mills, etc., and, farther 

 down, the sewage from the Tonawandas, empty into the river caus- 

 ing heavy sludge deposits near their point of entrance. Out in 

 the swifter part of the river the bottom is swept more or less clean 

 by the current and samples were more difficult to obtain, but it is 

 doubtful if conditions are as bad where the full force of the 

 river is evidenced as in the slower parts along the shore. This 

 fact is well shown in the chemical analyses.^ The profusion of 

 weed beds with their plentiful supply of snails, (Physa, Planorbis) 

 etc., adhering to them, growing along the shores would indicate 

 that the great powers of assimilation of the river kept it for the 

 most part in a stage of recovery. 



Previous investigations- indicated that pollution was confined 

 more or less to the American shore on the upper river. This was 

 borne out in the present investigation as many fresh water insects 

 such as mayflies and caddisflies, fresh water mollusks such as 

 Campeloma and Sphaerium, and many green algae were plenti- 

 ful on the Canadian side of Grand island. 



In the lower river conditions were much improved due to aeration 

 by the falls but abundant weed beds still attested to the rich 

 organic content of the water. 



Streams. — Sewage and Industrial Pollution : Depew and Lan- 

 caster situated one below the other on Cayuga creek maintain in 

 this stream conditions of heavy pollution until it becomes a part 

 of Buffalo creek. This latter stream, in its lower 6 miles to the 

 lake as indicated above serves as the carrier for a great part of 

 Buffalo's sewage and industrial effluents. It receives an almost 

 unbelievable burden of such wastes, which keep it in a strongly 

 septic and highly toxic state throughout. Smoke creek, though 



1 See reports of A. Zillig, page 56, R. Williams, p. 58. and F. E. Wagner, p. 107" 

 ^ International Joint Commission on the pollution of boundary waters. 



