Anthropocene Lakes: A New Hydrological Regime and the Redevelopment of Buffalo’s Outer Harbor

Keywords: urban political ecology, Great lakes, political ecology, Rust Belt, postindustrial, urban development, neoliberal city, local governance, critical zone, Anthropocene, landscape
Abstract Type: Virtual Paper Abstract

Abstract

Ecologists now recognize that climate change has generated a “new hydrological regime” across the Great Lakes. This case study of Buffalo’s Outer Harbor examines the articulations between the new hydrological regime, postindustrial redevelopment, and the region’s settler-industrial past. Since 2013, semiannual polar vortices have instigated a sharp rise in lake water levels, producing several record high levels. Combined with an increase in extreme wind events, high water levels have supercharged Lake Erie’s seiches—westward traveling, wind-generated wave events. Seiche waves, which can be 10-12’, greatly impact the city at the western end of Lake Erie’s funnel: Buffalo, NY. Buffalo’s manmade Outer Harbor was originally built to accommodate shipping traffic and—while it no longer serves that purpose—it does protect the city against seiche damage. Environmentalists have recently proposed to develop the Outer Harbor into a nature-based barrier island that doubles as a resilient coastline and public park. However, a development corporation manages the 200-acre Outer Harbor and plans to turn it into a housing colony. This paper—based on interviews, fieldwork, participant observation, and archival research— demonstrates that a new hydrological regime is as much a political phenomenon as an ecological one. In building a theory of urban political ecology, this paper also re-narrates the history of Buffalo’s industrial waterfront in light of the Anthropocene, arguing that it a key site of settler colonial infrastructuralization. In so doing, it argues for the importance of a place-based approach to the Anthropocene.