Congressman Nick Langworthy speaking at Barcelona Harbor (February 15, 2023)

Congressman Nick Langworthy says the restoration of Barcelona Harbor is a top issue for him in Chautauqua County.

Langworthy, joined by Chautauqua County Executive PJ Wendel, Westfield Town Supervisor Martha Bills, and other officials, spoke on an eroded dock while being buffeted by high winds off Lake Erie in Barcelona Harbor.

Langworthy said the harbor was considered one of the few “safe harbors” on Lake Erie, but the Coast Guard removed that designation.

He said work needs to be done to get the harbor operational again, “And all of this is due to rising water levels and high winds in the Fall of 2019 that severely impacted this channel here and filled it in as you can see. And we’ll have some of the folks here share some of the specifics, because they live it every day. It’s increasingly shallow and it’s become all shoaled in, so we have to get this thing dredged and we have to get the funding in place. The viability of this harbor is at stake.”

$1.1 million in funding to dredge the harbor had been included in the Fiscal Year 2022 omnibus.

Langworthy said he hopes to have a meeting this week with the Army Corp of Engineers to discuss the timeline for dredging.

He said dredging is supposed to be done every 5 to 10 years with 2017 being the last time it was done in Barcelona, “But we’ve had extreme storms. And when you have extreme circumstances, you’ve got to change your model and we have to have a permanent solution, but we have to solve the short-term dilemma. And there’s too much debris here. We have to get this harbor opened back up so that we have a vibrant season ahead.”

County Executive Wendel said the harbor has gotten progressively worse since he took office in 2019 and that it’s at a short-term crisis point, “And this harbor is almost shut off right now. There was a safe harbor, if you look over my left shoulder, those markers have been taken down because this is no longer a safe harbor. You’re not able to get in. The Coast Guard, themselves, when they came in here a year or so ago to do an inspection dinged up one of their own props. And after that, they then declared that it’s not a safe harbor anymore, so this has been to the attention of everyone, but like anything else, it’s something we need to move on quicker.”

Wendel said commerce is at stake as well for the local fisheries, fishing charters, and dive charters that operate out of the harbor.

Dredging is scheduled to happen in July but town officials are working to get that moved up to May, depending on when fish are spawning. Wendel said with Lake Erie not being frozen, they’re hoping to see if it can be done as early as March so as not to impact the late Spring and Summer commercial fishing season.