Water chestnuts invade Tonawanda

TONAWANDA, N.Y. (WIVB) - Volunteers paddled around the Ellicott Creek Saturday to help deal with a growing environmental problem.

The invasion of the water chestnut has transformed Ellicott Creek in Tonawanda in just two years.

Michael Goehle of the Regional Aquatic Invasive Species Coordinator for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service said, "There's a number problems ecologically the fish and the birds and other animals in the area have a real difficult time swimming through them and getting their normal food supply."

This prompted a large scale effort from volunteers, The Buffalo Niagara Riverkeeper's and Erie County to come together to literally pull out these plants one by one.

Each of these Water Chestnuts contains about 4 to 5 seeds, so volunteers will need to come back for the next few years to hopefully eradicate the problem entirely in the future.

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Other unwanted invasions in the area:

Asian Carp in Lake Erie.

Groundhogs in a Cheektowaga backyard.

Rats in South Buffalo.

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After the first day of this that we were using the mechanical harvester we bumped into somebody that had been here before and he said he caught a little bass this morning, its probably the first fish that has been caught out of here in a couple of years," added Goehle.

Kerri Li of The Buffalo Niagara River keepers is just happy to have the support of these great volunteers and Erie County because without them this project may never have off the ground to this scale.

Jim Hornung, the Erie County Parks Commissioner said, "We're operating the excavator and taking the loads of water chestnuts from the banks and bringing it up to the trucks and taking it up to the dump site."

Volunteer Jill Jedlicka added, "You see the National disaster with the oil spill in the Gulf and things going crazy all over the world but here we have an issue in our own backyard that's a great opportunity for the kids to get involved and to educate them about what they can do at home."

This won't be the last time you'll see volunteers in these waters, but this is a BIG step toward permanently removing the water chestnut from Ellicott Creek.