Randy Woodbury, Department of Public Works director for the city of Dunkirk, gave an updated report of projects in the city at last month’s Finance Committee meeting.

“We have two big projects yet, one is the replacement water line on West Seventh Street to replace the feeder line to the Willowbrook tank,” Woodbury began. “We’ll be starting that as weather permits. The other is the Main Street booster station, they’re going to have new controls there and also have an emergency generator. The Main Street booster station provides all of the water for the plaza, Vineyard Drive and most of the Third Ward.”

Woodbury commented on the Vineyard Drive booster station being handled by the village of Fredonia.

“We had a dry run to that pump station last week and it works pretty well. It had not been working correctly,” Woodbury said. “It’s not our project, but they draw our water. When they draw our water they’ll be paying according to the out of town rate.”

According to Woodbury, and sentiments shared at the last Fredonia Board of Trustees meeting Feb. 22, the village is going to be needing that feed for Dunkirk water as they’re reconstructing their clarifiers at their filter plant which means their filter plant won’t be able to supply enough water for the village and they’ll need to buy water from Dunkirk for probably a couple of months.

Projects also moving forward this year is chip sealing Fourth Street, Third Street, Second Street and of course the reconstruction of the retaining wall on Lakefront Boulevard that was decimated during the wind and rain storm that hit the city on Halloween in 2019.

“The wall project is going well,” he said. “St. George has all of the parts ready to go as soon as the weather breaks up a little more, they’ll be back down there putting it all together,” Woodbury stated. “He knows he’s under a deadline for Memorial Day to have that all done. There’s a lot of work to be done to make it stronger so that type of wave and wind activity won’t break it the next time around, and that’s funded by FEMA.”