Plans to repair old bridges envisage the falls’ waters being diverted for months. The only previous time it was done, rocks, coins and the odd body were revealed

The sound of Niagara Falls’ unmistakable belligerent roar as 85,000 cubic feet (2.4m liters) of water crash down to its rocky base every second quite literally takes one’s breath away.

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But according to plans revealed on Wednesday, for the second time in history the falls may soon go silent. The manmade stoppage will last just a few months.

Two deteriorating, century-old commuter bridges connecting the town of Niagara Falls to the state park islands in the middle of the Falls themselves are in need of repair; a repair engineers and park officials say almost certainly involves diverting water flowing through the American part of the falls to the Canadian side.

The plans – still not finalized and still lacking funding – are being put forward by New York State offices of parks and transportation. They attracted national and international attention when they were first reported in the Buffalo News last week.

The proposal has shocked and excited some residents of the town of Niagara Falls, many of whom were not around the only other time the Falls went quiet.



“The historian in me is excited to witness this,” says Michelle Kratts, a former Nigara Falls historian, who wasn’t yet born when Niagara’s American water was diverted the first time round, in June 1969, for nearly five months.

Newspaper reports from the time say throngs of tourists turned up to watch the event. Coins that visitors had thrown into the falls over the years had to be gathered and taken away by the bucket load.

Two cadavers were also found – one of a man who was later identified, another of a woman whose body was found lodged in between two rocks halfway down the approximate 100ft newly bare fall. Her identity was never discovered.

As grim as the discoveries were, residents say that, if anything, they were surprised the number of bodies found wasn’t greater. That the falls are a destination place for people wishing to end their lives is a painful, open secret locally. Often, bodies are never recovered.

“A lot of people here have witnessed people go in,” says Kratts, referring to people either committing suicide, attempting daredevil stunts, or falling because of lack of caution.

“It’s scary. It stays with you.”

Aside from the tragedies revealed, when it came to the aesthetics of the event, locals remember being quite underwhelmed.

“It was just a lot of rocks,” Rick Lecksell, a Seneca Casino employee who was a teenager at the time, says flatly.

Will the next planned dewatering manage to create positive publicity and enthusiasm? Officials certainly hope so.

At a public hearing organized by New York State Parks and the state’s department of transportation, 100 or so residents, city and state park officials, engineers and members of the press gathered in the Niagara Falls Conference Center for a public hearing on the dewatering plans. Two current options for bridge repair provide for the dewatering to either last five or nine months.

“This is an enormous opportunity,” declared John Percy, the president and CEO of Niagara Tourism and Convention Corporation. “ [The dewatering of the American Niagara Falls] will gain worldwide attention. Tourism will be benefited.”

Percy pointed out that at least one of the two plans being considered involves the American falls being turned off between August and December, a period of the year during which tourism wanes anyway.

People attracted by the lure of witnessing what lies beneath when the falls are halted may end up coming in greater numbers in those “shoulder months” than if the water was still flowing, the thought seemed to go.

In 1969, reports show tourists expressing thrill and amazement at feeling they were part of a unique, historical moment.

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But the New York department of commerce still had to get involved to sell it as a “once in a lifetime trip” in order to get excitement levels up and convince potential visitors to still make the trip.

In a similar vein, Percy said he looked forward to working in coordination with state, park and city officials to devise the “right messaging” around the dewatering. He expressed a will to ensure visitors during the water-bare months are given as much access to stripped sites as possible.

Within the community, people seem mostly in favor of the dewatering plans to restore the bridges, but some – including environmentalists and members of the Native American community are far less excited.

In 1969, almost all of the trees on the dewatered riverbanks died of thirst within a month, it was reported.

“There is a part of me that doesn’t like to keep harnessing her,” Kratts says, explaining she thinks of the river as a living thing.

“I go on the side of environmentalists. We have done so much to the river, diverting so much of her for power, electricity,” she says referring to the massive, industrial-scale hydroelectric endeavors that have been consistently using the river’s force, and diminishing it, since the late 19th century.

Neil Patterson, a founder and director of the Tuscarora Nation’s environment program, says there are a few thousand Haudenosaunee people, also referred to as Iroquois, living within 40 miles on the American side of the Niagara Falls, including on the Tuscarora reservation.

“There is a real sense of ownership of these falls regardless of legal title,” he says.

Haudenosaunee people, who have never given up formal claims to the falls themselves, used to live on the river’s shores and believe it is home to a thunder god, making the river an inextricable link to the “the sky world”, he says.

“But the notion of consultation about a place that has historic or cultural importance to indigenous people has not been complete since the dispossession of our territories going back to 1794,” he says, describing the dewatering as “another action in the colonization of water”, which has been going on for centuries.

Patterson points out that part of the appeal of the area for tourists from around the world is its Native American characteristics – peoples and traditions that have slowly, consistently and increasingly been marginalized, silenced, suffocated.

Once a booming industrial and tourist destination town, Niagara Falls, New York, is currently home to just 50,000 people, a quarter of whom live below the poverty line. It’s a depressed combination of casino lights, chain hotels, and neglected, sometimes boarded-up housing. In the winter months, calling it a ghost town is no stretch.

Kratts says she wonders whether some of the sadness in the city is payback for what she ventures could be described as a rape of nature.

“The city is so depressed. You wonder if we are being punished for it. You take so much from nature …”