Where we dig, demolish and build in Erie and Niagara counties

Buffalo, fifteen neighbors and the lines between them

The list starts with the City of Buffalo and runs out through Erie County: Amherst and Williamsville, Cheektowaga, Kenmore and the Town of Tonawanda, Grand Island, West Seneca, Lancaster and Clarence, then south to Orchard Park, Hamburg and East Aurora. Across the county line sit three Niagara County cities: North Tonawanda, Niagara Falls and Lockport.

Place names can fool you. Census records list a Tonawanda city and a Tonawanda town in Erie County, plus the separate city of North Tonawanda in Niagara County, and Lockport is both a city and a town. Each is its own municipality, so permit and inspection rules follow the one your lot is actually in, not the name on your mail.

Housing age splits the list too. In the Census Bureau's 2020-2024 estimates, the median year built for Buffalo's housing is 1939 or earlier. The medians run 1941 in the City of Lockport, 1949 in Niagara Falls and 1954 in the Town of Tonawanda, then climb to 1971 in Amherst, 1977 in Orchard Park, 1983 in the Town of Lockport and 1989 in Clarence. That gap shows up underground: older blocks tend to hold clay tile laterals and decades of fill, while newer subdivisions tend to have plastic pipe and a graded plan to follow.

The lake plain: flat ground that stays wet into May

The USDA soil survey of Erie County places the county's northern half, plus a strip along its western side, on the Erie-Ontario lake plain, land that "typifies the topography of an abandoned lakebed." In Buffalo's flat neighborhoods and nearby suburbs it maps Urban land-Odessa complex, where streets, roofs and lots are interlaced with scraps of Odessa soil so intricately that the survey mapped the two as one unit. Odessa formed in clay that settled on an old lake bottom. A typical profile runs about 9 inches of silt loam, then mottled silty clay, then varved silty clay to 60 inches, and the survey rates bedrock as 5 feet down or deeper.

The catch is water. Permeability in Odessa soils is slow or very slow, and water perches near the top of the subsoil for the whole stretch between December and May. The survey names better natural drainage as the main soil management need on this plain. On a job, that means spring trenches that seep, spoil piles that turn to paste, and clay backfill that has to go back in thin, compacted lifts or be swapped for stone around pipe and foundation walls. It also explains puddles that linger long after a storm.

The flat ground carries on into Niagara County. That county's survey calls Odessa-Lakemont-Ovid its largest soil association: level land with a clay-rich subsoil on the lake plains south of the escarpment, where new neighborhoods were spreading near Niagara Falls when it was written. Natural drainage is again the main planning concern.

Limestone ledges, then shale hills in the Southtowns

Two rock steps cross the region. The Onondaga limestone escarpment runs east-west through northern Erie County, facing north and generally steep. Along its top edge the soil is thin: Benson soils, profiled near Kraus and Greiner Roads in Clarence, mostly sit 10 to 20 inches above fractured limestone, and the survey notes that this rock "generally requires blasting." In Niagara County, the Niagara Escarpment divides the Ontario Plain from the Huron Plain. Most of the City of Lockport falls in a soil association where limestone lies 3½ to 6 feet down in some areas, often with large stones above it, and where underground installations are costly in many places.

South of Buffalo the land climbs onto the Allegheny Plateau, with steep valley walls and flat-topped hills. Glacial till, not lake sediment, is the main parent material there. Manlius soils, profiled near Chestnut Ridge Park in Orchard Park, rest on acid shale 20 to 40 inches down, and common plateau soils such as Volusia and Mardin carry a dense fragipan, with water perched above it in winter or early spring. An old glacial-lake shoreline, the Beach Ridge, angles from Alden to North Collins; the well-drained shaly Blasdell soils tied to it were profiled half a mile west of the Village of Hamburg. Up here the survey flags erosion on hillsides and valley sides, so silt fence and quick seeding matter as much as the dig.

Sewer districts and sale inspections change at the line

Who runs the sewer under your street depends on the district, and districts don't always follow town lines. Erie County's Division of Sewerage Management lists county districts that serve pieces of several towns. District No. 1 covers southern Cheektowaga and northern West Seneca, with treatment by the Buffalo Sewer Authority. District No. 3 serves the villages of Blasdell, Hamburg and Orchard Park and parts of the Town of Hamburg. District No. 5 covers parts of Amherst and Clarence, and District No. 8 serves the Village of East Aurora and part of the Town of Aurora. Outside those districts, ask the town, city or village which system you're on.

Rules ride along with the district. In Amherst, the Town's time-of-sale sewer inspection covers homes built before 1965 in its Consolidated Sewer District, but not the Village of Williamsville or properties on County District No. 5. Don't assume the next town works the same way. Before a lateral repair, a tear-down or a closing, confirm the requirements with that municipality's engineering or building office.