The city of Dunkirk thought it had federal funding for offshore breakwaters to protect Lakefront Boulevard. However, the money floated off on another current.

The Army Corps of Engineers scooped up the $4.75 million appropriation for the breakwaters and redirected it to a project fixing Dunkirk’s existing Lake Erie breakwall. Vince DeJoy, Dunkirk’s planning and development coordinator, gave the news during a city Economic Development Committee meeting last week.

The OBSERVER reported in August that Sen. Charles Schumer had managed to get the breakwater money appropriated in a federal spending bill.

“We’re trying again,” DeJoy said. Earmark requests are going out to Schumer again, and the city is trying to get Rep. Nick Langworthy on board, as well.

DeJoy showed the latest drawing of the proposed breakwaters, one of many such renderings seen over the years. He called it “not for publication.”

It depicted a series of curved and T-shaped breakwaters — quite unlike the straight breakwaters seen in previous drawings and currently in place on the west side of Presque Isle State Park in Erie, Pa.

The city is hoping to get money for breakwaters along Lakefront Boulevard from the Main Street beach to Serval Street. That is just “Phase 1”; city planners want the breakwalls eventually installed all the way to Wright Park beach.

The goal with the breakwaters is to create “a living shoreline designed to capture sediment as it’s transported,” DeJoy said. They are supposed to help protect the boulevard, the beaches, and nearby city homes and infrastructure from the worst of Lake Erie’s infamous storms, he said.

Dunkirk officials have discussed the breakwaters for many years. According to city Councilmember Nancy Nichols, they’ve talked about them since at least 1992.