Earlier this month, the Ohio EPA and the Cuyahoga River Remedial Action Plan (RAP) Coordinating Committee sent a request to the U.S. EPA asking permission to expand the boundaries of the RAP’s Area of Concern by a mile and a half. Adding a little river to the cleanup area near Akron would improve the state of the river as it empties into Lake Erie at downtown Cleveland.

The additional river segment would allow the nonprofit organization to include in its restoration work the dam pool upriver from the Gorge Dam in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, almost to the falls for which the city is named.

This expansion of territory would allow the group to work on the sediment removal that will be necessary when the dam is removed, and allow the remediation to be eligible for funding under the Great Lakes Legacy Act.

Dam removal is one of the RAP’s cleanup strategies. The goal is to return the Cuyahoga to a free-flowing river that allows fish and aquatic life to complete full life cycles and move unimpeded from lake to headwaters.

Over the past several years two dams upstream of the Gorge Dam have been removed or bypassed. The Kent dam bypass and the removal of a small dam in Munroe Falls have improved the water quality and biological measurements to the extent where aquatic life is once more at or near healthy levels. The City of Cuyahoga Falls is working to obtain funding to remove two small dams immediately upstream of the Gorge Dam. Work is also underway to prepare for removal of the Brecksville Dam at Route 82, already within the AOC.

Removing the two dams would leave the last 59 miles of the 100-mile-long Cuyahoga free flowing and fish-accessible. The organizations stress that restoration of the habitat and hydrology are critical to the river’s recovery and are expected to result in meeting water quality and fish goals in the entire mainstem of the last half of the river.

Last year, on the 40th Anniversary of the 1969 fire in the industrial channel, the RAP and OhioEPA asked the U.S. EPA to remove “impaired fish populations” from a portion of the river’s report card. The federal agency declined, saying the partners would have to wait until the whole Area of Concern met its goals. Removing the dams would bring the river a step closer to those goals.

A wetland in the Tinkers Creek watershed is worth, on average, about $400,000 per acre, or a little over $12,000 per acre, per year.

The report says that it would cost almost $82 million to build the artificial retention and detention basins required to duplicate the storage capacity of all existing Tinkers Creek wetlands. And that doesn’t include replacement of the eco-services that wetlands provide, or the ongoing maintenance of the built system, or the cost of lost wildlife habitat.

A study done for the Cuyahoga County Board of Health (CCBH) and Tinkers Creek Watershed Partners set out to evaluate existing wetlands in the watershed of the largest tributary to the Cuyahoga River. The watershed covers 96 square miles, from Beachwood down to just north of Kent, as far east as Aurora and as far west as Cuyahoga Heights, where it joins the Cuyahoga River. Thousands of streams feed into the 33-mile-long main stem, from 24 communities’ urban neighborhoods, commercial areas, farms, suburbs and forested parks.

The goal was to determine how valuable each wetland is ecologically and as a property enhancement, how much those eco-services are worth to the community in dollars and cents, and what it would cost to conserve or restore it. The valuation took into account avoided costs of flooding and stormwater management as well as added housing and recreation value.

The challenge to water quality and the natural systems that support human health is that “those who make land use and development decisions have found it difficult to put a dollar value on the natural or ‘green’ infrastructure that stores, filters and manages storm water,” according to Mike McNutt, CCBH’s program manager for Tinkers Creek. At the same time, he says, we have to understand the full costs of removing wetlands and having to build and maintain replacement systems to do the same work.”

The study identified 951 wetlands, a total of almost 4,000 acres (6.2% of the total watershed) that store or process 16,000 acre-feet of stormwater each year. The work was done by EnviroScience, Atwell-Hicks and Dr. Diane Hite of Auburn University.

A new study now underway for CCBH by Biohabitats and TetraTech will add data about the value of wetlands’ services that improve water quality, especially reducing levels of phosphorous, and the total value of the green infrastructure.

You can download the study report at the Tinkers Creek website.

Earlier this year the Ohio Lake Erie Commission and the Ohio Water Resources Council awarded six Balanced Growth Strategy grants to local watershed projects across the state, one of which will support the BGI plan for Furnace Run. The $57,400 Furnace Run grant was one of only two in the Lake Erie Watershed.

The grants advance the Lake Erie Balanced Growth component to Ohio's Lake Erie Protection & Restoration Plan by promoting voluntary planning for priority areas for future growth and conservation at the local level. 

"These grants support Lake Erie basin watershed planning, and improve local economic development and conservation, through the application of Balanced Growth practices," said ODNR Director and Ohio Lake Erie Commission Chairman Sean Logan.

Priority consideration was given to local watershed planning partnership groups comprised of local governments in each watershed, as well as planning agencies, councils of governments, non-profit organizations and other locally chosen stakeholders. The two-year funding is provided by the Ohio Water Development Authority and the Lake Erie Protection Fund.

Ohio EPA Director Chris Korleski added, "The benefits of balanced growth are enormous. The grants will help communities coordinate water, wastewater, transportation and other infrastructure planning while protecting and restoring Ohio's watersheds. Korleski also chairs the Ohio Water Resources Council.

The first site will create a 3,000-foot-long strip of new larval fish habitat along the riverbank on the eastern edge of the Scranton Peninsula and seven acres of terrestrial riparian wildlife habitat. The project will add public access to the river's edge in a restored natural setting, and be one of the few places where the river and the Towpath Trail run so close together. This project is a collaboration among the CIty of Cleveland, the Ohio Canal Corridor, the RAP, Cuyahoga County Engineer, the Trust for Public Land and the Cleveland Metroparks.

Site number 2 is part of the Old River Channel, where more than 100,000 cubic yards of toxic sediment are to be removed and critical fish habitat restored. Existing steel bulkheads will be refurbished or replaced. Habitat restored near the former American Ship Building site will provide important lake marsh nursery habitat.

Site 3 is Irishtown Bend. Working with the City of Cleveland and the U. S. Corps of Engineers, CRCPO has been helping to bring together stakeholders to tackle the problem of the hillside slumping into the river. CRCPO and parters, the Corps and OhioEPA, see the stabilization of this area as a great opportunity to restore approximately 3,000 linear feet of riparian and aquatic habitat for migrating fish.
The last sites, 4a and 4b, are located, respectively, beneath the Main Avenue bridge on the Flats west bank, and at the hillside adjacent to the new I-90 Bridge on the west bank. Both sites offer opportunities to develop innovative approaches for attenuating storm water runoff from the bridges while also creating pocket marsh areas along the river's edge. In both places, natural areas would be integrated with trails currently in design and planning.

The "Habitat for Hard Places" initiative, and the re-naturalization of this most urban river segment will, we hope, offer a model for other RAPs as well as other heavily urbanized rivers. Contact CRCPO Executive Director JIm White for more information. (216.241.2414 x307 or whitej@cuyahogariverrap.org)

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Visit on the web at www.portageparkdistrict.org.
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PRIORITIZING WETLAND RESTORATION POTENTIAL
in the TRIBUTARIES of the CUYAHOGA RIVER AREA OF CONCERN (AOC) (PDF download 3.5M)

This is the introduction and overview. Detailed information for each tributary watershed will be posted as individual chapters in the weeks to come.

The goal of this project is A ranking model has been developed to assist in identifying the “top wetland sites” in each tributary watershed of the Cuyahoga River AOC. By identifying wetland sites, this project will help expedite and focus efforts to meet mitigation needs, as well as make the best use of other public or private funding sources.