City approves seawall restoration

Work to create new fish habitat

Fish will get a new place to gather underwater in a project to repair the seawall near the mouth of the Black River in Lorain.

The city will use a federal grant to pay for the $2.23 million project to replace the steel seawall on the eastern side of the Black River.

The money comes to Lorain through the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative. The city has had numerous ecological restoration projects along the Black River from Lake Erie upriver to the area of the steel mills and the confluence of the river and French Creek.

The next project will be close to Lake Erie, running the length of the shoreline along the Lorain Sailing & Yacht Club, 108 Alabama Ave., from the area of the Black River Wastewater Treatment Plant to the U.S. Coast Guard station. The city owns the property and rents it to the Lorain Sailing & Yacht Club, said Kathryn Golden, storm water manager in Lorain’s City Engineering Department.

There will be steel material welded onto the front of the seawalls to create “fish shelves,” which will be new habitat for fish.

The designs of fish shelves vary based on the aquatic environment involved.

In the Black River, some of the fish shelves are built of sand and gravel and look similar to a mound or a road base built out from the shore into the water, Golden said.

“Fish don’t like necessarily to swim in open water,” she said. “They prefer places to hide and get some respite from the environment around them.”

In the latest restoration project, the fish shelves will have half-circle shaped pieces of steel attached to the metal seawalls; the pieces will be filled with stone and tree trunks.

“And that provides shelter and habitat for fish,” Golden said.

The materials mostly will be underwater, but portions could become visible depending on the water level of the lake and river.

The new structures will be outside the navigable channel of the Black River.

Work will take place in the off season for recreational boating and industrial shipping, Golden said.

The city Board of Control on Oct. 24 approved spending the money to hire a contractor.

Several companies requested project specifications.

Huffman Equipment Rental & Contracting Inc. of Eastlake was the sole bidder, with its price coming in about $400,000 below the engineer’s estimate.

With the approval, the city will issue permission to proceed as soon as possible.

Golden predicted the work will begin in the first half of November.

It must be completed by May 1, the start of recreational boating season in Lorain.

The project does not include work on the three interior basin walls at the Lorain Sailing & Yacht Club.

Replacing those would be costly and there still is some useful life for those seawalls, Golden said.

There is wood visible along the seawall by the yacht club. That wood was installed to protect small sailboats from bumping into the metal when the boats are launched there and it is not integral to the structure, Golden said.