Council OKs environmental projects

The city of Lorain will develop plans for a new site to dump material dredged to maintain the navigation channel for freighters traveling the Black River.

Meanwhile, city staff will continue working on plans for a stormwater retention area that could alleviate flooding around Martin’s Run on Lorain’s west side.

Lorain also will continue working with ColdWater Consulting LLC, the company that has assisted with the city’s environmental restoration projects.

The plans were part of legislation that Lorain City Council approved Dec. 18.

The city will continue working with the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency and the Ohio Department of Natural Resources’ Office of Coastal Management to develop a site to reuse material dredged from the bottom of the Black River.

Earlier this month, state Sen. Gayle Manning announced the city would receive $4 million to plan, design, obtain permits and build a new Black River Dredge Reuse Facility on a 30-acre site within a larger reclamation facility owned by the city.

Council had relatively little discussion on the project.

The Black River and other northern Ohio rivers periodically are dredged to maintain the needed depth for the federally regulated navigation channels that freighters use when they dock and load or unload in the cities.

In the past, the dug-out material was dumped in the open waters of Lake Erie, but that practice will end in 2020.

“This is a test facility,” said Safety-Service Director Dan Given. “The state obviously needs to figure out what do with dredge material that’s coming out of the rivers.”

The facility would go on city-owned land known as the RTI site that sits between the Black River and the steel mills.

The area has been the site of much environmental restoration work in recent years.

Meanwhile, Council approved city staff are applying for ODNR grant money to continue studying the Martin’s Run Ecological Restoration Project.

The city is seeking $60,000.

If the grant is awarded, it will pay $60,000 for a project cost of $120,000.

ColdWater Consulting is studying whether land at 305 Cooper Foster Park Road could become a wetlands area that would act like a retention basin for Martin’s Run during heavy rains.

The water would pool there and eventually drain through Martin’s Run to Lake Erie, said Kathryn Golden, stormwater manager in the city Engineering Department.

The area would have three purposes:

• Create a more natural landscape in an area where Martin’s Run flows more like a roadside ditch.

• Improve water quality in Martin’s Run and Lake Erie.

• Relieve downstream flooding around the culverts where streets are built over Martin’s Run in the area between Oberlin Avenue and West 35th Street.

The city has completed some assessment and modeling of the land.

If the grant is awarded, the next phase would include design of the wetland area, Golden said.

In other business, Council on Dec. 17 approved legislation to continue working with ColdWater Consulting for professional services related to Lorain’s environmental and ecological restoration projects.

The city has worked with the group for years, but sought qualifications to review other consultants to see if other firms are better qualified, said City Engineer Dale Vandersommen.

“We found that ColdWater is certainly the most qualified firm for what we’re doing out there, a lot of the ecological work out at the RTI site,” Vandersommen said.

ColdWater has helped Lorain score $30 million in grant funding and the company takes its fees out of the grants, so the contract does not take money from the city’s general fund, he said.

The work is substantial, complex and overlayed by law that is highly complex, said Law Director Pat Riley.

Lorain should be excited by the projects and the amount of money secured to clean up the banks of the Black River, Riley said.

At the same time, Lorain may encounter risks working on the former industrial sites, he said.

Riley and Given noted the city has received a letter of assurance that state and federal environmental regulators are supporting Lorain’s projects.

“The work that’s been done at the Black River is tremendous,” Riley said. “That’s my opinion, not as a law director, but as a citizen.”