MAHONING COUNTY Leaders work at solving area's flooding problems

Flood control is a regional issue, community leaders agree.
By PETER H. MILLIKEN
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
BOARDMAN -- Officials of Boardman Township, Mill Creek Park and the Mahoning County Engineer's Office agree that a study of the entire Mill Creek watershed is needed to find solutions to storm-water management problems.
They met Wednesday in the township hall to discuss the issue in the aftermath of last week's torrential rains from the remnants of Hurricane Frances.
"The only way we're going to be able to attempt to solve the flooding problems in Mahoning County is to work together," said Marilyn Kenner, chief deputy county engineer.
Kenner said that the county would like to be involved in the study and that all communities with territory in the Mill Creek watershed should participate.
The watershed includes parts of Austintown, Boardman, Canfield, Green and Beaver townships and parts of the cities of Youngstown and Canfield. Such a study would likely cost several hundred thousand dollars, Kenner said.
"What's good for the political subdivisions that surround Mill Creek Park is also good for Mill Creek Park," said Virginia Dailey, chairwoman of the park board. "When the storm water can be managed in a way that's good for those communities, it is also good for Mill Creek Park," she said.
Erosion at Mill Creek Park
"The amount of storm water and the velocity at which that water is entering Mill Creek Park is causing enormous erosion. Our creeks are overflowing badly. We're being flooded badly because of the water that's flowing into Mill Creek," Dailey said.
"We share a common area that impacts our area when it rains heavily," said Elaine Mancini, Boardman trustee chairwoman. "It's a necessary thing to do to start from where it [the storm water] goes and work backward to how we can fix this problem," she said.
After being held in neighborhood detention basins, "The water has to go somewhere and it has to leave the township somewhere," said Gary DiOrio, an engineer with MS Consultants, which is working for Boardman Township.
Without making Lake Newport a "dumping ground," DiOrio said his goal would be to "manage that water out of these neighborhoods'' and into various drainage pathways into the park and eventually into the Mahoning River.
The problem may even be bigger than the Mill Creek watershed, suggested Sue Dicken, park executive director. "At the last flood occurrence [last week], the [Mahoning] river was not accepting any more water from Mill Creek. Our dam -- the ice house dam -- was under 4 feet of water. So we can't evacuate any more water," she said.
She was referring to a dam on Mill Creek between the Lake Glacier dam and the Mahoning River, which was built more than a century ago to impound creek water for ice-harvesting purposes.