43
Pollution, siltation not new to park
YOUNGSTOWN
The related issues of water pollution and lake sedimentation have been recurring problems in Mill Creek Park over many decades, according to Vindicator files.
Vindicator stories reflect many meetings among public officials and boards to discuss these matters, some finger-pointing at pollution sources, and limited to nonexistent solutions due to a lack of funds to cover the high costs of remediation.
These stories and other sources provide a context for this summer’s massive Lake Newport fish kill, which the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency attributed primarily to a city combined storm and sanitary sewer overflow after heavy rains in late June; and the subsequent closing of park lakes Newport, Cohasset and Glacier to recreational activities due to high E. coli bacteria counts.
A 1954 report by Havens and Emerson, a Cleveland engineering consulting firm, observed that the Mill Creek Park sewage pollution problem might be solved if the city and Mahoning County would eliminate storm-water connections to sanitary sewers.
An Aug. 18, 1956, Vindicator editorial complained of a sewage overflow into a Mill Creek tributary in Boardman that enters the park at Kreider’s Entrance on the east side of Lake Newport.
“The stream carries raw sewage into the lake to foul the water and crust the bank with its filth,” the editorial said.
A few days later, at the insistence of park commissioners, county engineering crews began cleaning out sewers in the park and in Boardman.
Also during that year, Lake Glacier was dredged after 50 years of silt deposition, and the bottom sediment was used to build the Par 3 Golf Course in the James L. Wick Recreation Area, according to the 1976 book by Dr. John C. Melnick titled “The Green Cathedral: History of Mill Creek Park.”
TYPHOID shots for divers
In April 1962, Park Superintendent Albert Davies said Lake Newport water pollution was so bad that 65 divers, who had responded to a drowning, had to take typhoid shots.
In February 1967, a park watchdog group known as the Mill Creek Park Citizens Committee unanimously adopted a resolution calling for legal action against discharge of sewage into park waters.
“We must recruit conservationists, sportsmen and other individuals to strengthen our vigilante movement to check future desecrations of the park,” the resolution said.
Committee member Joseph Sacchini said frequent bacteria checks in the fall of 1966 showed the pollution was coming from Boardman, where some residents were using septic tanks, instead of connecting to available county sanitary sewers.
County Prosecutor Clyde W. Osborne said the county health board could require property owners to tap into sewers, where sewers are available, and bring criminal charges against those who refuse to do so.
In March of that year, Jack C. Hunter, 5th Ward city councilman, asked city Law Director Patrick J. Melillo to investigate the city’s legal power to halt pollution of Mill Creek and the park lakes due to septic-tank effluent from Boardman.
Some 160 to 180 West Boulevard area homes in Boardman were causing the problem by continuing to use septic tanks, despite their access to sanitary sewers, resulting in children “wading in areas where the water has been transformed to almost pure sewage,” Hunter said in a Vindicator story.
well closings suggested
In September 1967, Mayor Anthony B. Flask suggested city water be supplied at all park fountain and well locations because the well and lake water pollution problems could not be resolved.
The Vindicator reported the contamination was caused in part by “erratic operation of six septic tanks in Genessee Drive, Youngstown, hundreds of septic tanks in Boardman and industrial plant wastes from Austintown.”
City Engineer J. Phillip Richley said it would cost more than $5 million to eliminate sewer overflows into the park, and that the project would be difficult for the city to afford, even if federal funds covered half the cost.
Now, the city is under a $147 million agreement with the U.S. and Ohio Environmental Protection agencies to upgrade its sewer system, which includes $48 million for elimination of combined storm and sanitary sewer overflows into the park.
The upgrade is to be completed by the end of 2033.
The park eventually closed its wells, including Sulphur Springs and the Flowing Well, the artesian wells from which many local residents took home bottles of water.
In February 1975, county and park officials launched a 12- to 18-month, $170,000 project to clear debris, trees and brush from 2.5 miles of Mill Creek south of Shields Road to keep the creek in its channel, thereby alleviating flooding in rapidly developing areas of Boardman.
Park Superintendent Charles C. Wedekind said the debris removal would result in faster creek flow and sediment buildup, which would compound the need to dredge Lake Newport.
There, 20 years of siltation had reduced water depth from 5 feet to 2 feet near the boat docks and had reduced the nearby Smythe Island channel depth to 6 inches, he said.
Wedekind said he considered the sediment a pollutant.
In June 1983, Doug Hasbrouck, chief of OEPA’s Twinsburg office, declared inadequately treated effluent from the county’s Boardman wastewater treatment plant had made part of Mill Creek unsuitable for fishing, wading or swimming.
uninhabitable for Fish
“There’s no way a fish could survive in that stream” at U.S. Route 224, he said after making an unannounced visit to the plant and its neighbors, who had been complaining of its foul odors.
Park Superintendent William Schollaert asked plant officials to use more chlorine in the treatment process.
Park Naturalist Bill Whitehouse said plant effluent, which was high in phosphates and nitrates, caused increased algae growth in the creek and in Lake Newport.
The algae decomposition contributed to reduced lake depth and to a reduction in dissolved oxygen needed by fish, thereby reducing the number and types of fish in the creek and its lakes, he explained.
The Boardman wastewater treatment plant, which had been built in 1964, was upgraded in 1984.
Sediment accumulation caused park officials to close Lake Newport to boaters in 1991.
During the 1990s, park commissioners considered an $11 million plan to dredge Lake Newport.
However, they decided instead to create wetlands in its south end for about $100,000 to slow sediment deposition in the rest of the lake before reopening the lake to boating in May 2000.
proactive effort
Meanwhile, Susan Dicken, MetroParks development director, announced late in 1999 that $100,000 from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources and $273,800 from the U.S. EPA would be used proactively to protect water quality in the Mill Creek watershed through tree planting, education and purchase of conservation easements.
As for sewage pollution remediation, the city awarded a $3.74 million contract in July 2004 to Marucci & Gaffney Excavating of Youngstown, which built a sanitary sewer line through the park to eliminate the combined storm and sanitary sewer overflow at Orchard Meadow near the Lily Pond.
Elimination of that overflow was required by the settlement of a lawsuit against the city by the U.S. and Ohio EPAs.