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Traficanti won't accept park lake neglect
YOUNGSTOWN
Anthony Traficanti, chairman of the Mahoning County commissioners, won’t take “no” for an answer when it comes to federal funding for cleanup of Mill Creek Park’s Lake Newport.
Park lakes have been closed indefinitely to boating and fishing since July 10, when the county health board lab reported excessive E. coli sewage bacteria levels in Lake Newport.
This followed a massive fish kill the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency attributed primarily to a city combined storm and sanitary sewer discharge due to heavy rains in late June.
Traficanti made his remarks Thursday after Dennis O’Hara, county emergency management director, said a state official told him no federal disaster aid would be available because the park lakes are recreational and do not provide a drinking-water supply.
“That answer was unacceptable. I worked with the federal government for 11 years [as district director for U.S. Rep. James A. Traficant Jr.]. There is a plethora of grant money through the USDA [U.S. Department of Agriculture] and the U.S. EPA. Monies could come back here to help us,” Traficanti said.
“We can fly [a spacecraft] around Pluto and put a man on the moon, but all I’m hearing is: ‘No. It’s a recreational park. There’s nothing we can do,’” he said.
Traficanti said he isn’t satisfied to relegate the park lakes “to retention ponds for a septic system.”
“No. I’m not going to let this issue die, and we’re going to get somebody to come in here and help us,” he vowed.
Traficanti said solutions for the park lakes could include installing an aeration system to increase dissolved oxygen in their waters or dredging the lake bottoms.
Linda Fee Oros, an Ohio EPA spokeswoman, said removing the Lake Newport dam and restoring Mill Creek to its natural flow would be the cheapest remedy.
“It is made ecologically unstable by the dam and prone to many problems not found in free-flowing natural streams,” Oros said of Lake Newport, noting that it is an artificial lake. “The fish kill was composed of carp, an indication of a severely distressed system,” she added.
Aaron Young, Mill Creek MetroParks executive director, said OEPA offered to help pay for removal of the dams at lakes Newport, Cohasset and Glacier, but Young said that option isn’t desirable because it would curtail the park’s water-based recreation.
Young said OEPA officials offered no dam-removal cost estimates and didn’t say what portion of those costs the state agency would pay and what the local share might be.
Young said he understands the state EPA’s position from an ecological benefit standpoint.
He added, however, “It doesn’t address the recreational opportunity that those lakes provide.”
“They’ve stood the test of time,” he said of the park lakes, which were created between 1897 and 1928.
The city’s agreement with OEPA calls for combined sewer overflow elimination and other upgrades costing a combined $146 million to be completed in 2033.
Meanwhile, the city reported the results of July 14 and 15 E. coli testing in Mill Creek and Lake Newport.
Samples taken at all locations July 14 from Calla Road downstream to Lake Newport were below the potential health hazard threshold count of 576 per 100 milliliters (3.4 ounces) of lake water.
Results taken the following day, however, were excessive: 5,250 at Calla Road: 4,550 at U.S. Route 224; 5,050 at the footbridge over the creek just north of Shields Road; 5,400 at Smythe Island in the Newport Wetlands; 3,850 in the shallow lagoon; and 5,950 at the boathouse.
Young said readings typically fluctuate, with higher E. coli readings after rainwater runoff transports more pollutants, such as lawn and farm fertilizers and waste from failing septic systems and city sewer overflows, into the creek and the lakes along it.
He said, however, he couldn’t specifically remember rainfall that might have caused the difference between the July 14 and 15 numbers.