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Dam removal awaited this year
YOUNGSTOWN
If negotiations between the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency and the company that owns half of the First Street dam in the Mahoning River at Lowellville can be concluded next week, that dam will be gone this year, a regional planning official said.
That comment was made Friday by Joann Esenwein, administration and capital planning director at the Eastgate Regional Council of Governments, as she attended a quarterly meeting Friday of Mahoning River corridor mayors at the Western Reserve Port Authority office here.
The Ohio EPA has provided a $2.38 million grant for removal of that dam to restore the river to its natural flow and remove a barrier to canoeists and kayakers.
Half of the dam is owned by the Village of Lowellville, and the other half by Sharon Slag, the company with which OEPA is negotiating to acquire the company’s half of the structure.
With no local matching funds required, the grant would pay for removal of the dam and contaminated sediment behind it.
Dam removal will clean the river and keep it clean, Esenwein said.
“You get the free-flowing water, so then it just naturally cleans itself,” she said of the river without the dam.
“We’re hoping to commence this project this summer,” Lowellville Mayor James Iudiciani said of the dam removal. “Hopefully, the rest of the river gets the same thing, all the way up to Newton Falls,” he added, referring to removal of old former industrial dams upriver.
“As we start taking the dams off of the river and we start cleaning the river up, there are a lot of activists and people who love to canoe down the river, and right now, with the dams, they are kind of prohibitive. You’ve got to portage,” around the larger dams, observed Lyle Waddell, Newton Falls mayor.
As dam removal occurs, Waddell suggested placing more docks along the river to facilitate recreational boating access.
Recreational boaters could boost business in local restaurants, he observed.
Mayor James Melfi of Girard said construction of a canoe launch in his city will occur this year using a $68,000 Ohio Department of Natural Resources grant.
Melfi also said he would like to see commercial redevelopment of 27 acres along the river at the site of the city-owned former Ohio Leatherworks tannery, which operated from 1900 to 1970.