Austintown lakeside homeowners, officials discuss upcoming dam auction

AUSTINTOWN

Homeowners along the Woodside Lake shoreline are evaluating their options as an auditor’s sale of the deficient dam that impounds the lake, and part of the lake itself, looms at the end of this month.

The homeowners met this evening at YOLO Grille and Taproom.

If there is no buyer, the lake likely will be drained and the dam breached, Ralph Meacham, Mahoning County auditor, has said.

The lake and dam parcel, located just west of Meridian Road, is for sale at 11 a.m. Nov. 30 in the county courthouse basement, along with 20 other tax-delinquent properties.

“We won’t let that dam go down, no matter what it takes” to repair it, vowed George J. Berick of Edinburgh Drive, a lakefront homeowner and owner of Century 21 Lakeside Realty in Austintown.

Berick, who coordinated Thursday’s homeowners’ meeting, proposed that one homeowner would buy the dam and part of the lake Nov. 30 and that the lakefront homeowners would then share in the cost of the purchase and dam repair.

“We’d like to see it [the dam] get repaired,” Chuck Shasho, Youngstown’s deputy director of public works, who attended the meeting.

“Our concern is we have some downstream residents and Meridian Road,” he said, adding that a dam failure likely would wipe out Meridian Road.

Read more about the situation in Friday's Vindicator or on vindy.com.