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Lakefront homeowners mull options
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 Thursday 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.
Some of the approximately 30 lakefront houses are worth $200,000 or more, and they could lose half their value if the lake is drained and the dam breached, he said.
Dam repair estimates from contractors and other experts range from $80,000 to more than $100,000, but the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, which is mandating repairs to the dam, puts the cost between $500,000 and $1 million, Berick said.
“We’d like to see the dam fixed and the lake stay as is,” said Lori Ferreri of Ayrshire Drive, whose home is on the lakefront.
“We want to keep our property values where they are, and, of course, we want to have the lake there because we use it. The kids fish in it. We have paddleboats we take out. We have little outings in the backyard,” she added.
“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.
During the meeting, homeowners said they wanted additional information, including information about government responsibility and possible government funding sources for dam repair; and some expressed concern about homeowners’ liability if they were to own the dam.
“Collapse of the left spillway sidewall and significant seepage through the right sidewall and embankment were noted” in an April 19 inspection, Andrew D. Ware, acting water resources chief at ODNR, wrote in a letter to Cheri Donofrio, director of taxation in Meacham’s office.
Ware urged the county to consider lowering the lake level by at least 2 feet until the dam is properly repaired or breached.