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Woodside Lake dam removed from auction
20 other properties will be up for purchase at today’s auditor’s auction
YOUNGSTOWN
Mahoning County Auditor Ralph Meacham has removed the crumbling Woodside Lake dam and a portion of that lake from the auditor’s auction he will conduct at 11 a.m. today in the county courthouse basement.
Meacham said he did so to give lakefront homeowners time to get cost estimates to repair the Austintown dam and to decide if they want to buy the dam and part of the lake at a later sale and then repair the dam.
“It was an accommodation to the landowners around the lake. They requested additional time to get engineering estimates and construction estimates” of dam-repair costs, Meacham said Tuesday.
Meacham, however, said today’s sale will proceed with the auction of 20 other tax-delinquent properties to the highest bidder.
Some of the properties are residential, including rental properties, and some are commercial, but all structures on them are vacant, Meacham said.
Several of the properties are empty lots, he added.
The parcels are being offered in as-is condition, have failed to sell in two sheriff’s sales and were forfeited to the state for the auditor to sell as an agent of the state.
“There are no palaces there,” Meacham said of the auction list.
At the Woodside Lake dam, the entire spillway system must be replaced and embankment stability must be maintained, according to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources’ report of its April 19 inspection of that dam.
The water leaving the Woodside Lake dam goes into Ax Factory Run, which flows into Mill Creek Park’s Lake Cohasset.
If the dam failed, Meridian Road might be damaged, and a house on Kingston Lane, located only 7 feet above the Ax Factory Run stream bed, might be flooded, but loss of human life is unlikely, ODNR said.
The state said dam repairs must be made within one year.
Woodside Lake is named for the late Judge Clifford Woodside of Mahoning County Probate Court, who lived in a lakefront home on Meridian.