Clean Water Works
Dam Removals and the Cuyahoga's Comeback
What if a local river, once notorious for pollution and even catching fire, could become transformed into a thriving ecosystem? We explore the Cuyahoga's incredible decades-long progress with Elaine Marsh, a watershed specialist with Summit Metro Parks and co-founder of Friends of the Crooked River. Elaine shares her passion for environmental advocacy, a history of the Gorge Dam, and the vital importance of its removal for the health of local fish and macroinvertebrate habitats and our communities.
For more information, including a rendering of the Gorge Dam leave-behind, visit Summit Metro Parks's "Free the Falls" website.
Learn more about Friends of the Crooked River.
What if a local river, once notorious for pollution and even catching fire, could become transformed into a thriving ecosystem? We explore the Cuyahoga's incredible decades-long progress with Elaine Marsh, a watershed specialist with Summit Metro Parks and co-founder of Friends of the Crooked River. Elaine shares her passion for environmental advocacy, a history of the Gorge Dam, and the vital importance of its removal for the health of local fish and macroinvertebrate habitats and our communities.
For more information, including a rendering of the Gorge Dam leave-behind, visit Summit Metro Parks's "Free the Falls" website.
Learn more about Friends of the Crooked River.
The opinions expressed on this podcast are not necessarily those of the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District or its employees. For more information about the Sewer District and its projects and programs, visit neorsdorg. The Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District presents Clean Water Works, a podcast that explores water, sewer and stormwater issues that affect you and your community. Learn about the people, projects and programs that are protecting your health and the environment here in Cleveland and throughout Northeast Ohio.
Speaker 2:At that time, as a young person and having grown up with four brothers, I operated a lot on anger and I, as a kid, 13 years old, went to Boundary Waters with my uncle and aunt. What is Boundary Waters? Boundary Waters is a national recreation area between Minnesota and Canada. Oh wow, and it is, I believe, in acres, the largest park, and if you add Quetico, which is the Canadian profits, it's like twice as large and it's all rivers and it's all pristine, and I could put my cup down in the water and drink it and I just blew up Furious. Yes, I said, is this? What water is supposed to be? Right? I mean, I really had no idea.
Speaker 2:That, more than anything motivated me how we had ruined this beautiful planet and I thought, well, if we can ruin it, then we ought to be working to clean it up. And it wasn't just me. I mean, there were so many people who worked on this for so many years. And I believe Northeast Ohio is a special place. We understand partnerships and I think that dedication and that willingness to work together and to compromise, I think we are a special place and I was lucky enough to be in a place where people wanted to get things done people wanted to get things done.
Speaker 3:Elaine Marsh is a longtime Ohio environmental advocate, currently working for Summit Metro Parks as a watershed specialist and also a co-founder of the Friends of the Crooked River. One of the main topics we want to talk about today is the Gorge Dam.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:And the removal of the Gorge Dam, which has been a decades-long process involving a lot of different people and groups.
Speaker 5:The Gorge Dam is not in our service area. Can you talk a little bit about where it is?
Speaker 2:The Gorge Dam is about mile 40 on the Cuyahoga River. It's outside of your service area but it is in the area of concern, is in the area of concern and a lot of the resources from the Cleveland area working on clean water, including the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, are part of this giant effort to remove the Gorge Dam.
Speaker 3:It's by Cuyahoga Falls or in Cuyahoga Falls.
Speaker 2:It is Actually it splits the Cuyahoga River at that point splits the city of Akron and the city of Cuyahoga Falls. It is actually it splits the Cuyahoga River at that point splits the city of Akron and the city of Cuyahoga Falls. So on the north side is the city of Cuyahoga Falls and on the south side is the city of Akron. So those two cities are very involved in this project, particularly the city of Akron which has taken project management, particularly the city of Akron which has taken project management for the actual deconstruction of the dam and for the construction of the place where they're going to put the contaminated sediment to get that out of harm's way. How?
Speaker 2:big is the dam, which was built in 1911, so over 100 years old, is roughly 60 feet high and 440 feet wide, and it is a solid hunk of concrete.
Speaker 3:Why was it put there?
Speaker 2:Well, back around 1880, niagara Falls figured out a way to build hydropower to capture the power of rivers. And when they did that and they found out that it was a relatively cheap way at the time to produce electricity, everybody was looking for hydropower. And in Northeast Ohio the only place that it would have been possible was on the Cuyahoga River, in this two-mile stretch where the river falls over 200 feet in less than two miles, and engineers at the time said this is the place, and so they built the dam for hydropower, mainly for public works like the trolley car system in the city of Akron. They noticed that there would also be an opportunity to build a coal-fired steam plant and use the dam pool water for cooling. So it served two different kinds of electrical generation, beginning in 1917.
Speaker 5:How long?
Speaker 2:was it functional? So you know, the hydro operation never worked well and they looked at any number of things and what they found out it wasn't the engineering. The engineering was sound, it should have worked. But the Cuyahoga is a short, shallow, slow-moving river that doesn't have predictable flow, and so it was the unpredictable seasonal flow of the Cuyahoga River that was a challenge for producing hydropower. Cuyahoga River that was a challenge for producing hydropower, and so they took that offline in the 1950s. But of course the dam was the solid hunk of concrete and so they didn't remove that. And also, upstream of that was the power plant, the coal-fired power plant, and that stayed in operation until the 1990s. Oh wow. So the dam has been functionally obsolete since 1992.
Speaker 3:And even with dams and hydroelectric systems that are functional, that do work, dams are a problem.
Speaker 2:They have negative impacts.
Speaker 2:So, irregardless of what positive functions dams have, they do have a lot of problems for water quality. Back in 1996, the Ohio EPA did a study of a 20-mile stretch of the Cuyahoga River where the discharges met the chemical standards, but the fish and invertebrates did not meet the standard. And this was a large study and the first of its kind in Ohio and one of the first in the nation. And what that study found is that it wasn't discharges that are usually the cause, it was dams.
Speaker 2:What dams do? They create this barrier in the river and you know, the obvious thing is that it stops fish migration both up and down the river, and that's a problem. But in addition it creates this biochemical situation. That is not a river. It's not a river, it's not a lake, it's a reservoir. So it doesn't have the required dissolved oxygen, sediment builds up Toxins build up in the sediment. You don't have the habitat where macroinvertebrates and fish can reproduce and live healthily. You don't have the kind of vegetation. So it is a place on the river where normal riverine, healthy living beings cannot live.
Speaker 3:And you've been involved in a number of dams. Yes, dam removal projects.
Speaker 2:Yes, is that right? How many?
Speaker 3:have you seen?
Speaker 2:Six if you count the Gorge Dam. So the Kent Dam came out in 2005. Monroe Falls came out in 2006. And in 2013, two dams came out in the city of Cuyahoga Falls and in 2020, the Canal Diversion Dam came out, and there was a big coalition of partners on all of these dam removals.
Speaker 5:So how do you remove something that big?
Speaker 3:How do you take down a dam? One sledgehammer at a time, dynamite.
Speaker 5:Blow it up. Do you blow it up? No, no, okay.
Speaker 2:So the biggest issue with the gorge dam is not the dam itself, because that dam could be removed in similar ways of the smaller ones.
Speaker 2:They, section by section, break it up and remove the debris. But the problem was that that dam had been there 100 years and upstream was the power plant and also the industry from the city of Cuyahoga Falls. So the first thing that had to be done was to make a decision about the sediment 832,000 cubic yards of contaminated sediment. Now it was contaminated, which said it should be removed for the health of the aquatic beings in the river, but it wasn't toxic, so we could move the sediment on land, but it wouldn't have to be in a confined facility. So the planning is done for that and the funding came mainly through the Legacy Act, which is one of the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative funds, and for that the Legacy Act pays 65% and other non-federal partners pay 35%. The regional sewer district is part of that funding mechanism, as is First Energy. So that took an amount of time to come up with the funds. Sure, because the last publishable amount that the sediment was going to cost was at least $100 million.
Speaker 5:That is so much. Wow, can we just?
Speaker 3:sit on that for a minute $100 million, that is so much.
Speaker 5:Wow, can we just?
Speaker 3:sit on that for a minute.
Speaker 5:That is a wild amount of money. A few bake sales.
Speaker 2:A couple, I mean at least two more car washes on top of that.
Speaker 2:They're using this combination of dredging and pumping. So what they'll do is they'll send barges in, they'll scoop up the sediment, the sediment will go through a hopper and they'll remove the large debris. It'll go into a pipe to where it's going to be placed, which is in Cascade Valley Park. Cement will be added to the sludge, which is the sediment, and a little bit of water, and then it will go down to the site where it will harden and all of the contaminated sediments will be bound up in the cement. And also the cement doesn't need to be dewatered, which would avoid putting more contaminated water back into the Cuyahoga River. At that point, what's the outcome going to look like? You know, if you want to see, that Summit Metro Parks did a rendering and we have a video on the Free the Falls website. There were some writings about the geology and people have read that and we do have some pictures.
Speaker 5:Some old photos Very interesting photos.
Speaker 2:That's cool. But it's going to be an all-new thing to discover for all of us. Wow.
Speaker 3:But you've done five or six of these already so you kind of have a general idea of what the outcome is going to be right.
Speaker 2:We haven't done one that is 60 feet high, you know, and in a gorge that is 250 million years old, so it's going to be fabulous.
Speaker 3:Can you talk about the recreational benefits of removing a dam for the kayakers? Are we going to kayak? Are we going to go?
Speaker 5:kayaking, elaine, are we doing that? Are we going to go kayaking? Yeah, you want to go with me, you and I. You're a paddler.
Speaker 2:No, no, and most of the real kayakers I know are not going to do that.
Speaker 5:Okay then, no Pass, I'll just watch.
Speaker 2:As I said, the river falls over 200 feet in less than two miles. Upstream of where the dam pool is is the upper gorge and that falls 100 feet in a half a mile. Oh, wow, it's class four or five water. So that is an experienced expert. Yeah, it only goes up to five right, and it only goes up to five right, and it only goes up to five. We know people who paddle that safely all the time and they are very experienced and know how to do it.
Speaker 2:Where the river runs through the dam pool and below we think is going to be class 2-3 rapids, so it won't be as big as upstream, but it's in a gorge and it's in an area where the flow varies a lot and so you will have to be an expert to paddle that class 2-3 water and that two-mile stretch will have class 4-5 in the upper, class 2-3 through the lower gorge and then we'll have Class 1 at the end. So it will accommodate the broad spectrum of recreationalists paddling recreationalists. The other recreational value is the aesthetics that will be restored. You know the gorge was the number one tourist attraction from 1875 until about 1900. And it was because there is a falls that is 22 feet high that the dam is built on top of, and this was the number one tourist attraction, even though it is a drop-dead beautiful place. Now we look forward to bringing it back to what it was before the dam came in. Yeah, but in the end it will be a biodiverse place that will mimic what the Cuyahoga River originally carved out 10,000 years ago.
Speaker 5:Is it too soon to ask what's next for you? Do you have another dam in mind? Do you have like?
Speaker 3:a A map on the wall. That's exactly what I'm picturing.
Speaker 5:That's totally what I'm picturing.
Speaker 2:We did, we did, we have pictures, but this will be the last major dam that comes out on the Cuyahoga River. When we built dams, our technology was much different than it is now. Most dams served a very good purpose at the time, especially smaller dams, especially smaller dams. I think we've learned about how dams do impact our water systems, our living water systems. We are much more cautious about how we use that water, and it is the living systems that sustain us. The living systems in the water balance what comes in and goes out, and we need that. In addition to sewage treatment, we need the life in the water to maintain a healthy living system. A lot of people don't know that 70% of the oxygen we breathe comes from the balanced living systems of the ocean Right. So the more we learn about sustainability, the more we learn that nature's way is the way to sustain us.
Speaker 3:Water quality and rivers and watersheds is a lifelong vocation for you.
Speaker 2:Yes, it is.
Speaker 3:Can you talk a little bit about growing up in Cleveland and how you made your way to become so passionate about our waterways and the our land?
Speaker 2:We treated our resources as though they were waste deposit places for us, our rivers were sewers and a lot of our land, especially along rivers, were dumps. There was a road, canal Road that was along the Cuyahoga River and along the canal, the Ohio and Erie Canal, which was watered at that time, and there was a mill race on the canal and it frothed up the water. And I say frothed up because it generated these huge clouds of suds. I mean they were semi-sized clouds of suds that would blow off the top of the canal and go onto Canal Road, and occasionally they closed that road because it became so slippery with these soap suds. Oh my goodness, with these soap suds, oh my goodness.
Speaker 2:Another thing I have very distinct memories of is when I was in high school. I got a job downtown Cleveland. So I would take the bus and as we drove through the Industrial Valley there was so much particulate in the air that on humid days in the summer it would seed out rain. So you would drive through that area and the bus would have to turn on their wipers oh my gosh. And also, when you drove through that area you could taste the pollution and there wasn't much paint on the houses in that area or on the cars that parked there.
Speaker 3:You mean it took the paint?
Speaker 2:off the houses.
Speaker 5:It took the paint off houses and off cars, and that was really when the steel mills were cranking through there, right, right by Slavic Village. That area, yes, yes.
Speaker 2:And the steel industry and the industries that supported it, many of which were as dirty as the steel industries themselves, were the major employer in the city of Cleveland and I lived through a time where we had just unbelievable degradation. You know, the river ran in colors Orange there was a paint factory and they would just dump paint. That didn't turn out well. So the river ran in colors.
Speaker 2:There really wasn't any water on the surface of the surface water. It was oil and grease and debris of all kinds. The first fire was in 1888, and it burned many times, a couple of times in the 30s. Lives were lost, so people knew it was a problem, but we had this unfortunate way of looking at economics, as though you could put economics in an envelope outside of life. So it was in the 50s that people began to notice it, and in the 60s is when people began to get angry about it and that culminated with the fire in 69.
Speaker 2:And I was in college at Kent State in the 60s and the environmental movement was very strong at that time. It, I believe, really started on college campuses where people began looking at the science of pollution and understanding what impacts the chemistry has on biology, people and fish. I lived through the 70s and 80s when there was a lot of argument about how this regulation should be enforced. I lived through sewer districts, districts arguing with regulation and in 2019, your fabulous executive director, kyle Dreyfus-Wells, said, if you want to know what happened to clean things up, it was the work of a lot of people and enforced regulation. People sometimes say it's taken so long. Well, you know it took over 200 years to dirty the river and it's been pretty well cleaned up in my adult lifetime, and the reason it has is because it became a public value and people demanded it. The demands of people became stronger than the vested interest that previously supported pollution.
Speaker 2:People don't want to spend money to treat sewage. They never have. They think it should be cheap, and when we didn't do a very good job of it, it was cheap. The existing infrastructure that we had prior to the Clean Water Act and the cleanup was considered sufficient. The funding was considered sufficient. Nobody knew where the money was going to come from. Nobody knew the technology. Nobody knew where the money was going to come from. Nobody knew the technology. I mean, we had to do the research to invent the technology of how to do the treatment, so it was a pretty insurmountable task.
Speaker 2:The Ohio EPA was a very good partner in getting things done, and also we began educating engineers to treat wastewater right and so, using the new science and the new technology, I think through programs like this, we are beginning to help people understand that it's not a sewer bill, it's an investment in the future of clean water. It's an investment in the future of clean water and it's a good investment because Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District and the city of Akron, who followed a similar path over time, are doing really a good job, using not just chemistry but biological science. Chemistry but biological science. The idea was led by science, backed by people and then adopted by technology, and it wasn't easy, you know. I mean it took all of the partners, it took people like me with a big mouth in the beginning. You know there was only one thing to do in the beginning and that was to be contentious. Sure, and then over time, you know you change because you don't always have to be contentious.
Speaker 2:Now I talk in support of the city of Akron and in support of the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District, because I'm a clean water gal and you guys are doing great work. Thanks.
Speaker 3:Oh, that's nice to hear. Do you want to talk about some of your other projects? Friends of the Crooked River.
Speaker 2:So Friends of the Crooked River started in 1990. I at the time was working with Portage Trail Group at the Sierra Club, john Debo who was the superintendent of Park. He was appointed sometime in the 1980s and he was being interviewed and he said well, you know, the river's got a lot of problems and plus it doesn's got a lot of problems and plus it doesn't have a constituency, you know, and I had been paddling the Cuyahoga River, you know all of my life at that point you were like rude yeah exactly, exactly.
Speaker 2:I called him up the next day and said superintendent, I'm the constituency. I and my pals are the constituency, so that's how we got started.
Speaker 5:That's awesome yeah.
Speaker 2:And we you know the way most things like that start are around kitchen tables and bottles of beer and cups of coffee. You know, we outlined what. We listed 19 things we wanted to do. Oh, I, love that and the last one, although at the time I don't think we thought it was possible.
Speaker 5:the last, number 19, was remove the gorge dam, oh my gosh, look at this, look at where we are. Your bucket list is almost checked off here.
Speaker 3:Yeah, what's your favorite place to go paddling?
Speaker 2:The upper Cuyahoga. It's beautiful. It's beautiful, it's flat, it's wetlands everywhere and birds and mink and beaver and it's just really fabulous. That's awesome. And my husband and I paddle that several times a year.
Speaker 5:Oh, that's wonderful. Did you hear that we've got some otters? Oh, yes, you heard, I've seen them Did?
Speaker 2:you see them, I have pictures of them, and so I have to say I did not believe any of this was possible. When I was a college graduate and really started to get involved, I would have never said you know that number one that we would have a national park through 22 miles. And there was a study done way back in the 50s by some university professor, and in that stretch that is now the Cuyahoga Valley. This might be a little bit mythological, but supposedly there were only two live fish found and now there are millions of fish in that area. And, by the way, where we took out the dam, the large partnership working together who took out the dam, including, you know, the sewer district and the city of Akron the water quality downstream of the dam was exceptional warm water habitat, which is like getting an.
Speaker 3:A++.
Speaker 2:And the two and a half miles now that used to be the dam pool is very likely that will be exceptional warm water habitat. So we've gone from a stretch of river that had two fish in it to exceptional warm water habitat because the public supported and our agencies supported doing what we could to clean up this river.
Speaker 5:I will say, elaine, I woke up this morning and I was like blurg, I'm tired and I have, like you know, 25,000 meetings today and, like, sometimes the days just kind of roll into one another.
Speaker 5:Right, and you're working on stream restorations and you're working on basin projects and residents are calling you, whether they're happy or not. But hearing your story about the transformation from like when you were growing up and like there being no fish and moving from that and working your whole life towards this goal, and then seeing that you're at number 19 on your bucket list the river is beautiful, people are enjoying Lake Erie every single day. I went by yesterday and there are people enjoying the water. It's just really inspirational. And so I'm really glad that you're here, because I was having a little bit of a morning and it's so nice to be like. This does matter. The work we do really does matter so much and it's your living proof of how much you can get done, and I did want to say how much I love these podcasts that you do and you do it so well and so people oriented.
Speaker 2:And I told my colleagues at Summit Metro Park, my colleagues at Summit Metro Park, and they listened to them and they decided to do a podcast because of yours, so inspiring, yes because of yours, you know. I mean, there are 10,000 podcasts out there At least. You know, and some of them are very good, but I just loved your approach. Oh thanks. I loved the accessibility of it and the down-to-peopleness of it.
Speaker 5:It was really great. That's what we go for down-to-peopleness.
Speaker 2:The other thing that I liked is you emphasize the importance of clean water and investment in clean water infrastructure yeah.
Speaker 3:Need the dollars.
Speaker 5:It's not free, that's for sure.
Speaker 2:No, no, but I mean, you know, if we get people to think about the idea that what they're doing is investing in clean water as opposed to paying a sewer bill. It is all about maintaining public commitment to a clean environment. That keeps us going, and I would say that is the role of the activist is to make sure that public is informed correctly. So therefore, you have to do good research and tell the truth as best as you can, and you have to know where the community is, because eventually, it is the community and its agencies that are going to do the work.
Speaker 3:Elaine Marsh with Summit Metro Parks. Thank you so much for talking about your work on the Gorge Dam removal and all the dam projects you've worked on.
Speaker 2:My pleasure.
Speaker 5:Talk to you soon, I hope, and keep up the good work.
Speaker 4:Did you know? Eligible customers can save up to 40% on their sewer charges. Learn more about the sewer district's cost-saving programs and use our discount calculator at neorsdorg. Slash save or call 216-881-8247. That's N-E-O-R-S-D dot org. Slash save or 216-881-8247.
Speaker 1:Clean Water Works is produced by the Communications and Community Relations Department at the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District. Our music was composed and performed by GS Schrey. If you have a question or suggestion, or if you'd like to learn more about the Regional Sewer District, visit neorsdorg or call 216-881-8247.