Editor's note:
The story was updated to reflect that the Lake Rockwell Dam will remain on the Cuyahoga River -- there are no plans to remove it, since it helps provide drinking water to the City of Akron and other communities.
The Cuyahoga River could be free-flowing from Kent to its mouth at Lake Erie in the next five years, thanks to the Gorge Dam removal project — with the first construction phase beginning this fall.
“It’s such a victory for the river,” said Elaine Marsh, a watershed resource specialist with Summit Metro Parks.
Marsh is one of the founding members of Friends of the Crooked River, a nonprofit organization focused on giving a voice to the Cuyahoga River.
When the group formed in 1990, the members created a list of 19 things they wanted to accomplish as an organization, and one of the items was working toward the removal of the Gorge Dam, Marsh said. At the time, it was a “glint in the eyes of the people,” she said.
Thirty-five years later, that flash of light is a lot bigger. The Gorge Dam is finally coming down, and the Cuyahoga River may once again flow freely over the “Big Falls” that Cuyahoga Falls became known for.
“It is kind of an accumulation of all the work we’ve done prior,” Marsh said. “It is a project in and of itself that is expensive, but more importantly, it is a project on the Cuyahoga River to which we have invested many billions of dollars to restore.”
Gorge Dam is last of six dams along the river to be removed
Built in 1911, the Gorge Dam was constructed by Northern Ohio Traction & Light inside what is now Gorge Metro Park on the Akron-Cuyahoga Falls border. It originally supported hydroelectric power generation and provided cooling water for a coal-fired power plant, according to Summit Metro Parks. The dam no longer performs any useful functions, as the power plants have been closed for decades.
The Cuyahoga River became an Area of Concern — a geographic area that has faced significant impairments as a result of human activities — in 1987, with the removal of the Gorge Dam being deemed one of the projects necessary for restoring the area.
As part of the process to rehabilitate the area, five other dams — the Kent, Munroe Falls, Powerhouse, Sheraton and Brecksville Low-Head dams — have already been removed. The first was the Kent Dam in 2005. (The Lake Rockwell Dam will remain, as the reservoir it creates provides drinking water to the City of Akron and other communities.)
The Gorge Dam is one of the greatest unresolved problems on the river, Marsh said, and the river cannot reach its full restoration capacity without its removal.
Since the removal of the first five dams, the surrounding areas have experienced “tremendous” improvement to water quality and increased quality of life for residents, including a reengagement with waterfronts for recreation, Marsh said.
And some fish have returned to the Cuyahoga River. After the Brecksville dam was demolished in 2020, Marsh said populations of fish that require migration to Lake Erie for reproductive reasons have come back to the river.
The most important factor to note, she added, is that the improved water quality will impact future generations.
“These resources are not just here for our own use. They are not just here for our own purposes,” Marsh said. “They are here to sustain and support all of those people who come after us. They deserve it as we deserved it, but we had to work for it.”
Will the Gorge Metro Park remain open?
Summit Metro Parks will close the Highbridge Trail Area of Gorge Metro Park June 2. Beginning July 14, the Glens Trail Area — which includes the observation deck — will be closed.
The Chuckery Area is already closed for site preparation for the sediment that will be removed (details below) related to the removal of the Gorge Dam. And visitors are encouraged to avoid the area of the T-dock, which is being removed by park district staff to prepare for the project.
What is the timeline for this project?
At a May 19 Free the Falls public meeting, representatives from project partners — the City of Akron, the City of Cuyahoga Falls, Summit Metro Parks, the U.S. EPA and the Ohio EPA — shared details about the project’s timeline and design. Phase one — design and engineering of the sediment remediation process — is complete.
Phase two: sediment remediation
Starting in August or September, approximately 865,000 cubic yards of sediment will be removed from the 1.5-mile-long dam pool by mechanical dredges, a type of dredging equipment that uses scooping buckets to remove sediment from the bottom of a body of water. Niagara Falls-based environmental services contractor Sevenson Environmental Services is contracted to complete the work.
Debris will be sorted from the sediment, then the sediment will be mixed with concrete to stabilize the material. Mixing sediment with concrete will create a kind of “artificial soil,” Bill Zawiski, a water quality supervisor with the Ohio EPA, said at the meeting.
The mixed sediment will be transported via a temporary pipeline along the Highbridge Trail to be stored at a permanent disposal site in the Chuckery Area of Cascade Valley Metro Park. From there, the material will be placed in mounds capped with soil and covered with native vegetation and trees.
Dredging will begin after an anticipated three to five months of setup, said Charlie Stein, Sevenson’s project manager. When dredging begins in the fall, one dredge platform will be operating. Once dredging begins, construction crews will work 12 hours a day, six days a week. Dredging is scheduled to run at full scale by April 2026, with three dredge platforms.
Excluding delays, Stein said dredging is scheduled to conclude in December 2027. Building the landscape at the Chuckery Area should be completed by the end of 2028.
Phase three, removal of the concrete dam structure, and phase four, restoration of the river channel through Gorge Metro Park
Dam removal will take two years, and it is slated for 2028 and 2029, said Heather Ullinger, the senior engineer for the City of Akron.
“We can only lower the water level one foot per week, so that allows the banks to remain stable while the operation is happening,” Ullinger said. “So that’s why that process is so slow.”
The plan is to remove the concrete structure of the dam down to bedrock. The city is looking at a separate restoration project in 2030, Ullinger added, but planning will occur after analyzing the river valley’s condition.
Is federal funding secure?
In 2023, several project partners — the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District, the City of Akron, FirstEnergy and the Ohio EPA — signed a more than $100 million agreement for the sediment removal.
About 65% of the project funding comes from the federal government, said Courtney Winters, a representative of the U.S. EPA. During the Q&A portion of the meeting, an attendee asked if funding could be pulled from the project. For now, the project is full steam ahead, she said.
“I’m not going to speculate, you know, future decisions on future funding, but right now, the Great Lakes National Program Office supports this project, and that’s why we’re moving forward,” Winters said.
What about the Signal Tree?
The Signal Tree, a burr oak tree known for its three-pronged shape, is an Akron landmark that is believed to be around 350 years old. It’s located in the Chuckery Area of Cascade Valley Metro Park, the area where the excavated sediment will become greenery-filled hills.
The Signal Tree is protected, said Summit Metro Parks Executive Director Lisa King — contractors are aware of it, and protections are placed around it. Also, tree service company Davey Resources has assisted Summit Metro Parks with care of the tree.
“We’re going to be keenly aware of it all the way through,” King said.
