The century’s worth of sediment the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency plans to remove from the Gorge Dam in Cuyahoga Falls over the next two years could fill as many as 11 football fields, 10 to 12 feet tall.
Getting rid of it is the first step toward what state and local leaders hope could eventually be the removal of the dam — and the first time in more than 100 years that the Cuyahoga River will run free.
In the coming weeks, contractors will weld together a pipe that will carry the more than 850,000 cubic yards of sediment full of cadmium and other heavy metals two miles away to Cascade Valley Metro Park’s Chuckery Area, where it will be mixed with additives that will stabilize the material. Then, it will be covered with topsoil and planted, enhancing the park while clearing the way for the eventual dam removal.
The process will cost $130 million, with 65% paid for with federal funds.
“I didn’t think this day would come,” said Don Walters, the mayor of Cuyahoga Falls. “This is more of a miracle than people realized.”
It took 30 years to get to this point, said Anne Vogel, the U.S. EPA Regional Administrator. Vogel said no one was sure what to do with the sediment. Summit Metro Parks officials came up with the solution.
“We had two previous false starts,” Lisa King, the Summit Metro Parks executive director, told Gov. Mike DeWine at a Thursday event to kick off the project. “We’re at the right point in time for everything we needed.”
In Cuyahoga Falls, sediment removal project ‘long overdue’
DeWine peered over the underbrush into the river, where the buoys that will support the pipeline in the water were visible. He asked questions about why there was so much sediment to remove — “Because of the dam?” DeWine asked — and heard about Walters’ expectation that the eventual dam removal will help the area become a mecca for professional kayakers who will come for the whitewater rapids.
DeWine, more of a canoer than a kayaker, prefers calmer waters, but he said any effort to make the state more beautiful will pay off in efforts to bring people to live, work and recreate in the state.
Vogel, with the EPA, called the sediment removal the largest Great Lakes restoration project in the works. She said while the funding to remove the dam has not yet been earmarked, it is the goal of the project — and it could be done by 2032.
By then, DeWine said, he’ll no longer be in office. But he plans to be there to take pictures.
“Send me an invitation,” he said. “I’ll watch you blow up the dam.”
DeWine noted he was in Congress when the Great Lakes Legacy Act, which provided a significant portion of the federal funding, was approved. A large portion of the state money came from a lawsuit he filed against Monsanto when he was Ohio’s attorney general.
U.S. Rep. Emilia Sykes, D-Akron, called the project “deeply meaningful” and said that the work would yield economic benefits for communities across the region. U.S. Rep. Shontel Brown, D-Warrensville Heights, said it was clear the Cuyahoga River had come a long way since the river caught fire, and it was time people saw the change.
“Projects like this are real, they’re local, they’re life-changing and they’re long, long, long overdue,” Brown said.
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The partnership with leaders who advocated for the project “is truly the measure of what can happen when local, state and federal government can work together,” Akron Mayor Shammas Malik said.
Malik said the river cleanup and dam removal presents “really amazing opportunities” for the area.
Walters, in Cuyahoga Falls, anticipates a slew of restaurants and hotels that would cater to kayaking tourists and others who want to enjoy the water.
Already, Walters said, the dams that were previously removed have led to a half-mile of clean river that people use for recreation. It has been a boon for business, like the tubing company Float the River.
And with the last dam revealing the Cuyahoga Falls that the city was named for, he said there’s excitement from residents who will get to see the river in full for the first time since the dam was built in 1911.
“Really,” Walters said, the sky’s the limit.”