Posted on August 5, 2020
By Thomas Jewell, special to cleveland.com
SHAKER HEIGHTS, Ohio — With the recent completion of the $2 million overhaul of Green Lake dam, officials can now turn their attention to similar projects — and possibly bigger issues — at Horseshoe and Lower Shaker lakes.
The redesign for dam work at Horseshoe Lake is now back on the drawing board because of flooding problems in University Circle, where the $142 million Doan Valley Tunnel Project is now in its third year, with completion set for 2021.
Also known as “Upper Shaker Lake,” Horseshoe has been mostly drained for over a year now. The Ohio Department of Natural Resources first ordered that the water level be lowered by 3 feet in June 2018 to ease pressure against the earthen dam after a small sinkhole was found.
Bids had already come in too high for a combined Shaker Lakes dam rehabilitation project that had included all three and was proposed at $4.1 million. An automatic rebid was prompted at more than 10 percent over the engineer’s estimate
So the next time around, the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District went ahead and bid Green and Lower lakes separately from Horseshoe, which was no longer deemed an immediate threat to property downstream due to the reduced water levels.
But a year later, more water had to be drained from Horseshoe Lake after heavy rains fell right around the time that work on Lower Shaker Lake was considered to be officially completed last July.
After being refilled, Lower Shaker Lake has been drained at least twice so far this year, including in May, when NEORSD replaced the water-level gauge.
“When we did this, we noticed erosion on the backside of the spillway and reported that to Shaker Heights,” noted NEORSD Senior Public Information Specialist Jenn Elting.
From there, the decision was Shaker’s to drain Lower Lake again last month in order to have city engineers inspect the dam and spillway.
Elting added that the only involvement from NEORSD in mid-July was from a wildlife perspective, with one of their investigators being an expert on mussels that populate the lake.
Meanwhile, Shaker Heights Chief Administrative Officer Jeri Chaikin and Public Works Director Patti Speese are still awaiting the city engineer’s assessment and recommendations concerning any deterioration along the historic spillway at Lower Shaker Lake.
In the meantime, NEORSD officials met late last month with city officials in both Shaker and Cleveland Heights for an update on several projects.
“We are still working to complete the Stormwater Master Plan, including the evaluation of dam design alternatives and impact to the Doan Brook watershed upstream and downstream of the dam(s),” Elting said in a July 21 email.
At this point, NEORSD is only redesigning the Horseshoe Lake dam, officials said.
Green Lake complete
The recent completion of the new dam and spillway at Green Lake — along with the opening of a pedestrian walkway along what used to be Andover Road — has reportedly cost more than $2 million.
But separate from that was the protracted dredging of the 6.5-acre lake down to its original clay bottom, dating back to 1911 and a depth of about 6 feet, with 11,250 dry tons of sediment removed.
This was done without having to drain the “Duck Pond,” after several stops and starts triggered by the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency and the Shaker Historical Society.
Due to archaeological homestead sites in the area of Andover Road, the EPA ordered a more expensive, all-hydraulic dredging process at a cost of $3.3 million — more than double the original estimate.
Shaker Heights provided a local match of $500,000 to be paid out of its “Community Cost Share” allocation over five years, with the rest coming out of fees from NEORSD’s Stormwater Management Program.
Mayor David Weiss recently teamed up with the NEORSD team, including Watershed Team Leader Jeff Jowett and Chief Executive Officer Kyle Dreyfuss-Wells, also a Shaker Heights resident, for a short video on the Green Lake project.
Read more from the Sun Press.
Source: cleveland
