Posted on February 26, 2018
By Eric Heisig, Cleveland.com
The state of Ohio and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have settled a lawsuit filed over the dredging of the Cleveland Harbor and Cuyahoga River shipping channel in 2016.
The settlement requires Army Corps to bear the cost of placing the sludge from the bottom of the river into containment dikes in 2016 and 2017.
The settlement, noted in a document filed in federal court Wednesday, resolves agreements the state made that it would reimburse the Army Corps for any costs associated with placing sediment into facilities if it lost its lawsuit.
In past years, the Army Corps has fought demands by the state to dispose of sediment dredged from the shipping channel into containment dikes instead of in Lake Erie, arguing that the sediment would not adversely harm the lake’s ecosystem. At issue was the sediment dredged of the sixth mile, which serves the ArcelorMittal steel mill.
The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency said the sludge would pollute the lake. The Army Corps eventually relented, dredging in 2015, 2016 and 2017 and placing the sediment into dikes.
Senior U.S. District Judge Donald Nugent ruled in a separate lawsuit in May that the Army Corps abused its discretion in 2015 when it decided the sludge was suitable to be dumped into Lake Erie.
Ohio EPA spokeswoman Heidi Griesmer said in an email that “we are happy to put this dispute behind us. We hope to work cooperatively with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the future.”
The Army Corps has already received a water quality certification for its 2018 dredging project, its spokesman Andrew Kornacki previously said.
Kornacki said Wednesday that he could not address the settlement, but said the Army Corps has worked well with the state over the past year. There are plans to dredge the harbor as early as May 2018 and to place the sediment into a disposal facility, he said.
Source: Cleveland.com
