SHELBY – The Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District (MWCD) has acknowledged defeat when it comes to creating dry dams in order to reduce flooding in Shelby.
Mayor Steve Schag stated during Monday’s meeting of Shelby City Council that the MWCD “presently sees little or no reason to invest their energies any longer in a flood mitigation strategy that includes retention basins,” commonly known as dry dams.
“The MWCD is well-aware that any solutions proposing building retention basins, buying and removing any homes or including a trigger to build dams later appears to lack the level of support necessary for the conservancy board to move forward with an affirmative vote,” Schag stated.
The announcement comes just shy of a week after the Richland County Commissioners penned a letter to MWCD asking them to eliminate the implementation of any and all retention basins, or dry dams, from the Black Fork Subdistrict’s present flooding mitigation plan.
“Due to the lack of public support for the basins from residents living within the Black Fork Subdistrict, the commissioners believe implementing them would not accurately represent public sentiment,” the letter read, signed by Commissioners Tony Vero, Marilyn John and Darrell Banks.
Commissioner Marilyn John spoke at Shelby City Council on June 4 outlining the work done between the city of Shelby and the MWCD since 2009.
“Whether you agree with the project or not, whether you agree with the dry dams or not, I hope we have not reached a point where flooding of businesses and residences is OK,” John said on June 4.
Councilman Nathan Martin responded to the letter from the commissioners with frustration, stating the commissioners have “misled those who called their office saying that the decision was city council’s and city council’s alone.”
“As early as the last city council’s meeting, Commissioner John stated that the city council would be making a decision soon,” Martin said. “I have, consistently, told everyone that I was not sure of that and it was never fully clear to me what role we had as a council except that we would have to pass a resolution of support or non-support on a plan presented to us at the end of the year.”
In their letter, the commissioners requested the MWCD consider a hydraulics-only solution to flooding within the city of Shelby. That scenario was first introduced by MWCD during a meeting of Shelby City Council in February.
“Based on public input we’ve received so far and input from public officials, we are reviving a scenario we did look at previously, and we’ll be doing a lot more work to look at its effectiveness,” said Boris Slogar, chief engineer of MWCD, on Feb. 6.
The basis of the scenario is a “hydraulics-only” solutions model, where “hydraulics” means the flow of water, Slogar explained in February. The exclusion of dry dams is only one of four scenarios being considered by MWCD.
The scenario would include two means of flood mitigation – replacing and widening certain bridges to increase their capacity to handle larger flood events, and remove log jams and other debris to improve the water-carrying capacity of the river.
“We understand there is a lot of interest in clearing of the Black Fork,” Slogar said. “We also know that in certain parts of the Black Fork, particularly south of Shelby, there is a certain unwillingness to entertain detention basins. We hear that, so we are going to focus in on a hydraulics-only approach and essentially set the detention basins aside.”
However, there is a catch. If the Black Fork Subdistrict decides to adopt a hydraulics-only scenario, it would be on a “wait-and-see” matter, according to Slogar.
“There is a trigger,” Slogar said in February. “If a devastating flood were to occur after the hydraulic solutions were put in place, detention basins would then be resurrected and included in the plan.”
The inclusion of a trigger was still not acceptable to Shelby citizens who spoke at Monday’s meeting of council.
“I don’t believe Muskingum is serious about no dry dams,” said Gary Biglin. “I think they need to be clear not to have dams in any proposal. If Muskingum is in charge, I don’t see how it won’t be brought up again.”
Schag stated the MWCD would be discussing a possible hydraulics-only flood reduction strategy with the Black Fork Advisory Committee (BAC) at their 9 a.m. meeting on Friday. Also being discussed will be the findings of a cost-benefit analysis for the proposed flood reduction strategies.
However, Schag noted a hydraulics-only option would require additional analysis to fully understand the impacts downstream. Meaning the end of a flooding solution in Shelby is still not in sight.
“The BAC will have the opportunity to weigh in on whether to pursue that further, or to mothball the entire project for now,” Schag said. The recommendation of the BAC would then be forwarded to Shelby City Council.
“If that is the case, all of the work conducted on behalf of the Black Fork Subdistrict will be packaged up and kept at MWCD headquarters should any further generation desire to bring these proposed flood reduction solutions to the table for further refinement and discussion,” he said.
