MANSFIELD – The potential for a revised Black Fork ditch petition was discussed Wednesday at the Richland Soil and Water Conservation District board of supervisors meeting.
Representatives from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources and the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency attended the meeting at the board offices on Longview Avenue.
Also in attendance was Shelby Mayor Steve Schag and members of the community.
Erica Thomas, director of RSWCD, invited ODNR and EPA representatives to attend the meeting, hoping their input and direction may help petitioners craft a revised petition.
Revisiting the original petition
“The wording on the original petition was written very broadly,” Thomas said.
“I can see from the state agency standpoint that it was probably very hard to figure out what the group was actually proposing,” she said.
Originally filed by Schag in 2021, the proposed joint ditch petition between Richland and Crawford counties covered about 15 miles of the Black Fork tributary of the Mohican River.
Annual cleaning and maintenance — removing felled trees, leaning trees, log jams and debris piles — were included in the language of the original petition.
Additional verbiage mentioning bank stabilization, sandbar removal and live vegetation removal triggered concern with ODNR.
“I think if it was just that (log jam, tree and debris removal), it probably would’ve gone through,” said Mike Pettegrew, ODNR representative.
“We were concerned about the potential impacts to biology, recurring habitats, water quality, all of that stuff,” he said. “So that was our main point of contention.”
Other areas of concern for ODNR and the EPA involved freshwater mussels, protected under the Ohio Revised Code, and the protection of wetland areas.
There was no discussion Wednesday on whether to include Crawford County again in the petition.
ODNR and EPA recommendations
Anna Kamnyev, environmental manager at the Ohio EPA, recommended mapping out strategic access areas to the river where wetland areas are less likely to be discovered.
“There’s a potential that you don’t need any permitting at all, but really evaluating the access points is the key,” Kamnyev said.
Pettegrew also said that if log jam and tree removal work could be done completely from the river bank, he doesn’t believe the work would warrant a mussel survey.
“If it’s just removing any dead or leaning trees, or new log jams that come back, we don’t have any issue with that, the intent would just need to be clarified,” he said.
“If we already work out some of the things causing us heartburn, we’re good to go,” Pettegrew said.
With conversation continuing, Thomas spoke up, admitting a project of this magnitude was uncharted territory for local officials.
“This was the first time our counties had a ditch petition like this,” she said. “So I think we’ve all learned a lot that we didn’t do things correctly, probably the whole thing.”
Pettegrew said state agency coordination isn’t set up to ideally help projects, such as the ditch petition, earlier in the planning process.
“It doesn’t happen until the very end, until the plans are developed,” he said. “It should be early, then we’d be avoiding this right here.”
Slow road to success
Schag compared the conducting the process correctly to the speed lever on a tractor.
“This gets a little more towards the turtle, because this takes time,” he said. “I’d much rather work with the EPA and ODNR, and get everything right before we move forward.”
Thomas said the next step is in the hands of the petitioners, to revise and put together a new proposal.
“Today was very productive,” she said. “It helped define a scope that has a better chance of being more successful, so I’m optimistic.”
Thomas said that Brian Baldridge, director of the Ohio Department of Agriculture, was instrumental in bringing all parties together, connecting RSWCD with ODNR and the EPA.
“Getting everyone at the table was incredibly helpful,” she said. “I think everyone would’ve reached out sooner (to ODNR and EPA) if we knew this would be the result.”