BELLVILLE, Ohio — Since the formation of the Clear Fork Watershed Subdistrict of the Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District (MWCD) on June 7, 2014, officials have begun gathering information that will be useful for developing solutions to reduce the impacts of flooding along the Clear Fork of the Mohican River.
MWCD is currently working with the United States Geological Survey to study the waters of the Clear Fork. As part of the study, several rain gauges, speed of current gauges and water depth gauges were installed to collect detailed information about how the Clear Fork responds when storm events occur throughout the watershed.
A stream gaging station was placed near the Main Street bridge in Bellville. The recorded water level and corresponding rate of flow are used for flood forecasting, reservoir operations, design of bridges and culverts, interstate and intrastate water-rights claims and many other projects.
Live data from this station is accessible to the public via the USGS website. People can choose to have a text message sent to them when the water reaches a certain height–which is especially beneficial for local residents and business owners, Mayor Darrell Banks indicated.
“Though people will still have to worry about flooding, this at least gives them a little bit of a warning,” he said.
“One of the businesses right by the river is owned by a family in Mt. Vernon. They could either wait until somebody calls them and says that the water’s rising, or now, they could use this [text service] and know about [the water height] sooner rather than later,” he added.
Banks was pleased with how quickly the station was installed. He was told installation would be completed sometime in September, and by May the station was set up.
It’s estimated that the Clear Fork leaves its banks on Main Street north of the bridge at 11 feet, reaches the bottom of the bridge at 13 feet and goes over the bridge decking at 15 feet.
“The longer this goes on the more they will be able to tell us,” Banks said of the study.
MWCD has committed 85 percent of the cost of the study and the USGS has agreed to fund the remaining 15 percent of the $463,500 study.
Banks said after three or four years of conducting this study, a plan will be put in motion to determine what the best and most cost-effective solutions are to reduce the severity and frequency of flooding. A cost/benefit analysis will be done to find out the feasibility of those solutions. If the cost is greater than the benefits, the subdistrict will dissolve, but if the benefits outweigh the cost, the subdistrict will come up with a plan to pay for the solutions, the mayor explained.
“I’m very pleased we’ve gotten this far,” said Banks, who’s been an advocate of the formation of the Clear Fork Watershed Subdistrict from the get-go.
The process that led to the creation of the Clear Fork Subdistrict began in the summer of 2013. During that time, State Rep. Mark Romanchuk hosted a meeting to discuss flooding issues in the Richland County region that included officials from around the county, as well as the MWCD and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. In the weeks after the meeting, leaders of the Clear Fork area communities contacted MWCD and held several follow-up meetings to determine the viability of a subdistrict request.
The Clear Fork Watershed Subdistrict creation came three years after officials in the City of Shelby were successful in having their request granted by the Conservancy Court for reactivation of the Black Fork Subdistrict of the MWCD to address flooding along the Black Fork of the Mohican River.
“The Black Fork Subdistrict was a big help to us,” Banks said. “I think they helped pave the way.”
The entire watershed of the Clear Fork is located primarily in southern Richland County, with smaller portions in southern Ashland, northern Knox and northeastern Morrow counties. The Clear Fork Subdistrict boundary is limited to Richland County only.
Flooding has been a recurring theme within the watershed. Banks said he remembers his grandparents talking about the flood of 1913. Then his parents talked about the flood of 1938.
“I lived through the flood of 1959,” he recollected. That year, he and his fellow students were evacuated from the elementary school on Hines Avenue and walked across planks into the back of school buses because the water rose so quickly, he said.
Floods that occurred in the last century came 20-30 years apart, but now they are coming every other year with several minor floods in between, he said.
One of the reasons why this is, he said, is when the B&O Railroad was replaced with the bike trail in 1987, the natural dike was reduced by many inches, allowing water to flow into many more homes and a few more businesses.
The addition of a third lane on Interstate 71 is another reason, Banks said. “Ten miles of I-71 drains into the Clear Fork. Not all, but most of that comes right through Bellville. If you measure 10 miles times 13 feet of roadway, plus they made the berms on both sides a little wider, so you’re talking close to 20 feet times ten miles, twice, because you have southbound and northbound, and you figure out how many square feet that is and divide it by a 2,000 square foot home, it’s like having a thousand homes built outside of Bellville. So there’s a lot of water coming through here,” he explained.
Other contributors include the increase of impervious surfaces, water retention facilities becoming less efficient or nonfunctioning, and changes in agriculture trends and technology.
Timing also plays a role, Banks said. “The Clear Fork goes to Lexington and Ontario and the Cedar Fork goes to Johnsville and Morrow County. They [the Clear Fork and Cedar Fork] come together by Citi Church. If we get a lot of rain out of Morrow County at the same time we get a lot of rain in Ontario, for instance, it all gets here at the same time…So timing makes a difference, too,” he said.
Banks said the Village of Bellville was fortunate that in 2013, the Ohio Department of Transportation cleaned out underneath the Main Street bridge. And since then, the Clear Fork reached about 11 feet on four different occasions but didn’t cause any damage.
“Had they not cleaned that out, we would have had more flooding,” he said. ODOT will continue to clean out the area underneath the bridge every other year, he said.
Banks also shared that the U.S. Weather Department is going to make the Main Street bridge a “weather point,” meaning, “They’ll concentrate their efforts on predicting the weather more in that area, so we’ll get even more of a warning on flooding conditions,” he said.
Actions proposed by the Clear Fork Subdistrict will not prevent flooding, Banks said, but can potentially help reduce the frequency, severity and area of flooding in the Clear Fork Watershed.
“We’re not going to stop flooding, but we ought to be able to live with it a little better,” he said.
