Maintenance of waterway will follow logjam removal
What will the continued maintenance of Mill Creek look like after the logjam project is completed?
The exact approach has not been finalized but Joe Eads with the Union Soil and Water Conservation District (USWCD) said it will most likely involve a drone and focused points of attack.
“Most likely we’ll fly it with a drone, that’s what we did before and it worked great,” he said. “We are able to then just geo-reference everything and pinpoint where the logjams are and I’ll just basically get a work order and we’ll pinpoint attack it.”
He said county crews will likely not traverse the length of the creek to do the assessments – some 30 miles in Union County – but will check problem spots such as the Infirmary Channel on the north and east side of the city. They will also rely on residents to inform them when spots get jammed up and they will tackle those as needed. That is now possible with a maintenance procedure in place as well as an assessment process.
While property owners outside the city will be assessed a maintenance fee, city officials said maintenance on properties within the city will be paid out of the stormwater maintenance funds, already collected monthly from residents.
Property owners won’t be responsible for construction costs, which would typically be the case. That is because the county and city set aside American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds from 2021 to pay for construction costs. The plan will be for the county to invoice the city on a yearly basis for their portion of the work.
That portion of the project is still about a year from completion and Eads said maintenance assessments won’t start until after that is done.
Since starting the cleanup process in Marysville in December, the crew has gone from the Logan County line east to Dover Township.
“We worked all winter long and we kind of started in the Waldo Road area, pulling the big jam out underneath the viaduct there and then worked the Infirmary Channel,” Eads said. “That’s a rough area.”
While logjams form for many reasons, a number of the piles in the Infirmary Channel were the result of beaver dams that grew, in some cases, to more than six feet tall, Eads said.
Work to remove the logs involves a small crew of 2-3 workers who wade into the water, wrap steel cabling around the logs and pull them out with a log skidder.
“We’re now south-southeast of the recycling center outside of town, near the Union County (Sheriff’s Office) shooting facility. We’ve worked through Marysville. Basically, we’ve been on the north side of the stream the whole way through in town, which would put us basically on the Jim Simmons Trail,” he said. “We went under the viaduct there, over Maple Street, cleaned out all of the logs underneath the bridge at Maple Street, continued on the north side of the stream and got pinched off at the dog park.”
From there, crews moved onto residential properties behind the water treatment facility. They were cutting some trees as they went but were stopped due to regulations from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources on disrupting natural habitats.
“We had to stop cutting trees for the Indiana bat. ODNR said we can’t cut trees from March to October, so that kind of put a hold on the project, too,” Eads said, adding the project has a lot of variables. “As soon as it’s Oct. 1, my goal is to be at Delaware County Oct. 1. We’re going to turn the whole ship around and come right back up the stream and we’re going to cut the trees.”
He said they estimate about 8,000 trees to cut and were able to cut around 950 before they were shut down. They’ve pulled about 1,000 logjams out of the waterway since December. Crews pull logs and stack them along the bank in as safe a distance as they can, Eads said.
He urged city officials and residents alike to anchor objects near the waterway as best they can onto the properties as the crews have found pieces of debris along the water. Some of that included small pieces of equipment but others included city trash cans from parks and even a portable toilet.
