Stillwater River In For Makeover

06/23/2008 05:01:19


ENGLEWOOD, Ohio -- Five Rivers MetroParks is taking three summers and spending $1.6 million to put the Stillwater River back the way it once was at the Englewood Dam.

Some 15 years after the dam was completed in 1921, local officials requested a low-head dam be placed just upstream of the main dam. It created a pool for boating and raised the water level of a nearby barrow pit sufficient to form a lake.

"The park was designed in the 1930s around the recreation lake," said David Nolin, Five Rivers director of conservation. "That lake is almost gone. In 10 years, it will be forest."

Which is one of the reasons Five Rivers will be cutting a hole in the dam, dredging thousands of cubic yards of silt, cutting a new entrance and exit from the river to the lake, installing rock formations in the river, establishing new wetlands and stabilizing new river banks.

Work is to begin this month. When it is done, the river will be safer and the water quality better upstream of the remnants of the low dam.

About 60 percent of the money is coming from state grants, with the remainder from Five Rivers with assistance from the cities of Union and Englewood.

(Article courtesy of www.daytondailynews.com)

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