This is one of a series of stories The Plain Dealer will print this year as a part of "The Year of the River," a recognition of the Cuyahoga River's return to health 40 years after it caught fire.
BRECKSVILLE, Ohio -- Something's got to give at the Brecksville dam.
Although a relatively small structure about 20 miles upstream from Lake Erie, the dam has become a big problem for both the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency and the Cuyahoga Valley National Park.
The EPA and environmentalists want the dam gone -- a move that is key to improving river health upstream and to restoring the bottom half of the Cuyahoga to the free-flowing stream it was in pre-industrial days. Dams are bad for rivers because they keep fish from moving upstream to spawn; they slow down the water, causing stagnant pools; and they can retain old polluted sediment.
But the Brecksville dam was built to provide the water for about eight miles of the Ohio & Erie Canal. That section includes the working locks at the Canal Visitor Center, used to show visitors how the canal system once worked.
Brecksville dam on Cuyahoga River
Without the dam -- or some other source of water -- the canal dries up.
"The watered portion of the canal is a National Historic Landmark, and we have to protect it," said National Park biologist Meg Plona, who is working with the EPA on solutions. "We'd like to see a free-flowing river too, but not at the expense of the canal going dry.
"It's a delicate balance between natural resources and cultural resources, and this is a special case where a dam is useful."
Cuyahoga River nearly dam-free
That wasn't the case in the sections of the Cuyahoga where useless dams have been removed in recent years in Kent and Munroe Falls.
Both communities -- Kent in 2005 and Munroe Falls a year later -- removed a century-old dam that had no modern purpose.
And the upturn in river health that resulted simply from the removal of those two dams has been remarkable, said EPA scientists Bill Zawiski and Steve Tuckerman.
While other efforts, like cutting back on pollution and stopping sewage and stormwater runoff into the river, have already played a major role in cleaning up the Cuyahoga, the removal of dams is the next step being taken to make the river better for fish and humans.
"It's like peeling back the layers of an onion. Every time we do something like remove another dam, we get closer to the goal of clean water," Tuckerman said. Next in the EPA's sights are two small dams in Cuyahoga Falls, where civic leaders have not objected to discussing it.
If dams at Brecksville and Cuyahoga Falls were to go, it would leave only one blockade left on the Cuyahoga -- the biggest obstacle of all, the 58-foot-high Gorge Metro dam, also in Cuyahoga Falls.
The fate of that dam is likely to be first decided in court. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in October 2008 renewed a three-year permit for a Fairlawn company to continue studies into bringing the dam back online as an electricity producer.
Figuring out a new way
Which brings us back to Brecksville.
"Removing it will have an immediate and positive impact on the health of the Cuyahoga," Zawiski said. "But we can't just walk in there and take it out. There's a lot of players involved here."
Zawiski's right. The EPA is responsible for water quality, but the 160-foot-wide Brecksville dam -- built in the 1950s just downstream from the original 1820s dam -- is owned by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, while the Cuyahoga Valley National Park owns the land.
Zawiski, with help from Plona, is now working toward what the Park Service calls an environmental impact statement, a document that would finally determine the course for the dam.
The nonprofit Friends of the Crooked River has already paid for historical and some environmental portions of the study, using part of a $120,000 grant from the U.S. EPA.
The most likely final solution now appears to be installing a pump at the gate where the water from the Cuyahoga is released into the canal. Zawiski said that the EPA is likely to pay for the planning and building but that others would probably have to chip in on the cost of operating and maintaining the pump station.
Tuckerman said the project could cost about $2 million.
But Zawiski said there's a small chance that another plan might provide some of the water. Talks are under way with the city of Cleveland to use excess water from a nearby water main, piping it to the Ohio 82 bridge and right down into the canal.
"It wouldn't be enough, but it would help," Zawiski said. "The other idea is to get college students and other engineers to compete in a design contest to see if there's a better way to remove the dam and still provide water for the canal."
Both the EPA and the national park seem to agree that a Brecksville solution is a few years away -- but likely.
"I think everyone wants the river to be at its best and for the canal to function," said the national park's Plona. "I think we'll find a way for both to happen."