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By Bob Downing
Beacon Journal staff writer
Published on Monday, Aug 13, 2007
Ohio Environmental Protection Agency ecologist John Mack is knee-deep in a man-made wetland.
He is counting plants on the west side of Sippo Lake Park in Stark County's Perry Township and he likes what he sees. A former scrub forest has been turned into a desirable six-acre wet meadow.
That's a sharp contrast to the disappointment he feels when he visits two man-made wetlands in northern Summit County.
In Macedonia and Northfield Center Township, the skeletal remains of more than 100 trees mark a wetland that was to be enhanced behind the Crossings at Golden Links development at state Route 82 and state Route 8. It has too much water and not enough vegetation, in Mack's blunt assessment.
And in Twinsburg, at the sprawling Ethan's Green development, where developers promised years ago to turn ponds into wetlands, there are lakes with fountains shooting water into the air.
''It's a failure. They built lakes, not wetlands. There's a big difference,'' he said, pointing out that there's almost no wetland vegetation at Ethan's Green.
Since 1995, the Ohio EPA has been analyzing man-made, or replacement, wetlands.
Mack's team is surveying 25 of an estimated 415 man-made wetlands across Ohio. Most of the randomly chosen sites are in Northeast Ohio.
Perhaps 25 percent of the sites are good, Mack said, but the majority will earn a poor-to-fair grade.
''We can build quality wetlands, but that's something we don't always do,'' Mack said. '' . . . Quite frankly, we're just not getting the quality back that we're losing.''
That concern is being raised not only by the Ohio EPA but also by the prestigious National Academy of Sci ences.
Ohio is going after developers who have created inadequate wetlands, said EPA spokesman Michael Smith.
More than 250 developers recently received notices from the EPA to file overdue reports and to be prepared to do more to bring their man-made wetlands up to standards, Smith said.
When developers want to fill in wetlands to build houses or shopping malls, federal law requires what is called wetland mitigation. To prevent a net loss of wetlands, the developers may be required to build, restore, improve or enhance wetlands somewhere else.
That's because wetlands are important in preventing flooding, purifying water, storing water and providing wildlife habitat.
Wetland replacement
Since the late 1980s, more than 4,600 acres of replacement wetlands have been constructed in Ohio by developers under state-federal permits, said EPA spokesman Mick Micacchion.
The federal Clean Water Act requires anyone filling in wetlands to get certification from the Ohio EPA and a permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Ohio has lost 90 percent of its original wetlands, with the sites drained for farming and development. Only California has lost a greater percentage.
EPA spokeswoman Linda Oros said the agency is looking at revisions for wetland mitigation, possibly involving the amount required, the appropriate location for mitigation and new criteria to measure the success of wetland mitigation projects.
That review is to be completed in November and could lead to new rules, she said.
Elaine Marsh, executive director of Ohio Greenways and head of the Akron-based Friends of the Crooked River, a grass-roots group devoted to the Cuyahoga River, said stricter wetland rules would aid the environment across Ohio.
Wetlands should be replaced where they are being lost not miles away in other watersheds, she said.
For example, she said, the Grand River watershed has gained 260 acres of wetlands, while the Cuyahoga River watershed has lost six acres.
What Mack is finding in his assessment of man-made wetlands mirrors the findings in a 2006 Ohio EPA evaluation of 1,000 acres of replacement wetlands: 25 percent were simply shallow ponds without vegetation. In the 2006 report, only 18 percent of the wetland acreage was of good quality.
Mack said too many of the man-made wetlands have ''too much water . . . for far too long.''
In a natural wetland, he said, water typically rises and falls, and that results in the growth of different plants.
Developers and their consultants are too often ''oversizing the hydrology and making the new wetlands wetter than they should be . . . and that affects quality,'' he said.
Too much water is what killed the trees at the Macedonia-Northfield Center site, he said.
Before his $200,000 review funded with federal and state money is complete, Mack will have made 10 visits to Sippo Lake and each of the other sites.
At Sippo Lake, his team has found 39 species of wetland plants and good counts of amphibians and aquatic insects.
Darrin Petko, crew leader of natural resources for the Stark County Park District, is very proud of those wetlands, which were created from 1997 to 1999.
Loss in dredging
The park district was required to mitigate for shore wetlands that were lost in dredging the weed-choked, 97-acre lake.
In the early 1990s, Sippo Lake waters averaged five feet deep, with up to 23 feet of sediment where water used to be.
After years of planning and at a cost of $1.7 million, the park system removed 303,000 cubic yards of sediment enough material to fill Akron's Rubber Bowl 11/2 times. The project deepened Sippo Lake to 10 feet.
The dredged material required little management, although staffers would occasionally throw plant seeds into the soil to get more vegetation growing, Petko said.
In Macedonia-Northfield Center, the Youngstown-based Edward J. Debartolo Corp. won federal and state approval in 2000 to fill in 8.77 acres of wetlands and 1,050 linear feet of an unnamed tributary of Brandywine Creek.
The company agreed to restore 9.5 acres of wetlands in the same area and to enhance 2,600 linear feet of stream.
In addition, the company agreed to preserve, through a conservation easement, 130 acres of wetlands west of state Route 8 between Interstate 271 and state Route 82 in Macedonia and Northfield Center Township. That was above and beyond what was required and a nice gesture by the company, Mack said.
The company built a retention basin for storm water running off the development's parking lot. That basin overflows into a wooded tract after heavy rains, and that's what killed the 100 trees, Mack said. The water got as deep as three feet on those two to three acres.
For five years, the length of the EPA's oversight of a new wetland, the company has filed annual reports with the agency.
No decisions
EPA spokesman Smith said the agency has not yet determined whether the company met the state-imposed minimum scores for the new wetlands and streams and has not decided whether the state review will be extended for another five years.
Attempts to reach Thomas Nagy, vice president of DeBartolo Holdings LLC in Tampa, Fla., for comment were unsuccessful.
In Twinsburg, Sunrise Land Co., a division of Cleveland-based Forest City Enterprises, sought state approval in 1993 to build its planned-unit development and golf course.
The company pledged to replace more than 20 acres of wetlands and to enhance about eight acres. The company's plan called for turning five retention ponds into wetlands, according to documents filed with the EPA and the Corps of Engineers.
The EPA also ordered the company to purchase 56.2 acres of wetlands in Ashtabula County and transfer that parcel to the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.
The company was ordered to file annual reports on its wetland mitigation. Nothing has been filed since 1993, when it got the state permit, Smith said.
The company is among the 250 firms that recently got a letter from the EPA about their failure to report, he said.
Attempts to contact Adam Siegal, Forest City Enterprises' vice president of strategic marketing residential, for comment were unsuccessful.
Bob Downing can be reached at 330-996-3745 or bdowning@thebeaconjournal.com.
Ohio Environmental Protection Agency ecologist John Mack is knee-deep in a man-made wetland.
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