Fans of Lower Shaker Lake Balk at Sewer District's Plan to Drain the Body of Water

This month, the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District released recommendations for the future of Lower Shaker Lake: forget about building a $43 million dam and just restore the body of water to its natural state—a brook. Credit: Mark Oprea

For two centuries, the Lower Shaker Lake has served a number of purposes.

For most of the 1800s, its waters helped power a sawmill, thanks to a dam, operated by large Shaker family. In the 1920s, it was home base to competitive swimmers and the Shaker Lakes Canoe Club. And in the 1960s, at the height of the U.S. environmental movement, it played host to the newly-born Shaker Nature Center.

Today, there’s a real possibility that the Lower Shaker Lake will soon no longer exist.

For the past four years, a team at the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District has been studying the lake and its dam to see whether its placidity and beauty outweighs what is a very real risk: a rare flood event that could, if Lower Lake Dam isn’t rebuilt, flood a large swath of University Circle, bringing about widespread damage and the threat to human lives.

The problem? NEOSRD’s watershed team has come to the conclusion that the dam is way, way too old for today’s waters.

“It’s very wildly out of compliance. It’s not remotely close to being in compliance,” Donna Friedman, a manager with NEOSRD’s watershed program, told Scene at a public meeting at the Lee Road Library on Wednesday.

“I’ll put it this way: the Lower Shaker dam can pass two percent of the storm events that it’s supposed to pass safety,” she said. “Two percent. That’s it.”

In 2021, Friedman and her team, which analyze the Doan Brook Watershed and streams running from Bratenahl to the edge of Beachwood, recommended to the two cities that operate the dam—Cleveland Heights and Shaker Heights—that it be replaced. Construction would cost, NEORSD calculated, in the ballpark of $43 million.

This month, NEORSD reneged a bit on their suggestion. Even if a new dam was built, along with a new underground culvert in University Circle, only four fewer properties would be saved in the event of a 100-year flood.

“So, we just can’t pay for that,” Matt Scharver, the director of NEORSD’s watershed program that studies Doan Brook, said. “Because there’s just not a return on the investment for flood control.”

“But,” he added, “we can remove the dam and restore the brook.”

Flood events, like the lethal ones as seen in Central Texas or Asheville, carry the weight of risk and high-dollar property damage that put pressure on cities to keep up the infrastructure intended to prevent those tragedies up-to-date.

But returning Lower Shaker Lake into its pre-19th century form, a large stream, brings with it a kind of forlorn feeling for those who’ve come to admire its natural beauty, who visit to photograph its herons, to jog on its paths, or tend to its gardens.

The alternative — eight-foot-high concrete barriers around the lake topped off by a 30-foot-wide “gravity” dam that looks as if designed by a contractor in Star Wars — isn’t what they have in mind.

“I don’t like concrete,” Pat Chokel said. “I want it to be what it is right now.”

Eric and Rachael Wahl, who moved nearby Lower Shaker Lake in December, were upset by NEOSRD’s recommendation to restore the lake to its original stream. “I guess we’ll have to sell the house,” Rachael joked. Credit: Mark Oprea

Chokel, who raised her kids around the Shaker Lakes, helped helm a garden club that still tends to natural plant species around Lower Shaker Lake and its neighbor, Horseshoe Lake.

Chokel offered a kind of shoulder shrug went it came to the plausible reality that Shaker Heights and Cleveland Heights, currently undecided, may opt to have Lower Lake drained. Horseshoe Lake, after all, is slated to be converted into a park by 2028.

“I have totally mixed feelings,” Chokel said. “I used to live just up the block. I walked around the lake forever. But, you know, when you have a failing dam, there’s risk—and you need to do something about it.”

Nearby, Michael Collins and his son were eyeing plans for Horseshoe Park, which showed off a potential sensory garden, new overlook and lounge swings.

Collins, who’s owned a house near Lower Shaker Lake for decades, sighed envisioning the same future for his go-to spot for birdwatching.

“It won’t be as beautiful, definitely not,” Collins said about the possible draining. “I think it’s a devaluation of the property.”

Friedman said that it’s likely, once designs are finalized and submitted to the city, that a tunnel culvert underneath University Circle’s Wade Lagoon will be built for several million opposed to $43 million for a new dam down the road.

But is it worth the loss of the lake?

On Wednesday afternoon, as they do often during work breaks, Eric and Rachael Wahl were out on a walk on the dam-side of Lower Shaker Lake. As they passed over the dam, blue herons perched on both sides.

A sight the Wahls don’t want messed up. After all, they relocated from Indianapolis to a home within walking distance of the lake last December in part due to its nearby scenery.

“I mean, I guess we’ll have to sell the house,” Rachael joked, as she walked by.

“You think of all these people moving here to Cleveland,” Eric added. “California is too expensive. Arizona’s too hot. And that’s why people are moving here, and will be moving here in the future—because there’s water here.”