Lower Shaker Lake in the Midst of Controversy

The weather is still cool as April nears its end, but the battle for Lower Shaker Lake is heating up. Residents of Cleveland Heights and Shaker Heights packed city council meetings in their respective cities on April 6 and February 9, demanding their representatives find a way to save the lake. Meanwhile, the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District (NEORSD) is pushing ahead with plans to drain it. They announced the new plan last July in an abrupt reversal of their frequent promises to preserve the lake.

Those guarantees date back to 2019, when NEORSD drained Horseshoe Lake and turned it into a marsh. Both lakes sit in the Doan Brook watershed, which is home to 60,000 people. In both cases, the Sewer District’s argument has been the same: the Class 1 dams holding up each lake were cracking, and it would be too costly to repair them.

This is not the first time that the Shaker Lakes have been under threat. In the ’60s, residents had to band together to defeat a proposed freeway that would have plowed right over the lakes. Critics of that movement and the current one have pointed out a Not-In-My-Backyard aspect to the resistance that might be just as concerned with property values as with any environmental considerations. Other criticisms are also valid: Shaker Lake collects unhealthy levels of silt from upstream erosion, and more wetlands will benefit the wider ecosystem.

Certain considerations, though, seem barely to register in the debate. Both sides share the assumption that the Shaker Lakes are artificial. They are, after all, the result of dams built to drive mills in the 19^th century. What is erased from this history, though, are the aquacultural practices of the Erie people, on whose land Shaker and Cleveland Heights now sit, and the once abundant beaver populations, driven almost to extinction by the European fur trade. Given the topography of the upper Doan Brook watershed, it is a near certainty that there have been lakes here in the past.

The methods under consideration to prevent dangerous flooding and dam failure are also constrained by the erasure of ecological options. The approach chosen by NEORSD is to engineer a quick fix: funnel public money to a private contractor to dump limestone blocks along the dam with no consideration for the resulting habitat destruction.

What draining proponents omit is that the habitat constituted by the lake is an important one. Dozens of bird and fish species are specifically drawn to the small lake ecosystem, including mallards, cormorants, ring-billed gulls, blue herons, green herons, Canada geese, bald eagles, sandpipers, kingfishers, bullheads, carp, and green sunfish. Shaker Lake is home to hundreds of midland painted turtles, at least one mating pair of snapping turtles, and migratory killdeer and wood ducks who come every year to breed and feed. Numerous woodland creatures, from fungi to insects, will also lose their homes if the Sewer District fulfills its plan to cut down 1000 trees as part of the dam removal.

The root problem that leads to dangerous flooding is uncontrolled runoff. Controlling runoff requires addressing the whole watershed and not just a single dam. Planting appropriate native trees and grasses can prevent and reduce flooding, as does decreasing the land area covered by asphalt and concrete.

After massive parking lots, few things are worse for a watershed than a golf course. The high usage of pesticides and fertilizers and low water absorption combine to result in dangerous amounts of poisonous runoff during heavy rains. And the upper Doan Brook watershed is plagued by three golf courses: two private 18 hole courses—the Shaker Heights Country Club and Canterbury Golf Club—and the massive 36 hole course at Highland Park.

Both sides in the fight for Shaker Lake proclaim their concern for the watershed and both sides have some good arguments. But, as a protest sign planted in the ground on the Shaker Lake dam declaimed, “Having one plan is not a real choice.” It’s even less of a choice if the plan ignores the dimensions of the problem and many of the possible solutions.

The Sewer District wants to begin work this summer, though the final outcome is still uncertain. The neighbors have saved Shaker Lake before, and they may do so again.