DEAR EDITOR:

EnviroScience, a Stow environmental consulting firm, proposed an extensive construction of rock-armored stream banks on Yellow Creek in the Poland Municipal Forest to reduce bank erosion that threatens forest infrastructure. The project, costing upwards of $1.9 million, does not address the basic cause of the problem, and it would permanently alter and likely have unforeseen adverse consequences to the forest.

The cause of perceived excess erosion is too much water, too fast. This, as the spokesperson for EnviroScience agrees, is a watershed problem. Large portions of the Yellow Creek watershed have been deforested, wetlands drained, mined, developed for housing and used for tillage agriculture. All of these activities increase the rate of stormwater runoff and the load of sediment and other pollutants in the runoff.

Armoring the banks of Yellow Creek in the Poland Municipal Forest only treats the symptoms. Permanent solutions will occur only by watershed restoration. This includes, among other actions, establishing stream forested riparian zones, reforestation of land, especially areas with high slopes, re-establishment and construction of new wetland filters, encouraging conservation tillage, especially no-till practices and planting trees in urban areas and on public lands.

Of the five areas of erosion concern identified by EnviroScience, only two pose imminent threats to forest infrastructure: the erosion of Bluebell Trail and the gas line on Butler Trail. Solutions: move Bluebell trail and allow the creek to resume its natural progression through the forest.

EnviroScience’s proposal for Butler Trail is satisfactory, but that requires action by Dominion Gas. The other two: the sewer line along Thatcher Trail and the footing of Mauthe Bridge, both are relatively stable and erosion poses no imminent threats and are best addressed by restoration of the watershed.

Former Mayor Ruth Wilkes, Poland Village, commissioned a citizens committee in 2005 to study flooding in Poland Village and make recommendation for abatement. This committee

(Storm Water Advisory Team) issued its report in 2008. The committee made 11 recommendations. The most important were to establish: (1) a watershed Action Committee; (2) a Stormwater Utility (as Boardman and Austintown have recently done, i.e. the “ABC Utility”); 3) programs of watershed restoration.

None of the 11 recommendations was implemented by Poland Village.

Perhaps it is time for us to begin to find long-term solutions to chronic environmental problems that embrace natural ecosystem structure and functions, not short term, often cosmetic, treatments of the symptoms of watershed degradation.

LAUREN SCHROEDER