TOLEDO, Ohio (WTVG) – Toledo’s Bandore Park is a massive eyesore and has been since March, when the City of Toledo chopped down all the park’s trees and left the remnants behind. The trees were cut down as part of an ecological restoration project and, after some significant delays, the project’s construction — and the park’s clean up — are slated to begin soon.
People who live in and near Bandore Park first asked the I-TEAM to investigate the eyesore in May. Nearly half a year later, not much has changed.
“Well, about the middle of March, the city came and it looks like tornado hit,” Johnnie Rains, whose home overlooks the park, told 13 Action News in May. “They cut all these trees down and they haven’t been back. It’s not that I’m complaining about them being thinned out, but you got to come back and finish up.”
“I just want them to show some progress.”
The trees were cut to make way for the Bandore Park Restoration Project that will redo the banks of the Bandore Park stream, also known as Hill Ditch. The project’s goal, according to Toledo’s Commissioner of Environmental Services, is to slow down the stream’s water flow; in doing so, sediments carried by the current will be more likely to settle on the stream bed or get caught in the stream bank, which will result in cleaner water being deposited into Lake Erie.
“We have to improve the water quality. As we slow the water down, sediments will settle, will not end up at the end in the lake, where we get the water to drink,” Abed Samaan, Toledo’s Environmental Services Commissioner, said.
Samaan says the trees were cut down in March, earlier than some would consider necessary, because endangered bats would otherwise nest in the trees. If the trees weren’t cut down before the bats created their nests, Samaan said the project would have been placed on hold until the bats left for the season.
After the trees were cut down, there were some delays, Samaan says, in part because the project changed from a stream restoration to a stream realignment.
“[With a] restoration you take the existing and try to improve it. The realignment is really moving the banks of the stream,” Semaan said, adding that because of the change “it became more complicated and more costly.”
It’s a problem Toledo’s City Council addressed Wednesday, giving the project $175,000 to help cover those extra expenses.
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This article was published by WTVG on 2024-12-05 17:30:00
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