A pair of grants administered by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources have one common goal: protecting Lake Erie, which many people say is the state’s most important natural resource.
Awarded by respective competitive processes, each of the two grant programs use the services of the ODNR’s Office of Coastal Management to handle the required paperwork and determine which the applicant is most deserving.
The first – and smaller of the two grant programs - recently saw the disbursement of $389,353 to five governmental agencies. This is what’s called the Coastal Management Assistance Grant Program.
Total individual project money is split evenly between the federal government’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the successful applicant.
The five recipients include: Metroparks Toledo- $100,000 for its Glass City Stormwater Management Program; the Lorain Port Authority - $50,000 for is Lake Erie Bike Trail Station; the city of Rocky River for its Bradstreet’s Landing’s interpretive access boardwalk; Cleveland Metroparks - $21,000 for its Wendy Park nature-based shoreline restoration project; and the city of Mentor - $118,353 for its Mentor Marsh public access project’s Phase II.
“It’s sort of a ‘catch-all program where a portion of the funds we get from NOAA helps supply the money to enhance public access, protect Lake Erie as a vital natural resource, provide for recreational opportunities as well as help fund the planning studies which can aid enhancement to the lake,” said Scudder D. Mackey, chief of the Coastal Management Office.
This program has been in place since 1998 and grants are awarded every year. In all, the Coastal Management Office received 20 proposals, of which six were full proposals.
“Since the competitive Coastal Management Assistance Grant Program began more than $6 million has been awarded for 146 projects in Ohio,” Mackey said.
Much larger at $5 million is the state’s so-named “Erosion Emergency Assistance Grant Program.”
The name pretty much says it all, too.
“This program is intended to help with what we call ‘catastrophic erosion,’ and while Lake Erie’s water level had declined about one foot since a year ago, there is still above normal water levels and thus we still have a lot of shoreline erosion still going on,” Mackey said.
Not surprisingly than of the nine projects the Natural Resources Department will fund, eight are located in Northeast Ohio, a region typically associated with severe erosion.
“The Northeast Ohio Lake Erie shoreline has highly erodible bluffs and consequently has experienced significant problems,” Mackey said.
The nine projects include $1.45 million for an erosion control project for South Bass Island’s Put-in-Bay Township; $1 million for Cuyahoga County’s Beulah Beach-Euclid Beach Access and Protection project; $930,101 for a Mentor City erosion project; $560,800 for an erosion mitigation project at Geneva Township Park in Ashtabula County; $300,000 to the city of Euclid for waterfront-eastern stabilization; $371,339 for emergency repairs to Lorain City’s storm-water outflow system; $200,000 for erosion control at the city of Wiloughby’s Osborne Park; $160,500 for the city of Eastlake’s Galina Drive shoreline protection repair work; $27,260 for erosion control work at Lakeline Village property in Lake County.
In all, 20 proposals were received, Mackey said, but only nine could be funded. The successful applicants all tossed into the bid packages additional local funding, which sweetened their chances of being selected.
“Local communities were told that no matching funds by them was required, but we also said that if they did than that point would be a consideration in the application process,” Mackey said.
The $5 million was approved by the Ohio legislature and was included in the state’s Capital Improvement Budget, Mackey said as well.
Whether this Erosion Emergency Assistance Grant Program is a one-off legislative phenomena, Mackey did say that “internal discussions are occurring as to whether or not the program will continue, but it is up to the legislature to determine if it want to fund the program in the future.”
In the end, Mackey says, though different, the two grant programs will ultimately benefit both Lake Erie and those that use it for a host of reasons.
“Both of these programs are important for Ohio, and are also greatly appreciated by local communities which are being financially stressed because of the COVID pandemic,” Mackey said.
- By Jeffrey L. Frischkorn
JFrischk@Ameritech.net
JFrischk4@gmail.com
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