Brent Larkin joined The Plain Dealer in 1981 and in 1991 became the director of the newspaper’s opinion pages. In October 2002 Larkin was inducted into The Cleveland Press Club’s Hall of Fame. Larkin retired from The Plain Dealer in May of 2009, but still writes a weekly column for the newspaper’s Sunday Forum section.
Category: Water
Water by Brent Larkin
Water As An Economic Tool (PDF)
By Brent Larkin
Northeast Ohio should regard building a vibrant water-based economy as a priority so important that the future of the entire region depends on it. It probably does.
Water isn’t the only key to a prosperous future. World-class medical facilities, biosciences, renewable and alternative energy all show promise of contributing to our 21st- century economy. But the unquestioned key to that future is an asset whose origin dates back more than a billion years—the world’s most abundant supply of fresh water.
Of all the world’s water, 97 percent of it is salty. Another 2 percent is locked in ice or snow. Of that remaining 1 percent that is fresh water, the Great Lakes contain just under 20 percent of it. Lakes Erie, Ontario, Michigan, Huron, and Superior boast a total of 11,000 miles of shoreline. Recreation alone on the lakes is a $6 billion-a-year industry.
In considering the magnitude of the importance of Northeast Ohio’s most precious asset, consider that 46 percent of the world’s population does not have water piped into their home, that in undeveloped countries people must walk an average of 3.7 miles to get fresh water.
We have 6 quadrillion gallons (that’s 15 zeros) of it at our doorstep.
Cleveland’s past greatness was rooted in its relationship and reliance upon that water. Lake Erie and the large albeit crooked river that flows into it (the Cuyahoga) made the city a giant in manufacturing, shipbuilding and rail transportation.
Manufacturing will remain a significant part of Northeast Ohio’s economy for the foreseeable future, but it’s decline as the centerpiece of that economy has been inexorable and—when viewed with the benefit of hindsight—inevitable.
But booming economies in the West, Southwest and Southeast are now running out of the water they so desperately need to sustain their growth. Indeed, some aquifers in California are down to 25 percent of
capacity.
So as other parts of the country—and world—dry up, cities with great quantities of clean, fresh water have the potential to enjoy an economic resurgence. By 2025, an estimated one-third of the world’s population will not have access to fresh water. As a 2008 Goldman Sachs report concluded, fresh water has become “the natural resource with no substitute.” but as Northeast Ohio plans a water-based economy, that planning requires an understanding and appreciation of history. So before explaining how water can return the region to prosperity, let’s examine its paramount role in the greatness of our past.
In 1772 and again in 1786, a missionary and geographer named John Heckewelder visited the Indian-occupied territory along the Lake Erie shoreline at the mouth of the Cuyahoga River. Heckewelder was captivated by the location, which featured the vast lake and countless streams feeding into the river. It was, he thought, the ideal place for a settlement as the young nation expanded west.
On his second visit, Heckewelder established a small trading post along the Cuyahoga, close to what is now known as Tinkers Creek. He also prepared a map of the region.
Relying in part on that map, in 1796 a group of eastern investors purchased from the state of Connecticut what is now the Greater Cleveland region, paying $1.2 million for about three million acres (a little more than 30 cents an acre). They named it the territory of the Western Reserve.
In May of 1796, investors in the Connecticut Land Co. designated Moses Cleaveland as their agent to visit the territory. On July 4, 1796, Cleaveland and his sailing party of about 50 men reached Conneaut. About two weeks later, the group mistakenly thought they had reached its final destination, disappointing surveyors at the small size of the river.
So unhappy was Cleaveland’s group that legend has it they named the small river the Chagrin. More likely is the Indians had already given the Chagrin its name.
Having discovered its likely error, Cleaveland’s party continued west, and on the morning of July 22, 1796, slipped into the Cuyahoga and embarked near the area of the Flats east bank, now known as Settlers Landing. On the day the Cleaveland party landed, the east bank of the Cuyahoga represented the most western point in the United States, or its territories, not controlled by Indian tribes.
Cleaveland was exhausted, but wrote that the location—with its crystal clear lake, magnificent rivers, rich forests, fertile soil, and rolling hills—exceeded investors’ expectations. Within days, Cleaveland had struck a deal with the Iroquois to plot a village east of the river, just south of Lake Erie.
Three months after arriving, Cleaveland left the city that now bears his name, absent that first “a.” He never returned.
In the late 18th century, both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were known to ponder ways of moving goods from the west (the area now known as the Midwest) to population centers in the east. Both centered on the idea of a canal that would move products east along the Ohio River, and at one point Washington was said to recommend a canal that would connect the Ohio to Lake Erie, alongside the Cuyahoga River.
Absent access to a market, farmers in and around the new village of Cleveland struggled in the town’s early years. Then, in the early 1820s, Ohio’s leaders concluded the only way to ensure economic prosperity for the entire state was to construct a canal from the Ohio river north, through Columbus, to Lake Erie.
Many thought the canal’s northern terminus should be in Warren or Sandusky. Alfred Kelley believed that terminus should be in Cleveland. And Alfred Kelley turned out to be a very persuasive man. A lawyer, county prosecutor, the youngest elected member of the legislature, and the first president (1815) of the village of Cleveland, Kelley became the state’s most outspoken and effective promoter of the Ohio & Erie Canal.
In 1821, the state legislature began deliberating issues relating to the canal’s funding, route and construction. Kelley’s relentless lobbying paid off, and in 1825 ground was broken on the northern section of the canal that would link Akron to Cleveland. On July 4, 1827, the first boat to travel the canal route from Akron arrived in the Cleveland Harbor.
By the early 1830s, construction on the canal was complete. Economic growth was now all but guaranteed. And Alfred Kelley had earned his place as one of Cleveland’s greatest citizens.
Consider the canal’s economic impact: In 1830, about three million pounds of goods traveled the canal. By 1838, that number had grown to nineteen million. Products from central Ohio’s farmlands poured into Cleveland’s port, filling the harbor with steamboats and other vessels awaiting their turns at the dock. The dramatic increase in business at the port sparked a building boom along the river and on Superior Avenue, as schools, churches, warehouses, and office space gave birth to what was becoming one of the most vibrant and successful ports on the Great Lakes.
Cleveland could offer something unique, direct access east to New York or southeast to New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico. No other city on the Great Lakes had water access to New York or New Orleans.
Water was pushing this new young village on a path to prosperity.
In the summer of 1860, the Cleveland Leader, one of the city’s daily newspapers, complained of the city’s plight, “We continue to make nothing and buy everything.” That was about to change. Railroads had dramatically reduced the importance of the Ohio & Erie Canal. By the start of the Civil War, five major rail lines passed through the city. At war’s end, iron from the Lake Superior region began arriving by lake carriers in record amounts.
Much was then shipped by rail to steel manufacturers in Pittsburgh, Wheeling, and Youngstown. But by 1868, Cleveland itself was home to more than a dozen steel rolling mills. As the industrial revolution generated startling economic growth across the country, for a time no city grew faster than Cleveland. Water and rail made Cleveland a manufacturing giant, the country’s second largest automotive city, and the largest shipbuilding port on the Great Lakes.
Cleveland’s water-based economy was huge, diverse, and—as the 20th century arrived—seemingly recession-proof. In 1860, Cleveland was a relatively tiny town of 43,000. Seventy years later, it was home to a world-class port and a population of more than 900,000—the nation’s sixth largest. Access to water had made it a vibrant and prosperous city. but the end of that prosperity—and the city’s wise use of its water was nearing the end.
Cyrus Eaton, Cleveland’s world-renowned industrialist, once said the Depression hit his hometown harder than any city in the country.
Indeed, the loss of jobs and the post-war flight to the suburbs launched Cleveland on a path of slow, albeit relentless, economic decline.
As the city began to lose residents and jobs, Cleveland also paid a price for not tending to its greatest asset. By the 1960s, both Lake Erie and the Cuyahoga River became dangerously polluted, significantly damaging the Northeast Ohio fishing industry and dealing a crippling blow to the city’s reputation.
On June 22, 1969, an oil slick on the Cuyahoga caught fire. Flames on the river reached five stories high. Wooden bridges burned. The city’s water, the primary source of its greatness, made it the butt of jokes that linger to this day.
Three things must happen with our fresh water is it is to play a pivotal role in northeast Ohio’s economic recovery. We must: 1. keep that water here. 2. keep it clean. 3. rebuild the port as an economic hub.
For decades, Lake Erie and the river suffered as phosphorous and other industrial pollutants poured into the water unchecked, killing fish and other helpful species, giving the water an untenable odor, closing beaches, and spreading contamination north to the Canadian shoreline.
In 1972, Congress finally acted, passing the Clean Water Act, which regulates the discharge of pollutants into the nation’s surface waters, including lakes, rivers, streams, wetlands, and coastal areas. The act dramatically curtailed the discharge of untreated waste water and sewage from government and industrial sources, and eventually made both Lake Erie and the Cuyahoga River safer for swimming and fishing.
The results were remarkable. But eventually, problems returned. Lake Erie today again faces significant problems—largely invasive species, sediment, and the vestiges of pollution. The lake and the river are back from the dead, positioned to play a vital role in the 21st-century economy. But it is worth restating that this rebirth will be sustained only if we keep our water clean, wisely build an economy around it, and prevent other parts of the country from tapping into what is Greater Cleveland’s most precious resource.
Toward that end, in 1986 Congress passed the Water Resource Development Act designed, in part, to prevent diversion of Great Lakes water. But many legal scholars thought the act vulnerable to a legal challenge, so in the mid-1990s representatives of the eight Great Lakes states and two Canadian provinces began negotiating a basin-wide approach to decisions on water usage.
The result was the St. Lawrence River Basin Water Resources Compact—commonly called the Great Lakes Compact, a product of more than four years of negotiations by the governors, a 39-member advisory committee, and input from thousands of U.S. and Canadian citizens. Canada enacted the compact rather quickly. Approval by the eight states and the congress took more than five years.
The Ohio House twice ratified the compact, the second time by a vote of 90–3. But Ohio was one of the last states to give its final approval because the compact stalled in the Ohio Senate for more than a year. an April 27, 2008, editorial in the Cleveland Plain Dealer—one of many the newspaper wrote urging Ohio to ratify the agreement—angrily suggested the Senate’s foot-dragging “represents one of the most unforgivable public policy abuses perpetrated upon the people of Northeast Ohio in decades.” The paper accused more than several senators of concocting “some crackpot theory” that exposed “all of Ohio to economic harm.”
After allowing some face-saving for the Senate, Ohio became the sixth state to ratify the compact. In October of 2008, President George W. Bush signed it, just days after its approval by the U.S. House and less than a month after passing the U.S. Senate.
Now the law of the land, the Great Lakes Compact essentially bans diversion of large amounts of water outside the Great Lakes. In the United States, each of the eight Great Lakes states has a seat on a water resources council. Any water withdrawal exceeding five million gallons daily must be approved by a majority of the council. Similar diversion rules apply in Canada. In Ohio, only counties straddling the Great Lakes Basin are allowed to use Lake Erie water. Diversion approved prior to the compact’s ratification, like Akron’s large scale use of Lake Erie water, are allowed to continue.
The importance of preventing diversions is enormous, as public officials in arid parts of the country have been publicly talking of preying on Great Lakes water since the early days of the 21st century. In late 2007, when he was running for president, new Mexico Governor Bill Richardson called for a national policy to consider redistribution of water to needy areas, remarking that the West was drying up while places around the Great Lakes were “awash in water.” It was around then that a professor at the University of Alabama produced a plan to pipe water out of the Great Lakes into the Sunbelt.
David Naftzger, a former director of the Council of Great Lakes Governors, predicted in 2008 that an eventual water grab is a certainty. “Look at a map showing water shortages and population growth and see how they match up,” Naftzger told the Plain Dealer. “Now look at us and you can see a concern that, as times move on, those areas will be looking at the Great Lakes to bring them water— through either a tanker, pipeline, or natural channels.”
While Congress has the power to repeal the Great Lakes Compact, for now the world’s largest supply of fresh water appears safe. But as a great many commentators have observed, while 20th-century wars were often fought over oil, 21st-century wars will be waged over fresh water.
But even under a worst-case scenario, if some Great Lakes water ends up being diverted later in the century, the advantages enjoyed by the bountiful supply of fresh water enjoyed by just 8 of the 50 states argue strongly for future economic growth.
President Barack Obama has championed a proposal, as of this writing not yet law, that would spend an additional $5 billion over a 10-year period to continue Great Lakes cleanup as part of a plan to revive the lakes’ economic, recreation, and navigational potential. A 2008 Brookings Institute report concluded that such a cleanup would provide Cleveland with an economic boost between $2.1 billion and $3.7 billion with the overall economic benefit to the Great Lakes states estimated at a staggering $100 billion.
The logic is irrefutable. A cleaner Lake Erie for fishing, boating, swimming, and other water activities would not only drive up property values, but would also make the region more desirable for businesses creating jobs and generating wealth. As Greater Cleveland Partnership President, Joe Roman correctly noted, “With 300 miles of shoreline, Cleveland and the rest of Northern Ohio could thrive if we are able to fully realize the economic potential of this tremendous asset.”
Officials in Wisconsin figured this out years before it occurred to those in Greater Cleveland. Four of the world’s 11 largest water technology companies are located in Wisconsin. Milwaukee alone is home to 120 water-related companies. Marquette University Law School now has a water-law curriculum. And planning is underway for a $30 million lake-front headquarters of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Great Lakes Water Institute. Board members and leaders at the Great Lakes Science Center are now engaging in similar water technology efforts, but no one disputes that Greater Cleveland lags behind Milwaukee in planning for a water-based economy of the future.
Toledo Blade
Another significant problem is the troubling growth of toxic algae in Lake Erie and the spread of zebra mussels. The algae colors the water green and can be dangerous to humans, pets, and wildlife. Zebra mussels harm the fishing industry and pollute beaches. These festering problems only underscore the importance of a sizable, federally-funded Great Lakes cleanup plan.
Rebuilding Cleveland’s port as a significant shipping center is proving an even more daunting challenge. the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port authority, a vision of former Mayor Carl Stokes and Council President James Stanton, was created by county voters in 1968 to oversee what was then one of the Great Lakes’ busiest ports. For the first few decades of its existence, the port thrived. For decades, shipping raw materials to make steel was the port’s main business. But even with the steel industry’s decline, an economic impact study in the late 1990s found the port directly accounted for 4,700 jobs, generated $400 million in spending annually, and $64 million in taxes.
But the port also engaged in a obscene amount of over-ambitious thinking, devoting an inordinate amount of time on plans for a World Trade Center, cruise ship and ferry service, an aquarium and lake front retail none of which materialized. Throughout the first decade of the 21st century, shipping at the port declined steadily.
With shipping revenues in a free-fall, the port has struggled to raise its $158 million share of the $600 million tab the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers needs to dredge mountains of muck from the port and Cuyahoga River. Without that dredging—and a place to dump the muck, federal officials have warned that the Cleveland harbor could be shut down by 2015.
By the summer of 2010, Cleveland’s port was in clear crisis mode. the nine-member board fired its director and hired a new one. it scrapped a costly, $1 billion plan to build a new port several miles east of downtown. there was no clear game plan to raise the funds needed for dredging, nor one to revive its slumping shipping business. adding to those woes was the city’s need to secure federal funding to fix a crumbling slope above the river that threatened shipping to sites downstream.
In a series of news stories and editorials, The Plain Dealer outlined the port’s many “immense challenges,” underscored the need for dramatic change, and correctly linked the need for that change with the necessity of the port playing a major role in reviving Greater Cleveland’s economy.
An old, now somewhat trite, saying holds that, in determining the success of a business, the three most important factors are always location, location, and location. The visionary pioneers who settled this territory more than 200 years ago understood that.
Northeast Ohio and, indeed, the entire Great Lakes region, has something the rest of the world desperately needs. What’s more, we have a lot of it.
More than ever before, the fresh water that served us so well in the past represents our best hope for the future.
Bibliography
archives, The Atlantic “Water Summit.” October 29, 2009.
archives, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. 2009.
archives, The Plain Dealer. 1991–2010.
Miller, Carol Poh and Robert Wheeler. Cleveland: A Concise History, 1796–1996. 2nd edition. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997.
Rose, William Ganson. Cleveland: The Making of a City. Cleveland: World Publishing, 1950. reprinted with a new introduction. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1990.
Van Tassel, David D. and John J. Grabowski. The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History. 2nd edition. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996.
Wallen, James. Cleveland’s Golden Story: A Chronicle of Hearts that Hoped, Minds that Planned and Hands that Toiled, to Make a City “Great and Glorious.” Cleveland: William Taylor & Son, 1920.
Water: Our Thirsty World. Washington, DC: National Geographic Society, April 2010.
Further resources: http://www.great-lakes.net/teach/about/
New Lakefront Plan from Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson Strikes a Tone of Realism – Steve Litt
New lakefront plan from Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson strikes a tone of realism – Steve Litt, Plain Dealer November 15, 2011
CLEVELAND, Ohio — It would be easy to greet Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson’s new vision for the downtown Cleveland lakefront with skepticism.
After all, it’s the latest of more than half a dozen plans over the past 25 years that contemplated everything from building a floating hotel shaped like the Titanic to reconfiguring miles of shoreline with new islands made of landfill. Despite all the grand visions, the downtown lakefront remains a half-realized dream – and a chronic wasted opportunity.
Granted, a lot has been accomplished. In a burst of action starting in 1995, the city completed a collection of attractions on the shoreline, including the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, the Great Lakes Science Center and Cleveland Browns Stadium.
But lakefront development has stalled since then, leaving the architectural icons of the 1990s standing isolated amid a barren landscape of parking lots and lifeless streets and parks.
Despite the malaise, there are good reasons to take Jackson’s new plan seriously. Most important is that it isn’t so much a cascade of wildly original ideas as it is a collection of the most logical and sensible concepts for the downtown portion of the lakefront that have surfaced in earlier plans.
This is not to suggest that the designers involved, EE&K of New York and Van Auken Akins of Cleveland, have plagiarized their predecessors.
On the contrary, the designers this time around appear to have arrived at their recommendations independently. This gives all the more credence to their conclusions, the most important of which is that there’s plenty of room for private development and ample public space on the waterfront.
In fact, the numbers sound impressive. The designers believe there’s ample space for 3.5 million square feet of development on 55 acres of waterfront land along two linear miles of shoreline that weave in and out from Dock 28 north of the stadium to the west end of Burke Lakefront Airport.
The plan also includes miles of bike paths connecting the waterfront to the downtown core and roughly two miles of public promenades on the water’s edge. Public spaces of high quality could be woven throughout three distinct waterfront zones from the Port of Cleveland to Burke.
All of this is good news, because it means the city could finally realize a greater degree of private-sector payback from the massive public investments lavished on the shoreline attractions in the ’90s.
What’s different about the new plan is that the city and the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority have clarified the ownership and management of key parcels around the harbor, which could facilitate development.
In addition, the new plan is emerging amid a greater sense of certainty about what’s possible, and what’s not possible, on the lakefront.
The port, which had contemplated moving its downtown cargo operations east to East 55th Street, has decided to stay put on the lakefront acres west of the stadium. This settles, for now, one of the biggest questions affecting waterfront development by limiting
possibilities and allowing the city to focus first on the strong opportunities around North Coast Harbor.
Also, Jackson has come down firmly against the idea of closing Burke Lakefront Airport and either turning it into a park or a vast real estate development.
That position also makes sense. With millions of square feet of vacant office space in the core of downtown, it doesn’t seem like the best time to open up a huge new area for development along the lakefront at Burke.
It makes more sense, instead, to capitalize on the investments already made in the ’90s, such as the Rock Hall.
In many ways, Jackson’s plan represents a continuation of the ambitious lakefront plan completed in 2005 by his predecessor, Jane Campbell.
But while the Campbell plan provided an important framework for future decision-making about all nine miles of city lakefront, it was less specific about how to get things started in discrete locations.
Under the new plan, Jackson has a more plausible road map about how to get started and keep moving on the downtown waterfront.
Small but important pieces of the new vision have a decent chance of happening within three to five years, either because the projects are already funded with federal money or could attract private investment.
These include a pedestrian bridge at North Coast Harbor designed by Boston architect Miguel Rosales (another legacy of the Campbell plan), a pair of waterfront restaurants, more on-street parking on the East Ninth Street Pier and a marina for pleasure boats north of the Rock Hall.
If those elements come into being relatively soon, the city could create a sense of forward motion around the Rock Hall, which could attract bigger pieces of proposed development, such as office complexes proposed for chunks of land west and east of North Coast Harbor.
To be sure, obstacles exist. One is that the city simply doesn’t have tens of millions of dollars to pour into the infrastructure needed to trigger large-scale development on the
waterfront. It’s counting on the federal government for an $80 million grant to pay for transportation improvements at the port and for a pedestrian bridge from the north end of Mall C to North Coast Harbor and the Rock Hall.
Chris Warren, Jackson’s chief of regional development, described the process of winning such a grant as “enormously competitive,” which sounds daunting.
But other parts of the plan sound eminently doable, such as creating new parking spaces on the East Ninth Street Pier as a way to make the area more accessible on a casual basis and more like a regular city street.
The computer graphics created by EE&K and Van Auken Akins for Jackson’s lakefront plan look deceptively smooth and polished. The reality is that the plan will take two decades or more to complete and will undoubtedly evolve over time. New plans will probably emerge as the city’s circumstances change.
For now, Jackson’s plan provides a good framework for steps the city can take in the near term. It’s crucial that the mayor and his team deliver on what they’ve envisioned. If they can’t, the city’s lakefront will continue to stay frozen, largely as it was at beginning of the last decade.
Mayor Frank Jackson Tries to Change History with Lakefront Plan – Plain Dealer
Mayor Frank Jackson tries to change history with lakefront plan – Plain Dealer November 15, 2011
CLEVELAND, Ohio — The development of Cleveland’s lakefront is a century-old story of piecemeal action and broken promises, but Mayor Frank Jackson thinks he has strategy that could put all that in the past.
Jackson presented a plan(pdf) Monday for developing the downtown waterfront from the Port of Cleveland to Burke Lakefront Airport. Drawings show 90 acres laced with offices, restaurants, shops and marinas. (Read the earlier version of this story.)
The plan, drafted by EE&K architects of New York and Van Auken Akins Architects of Cleveland, could unfold over many years and eventually reach $2 billion in value. Most of the money is expected to come from the private sector.
Skepticism came quickly at the City Hall news conference, not only from reporters but from John Onacila, a 67-year-old boater who lives on the city’s West Side. From the rear of the room, he listened as proponents declared this plan to be The One.
“I’ve heard that before,” Onacila whispered.
But Jackson and others say the latest vision can become reality because it has the backing of the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority, the Cleveland Browns and other lakefront interests and answers two lingering questions.
Will the port move? Will the airport close? In both cases the answer is no.
Another key is a series of ordinances, given to the council Monday night, that make clear which sections of the development area the city will control, and which will be managed by the Browns or the port authority.
Council President Martin J. Sweeney said the council should pass the legislation by February. He and downtown Councilman Joe Cimperman said they are excited about seeing mixed-use waterfront development become a reality.
“I think it’s a real shot at making something happen,” Cimperman said. “There’s going to be such a demand for this.”
The city, which owns all of the development area, will lease land to developers, just as it does with the Browns. Chris Warren, Jackson’s chief of regional development, expects some developers to commit to projects within six months, though financing and other hurdles could push construction out two or three years.
A marina for temporary docking and a pedestrian bridge over North Coast Harbor, paid for by the city with grants, will open in 2013. Warren says those projects prove Jackson’s plan is not “pie-in-the-sky.”
When other publicly financed features will arrive is not as certain. The city needs $100 million for other work, including a second pedestrian bridge linking the lakefront to downtown. Cleveland has asked the federal government to pay $80 million of that expense.
Skeptics can be forgiven. A number of grand plans for the lakefront have been floated over the years; Jackson’s is just the latest.
A 1959 plan called for a recreation center with a sports arena and aquarium. In the 1960s and 1970s, proponents pushed for an international jetport five miles offshore, along with new parks, beaches and marinas.
In 2000, then-Mayor Michael R. White proposed a $750 million plan that included a Ferris wheel, children’s museum, band shell, theater complex, aquarium, ferry dock and marina for pleasure boats.
Four years later, his successor, Jane Campbell called for five marinas, five beaches, 3.9 million square feet of office and commercial space and 7,500 housing units. Planners also spoke about building an 18-hole golf course and turning Burke Lakefront Airport into mixed-use development.
Follow Thomas Ott on Twitter @thomasott1
Cleveland Water History – Historical Overview
The history since 1810 of drinking water in Cleveland.
From the City of Cleveland Department of Water
“The State of the Great Lakes” Chris Korleski at Cleveland City Club 7.11.14
Chris Korleski is director of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Great Lakes National Program Office (GLNPO). GLNPO coordinates U.S. efforts in implementing the goals and objectives of the Canada – U.S. Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, working under the strategic framework of the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative. Before coming to GLNPO, Korleski was director of the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency. He also served as counsel to Honda of America Mfg. Inc. in Marysville, Ohio, and was an assistant attorney general in the Ohio Attorney General’s Environmental Enforcement Section. Korleski earned a bachelor’s degree in agronomy from The Ohio State University College of Agriculture, and a master’s degree in agronomy from the University of Nebraska. He received his law degree from The Ohio State University. Tickets: $18 members/$30 nonmembers
Water Matters From the Plain Dealer
An ongoing report on Great Lakes water issues. Includes the 2008 series “Who Owns Our Water?”
The Great Lakes Water Commission
The Great Lakes Commission is an interstate compact agency that promotes the orderly, integrated and comprehensive development, use and conservation of the water and related natural resources of the Great Lakes basin and St. Lawrence River. Its members include the eight Great Lakes states with associate member status for the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Québec. Each jurisdiction appoints a delegation of three to five members comprised of senior agency officials, legislators and/or appointees of the governor or premier.
Water System
From the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History
WATER SYSTEM. The production, purification, and distribution of potable water constitutes a “hidden system” in the infrastructure of the modern city. Until faucets run dry, or reservoirs are exhausted, citizens tend to remain unaware of the nature and condition of the complex technological, social, and political attributes of the water system.
Early settlers in Cleveland were dependent on surface-water supplies from ponds, lakes, rivers, and streams, and upon dug wells, the latter becoming more prevalent as population density increased in the early walking city. A town pump on PUBLIC SQUARE is reported to have been in operation in 1812. Ca. 1820 a well existed at Bank (W. 6th) and Superior designated mainly for firefighting. At the same time, “every family had a well; however, Benhu Johnson hauled lake water when droughts set in . . . [for] twenty-five cents for two barrels.” In Jan. 1833 the privately owned Cleveland Water Co. was chartered to supply water for the village, but the city council continued its involvement, allocating $35 in 1840 to sink public wells at PUBLIC SQUARE. By 1852 water was being drawn from springs, wells, canals, and the CUYAHOGA RIVER, with storage cistern-based pumps utilized in the business district for firefighting and public use. A dependable public water system to provide fresh water, together with a sewage system to dispose of the used water, was needed. Both were capital-intensive municipal functions that reflected a growing concern for local public health and the needs of Cleveland’s growing businesses. The city was prosperous enough to acquire the needed financing for a municipal waterworks, and a popular vote (1,230 to 599) in 1853 authorized the city to issue $400,000 in bonds to build it. Water was first brought from Lake Erie in Sept. 1856, via a 50″ boilerplate pipe tunnel extending 300′ into the lake, reaching shore at about W. 58th St. At the same time, the KENTUCKY ST. RESERVOIR at Kentucky (W. 38th) and Prospect (later Franklin) streets was opened to store water pumped by 2 Cornish steam engines, the first west of the Alleghenies. Two distribution mains totaling 44 mi. were established, along with a water fountain on Public Square. By 1864 most of the 75 cisterns placed around the city for firefighting had been supplanted by piped water. Cleveland now had the ability to provide fire protection for the city and make a constant volume of fresh water readily available for residential and business needs. In 1856, the waterworks’ first year of full operation, 127 million gallons of water (38,000 gallons per day) were distributed (in 1900, distribution was about 20 billion gallons–about 5.5 million gallons per day; in 1970, about 129 billion gallons–about 35.3 million gallons per day).
With the advent of piped water, traditional privies, storage cisterns, and other means for disposing of sewage rapidly became inadequate. The first sewer in Cleveland is reported to have been built for surface drainage of Euclid St. in 1856. Two years later a rudimentary sewage system consisting of open drains conveying the wastewater downhill toward the Cuyahoga River and Lake Erie was begun. To gain access to fresh water beyond Lake Erie’s polluted shoreline, a new water-intake crib and tunnel were built some 6,600′ offshore in 1874. However, in 1881 city health officials protested that some 25 sewers, factories, oil refineries, and other industries were polluting the Cuyahoga River and Lake Erie, source of the city’s drinking water. By that time, 125 mi. of water mains had been completed in Cleveland, and the system’s capacity was about 10 million gallons per day, serving about a third of Cleveland citizens. In the 1880s the original Kentucky St. Reservoir had already become inadequate, requiring the building of the Fairmount and Kinsman reservoirs to service the growing population moving toward the heights east of downtown Cleveland.
To mitigate the growing pollution, the water system extended intakes farther and farther out into Lake Erie, and early in the 20th century finally provided treatment of the raw water. In 1890 a new 7′ diameter, 9,117′ long water inlet tunnel was completed. Yet another 9′ diameter intake tunnel was begun in 1896, extending 26,000′ into the lake, one of the longest in the world at that time; it was completed in 1904 after a considerable loss of life during its construction (see WATERWORKS TUNNEL DISASTERS). The intake structure for this tunnel, which at a distance resembled a freighter, was known as the “5 Mile Crib,” the distance from the actual lake intake to the Kirtland pumping station, built in 1904 at Kirtland St. (E. 49th St.). Seven years later, in 1911, Cleveland introduced water chlorination to reduce the instance of water-borne bacteria, on the recommendation of Drs. Howard Haskins and ROGER G. PERKINS†. Still unfiltered, the water was found unpalatable; in 1915 it was reported that on at least one occasion, thousands of people patronized springs in places such as WADE PARK and ROCKEFELLER PARK, requiring police to keep order. About 1916, the original 6,600′ intake tunnel west of the “5 Mile Crib” was extended about 26,000′ from shore to feed water to the Division Ave. filtration plant, which became operative in 1918. By 1920 the system of water mains had grown to 985 total miles, and it continued to grow in response to Cleveland’s expanded water needs. The Baldwin Filtration Plant on the border of CLEVELAND HEIGHTS was completed in 1925, with a reservoir capacity of more than 135 million gallons, capable of pumping up to 200 million gallons per day (see BALDWIN RESERVOIR). In addition, expansion and alterations begun much earlier on the Kirtland station were completed in 1927, giving Cleveland wholly filtered and chlorinated water.
As a municipal industry, the waterworks was expected to be self-supporting, and improved water quality was expensive; the water system’s debt grew from $1,775,000 in 1886, to $4,266,000 in 1906, and reached $27 million in 1930. Beginning in 1856, charges were levied on water users in the form of a semi-annual flat fee paid by the owner of each dwelling or building, to pay off the bonds issued for construction and expansions. Widespread criticism of poor water quality and inadequate service, however, slowed customer growth until after the turn of the century, when both the quality and delivery of water improved. With the universal introduction of water meters into dwellings by 1908, the amount of water used could be gauged more accurately, producing more equitable customer charges. As a result of the growing customer base, the water debt accumulated from past improvements was easily amortized.
By the 1940s Cleveland’s water system included cribs, 4 lake tunnels, 2 filtration plants (Division Ave. and Baldwin), 3 major pumping stations (Kirtland, Fairmount, and Division), and 2,700 mi. of water mains. During the post-World War II period, a new 3.5-mi., 10′ diameter tunnel was built into the lake to supply water to the new Nottingham Filtration Plant and pumping station in northeast Cleveland. Completed in 1951, the plant had a capacity of about 150 million gallons per day. A fourth, 2.5-mi, 8′ diameter tunnel, completed in 1958, extended northward into Lake Erie from the Crown Filtration Plant inWESTLAKE. The plant had a daily capacity of 50 million gallons, making the nominal capacity of the water system about 225 billion gallons annually. In 1970 the system had over 4,000 mi. of water mains, serving 75 sq. mi. in Cleveland and an additional 450 sq. mi. in Cuyahoga, Medina, Lorain, and Lake counties. Since 1856, when Cleveland’s public water supply was established, annual consumption has increased an average of 12 billion gallons each decade–much of the increase coming in the 20th century. However, between 1970 and 1986 daily water consumption declined from about 545 million gallons to approx. 320 million gallons (about 118 billion gallons annually). Much of the decline may be accounted for by demographic changes and the loss of business and industry from greater Cleveland. The city’s water system, however, had expanded its service area, providing water for Cleveland and 68 surrounding suburbs and municipalities in Cuyahoga, Lake, Summit, and Medina counties in 1986. The system had grown to about 5,800 mi. of water mains, serving some 400,000 accounts.
During the postwar period, purification and filtration continued to be improved. Beginning in 1965, sodium silicofluoride was added to the water to control tooth decay. In 1986, purification processes of settling and filtration were augmented by the use of aluminum sulfate for impurities coagulation, potassium permanganate for oxidation, chlorine for disinfection, and activated carbon for taste and odor control. Although most communities in Cuyahoga, Medina, and Summit counties served by Cleveland’s water system had direct service, CLEVELAND HEIGHTS, BEDFORD, EAST CLEVELAND, andLAKEWOOD purchased their water in bulk for many years and redistributed it to customers, charging their own water rates. In 1986 this bulk service was extended to Lake County.
Some of Cleveland’s suburbs, dissatisfied with the quality of water service and the high rates charged, initiated lawsuits in the 1970s to regionalize the ownership and management of the system, similar to the NORTHEAST OHIO REGIONAL SEWER DISTRICT, organized in 1972. In order to avoid losing control of the system, the City of Cleveland had to agree to a more equitable formula for setting suburban water rates and undertake a massive program of renovation, rehabilitation, and improvement of the system–a program that in 1982 was projected to cost roughly $918 million. Cost projections were revised regularly as interest rates and projected demand for water changed; for the 1986-92 period, the projected investment in repairs and improvements was calculated at about $380 million. It was expected that the capital-repair and improvements program will extend into the 1990s before completion. Since the water system is a self-supporting utility, funds for the capital-improvement program were acquired through increases in water rates to repay bonds sold for construction purposes. These increases caused some political furor in the city council, however, despite the fact that Cleveland’s water rates remained among the lowest of any major American city.
Willis E. Sibley
Bluestone, Daniel M., ed. Cleveland (1978).
City of Cleveland Water Div. The Cleveland Water Story (ca. 1970).
Fishing Industry in Cleveland
From the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History
FISHING INDUSTRY. Although Cleveland is situated on a lake that historically ranked among the world’s great fisheries, Clevelanders never looked to Lake Erie as a food source in any major sense. After 1796 the fishery was a marginal commerce, overshadowed by the port’s role as a transportation hub and industrial depot. Four major factors, geography, technology, consumer taste, and chronological coincidence, steered commercial fishermen to other ports on Lake Erie, particularly Sandusky, OH, and Erie, PA. By 1850 the Port of Cleveland looked to the Great Lakes for resources that proved of far greater economic importance than inexpensive protein.
The topography of the Lake Erie shore, high and rockbound from just east of the CUYAHOGA RIVER west to Cedar Point, presents as great a navigational hazard as any stretch of water on the Great Lakes. Only a few river mouths provide safe refuge from the sudden storms. On 19 Apr. 1808, Capt. Joseph Plumb of NEWBURGH, fitted out a sailing scow for a seining expedition. A sudden squall wrecked the boat at Dover Point (BAY VILLAGE), drowning all aboard except Capt. Plumb. Plumb was saved in a daring rescue, but the event exposed the difficulties of offshore fishing from Cleveland. Geography placed the richest fishing grounds at the far ends of the lake. The shallow, warm western basin has always been home to most of the lake’s fish. The deep eastern basin, on which Cleveland is sited, holds comparatively few. Because of its depth, it is not as easily fished as the west. Further, the species available off Cleveland were not as profitable to fishermen as the highly desirable fish of the west. Geography gave Cleveland’s competitors another advantage–both Sandusky and Erie grew beside the only natural harbors on Lake Erie. Sandusky and Presque Isle bays provided both refuge and terrain favorable for early fishing equipment.
The earliest extensive commercial fishing in Ohio began during the 1830s in Sandusky Bay. Its calm, shallow water and abundance of fish permitted simple, inexpensive onshore seining. A seine was a large bag-shaped net carried out on the water by rowboat, dropped overboard, and then dragged ashore. The rocky shore of Cleveland was not appropriate for this operation. When the northern port of the Ohio Canal was awarded to Cleveland it profited indirectly from the fishing industry along the Great Lakes, handling large quantities of fish caught elsewhere for transshipment to Ohio hinterland markets. During the 1850s, commercial fishermen moved out into the main fetch of the lake, significantly increasing their catch. Simultaneously, Cleveland received the first shipment of iron ore from the Marquette Range in 1852. This new traffic further congested the busy river, pushing out less profitable vessels. Still, despite the gathering industrial boom, a real commerce in fish did exist in the FLATS. The wholesale grocers who had transshipped imported fish on the canal had evolved into commission merchants who brokered a variety of commodities. These merchants purchased boatloads of fish from as far away as Lake Superior. They would then pack the fish on ice for local sale, or in salt for transport inland–the latter proved more profitable. W. L. Standart, cited as the most prominent commercial fisherman in Cleveland, operated 2 boats from the city, however, he was also a grocer, commission merchant, and saloon keeper. Clearly, Standart was not the professional lakeman seen in other ports.
Consumer taste also retarded the development of a fishing fleet in Cleveland. Both Native Americans and Europeans pursued the coldwater species of fish, especially whitefish and lake trout. This demand remained constant until those populations declined in the 1930s and 1940s. While found throughout the Great Lakes, neither species was particularly numerous in comparatively warm Lake Erie. With the fishing fleets of the upper lakes supplying the premium fish, and those of Sandusky and Erie providing other needs, Clevelanders chose to invest in fleets of freighters to serve the transportation and steel industries. By the 1860s, the economic role of the Port of Cleveland had been
established. The city would be a consumer, not a producer, of raw resources such as foodstuffs. However, some fishing boats sailed from the Cuyahoga, and processing plants continued to clean and preserve the catch. This marginal commerce would last for many years. In fact, the industry did enjoy some growth in the late 19th century. In 1883, for example, the demand of a booming urban population kept 4 major processing houses and several independent operators profitable. Two of the large firms specialized in ocean fish and shellfish, which had been sold in Cleveland since the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825. The other 2 handled imported lake fish. The independents generally sold their catch directly to grocers or through the municipal market. John W. Averill, Jr., was typical of the owner-operators of this period. His fleet consisted of 4 steam tugs and 1 sailboat, somewhat smaller than the comparable Sandusky firms. Even so, Averill especially advertised his whitefish and lake trout, indicating that he also imported fish.
In 1899 Chicago-based A. Booth & Co., then the largest fishing company on the lakes, opened a fishing station and processing plant in the Flats. Both (est. 1848) were the first to apply sophisticated management and financial procedures to a rough-and-tumble industry. The company soon had stations on all major fishing grounds and plants in most lake cities. True to form, Booth quickly grew to be the largest commercial fishing company in Cleveland. However, the long decline of the fishery had just begun, and the first evidence of it was the collapse of the lake sturgeon population. Relentless fishing and environmental changes caused by pollution and soil erosion decimated this once-valuable species. The period 1880-1915 regularly saw catches of 40 million lbs. of all varieties in Ohio waters. After that, species after species was subjected to the same pressures that had driven the sturgeon to near-extinction. The waters off Cleveland were particularly affected. Contrary to popular belief, the arrival of the sea lamprey did not cause the decline of the fish populations of Lake Erie; the lamprey does not breed in the warm streams feeding into the lake. By the 1920s, the average yearly catch had fallen to 16 million lbs. The decline of the cisco, or lake herring, accounted for most of this loss, which was extremely damaging to the industry as the cisco had accounted for the bulk of the sales. Some of the older firms went out of business as the industry as a whole grew smaller during the 1920s and 1930s. However, the companies that have survived were founded then. Fulton Fish, Euclid Fish, and State Fish all began
as fleet owners and processors. The industry was unionized during the 1930s, which drove up wages and costs; World War II drafted every available sailor into the armed forces, leaving only 1 boat operating out of Cleveland; and postwar consumer taste turned increasingly to beef. By 1950 only 7 boats sailed from the port. Cleveland was not the only city so affected, the industry was withering throughout the Great Lakes.
The nature of the lakes’ ecosystem was changing because of human action. Commercially valuable fish were vanishing, to be replaced by “rough” fish such as carp and smelt, which flourished despite the habitat degradation. Environmental factors, so pronounced in overutilized Lake Erie, culminated in a single great ecological catastrophe; the mayfly hatch of 1954 failed. The loss of this food source was disastrous for fish populations. The number of sauger, blue pike, walleye, and perch plummeted. Moreover, the mayflies served as an environmental indicator. Polluted and oxygen-depleted, Lake Erie increasingly could not sustain life, and this general collapse finished several companies. In 1955 Booth closed its Cleveland station; Star Fisheries, the predecessor to the State Fish Co., occupied their property in the Flats, and lean years followed. In the absence of pollution controls, the lake was increasingly fouled, and the boats departed Cleveland for more promising waters. In 1970, when Governor James Rhodes was forced to suspend fishing because of mercury contamination, only 1 boat, Fred Wittal’s Shark, was left on the river. By 1973, even it was gone. Nevertheless, the abandonment of Cleveland as a fishing harbor did not mean an end to its fish-processing industry. The surviving companies continued to import and distribute fish from the ocean and upper lakes. Prospects brightened in the 1970s as pollution control stemmed the habitat degradation. Fish stocks first stabilized, then grew. Although demand for fish increased, spurred by a cholesterol-conscious society, the fishing industry did not revive because the lucrative tourist industry lobbied for restrictions on the lakemen. Recreational fishermen, arguing that overfishing was responsible for the depletion of the stocks, met increasing success in Columbus, and strict netting regulations were applied. The Ohio Department of Natural Resources instituted a phased ban on gill nets in 1983, which became complete in 1985. Fishermen sold their equipment and quit the industry. By the late 1980s, the majority of lake fish consumed by Clevelanders were caught across the lake in Canada.
Michael McCormick
Western Reserve Historical Society