City waits on permit while Sierra Club ponders lawsuit

FREMONT- With the release of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's supplemental environmental impact statement Friday, the city took another step closer to removing the Ballville Dam.

Next, city officials will wait for one final permit and see if a state environmental group — the Ohio Sierra Club — decides whether to continue its lawsuit that initially halted the project in July 2015

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers still has not issued a Section 404 permit for the dam's notching and removal. The agency issued a separate 404 permit to Fremont officials in September to build an ice control structure just north of the dam.

City law director Jim Melle said Monday there would be a 30-day public comment period that started Friday when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service released its SEIS.

Once that comment period ends in late November, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has up to 30 days to decide whether it will award the city the 404 permit needed to remove the dam, Melle said.

"I don't anticipate any problems," Melle said of the city getting the permit.

The incremental removal of the Ballville Dam and construction of an ice control structure remains the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's preferred options, as the agency reported Friday in its release of a final SEIS on the dam project.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife's final SEIS stated that the results of the sediment analysis, as well as the anticipated short-term nature of impacts downstream from sediment release, indicated there was little long-term risk to the Sandusky River and downstream habitats.

The agency noted that the sediment studies did not indicate a need for dredging. There is approximately 840,000 cubic yards of sediment located in the impoundment area behind the dam.

The SEIS stated that the Sandusky River ecosystem is capable of and routinely transports high sediment loads similar to what is expected to occur from dam removal.

The statement added that chemicals and contaminants tested from the sediment did not appear to be at levels that would cause adverse environmental impacts if the dam is removed.

Jen Miller, the Sierra Club's Ohio director, said her organization's legal team and scientific experts were still reviewing the federal agency's SEIS.

"We haven't made a decision on next steps for that reason," Miller said.

Miller said that what she had read from the SEIS vindicated the Sierra Club's decision to file for a federal injunction in July 2015 to halt the project. The Sierra Club director said the environmental statement showed the removal of the dam could double the output of phosphorus loading from the Sandusky River to Lake Erie.

"Most of that loading is hard to control," Miller said.

A large, growing dead zone in the lake's central basin, caused by nitrogen, could also be expanded with the dam's removal, Miller insisted.

Miller said the Sierra Club would ultimately like to see the dam removed, but only if the sediment behind the dam is removed first.

"We do feel as though the evidence presented indicates the sediment should be removed.

The costs of dredging and removing sediment are also much lower than what had first been estimated by federal officials, Miller said, with a new estimate in the $11-to-$16 million range.

Included in the final SEIS released Friday was a section on harmful algal blooms and whether dam removal would have any impact on those blooms. U.S. Fish and Wildlife reported that experts from Ohio State University, the University of Toledo and Bowling Green State University were asked to review concerns about algal blooms in the Western Lake Erie aquatic ecosystem.

The SEIS stated that responses from those experts indicated that removing the dam and release of impounded sediments would not impact cyanobacterial blooms in Sandusky Bay or Lake Erie.

Miller said the case involving the Ballville Dam and dam removal is about more than just the impact on Fremont.

She said Lake Erie is distressed and the Sierra Club sued to reduce the phosphorus and nitrogen load going into Lake Erie.

dacarson@gannett.com

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Twitter:@DanielCarson7