Warren Township residents continue to raise concerns over dam removal

If all goes according to the Trumbull Metroparks plan, the Leavittsburg dam will be removed in 2025.

Residents and a group called 'Our lives count" are opposed to the project and Wednesday night, they met with Warren Township trustees and other officials to express their concerns.

"The stink of that bottom of the river, those of us that live along the river are going to have to deal with that for I don't know how many years, at least a year, two years is my guess, but then the maintenance of that property and the cleanup of that property has not been addressed at all," one resident said.

"We're gonna destroy the environment for years all the way down to Louisiana by taking this thing out," another resident said.

"Our concerns basically are not only from health concerns but it is also cleanup because there is sediment, there is anything from appliances, cars, all these are buried in that river and when that water level comes down to the level that we think it is going to, it is going to expose all this and they are telling us we are responsible as a township and homeowners to go in and remove these cars and remove these appliances and everything else," Warren Township Trustee Edward Anthony said. "We're being told the cleanup is going to be the responsibility again of the township and the homeowners which we can't afford."

The discussion also centered around the illegal discharge that is currently going into the river from about 750 homes. The sanitation project to fix that wouldn't be complete before the removal of the dam.

"If the dam is taken out where it is projected in 2025, the sanitation project will not even be completed until '28 or '29 so all that illegal discharge will be exposed because the water level will go down and expose all that illegal discharge," Anthony said.

Other issues that were brought up included the recreational aspect and destroying the local ecosystem.

Township trustees say they're frustrated because they have been raising these concerns for several years.

"The same concerns that we brought to them two and a half years ago, they want us to bring it to them again, so what makes us think it's going to be any different," Anthony said.

Trumbull Metroparks has a meeting scheduled for Thursday and want residents to address their concerns then.