No dry dams for Shelby: Efforts to prevent flooding will focus on other options

SHELBY - Eight years and $1.6 million later, the Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District is on the brink of packing up and going home.

District representatives met Friday with the Black Fork Advisory Committee, a body of local officials organized to evaluate several proposed methods of reducing flooding of the Black Fork River in the Shelby area. District employees started working on those plans in 2010.

Some of those plans included the construction of dry dams south of the city, but only one focused on hydraulics-only solutions: up to 19 bridges and culverts along the river could be widened, log jams could be removed and designated flooding areas known as floodplain benches could be formed.

Dams are 'off the table'

Retaining water is the best way to reduce flooding, said Boris Slogar, a chief engineer for the conservancy district. The problem is that residents don't want those retention basins.

"The dams are gone," Slogar said Friday. "They're off the table, and we want to make that clear."

That left the committee with two choices: ask Muskingum to move forward with hydraulic improvements, or tell the organization to go home.

The hydraulics-only project would cost $18.3 million, and would provide at least $27.2 million in benefits to the city over the next 50 years, according to Miles Hebert, an engineer contracted to help with the project. That project would allow the water to leave Shelby more quickly and embark on a 31-mile trek to Charles Mill Lake.

"We may be increasing the flooding downstream," Hebert said. "We might have to do things that we can't talk about today because we don't know what they are yet."

Slogar said his office would need to spend $250,000 on a year-long study of how the hydraulics-only adjustments would alter the flow of water between Shelby and Charles Mill, should the district be asked to move forward with the project.

How would the hydraulics-only project be funded?

The $18.3 million project would be repaid over the next 30 years by owners of the 12,000 parcels in the Black Fork Subdistrict. Slogar said that rate already includes the price of financing, and other charges.

Owners of Shelby homes outside the floodplain would pay $9 a month per $100,000 of property value, rural home owners would pay $3 a month per $100,000 of property value, other rural parcels would be charged a flat $5 per month, small businesses outside the floodplain would pay $51 a month and small business in the floodplain would pay $126 a month.

Slogar said large businesses would be evaluated individually, and would pay much more monthly than the small businesses.

Gauging interest in the hydraulics project

Committee members in attendance took an informal poll to see who was in favor of the hydraulics project, and who wanted to part ways with Muskingum. Only one person voted in favor of hydraulics: Harv Traxler, a member of the Shelby Floodplain Management Commission.

Traxler said Shelby has been flooding for more than 100 years, and that committees like the current one are formed every 25 or 30 years to look into finding a solution.

"We do this again and again and again," Traxler said. "Your answers are here. They aren't easy, and they aren't cheap, but they're here."

Will Muskingum be included in the project? 

The decision to remove Muskingum entirely from the project will fall upon Shelby City Council, which next meets July 2.

"I consider it essentially closed," Slogar said. "When I leave here today, I'm not planning to come back."

Should city council members vote to not use Muskingum's hydraulics-only plans, the conservancy district employees will seal all of the documents, and notify all interested parties their work has ended.

The $1.6 million spent on planning over the last eight years will lie dormant forever, and will always need repaid should the subdistrict ever ask for a project in the future. The plans will slowly lose validity as time passes, the terrain changes and new generations rise to adulthood.

"You had an answer," Slogar said. "At least this time, you know what can be done."

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