Toussaint Creek Cleanout 2015-2018
 

Toussaint Creek is located northwest Ohio in Wood, Ottawa & Sundusky Counties. It's located about halfway between Port Clinton and Toledo and near Magee Marsh and Ottawa National Wildlife Refuse and drains into Lake Erie. That area is on a major flyway so is a birding hotspot during migrations. The rivers in that area that drained the Great Black Swamp typically have slow, sluggish currents.

A friend of mine that lives out that way was telling me he saw the Toussaint was being cleaned out so I had to do a bit of googling. It seems there has been a lot of flooding along Toussaint Creek in past years. A petition was filed asking for a cleanout of debris to help alleviate the flooding. In 2015 Wood, Ottawa and Sandusky counties contracted to have 32 miles of the creek cleared of trees and logjams. Project was to be completed by April 2018. Cost of the project was paid by assessing landowners along the drainage. I was impressed with scope of the project:

32 miles of river to be cleared
An estimated 6600 down or leaning trees, about 5000 to be removed
240 logjams to be removed
Cost around $900,000

Now that's a river cleanout! I did not find any explaination of how the contractor went about doing this work. I did read that the amount of debris was so extensive that it was pulled out and piled above the high water mark and not completely removed.

https://www.portclintonnewsherald.co...anup/96452738/

-KenM

Remarkable!
 

This is remarkable on several levels–the planning and organizational effort, the on-the-ground work required to clean out so many logjams and trees, and getting the property owners to pay for it. I'd be curious to know the results and if it was finished in April of this year as scheduled. The flooding caused by the jams must have been pretty bad for the property owners to pay for the project.

Like I told ken,
I want the name of the person who approved the clean up. Find him, kidnap him and bring him the Mahoning.