The controversy over Horseshoe Lake in the Heights has garnered a lot of press lately, too often the “People want this, but the experts say that” kind of reporting that doesn’t take digging or questioning anyone’s truthfulness, knowledge, or motives.
The real problem is money. The powerful Northeast Ohio Sewer District has said that it won’t spend any on restoring the dam and lake because the lake provides no “significant” flood control, so financing restoration would be entirely up to Cleveland Heights and Shaker Heights (which are supposed to maintain the lake per the longstanding lease agreement with the City of Cleveland), and the cost is more than the cities can spare. So, the focus of the cities and the organizations that should be interested in saving this recreational, historic and wildlife gem needs to be on developing alternative funding.
Instead, NEORSD has roped these organizations into generating public support for destroying this great resource by framing their plan as restoration of something “Natural”—with a capital “N.”
Really? Well, the arguments jerk progressive knees with phrases such as “climate change,” “biodiversity” and “natural, the way it was 14,000 years ago.” And enablers charge the lake with environmental crimes, such as being “stagnant,” not having “diversity,” or not providing enough “benefits to insects and birds.”
Let’s take a closer look at the propaganda. Early in NEORSD presentations and echoed by its “expert” enablers was the promise of restoring the Horseshoe basin to “the way it was 14,000 years ago.” That marks the time when the Illinoian glacier left Ohio. What was “the way it was” then? Tundra. Restoring that would be quite a trick. Tundra was succeeded by spruce and fir forests about 10,000 years ago. But no, it’s not cold enough for that. Pre-settlement beech-maple forests likely didn’t develop until about two and a half thousand years ago. If there was a Doan Brook then, it was a woodland stream in a valley, if not a ravine.
Is that the goal? Draining the lake, bulldozing the streambeds and dumping gravel in them, and massive planting and invasive plant removal, however, can’t restore an old-growth forest with a stream. In a distant future, the basin might look somewhat more like the wooded areas upstream and downstream, but that’s not “natural,” either. It couldn’t be what it was even 50 years ago. One reason is earthworms. The natives are gone from the glaciated parts of Ohio, replaced by damaging European and Asian species that have destroyed the duff of slowly decomposing leaves and other organic matter, robbing plants of nutrients, the soil of moisture, and invertebrates and herbaceous plants of habitat. Another reason is the overpopulation of deer, which have heavily browsed the understory and herbaceous plants on the forest floor. Finding a blooming trillium in the spring is tough.
Stagnant? Nope. Doan Brook flows in, and Doan Brook flows out. Climate change? On a hot day, you would sweat more in the open bowl of a meadow Horseshoe has become and would likely be for decades than you would beside or on the water, which is cooler than the air. That’s why many people flock to lakes in the summer.
The greatest false accusation is lack of biodiversity. To support that charge is a message posted on the Shaker Historical Society website to its executive director from the conservation director of Great Lakes Audubon, noting that “blockage of streams and wetlands to artificially create bodies of water is detrimental to many species of birds. Marsh birds, waterfowl, shorebirds and wading birds depend on a dynamic hydrological system that allows for periods of low water . . .’’
But Horseshoe Lake did have a dynamic system. For example, at times of lower flows, mudflats were exposed, attracting shorebirds. The bird records for the lake demonstrate just how diverse and numerous marsh birds, waterfowl, shorebirds, wading birds, swallows, and more were at this nationally recognized birding hotspot. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s eBird data on Horseshoe Lake from 1990 to 2017, before the recent lake drainings, listed 50-some species of birds that use or require a lake environment — all the birds the conservation director might expect in a dynamic aquatic system, including three species of geese, Tundra swans, wood ducks, eight species of dabbling ducks, five species of diving ducks, three species of mergansers, coot, two species of grebes, sora rails, nine species of shorebirds, snipe, two species of terns, two species of gulls, common loons, double-crested cormorants, four species of herons, osprey, Bald eagles, kingfishers, and six species of swallows. Pretty impressive for a little urban lake. A diversity of fish, crustaceans, insects and aquatic plants fed those birds, and abundant insect emergence from the water also fed songbirds, including numerous species of warblers during migration. Removing more than 50 species of birds and the aquatic life that supported them and diminishing a food supply for many other birds will not increase “diversity” in that park.
Now, we need to ask why all the inaccurate propaganda? It’s not clear yet, but NEORSD admitted to giving the Nature Center at Shaker Lakes $5,000 and the Doan Brook Watershed Partnership $40,000 last year for their “environmental expertise.” Could there be more in the future? In presentations NEORSD touted a potential “Nature Center number 2’’ at the Horseshoe site. More needs to come to light, but people must recognize that this is how the game is played: You line up prominent voices behind your plan however you can and do everything to quash opposition, even down to the nasty tactic of removing “Save Horseshoe Lake” signs from supporters’ lawns.
A retired medical writer, Penny Allen is a longtime Shaker Lakes birder. As a teenager, she participated in the freeway fight to save the Shaker Lakes and in the Doan Brook Project, a study of pollution in the lakes and brook.
3 Responses to “COMMENTARY: Natural Gaslighting — the Future of Horseshoe Lake”
Craig
Very few people are familiar with another of the Shaker Lakes – Green Lake which is located a bit southwest of Horseshoe Lake but wholly located in Shaker Heights and directly bordered by several legacy and elegant Shaker Heights estates.
Green Lake’s dam was recently fully rebuilt with no issues lest the area behind those estates convert to a stagnant waste land. Money talks folks. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cleveland.com/community/2020/08/green-lake-dams-2m-overhaul-completed-lower-shaker-and-horseshoe-still-being-evaluated.html%3foutputType=amp
catherine podojil
Peggy Allen, thank you for this impassioned and informative article about the gem we knew as Horseshoe Lake. Would you contact me at cmpodojil@aol.com; I’d like to talk with you about this and do not find you on FB.
And by the way: They’re also going to cut trees????? Cannot print my response
Castaway
So much controversy over horseshoe lake. I can hardly stand it! Yes the lake was nice and enjoyable to walk around and to gaze upon. But maybe it would make a nice Marsh or perhaps it could be turned into a skateboard park or maybe a summer carnival. Think of it we could have beer gardens! of course they need to be approved by the respective cities, but it would be a nice place to hang out and have a cold beer in the evening during the summers. So many opportunities to turn it into something new. Imagine what it could be. Let’s move forward!