Introduction: "That's stupid"
This past summer I went to a Cleveland Guardians baseball game with some college friends. We had all been students at Case Western Reserve University 20-odd years ago; some, like me, still live in the area, others now live elsewhere. While chatting with one of my old friends, he mentioned memories of going jogging around Horseshoe Lake (located a little more than a mile from where I now live in Cleveland Heights).
Horseshoe Lake, October 2016"It's not a lake anymore," I told him.
He was surprised, and I explained how the (very old) dam that created the lake had had problems, and it had been decided to remove the dam and restore the brook through where the lake had sat.
(Note: I didn't know at the time that the "restore the brook" concept was misleading. We'll get to that later. Anyway...)
"That's stupid," he said.
I think this moment was instructive when we consider the ongoing debate around the fate of the Shaker Lakes - Horseshoe Lake (which, as things currently stand, no longer exists) and Lower Shaker Lake (which is still there, at least for now).
People who are very well versed in all the arguments around this issue might spend a lot of time thinking about those arguments, the arguments on both sides. They might not think about how someone who knows nothing about any of those arguments but simply remembers spending time at the lakes would react to the situation. But that reaction is in some ways more important, I think.
There are a lot of people who enjoy the lakes and don't really know much about them except that they're nice places to spend time and it's nice to have them in their neighborhood. There are also people who don't live in the neighborhood, but have been here, and remember the lakes as one of the features that make it a nice place. I bet people like that easily outnumber people who know the details of all the arguments.
"That's stupid" is, to me, an extremely natural reaction to learning that Horseshoe Lake is no longer a lake. Because why would a community with such a nice and unusual feature - a beautiful lake, its shore lined with mature trees, in the middle of a residential neighborhood - that clearly contributes to making that neighborhood a desirable place to live - decide to get rid of that feature?
It would be a stupid thing to do, unless there were extraordinary circumstances such that there was no feasible way to preserve the lake.
So why would such a stupid thing happen?
Table of contents
The rest of this post will be split into sections. I'll start with a timeline of key events that led us to this point, then go through a number of reasons why the lakes are worth preserving, and finish with some thoughts on how that could happen. For ease of navigation, here are clickable links to each of the sections:
The Shaker Lakes are for everyone
The planned "brook restoration" is not a restoration of a natural state
Having nice amenities in a neighborhood is good for the health of people and the environment
Investing in the future is important
Save the Shaker Lakes: thoughts on how to do it
Let's start from the start...
~10,000-12,000 BC: Doan Brook begins its existence after the last glaciers retreat from Ohio.
1822: The North Union Shaker Community is founded in the Cleveland area.
1830: Beavers are declared extirpated from the state of Ohio, a result of the fur trade (this is relevant, I promise).
1836: The Shakers finish construction of a dam on Doan Brook to enable a gristmill and a sawmill, creating Lower Lake.
1854: The Shakers build a second dam, creating Upper Lake or Horseshoe Lake.
1889: The Shaker colony closes (Shakers practiced celibacy, so it's not surprising their movement faded out). The land is sold to a Buffalo real estate syndicate.
1896: The Shaker Parklands, part of the land from the colony that includes both lakes, are deeded to the city of Cleveland with the requirement that the land will be used as a park and will remain a park.
1901: Cleveland Heights, a streetcar suburb with the Shaker Parklands on its southern border, is founded.
1905: The Van Sweringen brothers buy other land previously of the Shaker colony en route to establishing Shaker Heights, a planned suburb directly south of Cleveland Heights and the Parklands.
1911: During development of Shaker Heights, the south branch of Doan Brook is dammed to create two additional, smaller lakes, Green Lake and Marshall Lake. These lakes are not part of the Parklands.
~1930: Beavers begin to reestablish themselves in eastern Ohio.
1947: The Parklands are leased from Cleveland to Cleveland Heights and Shaker Heights, a lease that is still in effect today.
1964: Proposals are put forward for three freeways to be built through Cleveland Heights and Shaker Heights. In addition to requiring the demolition of hundreds of homes, one of the freeways, the Clark Freeway, would go through the historic Parklands. Local residents quickly begin organizing against the freeways, and protecting the lakes becomes central to the cause.
1966: The Shaker Lakes Nature Center is established as part of the fight against the freeways. The Nature Center is built where a massive freeway interchange will sit if the freeway plan goes through.
1970: The freeway plan is abandoned, sparing the Parklands, the surrounding neighborhoods, and other neighborhoods in the Heights from devastation. (It must be noted that in Cleveland and throughout the country, many other neighborhoods disproportionately inhabited by racial minorities had tragically already suffered the devastation brought by freeway construction.)
1984: Shaker Village Historic District, which includes the Parklands, is placed on the National Register of Historic Places. Along with various other attributes such as architecture, the lakes are specifically cited on the application: "A sizeable public park extending the length of the district follows the Doan Brook, the natural watershed of the plateau. Two branches of the brook are dammed in four places to provide scenic lakes which delight aesthetically and serve for recreation purposes and storm retention basins."
2011: The Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District (NEORSD), the local sewer utility, enters into a consent decree with the EPA to settle allegations by the EPA that the Sewer District violated the Clean Water Act by not sufficiently controlling sewer overflow. NEORSD agrees to reduce combined sewer overflow (CSO) by 4 billion gallons/year by 2036. As part of the agreement, NEORSD will "propose a process for locating, designing, constructing, operating, and evaluating a set or sets of Green Infrastructure control measures" (for example, constructed wetlands) to reduce CSO. These control measures can be located anywhere "within the NEORSD combined sewer area" and the prioritization process includes finding locations where "land ownership will readily accommodate permanent Green Infrastructure control measures."
2014: Inspections of both the Shaker dams by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) note issues needing to be addressed and state that the issues "have been noted previously and the appropriate time period for completion has already been exceeded," reflecting years of neglect by the cities responsible for the dams.
2017: Plans are announced for NEORSD to make improvements to both the Horseshoe and Lower Lake dams.
2018: A sinkhole is discovered during ODNR inspection of the Horseshoe Lake dam. This leads to the lake being drained under ODNR orders.
2020: NEORSD completes a project to restore the dam at Green Lake, one of the lakes on Doan Brook that isn't in a public park.
2021: NEORSD reverses course on the previous Horseshoe plan and announces they now recommend removing Horseshoe Lake while still restoring the Lower Lake dam.
2025: NEORSD reverses course on the previous Lower Lake plan and announces they now recommend removing Lower Lake.
That's how we got to where we are today. Now on to all the reasons I think these plans are a bad idea.
Human beings are naturally drawn to bodies of water. This is a self-evidently true statement.
Oceanfront property is desirable. Lakefront property is desirable. Suburban developments frequently include artificial lakes or ponds. Large urban parks almost invariably have water features of some sort.
Here's a map of Central Park, the most famous urban park in the world. Look at all the water!
Central Park Community Fund, 1977It would be strange for a large park in a city to not have some open water, I'd contend. We could spend a long time talking about why human beings are drawn to bodies of water - the meditative state that can come from gazing out at a large lake, the immense beauty of the sky and trees reflected on a still water surface, the fact that water is essential for life and we're close to 70% made up of the stuff, etc., etc. - but there's no reason to spend that time here, because I don't think anyone can dispute this basic fact.
People like lakes.
There's
an argument put forth by the anti-lakes faction that the parks will be
just as nice if the dams are removed and we instead have nature parks
with the brook flowing through them, so we shouldn't complain about the lakes being removed.
I find this argument rather strange, and it's not because I don't appreciate a nice brook.
Just across Coventry Road from Lower Lake, Doan Brook begins a descent into a scenic ravine between North Park Boulevard and Fairhill Road. This ravine, known alternately as Doan Brook Ravine, Doan Brook Gorge, or Roxboro Ravine, and which I think of simply as The Ravine, is a true gem of urban nature. It's actually my favorite place to go hiking in all of Cuyahoga County, both because it's a really beautiful place and because the trails there have a ruggedness that I love and that is rarely found on the trails in the Cleveland Metroparks.
The ravine, like the Shaker Lakes, is a very special place that we're lucky to have. As much as I personally love the ravine, though, in the many hundreds of hours of my life that I've spent in these places, one thing is clear: the lakes are more popular than the ravine.
Given two equally accessible options, where people choose to spend time reveals their preferences. More people choose to spend more time at the lakes. This suggests that the average person prefers a beautiful, tree-lined lake to a beautiful, forested brook.
And even if one feels, like I do, that there's equal value to a brook as to a lake, here's the thing: we already have lots of brook where people can spend time.
Here's a map of the Doan Brook parklands, when the Horseshoe Lake dam was still intact, with highlighting of public parkland around lakes and public parkland around brook sections:
A perfect mix of the two!
Now here's a map with similar highlighting for the proposed scenario where both dams are removed:
I love the brook and I love the lakes. I think having both is wonderful.
Imagine that you were going to eat a delicious steak dinner (or insert your favorite dinner here) and then have a delicious piece of cake for dessert. Then your waiter tells you, "Oh, we no longer offer cake, but we're replacing the dessert course with a steak dinner. You shouldn't complain. Sure, you might love cake, but steak is just as delicious!"
You'd probably feel less than thrilled about the substitution.
Something that I don't think is being appreciated by people who are so casually willing to go forward with a plan to get rid of the lakes is just how special these lakes are.
Two beautiful lakes, that have existed for well over a century, their shores lined with mature trees, in public parks, in the middle of a residential area where many thousands of people can access them by walking or riding bikes or taking a very short drive. It's not something you commonly find. I don't remember seeing anything else like it in any of the cities I've lived in or visited. Certainly, there's nothing else like it in Northeast Ohio.
And let's not forget, the cities of Cleveland Heights and Shaker Heights simply would not exist as we know them without these lakes, and that's true for multiple reasons. The lakes were a major reason that people initially wanted to live here when the cities were founded. And the lakes are the most important reason that the area around them wasn't ruined by freeway construction. That's a really significant piece of our history, and it's a history that would inevitably fade with time if the lakes ceased to exist.
The lakes mean a lot to people, and for good reason.
See, for example, this piece by Julia Shefcheck from 2021: Horseshoe Lake saved my soul
In
it, she writes about the profound effect that visiting Horseshoe Lake
had on her, over two decades of her life. Visiting that beautiful lake
helped her through some of her darkest and most difficult moments.
Her
feelings about the current state of the park are heartbreaking: "I live
less than two miles away, and I no longer go there. I can’t. I
stopped taking my children and family to the lake. I avoid driving and
biking past it. It saved me, but it’s gone. Almost. The loss assaults me
every day, repeatedly, as happens in grief."
Think about the
other people for whom Horseshoe Lake, or Lower Lake, have had similarly
significant roles in their lives. Think about the lasting trauma that
would be inflicted on those people by the lakes disappearing. Think
about the void that would remain in our communities.
And an excerpt from a Cleveland Scene article about Lower Lake is also telling:
On
Wednesday afternoon, as they do often during work breaks, Eric and
Rachael Wahl were out on a walk on the dam-side of Lower Shaker Lake. As
they passed over the dam, blue herons perched on both sides.
A
sight the Wahls don’t want messed up. After all, they relocated from
Indianapolis to a home within walking distance of the lake last December
in part due to its nearby scenery.
I live close to a mile from Lower Lake in a house my wife and I bought in 2024. I've enjoyed spending time around the lake ever since I first lived in Northeast Ohio as a CWRU student nearly two and a half decades ago. Having the lake within walking distance was unquestionably one reason I found our current neighborhood attractive.
I'm confident that there are people who currently live in the area around the lakes (including parts of Cleveland Heights, Shaker Heights, and Cleveland) who would become substantially less likely to want to continue living here if the lakes cease to exist. I'm also confident that there are people who do not currently live here but might move here in the future, and who would become substantially less likely to want to move here if the lakes cease to exist.
Is there anyone out there who fits the reverse description, someone whose desire to live here would substantially increase if the lakes are removed? I'm skeptical.
The Shaker Lakes are for everyone
In 2020, NEORSD completed a project to improve the dam at Green Lake in Shaker Heights, thus preserving that lake, at a cost of about $2 million. The Sewer District, along with Shaker Heights mayor David Weiss, released a YouTube video about the project that is infuriating to watch in retrospect.
"Green Lake is one of these really special assets in Shaker Heights," the mayor begins.
He, and several NEORSD representatives including CEO Kyle Dreyfuss-Wells, go on to talk about the dam restoration project and its value in both managing stormwater and preserving a community asset. Green Lake is a "beloved asset in our community that people love to spend time here," the mayor concludes.
So here's the thing about Green Lake. It's a nice place. It's quite beautiful, even. But it's not located in a public park. You can walk or ride your bike past it and look at it and it looks pretty. But there are no trails along its shore. You can't walk around the lake. Half of the shore is private property, in the backyards of mansions on South Woodland Road.
I'm not even saying it's wrong to call Green Lake a special asset to Shaker Heights. People like lakes! But the value of Green Lake as a community asset is a tiny, tiny fraction of the value of Horseshoe and Lower Lakes. The idea of even comparing them seems laughable.
The existence of Green Lake benefits, first and foremost, the residents of eleven houses, houses with property values (using Zillow estimates) ranging from $857,000 to $1,280,000.
The existence of Horseshoe and Lower Lakes mainly benefits all the people who enjoy spending time at the wonderful parks centered on those lakes. That includes people who live in huge houses across the street from one of the lakes, people like me who live in normal size houses nearly a mile away, people who live in very affordable apartments by Shaker Square little more than half a mile from Lower Lake, and many more.
Interested in exploring this in a quantitative way, I used the EPA's Demographics Proximity Tool to gather data on people who live near the Shaker Lakes.
I found that there are approximately 42,000 people who live within a two kilometer (~1.25 mile) radius of at least one of Horseshoe or Lower Lake. That's a lot, in a fairly small area. Anyone living within that distance can potentially access the lakes via a walk, bike ride, or very short drive.
Of those 42,000 people, 53.4% are white, non-Hispanic and 46.6% are people of color. That compares to 58.3% and 41.7%, respectively, for the US population as a whole.
Additionally, of those 42,000 people, 13.3% live below the poverty line, compared to 12.6% of the US population. There are some census tracts not far from Lower Lake with median household incomes below $35,000.
The people who live near the Shaker Lakes represent a diverse cross section of society. And if you spend time at the lakes, you'll see that the people who enjoy the lakes represent a diverse cross section of society.
I had a thought: what other places comparable to the Shaker Lakes exist in this area, and who lives near them?
I tried to think of other places in the Cleveland area where I could go for a scenic walk around a lake, in nature, and that experience of walking around a lake in nature would be at least on par with the Shaker Lakes. The places I could think of, none of which is even in Cuyahoga County, were Punderson State Park near Burton, Kendall Lake in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, and Hinckley Lake in the Hinckley Reservation Metropark.
Kendall Lake (To preempt anyone saying What about Lake Erie??: The Great Lakes are amazing and we're very lucky to live on one. Visiting that lake is also a qualitatively different experience from that found at a smaller lake, and the presence of Lake Erie does not in any way diminish the value of the other lakes.)
Note that Kendall Lake and Hinckley Lake, like the Shaker Lakes, are man-made lakes, and I imagine that people would be pretty upset if there were plans to remove them.
I gathered the same data for those other lakes and created a table of key numbers for all five locations (the Lower plus Horseshoe population numbers sum to well over the 42,000 cited above because of overlap between those two areas):
| Location | People within 2 km | % population below poverty line | People below poverty line |
| Lower Lake | 28,755 | 16.0% | 4,608 |
| Horseshoe Lake | 19,559 | 7.4% | 1,452 |
| Punderson (Stump Lake/Punderson Lake) | 1,394 | 4.1% | 58 |
| Hinckley Lake | 661 | 5.9% | 39 |
| Kendall Lake | 45 | 4.2% | 2 |
There's a popular talking point among those who don't think the lakes are worth preserving that the people who really want to save them are just the rich people who live by them and whose property values will go down without the lakes. Seeing the proliferation of "Save Horseshoe Lake" signs a few years ago in places more than a mile away from Horseshoe Lake should have made it obvious that this wasn't true. But these numbers really drive home the absurdity of that argument.
There are no comparable places in the region that large numbers of people can access without traveling far from home. Moreover, the Shaker Lakes (especially Lower Lake) are disproportionately accessible to members of underserved communities when compared to other nice lakes in natural park settings. For some people who don't own a car, the Shaker Lakes might be the only accessible way they can go for a nice nature walk by a lake, and the ability to do that is a valuable thing to have.
Plus, how wonderful is it that young people in the area have these beautiful lakes they can visit without being driven to them? In an era when everyone is rightfully concerned about children and teenagers spending too much time on screens and not enough outside, that aspect shouldn't be underrated.
So now imagine that this is the ultimate outcome of these proceedings:
The Sewer District, with the cooperation of local government, already spent millions of dollars (money that comes from our skyrocketing utility bills, it's worth noting) to preserve a lake that isn't in a public park and that is literally in the backyards of million dollar homes.
After this happened, the Sewer District, with the cooperation of local government, removes two far more historically significant lakes that are in public parks and that are priceless community assets enjoyed by people from all walks of life. While some people deride the campaign to save the lakes as merely serving the interests of mansion dwellers.
I think there would be something almost cosmically unjust about such an outcome. What do you think?
The planned "brook restoration" is not a restoration of a natural state
"The idea of free-flowing river is a myth"
-Dr. Denise Burchsted, river scientist
I recently read a really great book, Beaverland by Leila Philip (subtitle: How One Weird Rodent Made America).
I'd recommend the book to anyone who's interested in animals, in watersheds, or in American history. I learned so much from it.
One thing I learned gave me a new perspective on the debate about the lakes.
The anti-lake people often like to say that a "free-flowing brook" is preferable to a "man-made lake" because they contend a free-flowing brook is more natural. As a biologist and lover of nature, this is an argument I admit is worth considering, even if to me it's not compelling enough to outweigh the benefits of the lakes to the community.
But what I learned from Beaverland is that a "free-flowing brook" is not the natural state of the brook.
A free-flowing brook would only have happened after the fur trade brought by European colonialism wiped out beavers. Before that, any waterway like Doan Brook would have had beavers living along it, and those beavers would have made dams that would have slowed the flow of the brook and created bodies of water.
The Lower Lake dam was built in 1836. Beavers were eliminated from the state of Ohio by 1830 after decades of their population dwindling from the fur trade. This suggests that a "free-flowing" Doan Brook could only have existed for a short blip in history, far shorter than the nearly two centuries the lake has been here.
I'm not saying a man-made lake is natural. But a free-flowing brook is equally unnatural.
To again quote Dr. Denise Burchsted, the river scientist with whom Beaverland author Leila Philip visited watersheds where beavers once more thrive and shape the water and land, "What if our vision of rivers as free-flowing was based not on the river's natural state but on years of study of rivers that were already degraded?" (Degraded due to the lack of beavers.)
Burchsted suggests that modern river restoration efforts in areas where beavers shaped the land for many millennia and were only wiped out two or three centuries ago are not restoring a natural state, not really.
That's true even in an idealized "free-flowing brook" scenario. What if we take a look at the Sewer District's actual plan for "restoring" the brook?
In Horseshoe Lake Park, to the west (downstream) of the dam, there is a wooded area that is a really lovely place for a walk in the woods. Through those woods flows Doan Brook, just as it did when the lake was there. The brook there is already in a natural state. Well, as natural as we can get without beavers, I suppose.
What does the Sewer District plan to do to "restore" this natural brook?
The plan, as it turns out, is to:
- Build an access road through the existing streambed
- Construct a new, artificial streambed about a hundred feet north of the existing streambed.
- Remove the existing streambed.
- Cut down hundreds of trees in this section of the park, and over a thousand in total, in the process of doing all this.
Let's dispense with the fallacy of debating a "natural" free-flowing brook vs. man-made lakes. The debate is man-made lakes that have been a key part of our community for nearly 200 years vs. a highly engineered man-made "free-flowing" brook that could only ever exist in a "free-flowing" state because humans wiped out beavers. And that would be constructed via a process that would demolish significant chunks of currently existing nature.
We can't know exactly what Doan Brook was like in its truly natural state, and embarking on a massive engineering project to try to "restore" a natural state is a fool's errand.
I think an appeal to nature is a really powerful argument in a community with such progressive values as those found in Cleveland Heights and Shaker Heights. I suspect there are a lot of people who really like the lakes and would really like them to continue to exist but also feel at least a little guilty because they've been told that the "brook restoration" project would make things more natural, and that it's bad to want a man-made lake over a natural brook.
There's no need for such feelings. Don't feel guilty if you love having beautiful lakes in your neighborhood. People like lakes. And the idea of the "brook restoration" being "more natural" than the lakes is an argument that, well, doesn't hold water.
Having nice amenities in a neighborhood is good for the health of people and the environment
Imagine a person who lives a short walk from the Shaker Lakes. This person really loves the lakes, and going for walks around the lakes has become a big part of their life. On most days, weather permitting, they go for a walk around one or the other of the lakes.
The benefits to both physical and mental health of going for walks and of spending time in nature are well established. This routine has great benefits to this person's health.
Then the lakes go away. The person feels sad. They can still go for walks in their neighborhood, but it's just not the same without the lakes, so they don't do it as much, and when they do go for walks, the benefits aren't as great. This has a negative impact on their physical and mental health.
They miss going for walks by lakes, so once a week or so they take a lengthy drive to a park somewhere else to go for a walk by a lake. This extra driving has a negative impact on the environment.
Now imagine there are quite a few people who would fit the broad strokes of this description.
There probably are.
Now imagine similar scenarios playing out on a grand scale, all over the world.
In places where there are nice amenities, such as green and blue spaces, that people can access without driving, the health of the people and of the environment benefits. In places lacking in such amenities, the health of the people and of the environment suffers.
The nicer and more accessible the amenities, the greater the benefit. If you replace an extraordinarily nice and accessible nature park with a huge green sewer infrastructure project that has the trappings of a park but loses the essential elements of what made it such a nice park in the first place, the benefit simply won't be as great.
In addition to Beaverland, another book I read recently and highly recommend is Life After Cars. We all know that cars are bad for the environment, but this book is very educational on how the harm is actually so much worse than almost anyone realizes (to the environment, and to many other things).
Building a better, healthier future for humans and for the planet requires getting people to stop spending so much time in cars. A big aspect of that is designing cities with desirable amenities that large numbers of people can access without driving. The Shaker Lakes have been right here for over a century as a great example of what that can look like.
One common anti-lake argument is that removing the lakes would be better for the environment. "Dams are bad for the environment," people say. "Dams are being removed all over the world."
This broad generalization ignores some important facts:
1. The documented environmental harms of dams are largely due to their interfering with fish migration, something that isn't relevant to Doan Brook.
2. Intriguingly, as explained in the previous section, the natural state of waterways over large swathes of North America, prior to European settlement, was a state with many more dams. Beaver dams, yes, but this fact pokes a big hole in the idea of dams as unequivocally bad. There's just a lot more nuance than that.
It's also interesting that this idea that we must remove dams to help the environment wasn't raised about Green Lake, nor do I see movements aimed at removing other beloved man-made lakes like Hinckley and Kendall.
The lakes and the brook undeniably have water quality issues. Perhaps transforming the lakes into green sewer infrastructure could have some benefit to water quality, but I'd argue that the lakes have far more value in myriad tangible and intangible ways than the same space would provide as sewer infrastructure. Part of the planning for improvements to the dams and lakes of the Shaker Parklands should include other methods to improve water quality while preserving these precious community assets.
Any watershed in an urban area will inherently have water quality issues. That's due to factors like people driving cars and people fertilizing their lawns. Ironically, the feature that makes the brook and lakes such a tremendous environmental asset in the big picture sense - the fact that they're located where so many people can visit them without spending a lot of time in a car - is the same feature that makes it impossible to control their water quality as much as could be done with a more remote brook and lake. Yet a more remote (and therefore cleaner) brook and lake would require a lot more driving if large numbers of people are going to enjoy them, which would be worse for the environment as a whole.
To be honest, I think we could tie ourselves into knots debating whether a lakes or no lakes configuration of the brook is overall better for the environment. There are tradeoffs in both directions, I doubt there's a definitive answer, and I'd be skeptical of anyone who confidently claims there is one.
(I'd be especially skeptical of anyone who claims the actual "brook restoration" plan that's been proposed and that removes a thousand trees would be better for the environment.)
The important conclusion here is that, similar to the incorrect claim that the planned "brook restoration" is "more natural," the claim that environmentalism demands we get rid of the lakes is unconvincing.
I suggest we again look to which option is better for the health of the community and of the people who live in that community. On that question, I really don't think there's a reasonable debate to be had.
Investing in the future is important
As wrongheaded as the idea is that the movement to save the lakes is mainly about protecting rich people's property values, in a roundabout way I think it actually gets to another reason we should save the lakes.
I certainly would expect that the property values of homes across the street from the lakes would decline if the lakes no longer exist.
I would also expect that the property values of homes the next street over would decline. And the street after that.
I would expect that the property values of hundreds of homes would decline, starting with large declines for homes adjacent to the lakes and with smaller and smaller declines the farther away you get.
If property values decline, that isn't just bad for the people who own those properties.
Property values reflect how desirable a place is to live. Shouldn't we be cautious about doing something that makes our community a less desirable place to live?
I could easily imagine that the property values of those hundreds of homes, in aggregate, would decline by millions of dollars if both lakes permanently cease to exist. That would not only reflect the area around the lakes (including portions of Cleveland Heights, Shaker Heights, and Cleveland) becoming a less desirable place to live, it would also have a very concrete effect of lowering the tax revenue for the cities in which those homes sit. For every year going forward, the decision to not invest in preserving the lakes would be paid back with less revenue for those cities.
Some wild, and wildly changing, cost estimates have been put forward by the Sewer District about what it would take to preserve the lakes. Some people use these estimates to say that we can't afford to preserve the lakes. I take issue with this in several ways.
The cost estimates, as far as I've seen, don't break down the actual costs of restoring the dams vs. the costs of all the other parts of the proposed projects. Nor should we sit back and assume the Sewer District's proposals are the best or only ways to restore the dams. The Sewer District doesn't appear to have been very interested in restoring the dams in the first place. To be fair, they have no obligation to, but they also aren't the entity that should be in charge of these decisions.
We also shouldn't assume that all the costs will be borne by taxpayers if we don't accept the Sewer District's lake removal plan. We should aggressively pursue other funding routes. Shared private/public funding seems like a very realistic possibility. Many people are passionately invested in wanting to preserve the lakes, and given the lakes' enormous historical significance, it's likely that further interest and investments could be drummed up if we get the story out.
It's also important to recognize that, even in the scenario where we just let the Sewer District do whatever they want with our historic lakes, we the taxpayers are still going to be paying a lot of money. In 2022, the Sewer District claimed, regarding the Horseshoe Lake removal project, "the discussion regarding millions of tax dollars being imposed on residents of Cleveland Heights and Shaker Heights is a misrepresentation as NEORSD will carry the bulk of the improvement costs" (source: December 1, 2022 NEORSD board meeting minutes). Three years later, the city councils of Cleveland Heights and Shaker Heights agreed to split up to $7.1 million in funds for amenities in the new, "improved," lakeless park.
Why should we trust any claims from the Sewer District about what these projects might cost us?
I have, many times, seen someone reference an exorbitant cost estimate from NEORSD and say something like, "Our city can't afford that."
But here's the thing: literally no one is saying that we should go ahead with that project at that price and have taxpayers fund it.
(An important side point: costs should be split between Cleveland Heights, Shaker Heights, and Cleveland, so acting like the whole bill would go to taxpayers of one city - in the case of discussions I've entered, Cleveland Heights - is further misleading.)
There's no need to rush forward with any plan. Until an independent study has been done with the explicit goal of preserving the lakes if possible, and that compares both short and long term costs of various options, and other funding sources have been explored, the question of whether we can afford it can't remotely be answered. And saying that we can't afford it when we have no idea whether that's true is just an attempt to shut down alternate voices and steamroll through a plan to irrevocably remove some of our community's most precious assets.
These are dark times in our country. One reason is the massive cutbacks that are being made to so many of the things that actually do make our country great - scientific research, our national parks, education, and so on. The very shortsighted view of trying to save money is used as a justification for such cuts, but what we'll lose in the long run will be so much greater than any immediate savings.
In this moment, that makes it all the more vital to insist that government still can do things to improve the lives of its citizens. Preserving two historic lakes in a dense residential area where tens of thousands of people can easily access them to find a moment of peace and tranquility and respite from the unending stresses of modernity does improve people's lives in very meaningful ways.
The Shaker Lakes are arguably the most important reason why the area around them initially became, and has continued to be, a special place to live. We have a choice. Are we going to put in the effort and investment to preserve that, so that this continues to be a special place? Or are we going to take the path of least resistance and invite a sad decline?
There are many challenges facing our cities, but let's not act like these lakes don't matter. If we lose them, they'll be gone forever. They're irreplaceable.
Nothing that could be constructed in the place of the lakes would have the same value to the people who live around them. It just wouldn't. It's a fantasy to suggest otherwise. So let's not let that happen.
Save the Shaker Lakes: thoughts on how to do it
To me, the case for why we should try to preserve the Shaker Lakes is clear. The question is how does that happen?
What should we do now?
I think the most important thing to do right now is... just stop. Stop these crazy plans. Stop the Sewer District from cutting down a thousand trees by Horseshoe Lake. Stop anything from happening at Lower Lake. Stop, and take the time to thoroughly assess the situation before any irreversible actions can be taken.
If you agree that we should take the time to review all alternatives before letting our historic lakes disappear forever, I encourage you to visit the Shaker Lakes Conservancy website to learn more and sign up for the email list, to talk to your friends about the reasons the lakes are worth preserving, and to contact your elected officials in Cleveland Heights or Shaker Heights.
There's no need to rush into any action. Horseshoe Lake has been drained, so the current status of the Horseshoe Lake dam is clearly not an emergency. The most recent dam inspection report for Lower Lake identifies several deficiencies but also explicitly states "non-emergency."
That said, corrective measures for the dams' issues are long overdue, and it's very sad that the cities responsible for these precious resources have let them deteriorate to this extent. We shouldn't rush into action, but we do need to immediately get to work on figuring out what that action will be.
We need an independent, non-NEORSD study that looks at various alternative plans including a thorough exploration of ways in which the lakes could be preserved. That study should weigh the costs and benefits of each plan, not just to stormwater management, but to the people living in our communities both now and in the future.
A central issue is the classification of the dams.
Both dams are considered Class I dams, the highest class, which affects the requirements for their design. Dams are classified from Class IV to Class I using three criteria: height, volume of water retained, and downstream hazard. The final classification is determined by whichever of the three rates highest.
Interestingly, both dams would be Class III by the first two criteria, and are Class I only by downstream hazard. Class I for downstream hazard is reserved for dams where it's estimated that dam failure would cause "probable loss of human life."
How is it that such relatively small dams could cause loss of life if they fail? Well, the potential threat, from dam failure in a massive storm (there is no such threat for a sunny day breach), is not immediately downstream of the dams, but miles away in University Circle.
What's also important to know is that no modeling has been done that is suitable for accurately assessing this downstream risk. It's currently a crude estimate of risk, and yes, if that's all you have, you should err on the side of caution. The cities have been told by ODNR that more detailed modeling is needed for reconstructed dams.
Ben Monreal, a CWRU physics professor with professional experience in environmental fluid mechanics and civil and geotechnical engineering, did a lot of research on issues about the Lower Lake dam, including taking a detailed look at the existing flood modeling. He made a series of presentations (available as videos on his Facebook and as PDFs on his GitHub - the "monreal_lower_lake" PDF files) that are very informative. He concluded that the existing flood modeling, which I'll reiterate is inadequate for accurately assessing the risk but is the best we currently have, suggests that it's borderline whether there is a real risk to human life from dam failure. He also suggested that making the dam somewhat smaller could retain most of the lake's current footprint but might lower the failure risk to be clearly out of the Class I level.
Keith Banachowski, the ODNR official who signed off on the dam inspection reports and gave a presentation about the Lower Lake dam to a joint city council session, told me, "I watched several of Mr. Monreal’s videos on Facebook prior to our November 18, 2025, meeting, and he appears to have a good understanding of the situation." (This amused me, as after I cited Ben's presentations in some online discussions, I'd had people tell me that Ben, as a physics professor, wasn't qualified to comment on the issue.) Keith also gave me a more detailed explanation of why the existing modeling is insufficient for properly assessing the risk, and told me about how the cities had been informed that updated modeling would be needed.
Ben has some really interesting ideas on new designs for the dam and lake that could potentially get the dam reclassified and cost substantially less than the NEORSD plans. He readily admits that he's not an engineer and not able to make definitive conclusion on what can be done, but he thinks (and I think) that these are ideas that engineers working on the project should consider:
I think either of these options would make people quite happy when put against the alternative of losing the lake completely!
Another option that has been raised, and that is apparently being considered by NEORSD, is for their Lower Lake replacement project to include a "water feature" that is disconnected from the brook. This would be similar to what was done for the restored pond at the Cleveland Metroparks' Garfield Park Reservation.
I have to point it out. The fact that this "century-old pond that had been suffocated for decades by vegetation and silt" was recently restored is an extremely strong indicator of the value to humans of having open water in parks.
People. Like. Lakes!
Anyway, thinking about this disconnected water feature option for Lower Lake, I could imagine a couple of possibilities:
1. The water feature is far smaller than the original lake, and looking at it is just a sad reminder of what used to be.
2. The water feature is large enough to cover a substantial portion of the original lake's footprint. But doing this while having it disconnected from the brook would require major rerouting of the brook that would mess up other features of the historic landscape, and probably balloon the cost of the project.
Perhaps I'm wrong, and I'd be happy to be proven wrong, but those are my concerns with that option.
Regardless, we should fully explore all options for restoring both lakes, and we shouldn't make any irreversible changes until we have explored all options.
There’s an idea I’d like to put forward that is something of a compromise. A compromise between the lake preservation advocates and the nature restoration advocates.Restore the Lower Lake dam and preserve Lower Lake in as close to its historic layout as is feasible, but also make it an even better version of its present self. There used to be a canoe club at the lake. Nowadays, there’s a very popular one day a year Take to the Lake event when people kayak, canoe, and paddleboard on the lake. Why limit this to one day a year? If we expand the recreational opportunities at the lake, this already very attractive community asset could be even more attractive.
As for Horseshoe Lake? Return Horseshoe Lake to nature. But truly return it to nature. No removing a thousand trees. No removing the existing brook to replace it with artificial stream channels. No regrading massive amounts of landscape.
In Beaverland, Leila Philip visits the site of a stream restoration where beavers have built a dam on one section of the stream, creating an eight acre pond. Scott McGill, founder of environmental restoration company Ecotone, points to the beaver pond and says, "To build a storm water management pond with that kind of water retention would cost one to two million dollars."
"You have to build the embankment, the core and outlet structure, you have to design and plan the whole thing. We've built those; we have contracts with counties throughout Maryland where it is one after the other. But beavers did all this..." He swings his arm in a wide gesture for emphasis. Moira, who has been listening, interjects with a grin, "For zero dollars!"
Return Horseshoe Lake to nature. Keep it as a nature park – a real nature park, not a gross over-engineered version of one – and then put some beavers in the lake, and see what happens.
As a scientist, I love a good experiment, and that would be a great one. One historic lake preserved and enhanced for future generations to enjoy, one historic lake brought closer to its true natural state, beavers and all. It could be a great opportunity for research and it could turn an already special and rare feature of the community into an even more special and rare feature.
Okay, I don't know if that's really a feasible option in a park that sits in a residential neighborhood, but hey, it might be. It's at least worth conferring with experts to find out.
What I do know is that our historic lakes and parklands have far more value to the community than could be provided by turning them into massively engineered green sewer infrastructure projects.
We, the residents of these cities, as well as the leaders of the cities, have a choice.
Decades from now, people could still be enjoying these beautiful and special lakes and parks, and as they do so, they might look back on this present time with the same reverence with which we now look back on the freeway fights.
Or, in the place of the lakes, there could be a generic park with artificial stream channels running through it, and the whole amazing history of this place might fade into nothing.
I hope we make the right choice.
About the author: I (Jeff McManus) have spent countless hours of my life around the lakes and all other parts of Doan Brook going back to my days as a CWRU cross country runner starting in 2001. I have a PhD in Biology from CWRU and work in research at my alma mater. I've lived in Cleveland Heights since 2012 and the brook and lakes are a large part of what attracted me to living here.
Pretty much says it all!. I hope we , da’ people, can save both horseshoe Lake and lower Lake
ReplyDeleteJeff has written a clear and concise overview of our situation. My thanks to him. One of my take-aways from his Blog is that these lakes add value to their surroundings - hence the well known marketing phrase “lakefront property”...and let's not forget that the Van Sweringen brothers were first and foremost real estate developers. They knew how to create value. They understood the criteria for adding value and desirability. They created Marshall Lake and Green Lake and chose to build their personal home across from Horseshoe Lake.
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