I actually thought after my previous entry that I'd be taking a break from writing these posts for at least a little while, but the Sewer District pulled me right back in when I learned of their outrageous most recent project update.
Easily one of the most controversial aspects of the Horseshoe Lake project is the fact, which became public knowledge late last year despite having been in the works for several years, that the plans call for removing over one thousand trees. Most people are shocked when they learn this. I've gotten pushback, though, from people who say that most of the thousand trees are invasive or unhealthy.
They thought this because the Sewer District led them to believe it.
I'd looked into it and come across a statement I previously hadn't known about in which the Sewer District said "most or about half" of the trees are invasive. Still a very large number of native trees!
Imagine my surprise when I learned that, on February 20 of this year, NEORSD had quietly posted an Implementation update FAQ to the project page, and in it I read these words: "Although some of the approximately 1000 trees are invasive or their health is declined, these trees constitute a minority of the trees being removed."
"Some" of the trees are invasive or in poor health. Some. How many? Who knows? 40%? 30%? 20%? We just know that it's "a minority."
Remember, some people dismissed previous complaints about the mass tree removal by saying that most of the trees were invasive or in poor health.
So now we can look at the full timeline of the misleading way in which the tree removal aspect of this project was rolled out to the public. The timeline can basically be divided into three phases.
1. A multi-year public engagement phase in which the Sewer District consistently heard from the public that we wanted them to prioritize preservation of existing trees. During this phase, nothing was ever said about the fact that the project would require mass tree removal, even though no plan was ever considered that wouldn't have required mass tree removal.
2. The phase after public engagement was over and during which plans were completed, permitting began, and Cleveland Heights and Shaker Heights city councils approved $7 million of taxpayer funding for the project. During this phase, the Sewer District started to talk about (in places not many people would see it) the fact that their plans would remove about 1,000 trees, but made it sound like most of the trees were invasive.
3. The present. After the cities approved funding for the project, after public knowledge of the mass tree removal became widespread, and after city officials and Sewer District representatives started to tell people that the Horseshoe plans are a "done deal," the Sewer District quietly acknowledged that, in fact, most of the trees are healthy, native trees.
Isn't that convenient?
Here's the full timeline in an image you can share with people who might not feel like reading this whole post:
Some additional details:
How do I know that the plans under consideration at the December 2022 park design open house would all have required removing hundreds of trees, but this wasn't mentioned? I was at that open house. I'm in this picture that was included in one of NEORSD's later presentations:
(How do you think I feel about my picture appearing in propaganda for this horrible project? I don't love it, that's for sure.)
Now that I've seen the full plans, it's very obvious that any of the options we were working from would have required mass tree removal. I distinctly remember that I and other people at the open house said that preserving trees was important, which is feedback that was consistently received during public engagement, according to NEORSD's own reports on public engagement.
Moving on, the two presentations that occurred about two months apart in 2025 (a March 31 public presentation and early June presentations to the Cleveland Heights and Shaker Heights planning commissions) are especially interesting. Both these presentations occurred at the same phase of the planning process, in between 90% and 100% design completion. The presentations contained most of the same content. In the middle, there's even a sequence of 13 consecutive slides in the planning commission presentations that (with minor changes to some slide titles) appeared in the exact same order in the middle of the public presentation.
Almost. One slide was missing from the public presentation; the other 12 were in the same order.
Here's an image showing part of that sequence:
So what was in that one slide that got left out from the public presentation?
Oh. Interesting.
I actually laughed out loud when I realized this. The sheer, unmitigated audacity, am I right?
The planning commission presentations, when it was incorrectly stated that "most or about half" of the trees were invasive, were the first time that mass tree removal was mentioned in a somewhat public forum, but these were very low visibility events. I first became aware of them and watched a YouTube video of the Cleveland Heights meeting last month, and at the time the video had 7 views.
It's also important to note that these meetings occurred after public engagement was over, and at the meetings, the District was merely informing the planning commissions of the basically finished plans, not seeking feedback on them.
The following month, a public notice was sent to "project-adjacent property owners" (a small number of people) and also uploaded to the project web page. Buried in the middle of a complicated document was a mention of the removal of over 1,000 trees. It received almost no attention at the time. The post about it on the web page didn't say anything about the number of trees, but instead said this:
The Public Notice includes several drawings (Sheets C-016 through C-018) that depict the project’s draft tree-removal plan and this has raised some questions from neighbors.
Select tree removal is necessary to construct the project. The Sewer District’s design team targeted tree clearing in areas dominated by invasive vegetation...
Given what we now know, it's fascinating how this was written. Saying "targeted tree clearing in areas dominated by invasive vegetation" insinuates that most of the trees are invasive, but in fact, because there's all sorts of non-tree invasive vegetation, it doesn't directly state anything about whether the trees are invasive.
The updated implementation FAQ also talks about new tree plantings. "Trees: 1,106 (1", 2" & 4" caliper)." Given that the number of trees slated for removal in the 100% design plan is 1,070, this number seems very deliberate. About one new tree for every removed tree.
There are a couple big problems, though.
One, which should be obvious, is that replacing a very large, mature tree with a sapling is a poor substitution. More than 200 of the trees marked for removal are at least two feet in diameter, some much larger than that. The tall trees in the foreground and at left in this picture are two of those trees:
I don't think cutting down those trees and planting two saplings is a good trade. Do you?
The second problem is that the new trees are being counted with a different counting system than the removed trees. Trees that are one or two inches in diameter weren't even included in the tree survey. There are probably hundreds of such trees that are in the way of the project and would be removed along with the nearly 1,100 larger trees. So if the trees being removed were being counted in the same way as the trees being planted, the number of trees being removed would be much larger.
Another question I was asked when I first posted about the 1,000 trees was how much that was of the total trees in the park. At the time, I didn't know the answer. I now know there are about 3,500 total trees (not counting the very small, not surveyed trees), so nearly one third are marked for removal. A massive, destructive alteration to a historic nature park.
Or, as the Sewer District would put it, "select tree removal."
The whole way this process was undertaken is absolutely appalling. Almost as appalling as the plan itself.
As we look back over all this, we see a classic case of shifting goalposts. A lot of people were very upset when it was announced that Horseshoe Lake wouldn't be preserved, but imagine the additional outrage if the original announcement had been, "We're planning to remove Horseshoe Lake, and we're also planning to remove over one thousand trees, nearly a third of the trees in the park, most of them healthy, native trees."
Seriously. How many people would have gotten on board with that?
Instead, the tree removal was just not mentioned at all during the years long public engagement process. Then, it was mentioned, but the trees were supposed to be mostly invasive. Then, it was finally acknowledged that most of the trees are healthy, native trees, but after it was declared that it's too late to change anything.
This should be a massive scandal.
Destroying our beloved historic park would be bad enough. Doing it through such a duplicitous process? I think it risks creating wounds in the fabric of our community that could take decades to heal.
I know that the Sewer District and many elected officials probably think that people like me are annoying. We're a thorn in their sides. But really, we're trying to help them, and I hope they can appreciate that. We're trying to help save them from making one of the worst mistakes of their lives.
Getting rid of the lakes would do irreparable harm to our communities simply due to the inevitable negative effect it would have on how attractive our cities are as places to live. Somehow, this doesn't seem to have been considered when the long-term costs of the plans were calculated.
Getting rid of the lakes and destroying over a thousand trees after repeatedly hiding and then obfuscating and misleading about that aspect of the project would do so much more harm, because thousands of community members would come away from the process harboring an entirely justified grudge toward the people responsible and feeling like they could never trust those people again.
I don't think that's an outcome those people should desire.
The sunk cost fallacy is powerful. A lot of work and money have already gone into making these plans and there's a lot of momentum toward carrying them out. But the felling of trees and bulldozing of land hasn't started yet. It's not too late to change course. Our elected officials don't have to continue making the mistakes that elected officials made in the past. Our Sewer District doesn't have to kick its customers in the face by destroying our parks after spending several years misleading us about the plans for those parks.
It's not too late to make things right. But that requires going back to the drawing board and engaging with the public in a transparent way. I think that's the least we can ask.
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