My name is Emily Collins, my address is Akron, OH 44302 – I’m a proud resident of the 4th Ward; also the Executive Director & Managing Attorney at Fair Shake Environmental Legal Services in Akron, OH.
In direct response to the Planning Director’s comments in the media that the proposed development is a better land use than electroplating or some of the other things that could go on this property, it’s simply a legal falsehood that the City has to grant a conditional use permit and allow this proposed development to move forward.
It’s also disingenuous for the City Planning Director to tell this Commission or the public that you have to allow this proposed development so that an industrial development does not take its place. Conditional use permits are not planning tools to require a choice between the lesser of two evils. Instead, the legal reality is that clear alternative economic uses exist for this land and you are not facing a high risk of taking of private property if you insist on a use that preserves the valley, properly plans and saves the residents of the City of Akron and the entire valley the severe costs of impaired water quality in the Cuyahoga River, including sedimentation and erosion.
Where green space and recreational opportunities exist in the watershed, the City’s actions should not increase impermeable surfaces. The Middle segment of the Cuyahoga River’s aquatic life use continues to be impaired by total suspended solids, phosphorous, ammonia and dissolved oxygen levels. The National Park’s environmental assessment just downstream at the Boston Run restoration project this summer described the biggest threats to the Cuyahoga River Area of Concern as: development, increased precipitation and channelization.
The City needs more than empty statements about better water quality resulting from a development when the stakes are so high – an existing green space being considered for development.
Detailed hydrologic reports, background data for both groundwater, climate change-altered precipitation data, seasonally impacted river water quality data, and climate change-updated floodplain modeling should all be absolutely necessary from the petitioner prior to the City’s full consideration of the conditional use petition. While a more effective and planted floodplain sounds quite nice, any loading of pollutants that further impairs the Cuyahoga River is too much. Stating the words conservation, stating the words trees and plants, and giving unwanted areas to a conservation nonprofit are not enough.
The City’s zoning code requires that conditions uses “not result in destruction, loss, or damage of a natural, scenic or historic feature of major importance.” Any sincere review of development of a property in the Merriman Valley would consider the River as such a feature of major importance. It’s an extremely high bar, especially for a water segment that is impaired by the very pollutants that are known to come from development of areas that were previously green spaces. It’s important to note that the City may have population goals, but that is not a consideration that the City’s zoning code in any way contemplates in reviewing a conditional use petition.
Granting the petition today would be an arbitrary assault on the people of Akron and their watershed.
