Cleveland, OH
Sheffield Village
By John Edwards
Sheffield Village Council unanimously opposed last week a proposal to expand North Ridgeville’s French Creek Water Treatment plant on Abbe Road. The expansion would be a regional sewage treatment facility to replace treatment plants in Lorain, Elyria and Amherst, facilities deemed unsatisfactory by the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency.
Mayor John Hunter asked Sheffield Village Council for the resolution opposing the expansion, and he was scheduled to present that legislation at an Oct. 12 regional meeting at Lorain County Community College. While he agrees a regional sewage treatment plant is needed, Hunter believes it should be constructed on industrially zoned, vacant land on the Black River in Lorain, instead of in a residential zone in Sheffield Village.
“We don’t want the extra odor, the extra lights or the extra truck traffic,” Hunter said. “We don’t want to have everyone else’s crap shipped to Sheffield Village. That might be good for Lorain, Elyria and Amherst – and very good for North Ridgeville – but it’s not worth the extra income tax from five or six new employees. I know the village council gave them the right to expand that plant back in 1970, and affirmed it in 1999, but times have changed. It makes more sense to build a new, state-of-the-art treatment plant on the river in Lorain.”
In other legislative action Oct. 10, council unanimously approved a resolution to correct misinformation by attaching a revised legal description and map to the Joint Economic Development Zone (JEDZ) agreement between the village and the city of Lorain. The agreement was approved in September for commercially zoned land in Sheffield Village at SR 611-Colorado Avenue at Root Road.
“Lorain sent us the wrong map and a legal description that didn’t exclude a small, privately-owned section of that property that’s not included in the JEDZ,” Hunter explained. “We need to correct that information so we can submit it to North Ridgeville (and) so we can ask their permission to allow us to run Lorain sewers to that area. The French Creek treatment plant is 3.25 miles away from the JEDZ, and the Lorain sewer is only 34 feet away. If North Ridgeville denies it, we’ll have a compelling case to present to NOACA (Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency) when we ask them to overrule North Ridgeville.”
Councilman Bob Markovich reminded residents the new third lane on Colorado Avenue is a turning – not passing – lane. He reported seeing a pair of young motorcyclists “popping wheelies as they whizzed by at about 100 miles per hour” in that turning lane Oct. 8.
Hunter reported Sheffield awaits “one more piece of paperwork” before advertising for bids for construction of the Safe Routes To School Grant-financed sidewalks on Oster and Harris roads. He said the concrete walkways would likely be installed next spring, after the weather becomes suitable for construction.
Clerk-Treasurer Tim Pelcic (who is also the S-SL Schools operations director and assistant treasurer) said piles of ground-up asphalt dumped on the district’s wooded building site by Karvo Paving during the resurfacing and widening of SR 611-Abbe Road are no longer available for free to village residents.
“The schools were allowing residents to take those grindings after the voters approved the bond issue for the new school, and it became clear we weren’t going to be able to use them all for trails in the woods where the school will be built,” Pelcic said. “But now the village’s service department is using the grindings for various projects, so it’s no longer available to residents. Those asphalt grindings hardened in the hot weather over the summer, and you can’t really shovel them into your truck anymore. You’d have to use a backhoe, which the service department does.”
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