SYLVANIA TOWNSHIP, Ohio — A creek known as Hartman Ditch in Sylvania Township is washing away residents' properties.
Resident Charlie Creech is watching the creek, which was one of the reasons he chose to build on the property, now eating away his yard and big oak trees.
"That creek has taken everything away and the root system is gone," he said, pointing to a tree threatening to topple.
Those beautiful trees are now threatening his and his neighbors' homes.
"This tree is going to come," he said. "You know that tree is going to come and it's coming this way."
The homes, located in the Northwoods subdivision off of Holland-Sylvania Road in Sylvania Township, are built on sand.
"It was beautiful and now it's just washing away," Creech said of the creek.
Call 11 for Action found residents in seven townships, including Sylvania Township, pay into the Lucas County Storm Water Fund. Residents can find out how much they are paying into the fund on the Lucas County Auditor's AREIS website, a digital database of county properties.
"I guess what I don't understand is what that county tax is doing," Creech said. "What are we paying this tax for to retain the creeks and streams and ditches and they're not doing anything? That's what I don't understand."
Lucas County Engineer Mike Pniewski said that money cannot be used to address problems on individual properties.
"Under the Ohio Revised Code, the county is permitted to essentially assess a storm water fee for purposes of administering and maintaining and complying with the Ohio EPA's MS4 Storm Water Permit," he said. "Monies underneath the Storm Water Fee can only be used to fund activities for storm compliance and administration of the permit. Regular maintenance of ditches is not a permit requirement."
The subdivision is included in what's called a "petition," which allows the county to do maintenance work.
"Property owners are ultimately responsible for maintenance of streams and ditches on their property, but there is a realization if people don't maintain what they have, it can adversely impact people either upstream or downstream," Pniewski said. "The purpose of basically placing a ditch, or a stream or a water course under petition is to allow the county to come in and basically do the maintenance on behalf of those property owners, that they don't have the ability, the financial ability or technical ability to do that themselves."
"The impact of that is if that maintenance has to be done, the benefiting property owners on that stream pay for the maintenance through special assessment. It's not paid for through regular tax dollars. They're paid through by special assessment on property owners whose drainage basically goes into those streams."
Pniewski said there is a plan in the works to replace existing erosion material originally put in place by the subdivision by adding larger boulders, rocks and riprap, which is rock or other material used to protect shorelines against erosion. The cost will be split among all owners in the subdivision, not just those who live along the creek.
However, there are some issues Creech has that Pniewski said cannot be corrected by the county.
"In terms of the fact that he has some shallow slope stability issues in his backyard, that is something that we cannot solve. That is something that he has to solve because that's something on his personal property," Pniewski said.
Creech still questions whether the county contributed to the erosion with the 42-inch pipe it installed in the creek, which deposits water from Holland-Sylvania Road.
"The 42-inch is full, and it just rushes through and the retention dam that they built here isn't going to do anything for this," Creech said.
Pniewski said that the 42-inch main was installed long before homes were built in the area.
Call 11 for Action questioned whether it is the appropriate size for the creek.
Michael Tatar, public information officer for the Lucas County Engineer's Office, said in an email, "Per our drainage engineer, the larger the pipe, the slower the velocity of the flow, therefore less of a chance for erosion. If a smaller pipe was there, the velocity would be greater coming out of the pipe and would increase the chance of erosion.
The flow remains the same no matter what size the pipe is, but the larger pipe allows for more capacity and with more capacity comes a slower velocity."
Creech said the time to act is now to prevent destruction of the homes and residents are tired of the back and forth since 2006 with no solution between Sylvania Township and Lucas County.
"They're kicking the can down the road, and it seems like they do it every year, they say, 'Well, we're going to get to it or something,' but it could have been done a long time ago," Creech said. "They came back with 18 excuses of, 'How are we going to do it? How are we going to get to it?' Things like that and they just had another meeting and said, 'Well they're not going to do anything with it for 12 months. They can't get to it for 12 months.'"
Pniewski said it could still be several years until the project is complete, including one to two years to finalize the plan, and then a few more to assess the cost and what it will be for each homeowner.