First Posted: 3/24/2015
LIMA — The Allen Soil and Water Conservation District will soon give Little Cranberry Creek a facelift.
The portion of the creek from where it joins with the larger Cranberry Creek east of Rockport down to south of Hillville Road will be the site of a ditch project that was approved Tuesday by Allen County commissioners.
“The biggest problem they have right now is the channel does not have a very uniform width,” district drainage coordinator Dan Ellerbrock said. “In some places, it’s real narrow and in others, it’s wide, and nothing has been done on this section of the channel in quite some time. By reconstructing that to a uniform width, it will help with the flow that goes down through there.”
This was originally the third phase of a larger project throughout much of Cranberry Creek that benefitted from state funding. However, after some delays, that funding was no longer available.
“So we went back to the landowners with a new proposal, and the landowners approved it,” Ellerbrock said.
While landowner assessments for this kind of project is usually determined by the amount of acreage bordering the creek, the cost for this project is actually based on who benefits the most from it.
“The main purpose of that is to reduce some of the flooding at the lower end,” Ellerbrock said. “The total cost for the project is about $125,000, and the landowners at the lower end will have the biggest portion of it. Some of those costs will be somewhere between $60 and $70 an acre. For people on the top end, it will be down as low as $25 per lot.”
There are 130 parcels of land bordering this section of creek. A schedule of landowner assessments should be completed and ready for commissioner approval next week.
