By JAN LARSON McLAUGHLIN
BG Independent News
Just as the Wood County Park District was warming up to the idea of investing in a park destroyed twice by walls of ice from the north, the board was told the park now faces the problem of an earthen wall to the south.
On Tuesday, a landscape architect from Edge, Jack McDonough, showed the board images of a dike built by the owner of a horse farm on West River Road, next to Buttonwood Park.
So while Buttonwood Park faces risks from the river, it will bear a greater brunt of floods and ice floes since the dike will divert even more high water to the parkland.
In February of 2019, a massive wall of ice pulverized Buttonwood Park on the banks of the Maumee River.
Photographs showed the ice walls towering over Wood County Park District staff as they surveyed the damage. The ice came on shore when high winds and frigid conditions pushed massive ice floes into the park along the Maumee River.
“It was just like a bulldozer,” Park District Assistant Director Jeff Baney said about the walls of ice that came on land.
The soccer fields were wiped out and the gravel parking area had been washed out by ice floes. Many of the trees in the park have had their bark rubbed off by the ice chunks. Some whole trees were swept away by the ice.
“It was basically like a dam breaking” quickly sending floodwaters ashore, Wood County Park District Director Neil Munger said.
This spring, the walleye fishermen were back – but the rest of the park remains unrepaired since the park district has no desire to invest more money in a park that has been demolished by giant ice jams twice in four years.
“It seems to be more often that we see 100-year floods that tear up the Maumee,” McDonough said.
Since the last flood, the owner of the horse farm, which was also damaged by flooding, had dirt and gravel hauled in to build a 12-foot tall mound perpendicular to the river’s flow, McDonough said.
That dike – located on a federally regulated floodplain – will redirect flood water toward Buttonwood Park.
Munger reached out to Wood County Planning Director Dave Steiner, since that office oversees floodplains in the county. Steiner reportedly checked into the dike, leading the landowner to request a variance.
Park board member Denny Parish questioned the legality of the dike.
“If I was a lawyer – which I am,” Parish said. “You simply can’t improve your property to the detriment of your neighbor’s.”
The park district already got burned once by making improvements to the park after a 2015 flood there. All those improvements were washed away by the 2019 ice floes and floodwaters.
It had already been decided that the former soccer fields would be turned into a prairie area. A plan was considered to move the parking lot and camping spaces further from the river – not knowing that would put them closer to the new dike.
Parish said he would not vote for improvements to the park while the dike stands.
“Based on the damage done before, there is no safe place to do it with the dike there,” Munger said.
This past April, a neighbor of Buttonwood Park, Molly Strader, asked the park district board to consider a partial revival of the park that previously allowed primitive camping. Strader said people travel from across the U.S. – from Washington, Florida, Maine and New York – to use the park on the Maumee River.
So the park district removed the “park closed” and “trespassing” signs.
Strader said she wasn’t asking the park district to invest a great deal of money in the site – but just open it up so it could be used.
“It’s a shame,” board member Tom Myers said. “It’s in a very unique location.”
“It needs to be gone,” board member Bill Cameron said about the dike.
Steiner reported that the variance request states that the dike was there previously.
Munger disputed that claim.
“We’ve owned the property for 25 years and I never saw a dike there,” he said.
