HORSESHOE LAKE —
THE CONTROVERSY THAT WILL NOT DIE

And NEORSD hasn’t refilled it.

I’ve seen “missing dog” signs on neighborhood phone poles, but I’ve never seen a “missing lake” sign. Maybe I should put one up! Our family’s dog went missing last week. She ran away. And then she was found. Unlike my lake.

Horseshoe Lake (and adjacent Lower Shaker Lake) are like Central Park for many East Side residents. The lakes are refuges — our lungs. The lakes are a blue space. Residents from throughout Cleveland come to Shaker Lakes for fresh air and to clear their heads. We hike, meditate, see birds, see blue water, and talk to neighbors who are walking dogs.

At the latest Cleveland Heights city council meeting, approximately 80 citizens showed up to protest NEORSD’s removal of Horseshoe Lake and the sewer district’s proposed gutting of Lower Shaker Lake. Twenty residents spoke. Each had two minutes. What particularly ticked off many of the speakers was NEORSD’s plan to chain-saw about a thousand trees, and plant saplings, plus add riprap (small rocks). The end result will be “re-meandered” streams where Horseshoe Lake was.

This was news to many locals. Shaker Lakes news does not bump off Trump/Iran-level headlines. For instance, Paul Springstubb, a Cleveland Heights resident, didn’t realize what’s in store for Shaker Lakes. He does now. He just texted me, “Just read about the packed Cleveland Heights council meeting. I can’t believe residents of Shaker and Cleveland Heights won’t vigorously work to stop a clear-cut of the lakes’ trees! What I’ve begun to fear is the natural feel of a lake — with its surrounding mature trees – turns into a totally over-planned, neatly groomed, ‘just so’ park.”

Springstubb, who is a retired Shaker Heights High English teacher, continued: “All these saplings that the NEORSD plans to plant. That’s not nature. That’s upscale mall/commercial planning, like Legacy Village, Lyndhurst. Maybe we’ll have loudspeakers in the scattered ‘rocks’ located along the redirected, but perfectly serpentine, streams. Maybe the speakers will play songs of the various birds that lost their homes at Horseshoe Lake.”

NEORSD and saplings. Spare us the sunburn due to the lack of shade for the next 10 or 20 years while the saplings mature.

If any Shaker Heights or Cleveland Heights elected officials acquiesce to the destruction of Horseshoe Lake and Lower Shaker Lake, their names should be registered in the imaginary Albert Porter Hall of Shame. (Porter was a county engineer who tried to run a freeway through the Shaker Lakes in the 1960s and was stopped by citizens civic groups.)

Cleveland Heights’ new mayor, Jim Petras, said at the council meeting that the City/ NEORSD deal to eliminate Horseshoe Lake was made before his time. That’s not a good excuse, Mr. Mayor. The cities of Shaker Heights and Cleveland Heights can rectify this monumental screw up.

In the public-discussion portion of the council meeting, Cleveland Heights resident Kevin Charnas nailed the situation in one sentence: “The sewer district just bulldozes stuff, pun intended.”

Erin Flanagan, a Cleveland Heights lawyer, has filed a federal suit to slow down the sewer people. Amy Weinfurtner of Shaker Heights has led citizen opposition to the lakes’ destruction. She administrates the website shakerlakesconservancy.org.

If Horseshoe Lake or Lower Shaker Lake go away, they’re not coming back. Dogs come back. Lakes don’t.

Horseshoe Lake when it was a lake.