(PHOTO BY JESSIE DAVIS / THE VILLAGE REPORTER)
DOING THEIR PART … The Oak Openings Preserve Metropark is now open to performing maintenance on its own ditches to help alleviate drainage issues in the Swan Creek Watershed, according to Swanton Mayor Neil Toeppe. The watershed is the focus of a petition that could see Lucas County residents footing a portion of the bill.
By: Jesse Davis
THE VILLAGE REPORTER
jesse@thevillagereporter.com
The Swan Creek Watershed ditch maintenance petition has been delayed in Lucas County and completely eliminated in Fulton County and Henry County after public outcry and the intervention of local government officials.
According to an update on the website of Lucas County Engineer Mike Pniewski, the Joint Board of Lucas, Fulton and Henry County commissioners voted in favor of his recommendation to reschedule the final hearing to July 15, 2025, at a meeting on Tuesday. The board also voted to completely remove Fulton and Henry counties from the petition.
Swanton Mayor Neil Toeppe said one of his main concerns after the informational meeting in Swanton last month was whether or not Oak Openings Preserve Metropark would be required to do any maintenance work on their ditches.
He and Whitehouse Mayor Richard Bingham met with Lucas County Commissioner Lisa Sobecki to discuss that, among other concerns, the next day.
“At lunch that day the three of us and the village fiscal officer – Holden Benfield – we sat at lunch and discussed the situation, and really it revolved around my concern that if Oak Openings did not clean their ditches and weren’t mandated to clean their ditches, it didn’t matter what anybody did upstream because that water would still back up from Oak Openings into Fulton County – and particularly Swanton,” Toeppe said.
He said uncleared ditches in the Metropark have caused flooding in Valleywood Golf Course, as well as into a creek that caused sewer systems to back up into residents’ homes.
Toeppe was later able to discuss those concerns with Pniewski, at which point he recommended flying a drone over the park to catalog the ditches that needed maintenance, with a follow-up flight several months later to determine if the required maintenance had been done.
He said he also pointed out to Pniewski that no petition would be required in order to mandate work at the park.
“[Pniewski] said that Lucas County Commissioner [Pete] Gerken and Lucas County Commissioner Sobecki as well as Mr. Pniewski have met with the Metroparks and they have heard, loud and clear, that they have to do something,” Toeppe said.
“They now have someone in charge of that type of concern, and they seem amenable to taking some action, but that remains to be seen.”
Toeppe said that in a subsequent meeting with Pniewski, Sobecki, Bingham, and the fiscal officer for Whitehouse, they also discussed the need to do more outreach to the public regarding the scope of the problem and the means to address it.
“I did talk to a number of farmers, and then while the county engineer said that it was really charging $30 an acre, $25 an acre, it seems like a nominal fee,” Toeppe said.
“But when you have 1,000 acres of farmland, farmers were getting billed anywhere from $8,000 to … $25,000 a year, and that’s for the first 6 years. So that is pretty excessive.”
He said that cost would have to be passed on to somebody. “To the renter of the farm field or the owner of the farm field,” Toeppe said. “And that would clearly have an impact on the price of corn and beans.”
According to Toeppe, the board is going to look into possibilities for state and federal grant funding, and that local officials in the watershed in Fulton County and Henry County were going to be involved despite no longer being part of the petition.
“It seems it would be beneficial to all of us to support getting grants to help minimize this problem,” he said. He also pointed out that rural residents tend to take better care of ditches on their properties to begin with.
“Typically, the folks in the rural counties – for example in the Village of Swanton – we maintain our own ditches,” he said. “They run free; they just get backed up.”
“With farmers, you’ll see them out cleaning up their own ditches. There’s a heightened sense of concern over ditch maintenance in the rural communities and less need for this overreaching petition.”
Toeppe credited a “tremendous outpouring of concern from the residents” as one of the reasons the attempt to change and delay the petition was successful, an opinion supported by his conversation with Sobecki the day after the public meeting in Swanton.
“She said her email box was already being bombarded,” he said. “So, they got the message, [and] the message has been delivered and received by Oak Openings.”
For more information on the current status of the petition, visit https://www.lucascountyengineer.org/swancreek.html.
