Lakewood resident Jay Foran had to barge in materials on Lake Erie to shore up the erosion outside his home, increasing the cost of an already expensive project.

Living on the edge
By Jennifer Mitchell
Westshore
Published Aug. 30, 2006

Some of the most prized properties on the Westshore perch high above Lake Erie. Those who own these hilltop houses treasure them for their unrivaled lakefront views. Westshore communities also have a vested interest in such residences, primarily because they provide a major source of tax revenue.

While governments and residents may have different reasons for considering these locales important, they agree on one thing —they must be protected. To be more specific, lakefront homes in Lakewood are losing anywhere from 6 inches to 12 inches of land annually from erosion.

Besides creating environmental issues, erosion reduces the size of land and bringing lakefront houses closer to the water.

“As soon as the first home falls in the lake, the values of all of those properties are going to go down,” Lakewood Councilman Kevin Butler said.

The answer — erosion control — can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per property.

Lakewood resident Jay Foran knows well the difficulties of undertaking such a project on an individual basis. He and a neighbor got started on controlling erosion on their properties in 2003.

Remains of an eroded Willoughby, Ohio, lakefront home.

Foran bought his home in 2000, a 1923 lakefront brick residence, perching about 55 feet above the water. Foran didn’t know much about shoreline erosion at the time of his purchase, but was told he could lose anywhere from 3 inches to 6 inches annually. At the time, it didn’t seem like very much.

However, just a summer after he moved in, an approximately 100-square-foot chunk of ground from the eastern edge of his property fell into the water. Two years later, he lost a similar-size on the western end. That’s when he realized he had to do something, fast.

The project was expensive and time consuming. Foran and his neighbor first had to hire a civil engineer, and then get permits from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers. All of that took about two years. Then there was the trouble of getting the material to the shore. Because the houses are so close together and the cliffs above the lake so fragile, the materials had to be barged in to the work site, adding even more to the project cost. The cost can range from $1,000 to $1,500 per square foot, and the neighbors had to shore up between 80 feet to 100 feet of crumbling cliff side. Those costs were in addition to the $10,000 engineering fee.

Foran said he felt that spending the money was worth it, because he will likely be able to recoup the cost when he sells: A lakefront home with erosion controls in place is worth far more than one without.

However, coming up with the money is a challenge and, for some homeowners, an insurmountable one. Lakewood Councilman at-large Edward FitzGerald called a meeting at City Hall Aug. 14 to discuss possible solutions.

One solution would be to allow the homeowners to come together and use the city’s leverage to acquire long-term, low-interest loans for the work that could be paid back out of their mortgage payments. The homeowners would be entirely responsible for paying the loans back. About one-quarter of the city’s lakefront homeowners, including Foran, already have united as a lakefront consortium.

“You can form an improvement district either through state law, or you can just from a consortium of people and get them together and form a nonprofit,” FitzGerald explained. “We don’t know which route we’ll go.”

Butler said such an organization could form a private taxing district.

“It can take the shape of every lakefront property owner,” he said. “It would be a very long, narrow district but that is how it would go.  “Residents of the district would have the authority to set up a board and essentially tax themselves over a long period of time to pay for the cost of shoreline erosion control.

Rocky River Mayor Pamela Bobst said that her city had done something similar during the tenure of former Mayor Earl Martin, when it allowed lakefront residents to finance the cost of erosion projects by paying them off along with their annual taxes.

The city also has two trusts, Beachcliff One and Beachcliff Two, that fund erosion control along two sections of Rocky River lakefront.

Another innovative funding idea in Rocky River was used this summer for an erosion control project at Rocky River Park.

The city’s Parks and Recreation Foundation raises money through its annual million dollar hole-in-one shootout contest. It gave the proceeds from a previous year’s event to the Parks and Recreation Department to fund the work.

Foran, FitzGerald and Butler are in agreement on the necessity of homeowners doing such erosion control projects together. Foran said that while he and one neighbor stabilized the lakefront on their properties, neighbors on either side didn’t. That means erosion will continue along the sides of their property. A lakefront-wide control project would benefit everyone by preventing that.

Government involvement could allow work on such a massive scale to happen. Other benefits the city could possibly supply include allowing workers access to the shoreline through Lakewood Park and helping residents get discounted supplies through its municipal buying power.

Already, the nonprofit advocacy group Lakewood Alive, founded by Foran, is on board.

Lakewoods next step at the city level may come at Tuesday’s council meeting, when FitzGerald plans to introduce a communication to formalize the process to the Public Works committee.

Foran will move forward with his neighbors. He plans to contact all lakefront residents in the city and hold a public meeting to further discussion about a large-scale erosion project. He also plans to come up with some finite figures as far as an estimated loss of tax revenue to the city if lakefront property values decrease due to erosion and projected gains by putting in untied erosion control.

“Where there is a united front, it’s better for everybody’s property,” Foran said.