WARREN, Ohio – Demolition of the Leavittsburg dam is expected to begin this month after the 11th District Court of Appeals overruled a motion for a preliminary injunction to stop it.

Warren Township trustees and Trumbull County commissioners have appealed a county common pleas court ruling dismissing their attempt to stop removal of the low-head dam. The two entities asked the appeals court last month for an injunction to halt the dam removal pending their appeal.

Trumbull County MetroParks, which owns the dam, filed a motion opposing the injunction, and the parties outlined their positions in a status conference before the appeals court.

“In sum, we conclude that appellants have failed to establish, by clear and convincing evidence, that they are entitled to a preliminary injuction …,” the appeals court judges wrote in their ruling Wednesday. “Appellant’s motion is hereby overruled.”

The Leavittsburg Dam, built in the early 20th century, is one of six low-head dams slated for removal in the Mahoning River Corridor Revitalization Plan developed by Eastgate Regional Council of Governments. Trumbull County MetroParks secured grant funding, beginning in 2022, to complete removal of the dam.

Commissioners and township trustees in their court filings had argued in the common pleas court case, based on a report from engineering company DLZ Inc., that there were risks to removing the dam, including riverbank instability, tree collapses, roadway damage and instability of an older dam in the area. 

But Judge Robert J. Rice in his ruling wrote that the park’s mitigation efforts will address those concerns. He wrote that the plaintiffs lacked standing to file the complaint.

The township and county commissioners also alleged that if the dam is removed and water levels decrease, residential septic systems submerged in the river and discharging into the water will be exposed, leading to sewage discharging onto the land.

“This sewage discharge will not be created by Defendant’s removal of the dam – it is already happening and, unfortunately, appears to have been happening for a long time according to the consent orders submitted by defendant,” Rice wrote in his decision.

Returning the river to its natural depths by removing the dam “is merely making such discharge more noticeable to those who reside along the river,” the judge wrote. “As plaintiffs fail to allege that removal of the dam will actually create sewage discharge, this is not an injury that creates standing.”

Removal of the dam was set to start this month and be completed by year’s end. The plaintiff’s motion for a preliminary injunction sought to stop the park from incurring further expense for dam removal until December 2027, when construction of sewers in the Meadowbrook area of Warren Township, adjacent to the Mahoning River, will be completed.

Rice called it bewildering that commissioners and the township “are content with the sewage continually being discharged into the river and ask to penalize the defendant, and the years’ worth of time and resources expended to research and plan for the dam removal, for an issue that defendant has no part of – an issue that was solely within the control of Warren [Township] and Trumbull County.”

The Meadowbrook sewer project is the first phase of a four-phase plan to install sanitary sewer lines in Trumbull County. It’s part of a consent decree between the county and the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency due to failed off-lot septic systems.