The Cold War-era Fernald uranium processing facility in Northwest Hamilton County reopened as a nature preserve in 2007. Ohio received $13.7 million as partial compensation for the damage the site did to the Great Miami Aquifer. For the last decade, a portion of that money has gone toward acquiring conservation easements to help protect and improve water quality in the aquifer and the Paddys Run watershed.
"The status of the aquifer is that it's still being monitored, still being cleaned," says Three Valley Conservation Trust Executive Director Randy Evans.
He's standing in a prairie of native wildflowers at Salamander Run MetroPark in Butler County; ironweed and compass plants wave in a gentle breeze. The land for the park was acquired as part of the effort to ensure clean water is being fed into the Great Miami Aquifer.
The headwaters of Paddys Run are in the park, 5 miles north of Fernald. Paddys Run is what's called a losing stream, meaning it carries surface water right into the groundwater.
"It was important to clean up the surface waters in order to make sure that there's clean water going into the aquifer," Evans explains. "Any runoff that we're getting from former fields and stuff like that are impacting water quality on the surface, which ultimately impacts the ability to clean water in the aquifer."
Water always has been a big part of the Fernald story. In the 1980s, nearby residents got the news: the water they'd been drinking was contaminated with uranium and other waste. Part of cleaning up the superfund site meant making the groundwater and surface water safe, and repairing the damage to the aquifer and the Paddys Run watershed.
Pushing clean water down the watershed helps flush the remaining uranium toward extraction wells. According to the Ohio EPA, 16,000 pounds of uranium has been removed from the aquifer. The agency reports the uranium plume has decreased from 196 acres to 69, but concentrations are considered safe under the federal drinking water standard.
Three Valley Conservation Trust and the Fernald Natural Resource Trustees developed the Paddys Run Conservation Project in 2010. To date, the project has protected more than 4,800 acres by creating conservation easements. Those easements keep natural areas and farmland from being developed. They allow working farms to remain farmland, while other land, like Salamander Run, is returned to a natural state, improving the quality of the water running off the land into Paddys Run.
"When we first came out here in 2014 — we acquired the property in 2014 using monies from the Paddys Run Conservation Project — there was just soybean fields here," says Steve Gordon, a subcontractor with Three Valley Conservation Trust, as he looks around the park. "You didn't see any of the prairies, of course, and anytime you had a rain event, the water that was going into Paddys Run, the tributaries and streams was basically like milk chocolate [in] color. You could almost see the soil going into it."
The Trust slowly turned the fields into prairies, and created wetlands and vernal pools.
Not only has the water quality improved, the prairies have taken off. All kinds of birds have been spotted, and several species of salamander were successfully introduced to the property from nearby Indian Creek MetroPark.
Randy Evans says that was particularly exciting.
"Salamanders are an indicator species of water quality and habitat quality. They're some of the first that are impacted by runoff into wetlands and contamination into waterways," Evans explains.
MetroParks of Butler County entered the picture in 2017, agreeing to operate Salamander Run as part of the park system.
"Our job is to maintain and keep what they've started," says Joe Dumyahn, senior natural resources manager.
"This is an amazing park; I love coming here. It's one of my favorites for all the different bird species and all the plants and all the work we put out there. But it is a part of something greater. You may look at it and say it's a single park off of Layhigh Road, but it's not. It's a part of a greater system," he concludes.
After 15 years, the Fernald settlement dollars supporting the Paddys Run Conservation Project are dwindling. Gordon says most of what's left will go toward maintaining properties.
More easements are needed to protect the whole of the watershed, and while there are other funding sources and grants they're applying for, those sources are slowly receding, too.
On the upside, though, Three Valley Conservation Trust says more property owners are coming to them, looking to donate their land as easements.
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