Work is underway to restore Sharon Creek from where it runs into the Mill Creek, upstream to Sharonville. Restoration on the roughly one mile of creek is being done by the Mill Creek Alliance.
"Sharon Creek is a major tributary of Mill Creek. It's big part of our watershed," Dave Schmitt, executive director, tells WVXU. "The water quality in the stream is very good, but because of all the stormwater runoff ... the bottom of the creek gets scraped dry, gets scoured — all the gravel and small rocks that's normally on the bottom of a creek get literally blown out, and that's bad for the creek because that's habitat."
The creek bed should be home to all kinds of small creatures like crawdads and beetles, and attractive to insects like dragonflies to lay their larva — all the things at the bottom of the food chain that are important for larger creatures like fish and birds.
The work is starting in Evendale where the creek meets the Mill Creek and going north to Sharonville.
The creek corridor is small, only about 130 feet wide. That means stormwater gets forced down the stream at high speed rather than meandering.
"We're going to be fixing a bunch of spots where there's heavy erosion. We're going to be reintroducing some bigger rocks and some habitat into the stream. We're going to be making some other structures in the stream that are designed to slow water down and spread [it] out and take advantage of the floodplains and cut down on flooding and storm water downstream," says Schmitt.
The three main improvements are:
- Stabilizing the streambanks and adding native vegetation
- Reconnecting the floodplain to improve year-round water management and create some wetlands
- Building 16 rock riffles to boost oxygen levels for aquatic life and keep the stream stable
The city of Sharonville will then pick up the work and take it up to Sharon Lake, he adds. Great Parks is nearing completion on an overhaul of Sharon Lake. That's expected to reopen sometime in late fall of 2025.
The $1.8 million project is expected to be completed by the end of the year.
Eventually, the planned Sharon Creek multi-use trail, in the works by Great Parks and Tri-State Trails, will run along the creek as part of the Triangle Trail network that will connect into the CROWN network.
"When we're done, we're going to replant everything with native vegetation. We've had to remove a lot of invasive honeysuckle along the banks of the stream, but we'll be replacing that with some great native vegetation and trees so it'll be a beautiful path for the trail as well."
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