LORAIN – Three companies have bid to restore four acres with the great blue heron rookery along Lorain’s Black River.
The project is another part of the city of Lorain’s continuing efforts to clean the environment and restore natural conditions on land between the river and the steel mills that grew up along East 28th Street.
The heron rookery is on a riverbend north of the mills and east of the turning basin that served ships coming to the mills.
The restoration project has been in planning since last year.
This summer there will have two phases.
Contractor Mark Haynes Construction of Norwalk will remove slag from the site, a project that started earlier this year.
That work will begin after Aug. 1 and is expected to take about a month, said Kathryn Hoffmann, storm water manager for Lorain’s Engineering Department. That office has worked with the city Utilities Department, where workers have led efforts to score federal grant money to pay for the ecological work.
The second phase will be environmental restoration including placing soil and compost, planting trees and stakes. That job will start after the slag is moved, about Sept. 1, and should be done by the end of the year.
On July 25, city staff opened three bids for the second phase of work. The apparent low bidder was Brookside Construction of Medina with a base bid of $123,618; the engineer’s estimate for the job was $142,961.
City staff and consultants will examine the bid documents and make a recommendation to award the project in coming weeks.
The heron rookery has become an attraction along the river with up to 200 nests estimated among the trees.
Some local nature watchers and outdoor enthusiasts have reported seeing bald eagles on the Black River and there is speculation an active bald eagle nest is among the trees of the heron rookery.
Lorain city officials now are treating the nest as if it is an active nest, Hoffman said.
The presence of the eagle aerie will reduce the amount of time each year people and heavy machinery can be back on land near the rookery, Hoffman said.
The city already stopped work in the rookery from Feb. 15 to July 15 to avoid disrupting the mating season of the herons.
Now work in the rookery will not be allowed from Jan. 15 to Aug. 1, which is the bald eagle nesting season, Hoffman said.
‘Basically what it does is, it reduces the amount of work that can be done in that area by about a month,’ she said.
