From: Cincinnati Magazine
Link: http://www.cincinnatimagazine.com/article.aspx?id=56522
Robin Corathers, executive director of the Mill Creek Restoration Project
From its headwaters in Butler County to the spot where it dumps into the Ohio River, the 28-mile-long Mill Creek passes through 37 political jurisdictions. Which means that Robin Corathers, the executive director of the Mill Creek Restoration Project, must grapple with scores of different agendas as she works to improve one of the most degraded waterways in North America. When she became head of the MCRP 14 years ago, the Mill Creek was so polluted by industrial waste, urban runoff, and the city’s sewage overflow that most people simply thought of it as a filthy ditch. The Laughing Brook wetland in Northside hints at what it could be. The constructed “brook” features sculptures of cupped human hands that morph into salamanders and fish—the fish that should be in Mill Creek if it were healthy. But the art/environmental project has a real function. It’s a wetland and a wildlife habitat, and all of it—the pebbles, the permeable concrete walks and pavers, the plants, even the sculptures themselves—absorb and filter storm water runoff before it gets to Mill Creek. Now Corathers is working with individual communities along the waterway to develop projects (trails, wetlands, wildlife habitats, and more) that will eventually create a greenway corridor. “It’s a slow process,” she says, but “more people are finally getting it.” All the bits and pieces seem to be making a difference. Corathers reports that, for the first time in 50 years, there are beavers living on the Mill Creek upstream in Butler County and black-crowned night herons nesting downstream in Lower Price Hill. Just two more reasons that she’s able to utter the words “hope springs eternal” with a straight face. // Linda Vaccariello
