The irishtown bend vision plan identified opportunities to enhance habitat conditions along the cuyahoga river while also improving site conditions that will enhance access to the river and…

The U.S. Department of the Interior Fish and Wildlife Service (DOI Fish and Wildlife Service Region 3) awarded the Cleveland Cuyahoga County Port Authority a $139,999 Project Grant on April 1, 2025, under the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative (GLRI) program (CFDA 15.662). The award supports completion by June 30, 2026, and funds the Irishtown Bend habitat restoration project along the Cuyahoga River in Ohio. The project creates fish habitat pockets within the federally designated industrial shipping channel at Irishtown Bend, addressing the navigation channel's historical constraints on aquatic habitat and fish migration. By constructing habitat features that emulate historic riverbank conditions—including undercut banks, overhanging vegetation, and woody debris structures—the project will provide food and shelter for fish, improve dissolved oxygen levels, and connect upstream and downstream habitat corridors.

This initiative contributes to delisting beneficial use impairments related to loss of fish and wildlife habitat and degradation of fish and wildlife populations in the Cuyahoga River Area of Concern. The project represents a collaborative approach to balancing federal navigation channel operations with environmental restoration objectives, utilizing innovative design solutions to enhance aquatic ecosystem conditions within a highly industrialized waterway. The GLRI program, which has restored more than 80,000 acres of coastal wetland and habitats across the eight-state Great Lakes region, supports projects that generate substantial economic and environmental returns, with studies demonstrating that each dollar invested generates more than three dollars in additional economic activity.

The irishtown bend vision plan identified opportunities to enhance habitat conditions along the cuyahoga river while also improving site conditions that will enhance access to the river and connections for recreation and community development over years to come, as a federal navigable river, the lower river contains areas that have been limited for fish habitat and migration due to existing infrastructure constraints and conditions in the navigation channel and the presence and need of bulkheads for the navigation channel. Improvements in the lower river will continue to enhance habitat conditions in highly used areas of the river utilizing innovative approaches while meeting the operating needs of the navigation channel. The goal of this project is to provide a friendlier habitat for fish in the federally designated ship channel at the irishtown bend location. Creating pockets of habitat along the bulkhead has been identified as feasible approach to improve conditions for aquatic habitat within the hardened and channelized cuyahoga river in the lower region of its area of concern. This project will create pockets offish habitat along the irishtown bend portion of the industrial shipping channel. The project will provide habitat needed by fish, connect upstream and downstream habitat, and contribute to delisting the beneficial use impairments for loss of fish and wildlife habitat and degradation of fish and wildlife populations in the cuyahoga river area of concern. The factors that can be addressed within this project include providing food and shelter for fish. IT may also be possible to provide localized improvements to a limited set of water quality parameters, like dissolved oxygen. Prior to channelization, the outside bends of the cuyahoga would have consisted of undercut riverbanks, overhanging vegetation and woody debris jams. Emulating the historic riverbanks within the irishtown bend project area may be best achieved by constructing a container between the proposed steel piles and in front of the sheet plies that can be filled with wood and plant material. The face of the container shall be permeable to water and consist of openings of various size that enable fish to access the habitat. The project is aimed to provide improvements to river conditions in the lower cuyahoga river and its associated area of concern goals towards delisting. The output for this project will be through the activities outlined to construct and install about 19 cages or units along about 190 LF of the bulkhead at south end of project. The intended beneficiary is the fish population in the river with the expected outcome of providing friendly habitat for the fish to eat and rest out of the way of vessel traffic.