By Dan Klepal
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Pat Karney (left), director of the Municipal Sewer District, portages his canoe around the low-head dam on the Mill Creek during a tour last week. | ZOOM |

QUEENSGATE - A thin green ribbon slices through two miles of concrete jungle in Queensgate - an environmental oasis created by mistake, not design.

This southern-most stretch of Mill Creek, from the Western Hills viaduct to the Ohio River, meanders between a huge rail yard to the east and a sewage treatment plant to the west and, against long odds, has become a haven for fish and wildlife.

Mill Creek, one of the most polluted waterways in the nation, for years carried blood and animal parts from slaughterhouses, as well as sewage and industrial waste from homes, mills and factories.

Yet, it was pollution that kept this portion of the creek untouched by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as it channeled the creek to the north.

In the 1980s, the corps paved over an area 6 miles to the north of the viaduct, making a concrete trough to control flooding. But by the time it got to the bridge, the expense of cleaning excessive waste in the creek brought the project to a halt.

The final 2-mile stretch was condemned, abandoned and ignored - by humans, anyway.

Environmentalists say that vibrant stretch now serves both as a reminder of what the creek once was and what it could be again.

INFOGRAPHIC

PDF map of the Mill Creek

"It became good habitat through ignorance," said Mike Miller, a professor of biological sciences at the University of Cincinnati. "It is so compressed that, by definition, it has a very high concentration of wildlife. You won't see anything like it in the world, as far as density of wildlife" in an industrialized area of a city.

Storied history

Dr. Stanley Hedeen, a Xavier University professor and author of The Mill Creek: An Unnatural History of an Urban Stream, said the waterway is second only to the Ohio River in importance to the development of Cincinnati. Called Maketewa by Native Americans, Mill Creek attracted European settlers because of its beauty and then served as a source of water for those who lived and worked along it.

But by the mid-19th century, the creek had become a sewer, a dump and a source of destruction to the developing land around it every time the creek spilled its banks.

A flood in the 1930s led to the construction of the Barrier Dam, which prevented the Ohio River from backing up into the Mill Creek during high water.

But the dam wasn't enough.

By the late 1960s, the Army Corps had drafted a plan to straighten and channel most of the stream south of the Butler County line. Engineers ripped out trees and vegetation along creek banks and replaced them with concrete. In some areas, 10-foot-high concrete walls remain, which - when combined with the abandoned factories and filthy, trash-strewn water - provide a post-apocalyptic feeling.

Miller said that by the time the Corps reached the last 2 miles of the project, workers discovered a tremendous amount of pollution in the water.

"They stopped because they found 4 inches of gas and oil, and it was so polluted they couldn't dredge it," Miller said. "The project had already cost them about $90 million, so they condemned the area and put up fences to keep the public out."

Condemning the creek kept people out and allowed fish, beaver, deer and scores of birds to reclaim the area. Tougher federal laws required polluters to better clean waste before discharging it into waterways. And, over time, the natural flow of the water cleansed itself.

Trees were left along the shoreline, providing homes for animals and shade to cool the water. Some fish cannot survive when water temperatures get too high.

Roots and other vegetation give shelter to fish, which use the area as a nursery until their babies are large enough to fend for themselves in the Ohio River.

The fish, in turn, attract dozens of great blue herons, green herons, black-crowned knight herons, sandpipers and kingfishers.

More work needed

But the creek is far from pristine. During heavy rains, sewers overflow into it and bacteria still rise to dangerous levels.

Bruce Koehler knows the concrete swath, as well as the creek's scenic bends and twists, probably better than anyone.

An environmental planner for the Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana Regional Council of Governments, Koehler has taken 46 canoe trips down the creek. He is founder and commodore of the Mill Creek Yacht Club, a group of enthusiasts who travel the creek in canoes.

He is quick to tell his crews not to lick their lips during the trips and to shower after the canoeing excursions. If ingested, the creek's polluted water could cause illness.

Koehler is pushing for two projects - one upstream and one within the 2-mile stretch - that would improve water quality and habitat by stabilizing the banks, providing places for fish to hide and removing barriers that keep fish from swimming further upstream.

"It's ironic that two of the biggest friends of the Mill Creek are the rail yard and a sewage plant," Koehler said.

"I've been canoeing on scenic rivers before, and I find the Mill Creek much more interesting,'' he said.

"On scenic rivers, you have tree, rock, bush, tree, rock, bush. On the Mill Creek, you have tree, rock, dump, tree, rock, viaduct."

The meandering stretch of green isn't the only special place on Mill Creek, Robin Corathers is quick to note. Corathers is executive director of a group that is fighting to save Mill Creek, restore the abandoned factories along the waterway and build a greenway that would restore trees and native grasses to the creek banks.

She said the future of Mill Creek, in many ways, reflects the future of the region. She wonders if there is the political will and civilian muscle to restore a resource that once was so important to the city.

"In some ways the Mill Creek is a barometer for us. How progressive are we going to be?" she said.

Koehler calls the creek a 28-mile test of character:

"Do we have the character and political will to clean it up?'' he said. "Or will we continue to treat the creek like the back shed where you put all your junk - so your neighbors can see but you can't?"

E-mail dklepal@enquirer.com