The City of Mentor, the Lake County Ohio Port and Economic Authority, and the Mentor Harbor Yachting Club, have entered into an agreement with the United States Army Corps of Engineers to study permanent improvements to the Mentor Harbor Channel. An ongoing study suggests that the existing West break wall should be extended to the North and hooked to the East, and the existing West and East break walls be fortified. These improvements should reduce wave energy within the channel and harbor, improve boating safety, and greatly extend the life of the channel.
The United States Army Corps of Engineers will perform a Geotechnical Investigation of the area in and around the channel to affirm that these structure improvements are suitable. Soil sampling equipment will be anchored in three different locations within the channel and three different locations just outside of the channel for 5 to 10 hours per location to extract subterranean soil samples from the lake bottom.
The work will be conducted on a 90’ x 45’ marine barge carrying a soil sampling rig towed by a 50’ tugboat. Due to the size of the apparatus – which is large enough to partially or fully block the Mentor Harbor Channel – boaters are advised that access through the Mentor Harbor Channel will be unavailable for boating traffic for extended periods of time while the United States Army Corps of Engineers performs their work.
This investigation will be conducted Monday, September 21, 2020 through Friday, September 25, 2020. The work is weather dependent and can only be performed when the waves on Lake Erie are two feet tall or less. As a result, it is impossible to accurately predict the exact times that sampling operations will take place and may possibly extend into the week of September 28, 2020.