CINCINNATI, Ohio — After months of detours and delays, work on a major sewer improvement project along Riverside Drive in Cincinnati is nearing completion — and one of the holdups was a family of beavers living in a sewer pipe, the Cincinnati Enquirer reported.
The Riverside Drive portion of the project is expected to be finished by the end of November, about a month later than originally projected, Metropolitan Sewer District of Greater Cincinnati spokeswoman Deb Leonard told The Enquirer. Rain, underground utilities that had to be worked around, and the beavers all cost time, she told The Enquirer.
The beavers were inhabiting an outfall pipe that runs under the Waterfront East Condominiums in Cincinnati’s East End, directly along the Ohio River, according to The Enquirer. The pipe discharges wastewater and stormwater runoff into the river, and the original plan was to abandon the pipe and fill it with concrete.
Before workers could proceed, the sewer district began receiving calls from condo residents and other neighbors reporting beaver activity in and around the pipe, The Enquirer reported. "We put a camera into the pipe and surprised a beaver in action. We estimate there are five to seven beavers in the pipe," Leonard told The Enquirer.
Ohio law prohibits relocating beavers and several other wild animals to prevent the spread of disease to new wildlife populations, The Enquirer reported. So sewer district officials came up with an accommodation instead: workers will fill the portion of the pipe that runs under the condos with concrete and leave the remainder open for the beavers to use, with work expected to begin later this week or early next week, Leonard told The Enquirer.
"We’re going to abandon 75% of the pipe and leave them the bottom portion of the pipe so they can do their beaver thing and live their beaver lives," Leonard told The Enquirer. "We thought that was the best outcome."
Business owners along Riverside Drive are ready for the cones to go. David Hall, who opened Knuckles Deli near the project site in March, told The Enquirer he was "very relieved" the beaver problem has been mitigated and construction will finish soon, after traffic congestion cut his receipts by about 25 percent. What happens next is the concrete work on the pipe — and, by the end of November, a finished Riverside Drive project, with the beavers still in residence underneath it.