CINCINNATI (WXIX) – Shawnee Lookout is an area that has served multiple purposes over the years. Great Parks, with the help of The Nature Conservancy in Ohio, recently started restoring the area’s native environment to protect water quality locally and downstream.

The area was once inhabited by several groups of Indigenous people before eventually becoming a golf course. The first stage in the restoration project is to daylight the streams that had been buried underground when the land became a golf course.

“Daylighting is where we are going to take the water that’s currently funneled through underground drainage to bring it back to the surface so that it is more accessible to the wildlife,” says Jessica Spencer, the director of natural resources for Great Parks. “And it’s better for water quality.”

Shawnee Lookout is in Southwest Ohio, near where the Great Miami River drains into the Ohio River. Experts with Great Parks say restoring the environment at this site protects water quality near and far.

“You could argue improvements to water quality with this project could impact and improve water quality all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico,” Spencer says.

Daylighting the streams is entirely funded by The Nature Conservancy through their Ohio Mitigation Program. The program consolidates money from permitted impacts to local waterways and uses those resources to execute strategic projects that help the environment.

“We’re really excited about the Shawnee Lookout project because there’s been development in the Great Miami watershed, and this allowed us to pool our resources and make a large-scale restoration project at one site,” says Jennifer McDonald, a restoration ecologist and project lead for The Nature Conservancy in Ohio.

Daylighting the streams is slated to be completed by fall of 2025. This is just one piece of the 150-acre project that Great Parks plans to accomplish.

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