Fans of Lower Shaker Lake Balk at Sewer District's Plan to Drain the Body of Water

For two centuries, the Lower Shaker Lake has served a number of purposes.

For most of the 1800s , its waters helped power a sawmill, thanks to a dam, operated by large Shaker family. In the 1920s, it was home base to competitive swimmers and the Shaker Lakes Canoe Club. And in the 1960s, at the height of the U.S. environmental movement, it played host to the newly-born Shaker Nature Center.

Today, there's a real possibility that the Lower Shaker Lake will soon no longer exist.

For the past four years, a team at the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District has been studying the lake and its dam to see whether its placidity and beauty outweighs what is a very real risk: a rare flood event that could, if Lower Lake Dam isn’t rebuilt, flood a large swath of University Circle, bringing about