People. Place. Belonging.
Syatt Elevates
Syatt Elevates helps governments, park systems, foundations, community organizations, and institutions turn completed plans into places and programs people actually use, trust, and claim as their own.
If you've walked along Johnston Run lately, you've seen it. Broken concrete. Commercial pallets. Appliances. Bags of who-knows-what. Animals that someone didn't even bother to bury. And tires. Did we mention the tires? This is the Johnston Run Nature Corridor, or at least it's going to be. Right now, too many people are treating it like a free landfill.
When you drive down Osborne Road and East 143rd Street, you're driving through the Mill Creek Watershed. Johnston Run feeds Mill Creek. Mill Creek feeds the Cuyahoga River. The Cuyahoga flows into Lake Erie. And Lake Erie is where Cleveland gets its drinking water.
So let's be really clear. Whatever gets thrown into Johnston Run doesn't disappear. It breaks down, it washes downstream, and it ends up in the water we drink, swim in, and fish from. That tire isn't "out of sight." It's on its way to your kitchen faucet.
We're not the only ones fed up. Signal Cleveland reports that Clevelanders filed more than 5,000 illegal dumping reports in the past year, while citations from the city's environmental crimes task force have dropped by nearly half in six years. Erika told Signal what we're dealing with here in Ward 1, and why it matters: "The site where they are dumping is also a freshwater tributary." Thousands of reports. Fewer and fewer consequences. That math ain’t mathing and is exactly why dumpers keep coming back.
Let's start with the ones backing up trucks. The contractors leaving concrete. The businesses ditching pallets. The folks who'd rather drive a load of scrap tires to a creek in somebody else's neighborhood than pay a disposal fee. This isn't laziness. It's a business decision, and you're making it at our expense. You're choosing a Black neighborhood on the southeast side because you think nobody is watching and nobody will care.
You're wrong on both counts. Under Ohio law, open dumping of solid waste, including scrap tires, is a felony. It's punishable by fines of $10,000 to $25,000, two to four years in prison, or both, and every day of a violation counts as a separate offense. Neighbors are paying attention, and we're reporting what we see.
Now let's talk about the fast-food bags thrown out the car window. The liquor bottles, Patrón to Don Julio, tossed in the grass like the park is a recycling bin. The cups, the wrappers, the chip bags.
It's "just one bag" until it's a thousand bags. It all ends up in the same place: the creek, the river, the lake, and our water. Top-shelf taste doesn't come with a top-shelf excuse.
We can't demand respect for this neighborhood from outsiders while some of us treat it like a trash can. Both things have to stop.
This neighborhood was once the Village of Miles Heights. It gave Ohio its first Black mayor, Arthur R. Johnston, and the creek and park that carry his name deserve better. Picture Johnston Run as it should be: clean water, healthy trees, birds, a trail where kids can explore, and a place where neighbors gather instead of looking away. That's the Johnston Run Nature Corridor. Syatt, Miles Heights Development Corporation, and the Friends of Kerruish and Arthur Johnston Parks (KAP) are working to make it real. But we can't clean it faster than people trash it.
Johnston Run is going to be a nature corridor. The only question is how long we're going to let people treat it like a dump first.
Syatt Elevates helps governments, park systems, foundations, community organizations, and institutions turn completed plans into places and programs people actually use, trust, and claim as their own.
