Changing Our Perception of the Cuyahoga River with Jim Ridge

Jim Ridge is the founder and executive director of Share the River, a non-profit that promotes Cleveland as a waterfront city and sharing everything that makes it a vibrant and engaging space for residents and visitors. In this episode, Jim talks about his upcoming Blazing Paddles Paddlefest on June 22, where hundreds of recreational paddlers and racers will paddle the commercial shipping section of the Cuyahoga River from Rivergate Park up to Cleveland-Cliffs Steelyard and back. Along the way, they will experience how the river has "risen like a phoenix" from its polluted past and is now attracting economic development, tourism, and community pride. Jim is one of our biggest river advocates, even being named Champion of the River by the Cuyahoga River Area of Concern (AOC) last year. He has much to share about how our past, present, and future are inextricably tied to our waterfront and its evolving health. Join us to hear his vision, plus some tips on sharing the river with freighters, about those YAKports, registering for Blazing Paddles, and more. You will surely find new ways to appreciate our tremendous natural resource for its recreational, commercial, and revitalizing potential.

Guest:
Jim Ridge, Share the River

Resources:
About Share the River
Follow Share the River - Instagram and Facebook
About the Cuyahoga River
Know Before You Go safety tips
Register for the Dave Vasarhelyi Memorial Recreational Paddle
Map of the lower Cuyahoga River (Federal Navigation Channel)
Cuyahoga River Water Trail
Cuyahoga River and Share the River News

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Contact us:
hello@ecospeakscle.com

Transcript

Diane Bickett: 0:04

You're listening to EcoSpeak CLE, where the eco-curious explore the unique and thriving environmental community here in Northeast Ohio. My name is Diane Bickett and my producer is Greg Rotuno. Together, we bring you inspiring stories from local sustainability leaders and invite you to connect, learn and live with our community and planet in mind.

Greg Rotuno: 0:27

This episode of EcoSpeak CLE is sponsored by Good Nature Organic Lawn Care. Lawns need care, not chemicals.

Diane Bickett: 0:36

Hello friends, are you as excited about Cleveland's waterfront and the Cuyahoga River as we are? Whether you're a paddler, a landlubber, a fisherperson, birdwatcher, sailor, business owner, city planner or a naturalist birdwatcher, sailor, business owner, city planner or a naturalist, there is something for all of us to be excited about. And the person probably most excited about our river is Jim Ridge, the founder of the non-profit Share the River. Jim recently received the Champion of the River Award from the Cuyahoga River Area of Concern for his work over the past decade, showcasing Cleveland as the waterfront city that it is and promoting the economic, recreational and social vibrancy of the Cuyahoga River. Jim joins us today with tips to help us get on the water safely and understand this great natural resource from the water level. We'll also be talking about the upcoming Blazing Paddles, paddle Fest and the past, present and future of our river, and how to be on the water safely and share it with freighters. Welcome, jim.

Jim Ridge: 1:31

Hey Dan, how are you?

Diane Bickett: 1:33

I wanted to just start saying that I love following your Instagram and Facebook social media. How else would I know that freighter season has begun, how to paddle safely during a solar eclipse and that Ohio is an Iroquois word that means big or beautiful river?

Jim Ridge: 1:50

Well, we're doing our best to try to communicate that info and I love the fact that you picked up the safety during this solar eclipse. You know I just watched a Cleveland City Council safety meeting today and just to hear the number of concerns and you know, with regards to traffic and all the people coming into town and the fact that the Coast Guard and the Coast Guard Auxiliary shared that information with me and to get it out to a wider audience, you know it's helpful to me to know that folks like you are receiving that information, acting upon it and hopefully making it a little bit less interesting of a day for our safety forces less than a week from today.

Diane Bickett: 2:37

Yeah, no doubt, and this podcast is airing after the solar eclipse, so we'll see. I want to start by asking you will we ever shed our burning river past, and should we?

Jim Ridge: 2:52

Yeah, I know there's some hand-wringing about the burning river memes and memories that much of America has about Cleveland, and Great Lakes Brewing Company has certainly done well with its Burning River beer. Quite frankly, I think it's a phrase that we can embrace as a city because it's part of our past and certainly Cleveland has risen like a phoenix from the bad old days of 1969. In fact, today is the anniversary of the birthday of Mayor Carl Stokes, and you know.

Diane Bickett: 3:38

April 3rd, that's right Okay.

Jim Ridge: 3:40

That's right. And Mayor Stokes was the first elected black mayor of a major American city and he won on a razor thin margin and he ran on a platform where he realized with such a razor thin margin he needed to talk about environmental justice, social justice. I mean the late 60s. A lot of stuff was happening and one of the things of course happens very soon in his administration is that darn river catches fire. That was the last of 13 fires that have happened on the Cuyahoga River, and the Cuyahoga was not the only body of water that caught fire. You look at any industrial city in the Midwest and they had fires as well. So personally, I think it was genius for the hardworking trio of folks that were having a beer with me years ago when we were trying to figure out what kind of an event we could host to provide a focus on the Cuyahoga River, and it's always in the branding and somebody just quickly put together it was like how about Blazing Paddles? And I just thought, oh boy, that's good.

Diane Bickett: 5:02

That is good, and I'm wearing my Blazing Paddles t-shirt from 2022. I think there were 700 people out on the river with us that day, great event. Tell us about Blazing Paddles 2024.

Jim Ridge: 5:17

Well, first we are on June 22nd and that will be that's Saturday and that will be that's Saturday, june 22nd, which will coincide with the June 22nd anniversary of the 1969 Cuyahoga River fire. We will be hosting it at Rivergate Park. We've worked in the past with Cleveland Metro Parks and Merwins Wharf to put in at that location. I'm hopeful that we will have the opportunity to partner with Cleveland Rowing Foundation this year and we are looking to expand the partners that we're working with, because I'm trying to be a little bit more mindful that we've been fortunate enough to scale Blazing Paddles to the point where the paddlers get it. The paddlers are showing up.

Jim Ridge: 6:13

We saw last year 725 paddlers from 18 states travel to Cleveland to explore this historic and unique river that they've heard about. And when we talk about this burning river myth, there's a curiosity about what this river is. And when they paddle this river, they see a natural resource coursing through an urban environment. And what's kind of cool about this paddle? A lot of paddling events happen out in the middle of nowhere. So you can do this paddling event out in this butycolic tree-lined environment, but then you're out in the middle of nowhere and here we have an urban environment where people can stay in an Airbnb or stay in a hotel. Come do the paddle and then they can go do a Guardians game, or they can go down to Playhouse Square to check out a show, or maybe there's going to be something down at Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse. So it's kind of like come for blazing paddles but stay for the weekend. It's kind of like come for blazing paddles but stay for the weekend.

Diane Bickett: 7:24

Cleveland from the water level is really exciting. It was for me especially. We paddled. How long is the course? It's like six miles or one direction, and then you turn around and come back obviously.

Jim Ridge: 7:37

Well, we have two different paddling options, diane. Okay, one is going to be the Dave Vasarely Memorial Recreational Paddle, which is an out and back paddle. It's about 8.4 miles where you would put in at Rivergate Park, head up river and if you make it all the way up, you will reach the head of navigation, which is right where the Cleveland Cliffs steelmaking operation is. You'll make that turn and then you can coast down the river a little bit if there's a little bit of a current. So that's an 8.4-mile option. We also have three races that are 3, 6, and 14 miles.

Jim Ridge: 8:26

Blazing Paddles started in 2018 as a stand-up paddleboard race first. That was our first event and what we learned by doing that. We then opened the field up the following year to kayaks and canoes and now Blazing Paddles is 86% recreational paddler. So the racing is actually a fairly small portion of our event, but what we do try to do is, while our paddlers are putting in, we have the racers go in first and line up. Meanwhile, we have our recreational paddlers going into the river and pushing to the sides of the river, and what we love to hear is our racers when they start and head down over by Jacob's Pavilion and Superior Bend and make that turn by that scenic view of downtown Cleveland. When those racers come back, there's like an in-the-water grandstand happening where our recreational paddlers are able to cheer the racers. And the racers kind of dig it because a lot of the races that they go to, especially coastal races, they'll put in at the beach head offshore a quarter of a mile, where they become a tiny speck on the horizon, and then they kind of head up or down the shore, make the turn and come back so they don't get a chance to hear anybody cheer for them because they're off by themselves out in the middle of the ocean.

Jim Ridge: 10:01

So we love being able to provide a mix of our recreational paddlers and our elite paddlers and just like any sport, especially on the novice side of things, when our novices see the elegance and the effort that goes into propelling a paddleboard or a high-performance kayak or a surf ski, they start going. Maybe it's time for me to up my game. Maybe this kayak that I thought was okay, maybe I might want to change it. And it's kind of neat to hear people say that I didn't know that these kind of crafts existed. These surfskis are beautiful pieces of engineering and they slice through the water like nothing and you know it's kind of neat to see these people say I might want to do that. Of course we have a sizable portion of our population that are participants who say that looks like too much work for me, I just want to.

Jim Ridge: 11:08

You know, have a.

Jim Ridge: 11:09

You know, have a beer in my kayak and kind of hang out on the river.

Jim Ridge: 11:12

And the cool part about our event is we partner with members of the Cuyahoga River Safety Task Force and one of those members is Lake Carriers Association.

Jim Ridge: 11:24

They're based here in Middlebury Heights and they voluntarily agree to encourage their member organization. And Lake Carriers Association is the trade group for US flagged freighters on the Great Lakes and what they basically say to their members is we're partnering with the local organization to provide free recreational use of the river so all of these recreational users don't have to worry about a 600-foot behemoth making its way up or down the river during the paddle. And what's kind of cool about that is we get the use of the river for half a day a year and then the other 360 days a year Share the River gets to return that favor by constantly reminding recreational paddlers of the importance of minding the freighter paying attention to the environment. You know there are some basic checklists that you need to do in order to have a safe paddle on the river and let's make sure that our recreational paddlers don't cause an unfortunate headline for the comeback Cuyahoga River.

Jim Ridge: 12:43

Because, nobody wants an accident to happen and you know it's great that the Cuyahoga River Safety Task Force and the industrial stakeholders at the river also say this event is a good look on Cleveland and it's a good look on our waterfront brand. How can we make that happen? And for a little organization like Share the River to have that kind of help, it's heartwarming and it pushes me to keep doing better.

Diane Bickett: 13:13

Yeah, and that's the day that we can have the river to ourselves and not have to share it with. I heard that a freighter is like the size of the terminal tower on its side.

Jim Ridge: 13:23

You've done your homework. You've done your homework.

Diane Bickett: 13:30

You've done your homework, Of course. So there are boats for rent if people don't have their own kayak. Correct and registration is open now.

Jim Ridge: 13:34

Well, registration is open to our alumni as a thank you. We're incredibly loyal to our paddlers who have paddled with us in the past and one of the things we want to do is open up registration for them ahead of the general public. We give them a small price break for that, so registration will be opening up shortly for all of our paddlers very soon, but right now we give our alumni a chance to get in ahead of time and we do cap the field. If we get additional space at Rivergate Park we will be able to increase the size of our field, but we're capping the field at 750 just to make sure that Our paddlers don't feel like we tried to get too many people in here and then we kill the experience.

Jim Ridge: 14:27

You know we want people who show up to Cleveland. They want to have a good time, they want to be able to get out on the river. You know, in a reasonable process, with the minimum of hassle, the help of the kids from Davis A&M High School and Argonaut, who did an incredible job of onboarding 725 folks in an hour. You know, from the shore to the river, that was a huge lift based on those kids' part, and I'm always indebted to the work that Argonaut does for us.

Diane Bickett: 15:06

Yeah, and you've got that cool launch thing too now.

Jim Ridge: 15:10

Well, you're right, I've used it. Well, the launch was a little bit of a breakthrough for us. We had somebody suggest hey, by the way, we have somebody who is in the dock connection business. They referred us to them. We kind of had a conversation. We ended up doing a site survey. They kind of took a look at it and said well, we installed this floating dock at Merwin's Wharf, so we're very familiar with these pieces. We'll rent them to you.

Jim Ridge: 15:47

And what was great about Mike at Marina Docks and Ports Connection was, you know, they rented us those docks but then after the event, so many people liked those yak ports is what they call them. They're like U-shaped things that bolt onto the dock to make it easier for people to load into a kayak. When Mike went to pull those units out a week later, cleveland Metro Parks started getting phone calls and Metro Parks pulled the trigger on making those a permanent fixture at Merwin's Wharf. And to me that was like a light bulb moment for me. That you know, share the River had the opportunity to improve public access of a natural resource, ding. That's an important thing for us to be mindful of as an organization that you know Cleveland has precious little access to its lake and its river and I and I understand there there's a reason.

Jim Ridge: 17:02

Maybe that access has been limited on the river because it's a federal navigation channel. You technically only have one public access point on the river and that's at Merwins Wharf. There is a private operation, great Lakes Water Sports, farther down in the flats, right across from the flats east bank, right across from the Flats East Bank. So Joshua's operation is top-notch down there and he will allow the public to put in there for a $5 tip for his folks to help people get their kayak through his operation. But you know, there's precious little access to the river. There's precious little access to the river and getting those yak ports in there means that people are more comfortable putting in true on that floating dock and if they're more comfortable they will tend to come there more and they, when they come there more, they will tend to spend their money maybe at merwin's wharf or maybe around the corner at Cyanato's or Brick and Barrel or slightly up the hill at Hoople's. And now what you start seeing.

Diane Bickett: 18:10

Greg's nodding Been there been to all those places.

Jim Ridge: 18:14

So you start seeing this catalytic effect of making waterfronts accessible, that that's an economic driver. And you start seeing things like when you get enough people coming down there and adopting this waterfront lifestyle, people start thinking you know, be nice, instead of me having to drive from the suburbs into Cleveland to experience this waterfront, maybe wouldn't it be kind of cool to live down here? And now, of course, we see 300 apartment units rising out of the ground right now.

Diane Bickett: 18:48

Scranton Peninsula. At Scranton.

Jim Ridge: 18:50

Peninsula, there will be another, joined by another 350 units at the Silver Hills Project, so that's 650 apartment units that are going to be on the river. On the river and all of a sudden we've got, you know, this younger demographic starting to experience the river in a way that you know. When Carl Stokes was mayor of the city, who could have thought that? You know, we had air that was choked with industrial processes. You know processes, you know a river that was being used as a pipeline for pollution and that river is now, after large remediations by the EPA and large investments in stormwater infrastructure by Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District, that former pipeline for pollution is now a conduit for tourism and recreation and a city that turned its back to the river is now wanting to use it as its front porch, as a place where people want to work, live and play.

Diane Bickett: 19:56

Yeah, perfectly, perfectly said. I like the point you made about had it not been for the governmental regulation and the taxpayer investment into cleaning up the river, cleaning up the water, none of this would be taking place now. So it's all been kind of an economic development tool in the end, would you agree?

Jim Ridge: 20:19

Well, I do agree and to your point. That's why I've reached out to folks like Greater Cleveland Partnership to ask for their help, because I do feel like Blazing Paddles is a photo op for the good things that can happen from common sense environmental regulation, from investments in stormwater infrastructure, from investments in stormwater infrastructure and, of course, the work that the Cuyahoga AOC has done to improve the health of the watershed. There's still work to be done. There are still some BUIs beneficial use impairments that need to be removed from the river, but when I talk with Gertrude Cleveland Partnership, I say here is I won't say Blazing Paddles is a lobbying effort.

Jim Ridge: 21:17

You know that doesn't sound so great city in the us and perhaps, perhaps, maybe in the world that can can speak to having had a river basically given for up for dead in the late 60s and then, through common sense, environmental protections and all the other things that I've just mentioned, that river is now a catalyst for economic development and there's a story there to be told about how we value natural resources, how we can protect those natural resources, how we can be stewards for those bodies of water and clean air that can nurture and heal us as a population, and that's an important story that only Cleveland can really tell, and we can continue to tell that story when we start having issues where whether it's Jackson, mississippi with their, you know water, or Flint, flint, michigan.

Jim Ridge: 22:30

You know, even you know places where they've had mines. You know foul water resources, like we've heard in West Virginia and other places. We're kind of like I won't say the Cuyahoga was the canary in the coal mine, but it's certainly risen like a phoenix.

Diane Bickett: 22:55

And it's kind of neat to be involved with an event that is so photogenic, especially on video, when you have all the kayak paddles going at once, it's very cool.

Jim Ridge: 23:03

Well, it makes me giggle sometimes when I see that.

Diane Bickett: 23:06

Especially when you speed it up into a van.

Jim Ridge: 23:07

Well, it makes me giggle sometimes when I see that Especially when you speed it up into it Right right To see the drone footage and to see the pictures, I've never seen the river look like that. Of course I know that lots of others had never seen the river like that. And what was cool was people who thought they knew Cleveland and, of course, love kicking Cleveland in the shins with the you know burning river thing. People see those photos and they say that's not the river I thought I knew. And now we start getting to the point where we have a young mayor that's saying Cleveland's best days are ahead and I think that the river is a foundation for Cleveland moving forward and we have a county executive, chris Renain, who keeps talking about Cleveland and Cuyahoga County being a freshwater capital.

Jim Ridge: 24:01

So we're ground zero for that and we hope that anybody who's listening that says, you know, we've been thinking about giving Jim a ring gives us a ring.

Diane Bickett: 24:12

Well, thank you for driving all this really with your organization. You're a nonprofit of one, I understand, and you've been at it for 10 years. I mean that's got to be a grind at times to try to continue to push. Will Beju Shaw get a free registration if he wants?

Jim Ridge: 24:32

Beju is always welcome. He's got a great team and we look forward to working with them.

Diane Bickett: 24:39

And, yes, Well, it's a home run for tourism for sure. The future of the waterfront. What are you most excited about in terms of what you're seeing? Is it Irish Town Bend, redevelopment at the Metro Parks? Is it Bedrock? What do you think?

Jim Ridge: 24:58

Well, it's all of it and what's kind of neat is, for 10 years Share the River has been specifically focused on branding Cleveland as a waterfront city and it's not like we're looking to take over the job from Destination Cleveland or anything like that, but there is a narrative there about the appeal and the attractiveness of working waterfronts.

Jim Ridge: 25:21

You know it's part of the core of Share the River's evolution. You know it's part of the core of Share the Rivers evolution. You know I come at it from being a Navy brat. My dad was an officer in the Navy, so we were ships and all of that activity and living in places like Norfolk, virginia or San Diego. You know those are, those are major waterfront location. The same thing that Moses Cleveland first realized when he and his band of surveyors traveled out here to survey the Connecticut Western Reserve. You know the same thing that Moses Cleveland saw when he established Cleveland as the capital city of the Western Reserve, capital city of the Western Reserve. You know we're now seeing Mayor Bibb and Chris Renan saying, yeah, we need to leverage this.

Diane Bickett: 26:36

We need to take advantage of this. This is part of our brand. So there's one final impediment for a free-flowing Cuyahoga, and that's the gorge dam in Akron.

Jim Ridge: 26:43

When the gorge dam comes down, what we'll do is remove one of the yes, Summit County, Cuyahoga Falls, yeah, all of that. So that will remove the last remaining impediment to a free-flowing Cuyahoga River.

Diane Bickett: 27:01

That's hard to say.

Jim Ridge: 27:02

Yes, free-flowing, and that's one of the BUIs that Cuyahoga River AOC has been working on, and that free-flowing river means that the water quality will continue to improve. You know, one of the stats that Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District gave to me was you know, back in the bad old days, in the late 60s, and when the Cuyahoga was first listed as an area of concern, there were three fish species in the river and now three fish species in the river, and now, 54 years later, we have over 70 fish species.

Diane Bickett: 27:50

Wow.

Jim Ridge: 27:56

And when that dam comes down we'll have even more, because those fish keep pushing up the river to find suitable habitat for spawning. And it's pretty cool to the point where National Fish and Wildlife and Cuyahoga Valley National Park are taking it, possibly reintroducing Lake Sturgeon into the river. And they won't reintroduce a fish species unless that habitat will support it, and all of their research so far has given it a thumbs up that yeah, we're finding habitat and we think it's going to work, so that would be cool to get a major fish like that back in the river.

Diane Bickett: 28:30

That's awesome. So, just like Mayor Bibb would say, the best things are ahead of us. How does he say it? Well, you know, I'm trying to remember the exact phrasing he had at the state of the city that last week. We'll, we'll talk to him. Okay, I want to wrap with some safety tips for getting on the river and and boating in the ship canal, which is the the commercial channel with the freighters. What do you got for us?

Jim Ridge: 28:58

Well, first, we've made it very easy for you and any of your listeners to get a crash course in how to be a safe user of the river, and that is we have an FAQ page knowbeforeyougo on sharetherivercom and it has a list on sharetherivercom, and it has a list. We've tried to make it as brief and as interesting as possible, but there are three simple things, and one is always wear a PFD or a life jacket. It's just a given.

Jim Ridge: 29:35

There's. You know, it's the old adage it's not a matter of if you're going to go in, it's a matter of when you're going to go in. And number two is use technology. There are great apps. I use Marine Traffic on my phone and it's an AIS app that allows you to just pull up the map. You can see where you are and you can take a look at that map and see the green little wedge that may be out a little bit in Lake Erie and may be heading upriver, or that green little wedge that's up by Cleveland Cliffs and is starting to head downriver. That is just such an easy way to know what's happening. Of course, the other way is to keep your eyes and ears open, and when you're paddling on the river, you know, listen for the horn of a bridge. When you hear a horn blowing, that's a sign that something big is coming and you just need to be mindful of that.

Jim Ridge: 30:39

And then the other thing is it helps and again, I don't expect first-time users to know all these landmarks of where passing zones are, but there are places where, if you're in the river channel, you can just hang out at a spot along the bulkhead and just wait for the freighter to pass you. And the nice thing is that the freighter captains and the mates that are on the ship, they will direct you on what they want you to do. So you know, if you're in a situation where you know freighter is coming, you know, hug a tree for a little bit. You know, just, I shouldn't maybe use that phrase, maybe change that phrase, to just stay in place and wait for them to tell you what to do. Is it move forward, move backward? And you know the freighter companies don't want to have an accident, they don't want to have a chance of you, you know, getting into the river. So they will be very clear on what you need to do and paddlers can go one way, the ship can go the other way, and we have ourselves a great moment where people are like that was cool and hey, let's be more mindful about sharing the river with commercial navigation.

Jim Ridge: 32:08

The other thing that we're trying to be more mindful of is, first of all, you mentioned that Share the River has previously been an army of one with many stakeholder partners. I need to be very clear about that. There is no way that we could have made the lift that we've made without partnering with a lot of different organizations. And Share the River is right in the middle of a reboot of our nonprofit to establish a board. We are reaching out to stakeholders to ask for their help because you know what we're doing is a big lift and it's kind of too big for one small organization. And that's where, if we can get professional help with our board and our advisory committee, that we can really start focusing in on this natural resource that is flowing through the city. This is kind of a. You know we've spent a lot of money to get the river to where it is now, but it's kind of free advertising now for us. And how are we going to leverage the power of that?

Jim Ridge: 33:21

Clean water as a resource, you know as a quality of life, amenity, where you know rivers used to be a place, you know of ill repute and where things were done, and you know movies like On the Waterfront and what have you, and now they're a place where people want to hang out. And you know, there's an urbanist, j Walt Jasper, that I had a chance to interview and, jay you know, talked about. You know, this generation that's coming up the best and brightest. These are the people who can call their own shots and they're looking for amenities. He called them millennial infrastructure and he talks about, you know, coffee shops and bookstores and restaurants and brew pubs and what have you. He says that that generation that can call their shots are looking for those kind of things. They're looking for cities that you don't have to jump in a car to go 20 minutes to go get a bite to eat. They want to be able to go from their workplace or where they're working, out of their home, and hit, maybe, the towpath trail and take it down to. By the way, you can take that towpath trail and, of course, 15 miles upriver we have a national park within cycling distance of us. That's the kind of amenity that can set Cleveland apart from the rest of the pack. Set Cleveland apart from the rest of the pack.

Jim Ridge: 35:02

You know, cleveland at one point was, I think, the fifth largest city in the United States. I think that was a time where we had about 900,000 population. We're a little bit short of that right now, but I do think that political leadership is realizing that. You know we can do some things to make it easier for us to hold on to our brightest and we can encourage folks from other cities that may be tight on, you know, housing stock and you know, maybe looking for a little bit of nature, you know, in their urban environment we have that.

Jim Ridge: 35:41

And water power fueled Cleveland's rise as a power. And once the Erie Canal was cut across New York and the Ohio and Erie Canal was cut from Cleveland, you know, down to Portsmouth, connecting to the Ohio River, that made Cleveland the pivot point between New York City and New Orleans and a young nation that you know. The original 13 colonies were all on the Atlantic seaboard and for a young nation to grow it had to grow west and things like, you know, the Cuyahoga River and the Ohio and Erie Canal fueled Cleveland's growth as a metropolis. So you know, maybe it's, you know, back to the future type thing where Cleveland's, you know, place on a lake and a river will fuel its comeback. And you know we look forward to being a part of that. We look forward to being, you know, helping connect historically disadvantaged audiences. You know people that doggone it, they can see Lake Erie from their porch, but these folks have never had a chance to recreate on Lake Erie or on the Cuyahoga River. You know we need to figure out how we can bridge that divide and make these waterfronts more accessible so that, you know, more people can enjoy them, because those experiences are horizon broadeners for these people.

Jim Ridge: 37:18

And when we talk about, I mean just, you know, I had a, I wrote an article, you know, last fall where an adopted cat of ours passed away and I've kind of got a chance to remind myself of the therapeutic effects of getting outside and just taking that cat for a walk. Towards the end of the day it was like, oh, that's good, not only good for the cat but it's good for me, and you start thinking the power of nature to heal and reinvigorate us. And Lord knows, we got a massive you know a massive lesson on that during the pandemic. So the work there's still plenty of work to do and you know I look forward to having that opportunity to do it with a bunch of smart people and organizations that are like, yeah, let's, let's go.

Diane Bickett: 38:15

Well, I love the vision you just painted for us and we thank you for all the work you've done thus far and wish you well on your big lift. I think if anyone can make all this happen, it's you, so thanks for joining us.

Greg Rotuno: 38:29

We hope you've enjoyed this episode of EcoSpeak CLE. You can find our full catalog of episodes on Spotify, apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes are available the first and third Tuesday of each month. Please follow EcoSpeak CLE on Facebook and Instagram and become part of the conversation. If you would like to send us feedback and suggestions, or if you'd like to become a sponsor of EcoSpeak CLE, you can email us at hello at ecospeakclecom. Stay tuned for more important and inspiring stories to come.