2026 Great Lakes Coastal Symposium

The site tours will showcase two very different project sites where the City of Lorain used ecological solutions to address environmental challenges stemming from urbanization and heavy industry.  The Martin’s Run Ecological Restoration Project will highlight how Lorain resolved localized flooding by converting low-yield agricultural land into a high-quality stream and wetland complex that provides nearly 20 acres of publicly accessible space. The Reclamation Site Restoration Project marks a major milestone—the final Management Action in more than a decade of coordinated work to remediate legacy environmental impacts along the Black River and its riparian corridor stemming from historic steelmaking operations. Attendees will gain insight into how the City of Lorain implemented both traditional and non-conventional solutions across a large landscape that have contributed to the recovery of the Black River watershed and to the eventual delisting of the Black River as an Area of Concern.