Five or six years ago the Butler County commissioners decided to log the forested parts of Alameda Park. After visiting the area afterward, I can say that it was one of the worst “selective cutting” jobs I have ever seen.

Any logging on a slope destabilizes the entire hillside, but the Alameda job was far worse than a regular logging operation. A larger number of trees than is generally acceptable in a selective cut were cut down, massive piles of slash (branches and twigs trimmed off the trunks) were left everywhere, and severely rutted and compacted skidder and bulldozer roads snaked through what remained.

Based on photos published in this paper the day after the flood, the main cause of the flooding was the choking of Sullivan Run by woody debris. Upon close examination of those photos, one would have seen that most of the branches caught under the bridge had been cut, not broken. There were also extensive amounts of mud and silt carried by the floodwaters.

Sullivan Run flows right through the center of Alameda Park. It doesn’t take much to put two and two together. The destabilized, exposed and compacted hillsides in Alameda greatly accelerated both the volume and speed of water running down into Sullivan Run. On its way down the hills, this deluge picked up and carried the slash that was irresponsibly left behind by the loggers, causing it to accumulate in the shallow and narrow parts of the stream and block the flow of water.

The back half of my property next to the park is undisturbed forest, untouched since the house was built in 1952. There is evidence of at least three large flows of water downhill that swept the forest floor clean of leaf litter in a distinct channel. If the heavy torrents produced this effect in my intact forest, which I have never seen before, it only stands to reason that the effect would be greatly magnified in a severely damaged forest.

Had the county not made the decision to log in a park, the damage from Wednesday’s flooding would have been far less severe, and it’s possible there would not have been any flooding at all.