Why Honey Creek Matters for the Future of Buckeye Lake

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:08]Hi, I'm Anita Swiger with Emerge Real Estate. I'm here today with Matt Bellman with Buckeye [music] Lake for tomorrow.

[00:00:13]Matt, you and I worked together a couple years ago on a series of videos trying to inform people about what all Buckeye Lake for tomorrow [music] actually does at on the lake here. Why don't you tell us a little more what we're doing today?

[00:00:24]So, today we're talking about the Honey Creek wetland restoration [music] and we're out here on the lake to show people where Honey Creek is on the lake.

[00:00:33]See behind me, uh the Gory Ore and Papa Boo's.

[00:00:38]And in front of me would be the sand bar or swimming hole and Honey Creek is just to the east of it.

[00:00:48]This creek supplies about 25% of the water and about 35% of the debris and uh nutrients into Buckeye Lake. We're trying [music] to restore that wetland to stop the nutrients and other debris that flows into Buckeye Lake through Honey Creek. If you look at the entrance of Honey Creek today, you can see there's a couple nice big [music] logs sitting there.

[00:01:13]Uh last year, I know I had to get ODNR down here for two 80-footers. But we're trying to keep this stuff out of the lake, the nutrients especially [music] as they feed the algae.

[00:01:25]And uh by creating the wetland back here I'm restoring 10 acres and rejuvenating the 10 acres that [music] still exist so that they're fully functioning and handling hundreds of thousands of gallons of water. Um it it will help reduce the nitrates and phosphorus that come in the lake.

[00:01:48]And those are the things [music] that feed blue-green and green algae which are not good, especially the blue-green.

[00:01:55]Uh blue-green has to have phosphorus so we really want to get this wetland set up and make sure it's filtering the phosphorus out and helping keep our water safe so that our kids, our pets, our grandkids, [music] and everybody can swim here at the swimming hole and you know, water ski, fish, and be safe.

[00:02:16]That's what it's all about.

[00:02:18]So, Matt, right now we're actually standing on the ground that you hope to be the future site of the [music] Honey Creek restoration project. Tell me a little more about it.

[00:02:25]Yeah, so we're kind of in the center of the land. Um you can see a eagle's nest way over there in the tree. Uh and we're on Township Road 404. [music] Uh this area to the right of me, which here all the way out to the road uh towards the creek, which would be uh to your [music] left in the camera.

[00:02:49]Uh all that would be dug out and it would be a holding pond that would feed the wetland.

[00:02:56]It would also control the flooding on Honey Creek Road and in the Honey Creek area.

[00:03:02]Um once that's dug out, we'll have a line that goes [music] under the road that feeds the wetland, which will be on the other side of Township Road, the uh west side of Township Road 404.

[00:03:16]And we're going to restore 10 acres of wetland [music] that are totally dried out uh and haven't had water for years. And there's another 10 acres around the eagle's nest that is pretty anemic.

[00:03:28][music] It It's treating like hundreds of gallons and it could be treating like 100,000 gallons. So, we want to get more water over there from Honey Creek.

[00:03:39]And then there's a stream that runs underneath Township Road 404 back into Honey Creek. So, we put the water right back into Honey Creek after it comes over here and gets cleaned.

[00:03:51]And the idea is to take out the nutrients, the nitrates and the phosphorus that feed the algae again to help improve the water quality of Buckeye Lake. This would also cut down on all the trees that are coming down.

[00:04:04]You know, years ago the emerald borer came in here and knocked out like all the chestnut trees, just hundreds of them. Well, it takes [music] like five years for the roots to die. It takes 10 years for the trees to fall [music] over. And so that's all the trees we're seeing now coming out of Honey Creek.

[00:04:21]All the way down to the end of Honey Creek, these trees [music] are falling and then they're flowing down into the lake. And of course, when these big trees fall, they leave a big hole on the shore >> [music] >> and that next time it floods, the stream pushes in behind the next tree and pushes the next tree loose, which is a healthy tree and that eventually falls and ends up [music] down here. We have a few sycamores along here that are really in bad shape that are at 45° angles because of that. Uh and we want to clean all that up and and part of our restoration project would also be to improve the banks and take out the trees that are leaning uh and put some rock up on the far side on Township Road 403 where we have a lot of erosion up closer to Honey Creek Road itself.