Dozens of volunteers were decorating Christmas trees on Monday for the annual “Tree Walk” inside the Davis Center at Fellows Riverside Gardens in Mill Creek Park.

This is part of the facility’s “Winter Celebration, which starts on Saturday.

More than 50 local non-profit groups–including the Leonard Kirtz School, Second Harvest Food Bank, Goodwill Industries and Ursuline High School–will have trees there.

This year’s theme at the Davis Center is “The Magical Woods.”

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People who like to climb boulders can now do it legally in an area of Mill Creek Park.

The park’s board of commissioners unanimously approved boulder climbing around an outcrop of boulders behind Bears Den Cabin.

It’s the only section of the park where boulder climbing will be allowed.

The idea was proposed by the Ohio Climbers Coalition in September.

A study was done to determine if any endangered plants would be harmed.

When the study came back negative, the decision was made to approve boulder climbing.

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Four years ago, voters in Mahoning County agreed to provide a million dollars a year to Mill Creek MetroParks for capital improvements. A 15-year plan was started in 2017 and the third year is just about over.

On Tuesday afternoon at Mill Creek South, crews were doing drainage work around the 17th green — part of $300,000 of drainage work done this year on 29 of the golf course greens.

“Last year, we did the bunker restoration at the golf course,” said Mill Creek MetroParks Executive Director Aaron Young. “This year, we’re finishing greens drainage.”

Repairing the golf course greens was one of 13 projects completed, totaling $1.75 million.

“The improvements have been well needed and well-received,” Young said.

Some of the improvements can be seen at the MetroParks offices and farm in Canfield, where the parking lot has been paved, new signs in what will now be the MetroParks style have been put up and a new $50,000 restroom.

Another restroom facility just like it was built at the Wick Recreation area this year. Over the next 10 to 15 years, the plan is to replace all of the restrooms in the park system.

“Quite frankly, if we had the resources, you could argue that they all need replaced right now. We already know that,” Young said.

One of this year’s major construction projects was around Lanterman’s Mill — one of the park’s top attractions.

The entire corner leading to the mill was reconfigured. The area around the mill and Canfield Road has been redone, as has the road that connects the mill with the Silver Bridge.

Like all of the restrooms, all of the roads and parking lots will eventually be redone.

“Everybody likes smooth roads, everybody likes a clear, delineated parking lot and everybody likes a nice restroom experience,” Young said. “You’re ahead of the game if you can provide those base-level amenities.”

The plan next year behind the Morely Pavilion in the Wick Recreation area is to build a new $500,000 maintenance building, which will open up the warming cabin for public use.

In 2020, work on renovating the Ford Nature Center will begin — 90% of the money is in place.

“Anything and everything that the park does needs some level of improvement, and we’re going to try to address as much as we can with the resources that are available,” Young said.

Fifty percent of this year’s capital improvements budget was spent on roads, bridges, parking lots and restrooms. Fixing the old log cabin cost $25,000. Putting in a disc golf course cost another $25,000. About $115,000 was spent on Fellows Riverside Gardens and the East Hike and Bike Trail got $150,000 in improvements.

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A Youngstown-based environmental company is running some tests around Mill Creek Park for the next few weeks, trying to find ways to kill off dangerous algae.

Green Water Solutions will be testing a new technology around Lake Newport over the next few weeks, using a system that puts more oxygen into waterways.

“A new form of aeration, similar to what we just installed at the Lily Pond,” said Nick Derico, natural resources steward at Mill Creek. “That system was designed to run 24 hours a day, 365. This will be more of a limited treatment period.”

The system doesn’t use hazardous chemicals. Instead, it sprays tiny ozone bubbles into the water.

“The technology is injecting ozone, infused into the nanobubbles,” said Chris Antinone, Jr., with Green Water Solutions. “The nanobubbles sink into the water. One of the things we are trying to do here is put it in downstream, let the nanobubbles come upstream, and see how far they work and how well it works coming up.”

The ozone turns into oxygen, and cleans out some of the nitrogen and other pollutants algae need to grow.

It’s being done in late summer because that’s when algae blooms are the worst.

Scientists from Youngstown State and federal agencies will monitor the results.

“They’re going to look at what’s in the water and what did we take out of the water,” Antinone said.

The park is interested to see how the project turns out. It’s been tested before at Mosquito Lake and in Florida.

This could be a way to control the dangerous bacterial growth like the one that killed thousands of fish in the park in 2015.

“In theory, it is possible,” Derico said. “I don’t want to say a solution, but it could help control those bacterias.”

The company will track nanobubbles down through the park’s waterways and see how far they travel.

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