US Port Wins AAPA Environmental Award
Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority wins international award for opening & managing Cleveland Lakefront Nature Preserve.
The American Association of Port Authorities (AAPA) has awarded the Port its 2012 Environmental Enhancement Award for the preserve, a unique 88-acre site on Lake Erie near downtown Cleveland, that the Port opened to the public on a daily basis in February.
“We are honored and excited to receive this award,” said Port President and CEO Will Friedman. “We have made environmental stewardship along our waterfronts a major organizational priority, and to be recognized by the AAPA for our efforts is rewarding. We hope this award will further raise the profile of the preserve and draw even more people to enjoy nature and bird watching on Cleveland’s Lake Erie shoreline.”
Since February, the Preserve has had nearly 14,000 visits by people from 39 states and 13 countries. The wildlife refuge is a man-made peninsula, originally created as the Dike 14 repository for sediment dredged by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to keep the Cuyahoga River clear for maritime traffic. The Corps stopped using the site in 1999. The area was then claimed by a diverse array of plants and wildlife, and designated as an “Important Bird Area” by Audubon Ohio.
AAPA is a trade association founded in 1912 and based in Alexandria, Virginia. It represents more than 130 port authorities in the United States, Canada, the Caribbean, and Latin America.