By Mark Shaffer
The Ironton Tribune

At Tuesday’s Lawrence County Commissioners meeting, they heard from Eddie Neal of Impact Prevention and David Lucas, president of the Lawrence County Rural Water District.
Lucas said he brought great news for all of Lawrence County.
“After many years of hard work, a lot of collaboration and a whole lot more meetings than I ever wanted to attend in my whole life, after all this work, water will come to Macedonia,” said Lucas. He thanked the commissioners for their support and contributions to get this project started.
Lucas said the water contract for Macedonia has been awarded and once the project starts, it will not take long.
“It has been a long road of more than six years to make this possible, but we are grateful,” he said.
He added that the district had met with the municipality of Waterloo to collect signatures for petitions to provide water to the town.
Lucas said they will not stop working on the projects until everyone in the county has access to clean water sources.
Neal was there to thank commissioners, public officials and businesses for their support of Impact Prevention’s annual Summer Party in the Park.
“We ended up having eight of these events in Lawrence and Scioto counties,” Neal said. “The weather was perfect, we had a lot of people coming in and the weather was perfect every day. Some people said it was hot a couple of times, but, you know, it’s summer.”
He said it was really great to see the children participating in the parks as first responders with the fire, police and EMS. There were many organizations in attendance that serve children, as well as many great volunteers from the community.
Events included arts and crafts, games and splash pools. Neal said the Kona ice cream truck and free food were a hit.
He said video summaries of the events can be viewed on Impact Prevention’s Facebook page.
“The great thing is that we were able to conduct interviews with young people. Some of the kids who were there gave their perspective on what happened, as did some of our youth workers who are part of the youth teams that Impact runs,” Neal said. “It’s great to see their perspective on things.”
He added that about 40 agencies are participating in the party in the parks.
Neal said this year is the sixth season for Party in the Parks and it has grown a lot over the years. He said the very first Party in the Park, when it was held at Aetna Park in Ironton, had about 14 people in attendance.
An upcoming Impact Prevention event is the annual youth-led suicide prevention walk on September 12 in Ironton.
On the items on the agenda, the Commissioners took the following actions:
• Approved floodplain permits filed by the Soil and Water Conservation District for Maxine Moore-Campers in a floodplain project at 156 Township Road 176 and Mark Crawford, brush clearing and stream maintenance projects at 6623 County Road 16
• Renewal of flood plain permits by the Soil and Water Conservation District for the Lawrence Sullivan Stream Maintenance Project at 277 County Road 36, Dirk L. Plybon Fill and Grading Project at 373 County Road 3, Dirk L. Plybon Fill and Grading Project at 216 County Road 3, and Justin Holland Stream Maintenance Project at 1045 County Road 37.
• Approved personnel changes in EMS, including the resignation of Jeffrey Coldiron effective August 2 and the retirement of Eva Delong effective August 3.
• Approved the part-time hiring of Jessica Malone for the Lawrence County Dog Shelter.
• Approval and signing of vehicle leasing agreement with ILCAO for the Healthy Aging Grant.