By Mark Shaffer
The Ironton Tribune

At Tuesday’s meeting of the Lawrence County commissioners, they heard from Eddie Neal of Impact Prevention and David Lucas, president of Lawrence County Rural Water District.
Lucas said he brought awesome news for all of Lawrence County.
“After many years of hard work, a lot of collaboration and a whole lot more of meetings than I ever wanted to attend in all my life, water will go to Macedonia after all this work,” Lucas said. He thanked the commissioners for their support and contributions to get this project going.
Lucas said the Macedonia water contract has been allotted and that the project won’t take long once it gets started.
“It’s been a long journey of more than six years to make this happen, but we are thankful,” he said.
He added district has been meeting with the Waterloo community to get petitions signed to bring water there.
Lucas said they won’t stop working on projects until everyone in the county has access to clean water sources.
Neal was there to thank the commissioners, public officials and businesses for their support of Impact Prevention’s annual summer Party in the Park events.
“We ended up having eight of these events in Lawrence and Scioto counties” Neal said. “The weather was perfect and we had a lot of turnouts and the weather was perfect every day. Some people said it was hot a couple of times, but, you know, it is summer.”
He said it was really great to see the kids come out to have the first responder engagement with the fire, law enforcement and EMS squads at the parks. There were many agencies that serve children as well as many great community volunteers.
The events had crafts, games, a dunk tanks and Neal said the Kona Ice truck and free food were big hits.
He said video recaps of the events were available for viewing on Impact Prevention’s Facebook page.
“Some of the neat things with that is we had youth interviews, some kids that attended, of their perspective of the events as well as some of our youth staff that are part of Impact youth-lead teams, Neal said. “It is neat to see their perspective.”
He added that there are about 40 agencies that participate in the Party in the Parks.
Neal said this year was the sixth season for Party in the Parks and it has grown a lot over the years. He said around 14 people attended the very first Party in the Park when it was held in Aetna Park in Ironton.
One upcoming Impact Prevention event is their annual youth team-lead suicide prevention walk on Sept. 12 in Ironton.
In items on the agenda, the commissioners took the following actions:
• Approved floodplain permits submitted by the Soil and Water Conservation District for Maxine Moore-Campers in a floodplain project located at 156 Township Road 176 and Mark Crawford, brush clearing and stream maintenance projects located at 6623 County Road 16
• Renewed floodplain permits submitted by the Soil and Water Conservation District for Lawrence Sullivan-Stream maintenance project located at 277 County Road 36, Dirk L. Plybon, filling and grading project located at 373 County Road 3, Dirk L. Plybon, filling and grading project located at 216 County Road 3 and Justin Holland, stream maintenance project located at1045 County Road 37.
• Approved EMS staffing change including the resignation of Jeffrey Coldiron, effective Aug. 2, and the retirement of Eva Delong, effective Aug. 3.
• Approved the approve the part-time new hire of Jessica Malone for the Lawrence County Dog Shelter.
• Approved and signed the lease of vehicle with ILCAO for the Healthy Aging Grant.