Yellow Springs’ aging infrastructure and how best to repair some of it was again a focus of discussion at Village Council’s latest regular meeting, Monday, Aug. 17.
At the meeting, Council members heard a familiar story: Yellow Springs is laden with old underground pipes that need fixing, and planning for repairs today would be cheaper than making them under duress tomorrow.
That was the message of Ryan Brauen, project lead for the Indiana and Ohio-based firm Wessler Engineering, who on Monday delivered a presentation that emphasized the Village’s need to update several key pieces of wastewater infrastructure — namely some mechanics of the Bryan Lift Station at the foot of the U.S. 68 bridge near the Bryan Center, as well as the force main that carries most of the village’s wastewater to the treatment plant on Grinnell Road.
“I don’t want to present doom and gloom … but I know from a planning perspective, it’s wise to think of next steps,” Brauen said of the aging infrastructure.
In his presentation, Brauen noted that the Village prompted his firm to conduct the wastewater evaluation to identify “capacity and performance limitations” with regard to the anticipated increase in residential homes being built in Yellow Springs. A $59,000 grant through the Ohio EPA covered Wessler’s assessment.
Brauen said that, while the Village is able to accommodate the flow of wastewater generated from the current output of Yellow Springs residents and businesses, it’s approaching a threshold.
“The lift station has a capacity of 3.74 million gallons per day,” he said. “The average you generate is 3.15 million gallons per day. So it’s reaching the limits. You’re at about 90% of the capacity of that station.”
The top priority, though, is the force main — which is over 60 years old and is deteriorating without a contingency plan in the event of its total failure.
“It’s a critical piece of how you can all flush and how your businesses can operate,” Brauen said. “You need a plan to address it going forward.”
Following a months-long survey of the treatment plant and collection system conditions, Brauen presented the following recommendations, in order of priority:
• Replace the force main — all 2,900 feet of 16-inch ductile iron pipe underground. Such a replacement would cost $2 million;
• Replace a particular 30-year-old leaky pump at the Bryan Lift Station, which services 70% of all wastewater in Yellow Springs. Such a replacement would cost $1.2 million; and
• Rehab portions of the treatment plant — built in 1964 and upgraded in 2009 — to improve reliability and support long-term operations. Such repairs would cost $5.45 million.
The cost would total $8.65 million, should the Village make all three of these large-scale infrastructure improvements; it’s an amount that could be subsidized by state EPA dollars, but one that could mean an increase of an estimated $30 in monthly utility bills for residents, per the Wessler study.
“But these are costs that could be scaled or phrased according to finances and need,” Brauen said.
In other words, the Village could choose to do one, two, all or none of the recommended actions, with varying costs or consequences to the taxpayer.
Village Manager Johnnie Burns insisted on the importance of looking at the force main. At the meeting, he called on the voice of Todd Van Lehn, former owner of Van Lehn Construction Services, who has worked on the repair and replacement of area utilities since 1980. According to Burns, Van Lehn was the last person to put eyes on a part of the underground force main, around 20 years ago.
From that memory alone, Van Lehn said the main needs replacing imminently.
“There’s no contingency,” Van Lehn told Council. “It’s been a tragedy in the making. If it breaks, it would pollute the river [Yellow Springs Creek in Glen Helen] and would continue to do so for the three weeks it takes to replace — and that’s optimistic.”
What the Village chooses to repair or replace, to what extent and when, all remain to be seen — and, according to Brauen, those choices could hinge on the dollars available through the Ohio EPA’s Water Pollution Control Loan Fund.
Brauen said that, on behalf of the Village, at the beginning of next month Wessler will submit a preliminary engineering report to the state — one that highlights the state of the force main, lift station pump and needs of the treatment plant. Around February of next year, the state will announce which municipalities have access to funds to offset project costs.
“We’re not committing to spending all this money,” Council President Gavin DeVore Leonard said of the recommended $8.5 million in improvements. “We’re going to put together a working group to consider the options.”
He continued: “We’re doing a decent job of keeping up with the things that are coming day-to-day. This is part of capital improvement planning where there’s some big picture, long-term projects that haven’t been looked at closely that far ahead. This is part of the effort to do better with that.”
One of the things local resident Chris Westhoff likes best about running is the internal quiet borne out of putting feet to the ground, focusing only on breath and forward motion.
“It’s just being alive,” he told the News in a recent interview. “It’s pretty quiet in there — and then it’s done, and it’s live again because there’s children and work and emails and phone calls and things to do. But it’s a very great place to go for me.”
This fall, Westhoff has plans to take that internal quiet someplace he’s wanted to go for years: the New York City Marathon. When he goes, he’ll take a bit of Yellow Springs with him — he’ll be running as part of Team Komera, raising money for a nonprofit enriching the lives of girls and young women in Rwanda, whose managing director, Ashley Lackovich, also lives in the village.
The upcoming marathon — a feather in the cap of any American long-distance runner — is set for Sunday, Nov. 1.
Westhoff said he started running regularly coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic. He had grown up watching his father run, and had cousins who were accomplished runners, but hadn’t imagined distance running as his own metier until the last few years. Now, he’s completed city and trail marathons and ultramarathon distances, including a recent 50K race in John Bryan State Park.
His progress since 2020, he said, has been tangible, in that running 10 or 15 miles — distances that might once have flattened him for the rest of the day — are now the kind of thing he can complete and hop on over to the Foundry Theater, where he’s the director, and oversee a performance.
“I’m 43, but I’m in better shape mentally and physically than I have ever been,” he said. “I used to play hard and get hurt, and then recover to play hard again and get hurt again; now I run easy to keep running easy.”
Outside of its international prestige as a marathon site, New York City has a special pull for Westhoff, who grew up outside the city and spent time there as a child. He and his wife, Chloe Manor, were married at a friend’s home off Central Park — where the marathon finishes — and will celebrate their wedding anniversary in November; Westhoff, Manor and their children will stay there again when they travel to New York for the race.
And he’ll be running with his oldest friend, Conor Gleason, whom he met playing ice hockey in third grade. Westhoff said he and Gleason have kept their friendship going across miles and years, in part by running together, including marathons in Denver, Cincinnati and Moab.
Running bibs for the NYC Marathon are increasingly difficult to obtain, as tens of thousands of runners enter a general lottery for a limited number of open spots. Another option for interested runners is to sport the bib of a nonprofit — the route that Westhoff, by chance, ended up running.
Westhoff and Lackovich serve together on the Chamber Music in Yellow Springs board, and their families have also crossed paths through the Antioch School. This year, Yellow Springs synchronicity came into play, as Westhoff mentioned to Lackovich that he wanted to run the New York City Marathon. It was just his luck that Komera had a couple dozen charity bibs on offer.
“I didn’t even know he ran,” Lackovich said.
Komera’s connection to running goes back to its inception. The nonprofit’s founder, Margaret Butler, herself a runner, was living and working in Rwanda. Lackovich said Butler would take daily training runs, and nearby children would call out “komera!” — a Kinyarwanda word meaning “be strong, have courage.” In 2008, the organization held its first girls-only fun run in Rwanda, and sport has remained part of its work ever since — including a youth running club that Lackovich said now includes about 500 girls in public schools.
Komera’s primary work, however, is focused on supporting girls and young women through secondary-school scholarships, mentorship, leadership programming, health and wellness initiatives and postsecondary support. Based in Rwinkwavu, Rwanda, the organization currently supports 70 young women through its secondary-school scholarship program. It also works with parents and guardians through a cooperative program focused on financial literacy, small-business development and stronger support for girls at home.
Lackovich has worked in international girls education for about 15 years — as the News reported in April, she also heads the locally based nonprofit Enhance Worldwide, which supports girls education in Ethiopia. She’s been with Komera for two years, and said the organization’s hallmark program serves high-achieving girls from households whose families often can’t afford the costs that accompany nominally free schooling — fees, uniforms, books, supplies and other necessities.
Komera now sends its young scholars to local boarding schools, Lackovich said — a shift that grew out of seeing the limits of tuition support on its own. In Komera’s early years of covering tuition costs for public school, some girls were still waking early to fetch water or care for siblings, arriving late to school and returning home to do chores. After a full day, in homes without electricity, there was often little light left for completing homework. Boarding school, Lackovich said, gives its young students room to study, make friends, play sports and “just be girls.”
Komera’s model has grown increasingly comprehensive over the years: scholars meet with school-based mentors; leadership camps during breaks cover subjects including decision-making, reproductive health and career development; mental health counseling is available; and families are folded into the work through the parent and guardian cooperative.
Lackovich said Komera’s years of work in Rwinkwavu have also helped shift attitudes among families about educating their daughters. In the organization’s early years, she said, some parents were reluctant for their children to participate; now, during the annual application process, parents come forward to advocate for their daughters to be selected.
“Attitudes change when you see success,” Lackovich said.
The organization reports that 105 young women have graduated from its secondary school program, with a 95% graduation rate overall; Lackovich said 100% of its most recent class graduated. According to Komera’s website, 61% of its scholars have gone on to university.
Komera’s local arm based in Yellow Springs is focused on raising money, Lackovich said, but the program itself is led by a staff of Rwandan women, several of whom — including its program manager — are graduates of Komera.
“The programs and the direction that the organization is going to go — it’s all Rwandans,” Lackovich said.
Lackovich said the long view for Komera isn’t just to make sure a girl finishes school, but to ensure that she has choices after she’s graduated. To that end, Komera continues supporting scholars through university when needed, and graduates often go on to support younger siblings and their own children. This year, she said, a group of alumni began paying to send 10 local girls to school themselves.
“The whole point is for girls to live a life of their choosing,” Lackovich said.
The New York City Marathon has become one way for Komera to keep offering choices to girls and young women. Komera fields charity runners who commit to fundraising for the organization, and Lackovich said this year’s New York team of 28 runners is its largest yet. With federal grant opportunities tightening, she said, marathon teams and other fundraising opportunities have become a crucial source of support.
Westhoff’s goal is $4,800, which he hopes to raise by the end of September. According to his fundraising page, $750 can cover a year of secondary school and supplies for one scholar; $1,250 can fund a year of university; and smaller gifts can support transportation, room and board at a leadership camp or access to a Komera social worker.
Westhoff said fundraising for Komera gives a communal purpose to an undertaking that is, by nature, intensely individual — one body moving under its own power from start to finish. The chance to connect the race to what he called “a really meaningful nonprofit,” he said, will make the race especially meaningful.
“It’s cool to do it for somebody else, with another idea at heart,” he said.
To contribute to Westhoff’s run for Team Komera, go to http://www.give.komera.org/fundraiser/7185878. For more information on Komera’s work, go to http://www.komera.org
It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No, it’s a red Chevy Tahoe that collided with the side of Super-Fly Comics and Games on Wednesday night, June 3.
No injuries were reported and Yellow Springs Police arrested one individual in connection with the incident: Xenia resident Shelton Da Costa was charged with failure to stop after an accident involving property of others, reckless operation, failure to control and hit-and-skip.
According to more than six witnesses of the incident and a bartender, Da Costa exited the Gulch Saloon around quarter to midnight. Attempting to drive out of the gravel lot behind the bar, he crashed into a parked car, causing significant damage to the impacted vehicle.
He then accelerated forward and smashed into the side of Super-Fly that abuts the alley, which connects the gravel lot to Dayton Street. According to that night’s bartender on duty, he pulled blindly onto the road, nearly causing another accident.
He was arrested several hours after the event and was transported to Greene County Jail.
Though all witnesses with whom the News spoke attested to Da Costa’s apparent intoxication that evening, Yellow Springs Police did not arrest him on charges of operating a vehicle impaired; Police Chief Paige Burge told the News earlier this week that such a charge would have been without probable cause.
Super-Fly took quite a hit from the collision. The car left a hood-sized cavity in the building — the impact toppling over several back-room shelves stocked with thousands of comic books.
Despite the size of the wallop, Super-Fly owner Tony Barry told the News the day after that his store suffered “shockingly little” merchandise damage — less than $500, he estimated at the time. It’s the clean up that he really laments.
“The shelves that came down were full of books in order and in meaningful piles and stacks — almost all our online sales, listings and overstock,” he said. “Now we have to reorganize and audit all of our stock — are they still in the same condition we listed them as? So, the legwork on resorting all of that is easily going to be 100 hours of labor.”
He added with dismay: “And Street Fair is right around the corner. What a nightmare.”
Still, Barry said he’s choosing to see the silver lining of the situation — it is, after all, the first major accident of the sort in the 19 years of Super Fly’s Dayton Street existence.
Not to mention, the damage done wasn’t enough for the fire department to condemn the building, so business has continued in the week since as usual. Plus, Barry said, shoddy construction of the wall that was taken out would occasionally lead to water seeping into the storage room — the true arch enemy of any comic store.
“So maybe a new wall will help — but that’s a solid maybe,” he said with a laugh.
Rogue cars notwithstanding, the comic business is good, Barry reported. The year’s Free Comic Book Day last month, on May 2, was Super-Fly’s best day of business since it opened almost two decades ago. Barry said an estimated 1,000 folks came through his doors.
On top of that, he’s been putting a considerable dent in his business-related debt.
“It’s not a big secret, but I’ve had some IRS debt that has been following me for a very long time, because when you’re 24 and you start a new business, you don’t always do everything exactly right,” Barry said. “Sometimes that shows up in some very loud and federal ways.”
He continued: “But thanks to Free Comic Book Day, I was able to make some moves and get the IRS off my back for the first time in many, many years.”
Looking ahead, Barry said he doesn’t need help in patching up the hole; his landlords are taking care of that work and all associated costs. Also, he’s not looking to recruit any more staffers or volunteers to help him catalog and organize the comics that were strewn about from the accident — he has a pretty rigid filing system and needs a trained eye to spot potential defects.
So how can one be a hero in such a case?
“Just come in and buy a comic if you can,” Barry said.
Super-Fly Comics and Games is located at 132 Dayton St. in downtown Yellow Springs. Hours are Monday–Sunday, 11 a.m.–7 p.m.
By Chris Wyatt
May 1, 2026
A chilly start to May.
Exams are done, as is my grading. Now I wait for my colleagues to grade their sections before compiling everything and assigning final grades. Bizarrely, at Wright State, students find out their final grades after convocation. I’m not sure why this happens but it means that a student can walk at the graduation ceremony, and then several days later discover that they failed.
Conversely, a good student can graduate magna cum laude and then discover a week later they are actually summa cum laude. I’m sure there is some rationale to this that involves money, but I can’t for the life of me think what it might be. I guess it may simply be that they print a large glossy brochure with the latin honors printed in it, and that takes time to produce.
I’ll attend convocation tonight for graduate students, and then present my son with his graduation certificate tomorrow at the undergraduate ceremony.
Master has given Bobby a certificate, Bobby is free.
May 3, 2026
A brisk, sunny Sunday. During the week a storm knocked a huge branch out of our maple at the back of the Yellow Springs house. It destroyed our back deck and smashed two fence panels into their component atoms. Until it is fixed, Archie remains on-leash at all times; he can now smell freedom. We should probably replace four panels as the fence was done cheaply and is completely rotten. Well, the upright posts are fine, but you can break the panels apart with your fingers.
A relatively simple job for someone else to do.
Sungolds are dead. Failure to thrive. Will invest in brandywines and peardrops from Butter Flower Farm.
May 4, 2026
This week I teach medical students, proctor my final student exams, attend a departmental retreat and chair an IACUC meeting. Then I’m done teaching for the semester. I still have many work-related things to do over the summer but I can take my foot off the gas a little. It’s a relief.
This was the first semester for a long time where I managed to avoid a trip to the hospital. My surgery last year was a triumphant success.
May 9, 2026
The beans are in the ground and spring has officially sprung. It looks like we will get one more chilly day and then it is plain sailing into summer. I love the month of May in southwest Ohio, the weather can be absolutely idyllic.
The beans are nothing fancy, just some heritage stringless green beans. My dad would always grow “French” beans and huge runner beans that absolutely were not stringless, they were delicious though, and required an 8-foot trellis. Dad would grow potatoes, peas, onions, beans and carrots in our back garden.
His father, Frank, was a vegetarian — unless he shot it or pulled it out of a river — and this was extremely unusual for a man living in rural Devon in the middle of the 20th century. Frank’s vegetable patch was extremely well tended, old Gaffer Gamgee would have been proud of it. I don’t aspire to be able to match it, but growing my own vegetables is a very satisfying pastime. Salade Nicoise will be delightful in the summer months.
May 12, 2026
Spring cleaning day. It is impossible to keep mice out of the kitchen at The Hall, and while we didn’t have many, we had enough to make a mess.
The kitchen was essentially mothballed for the winter, as there was no water. Now that the water is back and I have time on my hands, it’s time to make the place usable again.
I think I’ll really just focus on surfaces today, as currently we can’t see any surfaces for dirty dishes and pans. It isn’t quite the level of the kitchen in the movie “Withnail and I,” but bleach is definitely going to be used … as are gloves … and maybe a mask.
My creative passions have swerved toward vinegar again. I made a wonderful malt vinegar from one of YS Brewery’s barleywines — diluted 60-40 with water, final ABV, 6% — and now I’m experimenting with the fruity beer Raspberry Springer. If it turns out OK this should be perfect for vinaigrette, or for spraying on barbecue. My best vinegar was made with the viking ale Jord’s Bounty — it had wonderful notes of rosemary and redcurrant.
May 14, 2026
As it begins to get dark, I fall asleep. I wake when the light begins. This is good as it means I’m getting about nine hours of sleep, which is lovely. I drift off looking at the trees out of the window and I wake up with the same view. I enjoy experiencing the weird hypnagogic and hypnopompic states, where I see faces in the leaves of the trees: Jack-in-the-Green or the Green Man are the most common. Both have the same roots, not strictly ancient, but certainly symbols of Spring.
Today will be cloudy, and I will spend time putting up deer netting to protect my fledgling tomato and bean plants. The netting is cheap and effective, the deer hate it. It is black nylon mesh, seven feet tall and almost invisible, so the deer noses hit it. This startles them as it has no smell, and they tend to avoid the area after the encounter. It works a treat.
I adore May in southwest Ohio.
*Originally from Manchester, England, Chris Wyatt is an associate professor of neuroscience, cell biology and physiology at Wright State University. He has lived in Yellow Springs for nearly two decades, is married and has two children and an insane Patterdale terrier. “The Patterdale Hall Diaries,” by Chris Wyatt, is now available in book format via Amazon for $11.99.
By Scott Geisel
Those familiar with local author Ed Davis’ work and his 2005 novel, “The Measure of Everything,” will recognize Davis’ love of Yellow Springs and his propensity to write about that. His new work, a collection of linked stories, “Here Where We Stand,” visits the spirit of the village in similar ways.
This work is not strictly a roman à clef — “a novel with a key” that uses real people and places to explore themes in fictionalized ways. These are linked stories, not a novel, and these stories are more fiction drawing from life than a retelling of real life. But local readers will recognize things in Davis’ stories like the village of Shawnee Springs, the Glenora Wood nature preserve, Route 86 and Aha Pizza, as transformations of local entities.
These stories are literary fiction, designed to resonate with readers by depicting elements of life we recognize in ourselves as shared experiences. A thought by a newcomer to the village in the first story of the collection illustrates Davis’ methods and familiarity with the literary fiction genre when that character wonders about others: “Maybe something similar had happened to them.”
Not every line, image or element in the book should resonate with every reader, as is true of any fiction, but on the whole these stories are designed to seek out connection with readers. Davis does this very well: he writes with authenticity to create opportunities for readers to recognize and relate to — that’s what resonance is, and it is the heart of literary fiction.
Reading generates embodied semantics and reinforces empathy. That means neural pathways that are active during actual real-life activity work in similar ways when reading about them, and reading about experiences helps generate understanding and perspective. Those effects are at the core of what Davis accomplishes in these stories, building situations into the fiction that allows readers the opportunity to be transported.
There’s an earthy, mystic, contemplative and ethereal vibe in these stories that will appeal best to those who appreciate or want to experience similar themes. There are heavy doses of faith, religion, spirit figures, visions, symbolism, self-reflection, epiphany and desire for transformation. There is also a very heavy dose of nature and its ability to temper and transmute life experiences. All of that happens in Davis’ fictional Shawnee Springs. Those who know Yellow Springs will recognize the immense importance that this real village means to the writer and his work.
Find Ed Davis’ book at Dark Star and Tesseract book shops in Yellow Springs.
He will be introducing the book at the Yellow Springs Senior Center on Thursday, May 28, and at Tesseract Books on Thursday, June 18, both at 7 p.m.
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