Akron may be one step closer to saving nearly $230 million while still fulfilling the requirements of its water treatment consent decree.
The city presented a plan to the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency to update its Cuyahoga Street Storage Facility for about $30 million rather than build a new $265 million “enhanced high-rate treatment” facility (EHRT), the last step in the massive, $1 billion Akron sewer project.
“We have been able to successfully model to the Ohio EPA that we can and will meet our water quality standards due to the significant amount of work our Akron Waterways Renewed team has put into overhauling our system,” Mayor Shammas Malik said in a press release.
The city’s plan has not been approved by the state yet, but the state’s top environmental body has issued a draft change to the city’s National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) that allows public review and comment for 30 days.
The consent decree mandate has forced the city to almost totally redesign its wastewater facilities and processes to upgrade its 100-year-old sewer system, once notorious for dumping massive volumes of sewage into the Cuyahoga River during heavy rains. The new system has cost the city and taxpayers more than $1 billion, which is largely paid by ratepayers and long-term, low-interest loans.
This year, the city faced outcry about a planned $15 monthly rate hike, which will be implemented in 2028. If the city’s plan to eliminate the last stage of the sewer project is approved by the federal district court overseeing the consent decree, that rate hike would likely go away.
How far along is Akron in meeting the requirements of the consent decree?
Akron has made substantial progress in meeting the consent decree requirements, completing 24 of 26 mandated projects, with the Northside Interceptor Tunnel slated to be in use by the end of 2026. The $265 million treatment plant is the final project, which Akron has been trying to remove from the decree for years.
If the plan is approved, the city will save hundreds of millions of dollars in the process.
“We are hopeful that this potential change to our Permit will be the next step in eliminating the EHRT from our consent decree,” Malik said in the release. “At the conclusion of these projects, we expect to be capturing and treating 99% of all wet weather flows and annually keeping approximately 2.4 billion gallons of untreated wastewater out of our waterways.”
How to comment on the draft change
All comments or statements on the draft change and all requests for notice of further actions should be submitted in person, by e-mail to epa.dswcomments@epa.ohio.gov, or by mail to Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, Division of Surface Water, Lazarus Government Center, Permits Processing Unit, 50 West Town Street., P. O. Box 1049, Columbus, Ohio 43216-1049.
You can read the notice here.