Akron's Sewer Problems

As you can see from the picture, Kurt and attended the Sewer meeting at the Morley Health Center, on Broadway, downtown Akron last night.  We wanted to get some answers on the sewer rate hike, rumors of which have been floating around lately, but without adequate detail.

About 200 of the 900 miles of sewer lines running through Akron have what is referred to as an Combined Sewer.  This was put in, for the most part, in the neighborhood of 100 years ago, and was a state-of-the-art system at the time.  It saves money by combining both Sanitary and Storm Run-Off sewers into one.  Here is a graphic that shows how it works ..

Well, you could see the problem here.  When it rains, a small portion of the sanitary (full of feces, dishwater, etc..) gets mixed with the storm run off and flows into the river.  The EPA is pretty clear in a zero tolerance policy of any discharge into the river, this was not implemented until the 1990's though.

So what you have is a bunch of cities in industrial America, now being fined and dictated to by the Federal EPA.  The costs to other cities in the area run in excess of the billions of dollars for fixing similar problems.

To the Mayor's credit; he has apparently been working on this issue for the last 8 years, and was actually ahead of the curve, because the city knew that this sort of thing would happen.  The city had, according to the Mayor, something like 8,000 pages of documents, studies,engineering, environmental reviews and  and a mitigation plan that has already been partially implemented with the EPA of the State of Ohio.  The city was successful in removing something like 30% of the discharge by simply building a holding tank for rain conditions off Cuyahoga St, which would catch overflow, hold it until the rain subsided, and would then be pumped out to the treatment plant on Akron-Peninsula Rd. for treatment.  There were plans in place to re-mediate the rest of the problem in the works, at a cost, if I recall correctly, in the neighbor hood of 30 million dollars. (which is not bad, considering the new price tag.)

Enter the arrogant, and unrestrained Federal Environmental Protection Agency.  The said, essentially "you must do it our way".  The State of Ohio reneged on us, leaving Akron holding the bag, all the money and research already done wasted, and Akron receiving penalties annually for violations.  This is the problem in a nutshell, it is much more complicated in actuality, but I am not going to get into that here.. just know that we had something worked out, and the Fed came in and spit in our pudding.  

So, what does this mean?

As far as the residents of Akron, you can expect to see increases of 35% the first year, 15% for years two and three, and 9% for year four.  That's 74% and we may not even be done.  For communities that utilize the City's sewer and water services, like mine (Mogadore), it is unclear at this point exactly what the rate hike will be, as communities outside of Akron are responsible for the proposed (mandated) up-sizing of the water treatment facility, but not the 200 miles of combined sewer that resides entirely in the city.

As for the Brecksville Dam, that is being rolled into all of this, at a cost of 1 million dollars; Mayor Don explained to Kurt that it is a way to pay the penalties imposed by the EPA at a discounted rate, in lieu of paying the actual penalties.

Total estimated price tag, for now; 900 million dollars!

The city is stuck between a rock and a hard place at the worst possible time.  Many people in the city are already struggling to make ends meet and the EPA has now imposed what amounts to a new Tax-By-Way-of -Fee.  It does not seem like they are willing to work with us here, and currently, this is a federal mandate backed up by zero federal dollars (easy decision for them to make).  There are better and more efficient alternative remedies out there, if you believe the Mayor, but we must do it the EPA way.  It's a mess.  The federal government should ultimately have a financial stake in anything that it mandates, although the fed is still our money too.  Perhaps the most fair solution to dealing with this problem, that is truly not the fault of any living Akronite, is a write off, in federal withholding, to offset any increase in fees to our citizens caused by this federal mandate.  Thinks it's gonna happen?  Most likely not.  Yet another example of why we need to fight to take back local control, and re-assert our rights!  It is the only way we are going to get out of this malaise of bureaucracy and waste.

(Oh, and before anyone comes back with the old "if government didn't mandate it we would live in a third world hell hole" shtick, this is also a great example of a municipality being proactive about a public wellness and environmental concern, while still being within economic constraints, and the federal bureaucracy coming in and usurping our local interest.  We will not let our communities fall into filth if given the choice, that is just human nature, and electoral politics.  We don't need Washington to mandate it.)