Akron officials are asking the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to eliminate a $209 million project that's part of the federal agency's mandatory overhaul of the city's water and sewage system.
The project, a proposed water treatment facility near the Towpath Trail, is the last of 26 projects required under the federal consent decree. Residents' sewer rates would have to be raised 20% to pay for it, Mayor Dan Horrigan said during a Tuesday press conference.
“I cannot justify this expense to our residents,” Horrigan said.
The enhanced high-rate treatment (EHRT) facility would treat approximately three sewage overflows in that section of the Little Cuyahoga River per year, which are typically caused by storms or other severe weather conditions, Horrigan said.
However, that area has not experienced an overflow for nearly 500 days, he added.
“In that time, the EHRT would have sat here, useless, just waiting, wasting our residents’ hard-earned money with no environmental benefit,” Horrigan said.
Akron’s consent decree is strict: in 2014, city officials committed to the U.S. EPA and U.S. Department of Justice that they would improve water quality and allow zero sewage overflows in a typical year. To do that, officials agreed to complete 26 projects to update the city’s sewage systems, which has cost about $800 million so far, according to city officials.
In 2009, the city agreed to make the fixes as part of a settlement under the Clean Water Act to reduce or eliminate untreated sewage and wastewater that were overflowing the sewer system and flowing into the Cuyahoga River, the Little Cuyahoga River, the Ohio Canal and their tributaries.
The EHRT is the final project under the consent decree and would be the third most expensive, Horrigan said.
He’s asking residents to write to the EPA to ask them to scrap the project.
“We need to put as much public pressure — this is not a personal thing, this is not about personalities involved. This is about the 190,000, 200,000 residents in the community that are going to end up having to pay a lot more for very little benefit,” Horrigan said.
Instead of building the facility, city officials have proposed remediating or removing old septic systems in the city, as well as assisting other communities in the Cuyahoga River watershed, including Springfield, Lakemore and Peninsula, to build better sewage systems, he said.
These plans would cost roughly about a quarter of the money needed for the EHRT and more effectively improve overall water quality, said Emily Collins, the mayor’s strategic adviser.
Officials from the Ohio EPA are on board with the city's proposal, Horrigan added.
The EHRT would only be used about three times a year to treat potential sewage overflows, Collins said, whereas the proposed alternative plans would improve the city's water daily.
“We can actually do better with bacteria by eliminating all these septic systems and sanitary sewer overflows that happen during dry weather, instead of three times of year during these extreme weather events where nobody should be on the river anyway,” Collins said.
The EPA, on the other hand, isn’t budging, she said. They are insisting the city continue with its initial agreement to treat overflows at the proposed site.
“I think they have us in a place where we’ve agreed to something, and the process of reconsidering... these various projects is burdensome," Collins said. "I think it’s an administrative burden to them to process all of this and … help us come up with better solutions."
The EPA said it does not comment on ongoing enforcement negotiations.
Collins and Horrigan added that the 24 projects completed so far, with the 25th in progress, have substantially improved Akron’s waterways. When the Northside Interceptor Tunnel project is completed, 99% of the city’s wet weather flows will have been captured and treated, Horrigan said.
City officials submitted the formal dispute to the EPA Monday. The EPA now has 45 days to respond to the city’s request.
