The Price of Clean Water, Part One

Aired December 16, 1999

In 1972, Congress passed the Clean Water Act with the aim of restoring the health of our nation's waterways. Billions of dollars in federal aid were spent on clean-up, including upgrades to our sewage treatment plants, a primary source of bacterial pollution. While water quality has improved, wastewater contamination of our lakes and rivers continues to threaten public health. And though the Cuyahoga River no longer catches fire, it still falls short of federal compliance because of sewer overflows. Now cities across the country are faced with a new and vastly more expensive mandate to reduce wastewater pollution, this time without federal assistance. 90.3's Karen Schaefer has this first of two reports on the price of clean water.

Most of us have no idea what happens to the water that leaves our toilets, tubs and drains for treatment at the local sewage plant. But what we don't know can hurt us - right in the pocketbook.

Every year for the last four years, Cleveland's sewer rates have risen an average of $17 per household. Another rate hike is expected this January. The current rates are going in part to pay for improvements to the city's sanitary sewer system required by the federal government under the Clean Water Act. But Frank Greenland of the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District says the biggest costs may be yet to come.

Frank Greenland: I think in terms of meeting the Clean Water Act mandates, there was a lot of bang for the buck early in the program...Now we are in the high end of that curve. So every incremental increased benefit is going to come at a pretty enormous cost.

Although the federal government funded earlier sewer upgrades up to 75%, the latest mandated improvements must be paid for locally. The culprits are so-called combined sewer overflows, structures built 50 to 80 years ago to help alleviate sewer back-ups. Today the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says CSO's are the primary cause of the bacterial pollution that is sometimes closing our nation's beaches and making fish unsafe to eat. In a heavy rainstorm, Greenland says the CSO's allow excess storm water to overflow into sanitary sewers, which themselves overflow directly into rivers and streams.

Frank Greenland: So almost any urban stream in our combined sewer area receives some combined sewer discharges...It's primarily storm water, but there is a wastewater component.

More than a thousand older communities across the country are faced with the challenges of eliminating their sewage overflow problems, with an estimated national cost of $100 billion. In order for sewers to handle the extra flow of water during a storm, one engineering solution is to create huge underground tunnels to temporarily store the contaminated water until the treatment system is no longer overloaded.

But big solutions come with a big price tag. To complete all of the projects recommended by the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District, which serves most of Greater Cleveland, the cost will be over $1 billion. Officials say they hope they won't have to raise rates to pay for the projects over the 15-20 year construction period. But in nearby Akron, Service Director Joseph Kidder says the city simply can't afford to foot the bill.

Joseph Kidder: Well, $248 million is what it would take to take care of outfall in the city of Akron's sanitary sewers...We know that annually we spend less than $8 million on an average basis on our system....so if you triple that capital program just for one item, it's going to be significant.

Kidder says Akron hopes to re-negotiate the time frame for construction of mitigation projects with the EPA. And like Cleveland, Akron city engineers will closely monitor the results of each improvement and scale back larger projects wherever possible. Costly though it is, Bob Wysenski of the Ohio EPA's Northeast District office says the elimination of CSO's will provide big gains for water quality. But he says cities, by their very nature, are the real source of the problem.

Bob Wysenski: You end up with a tremendous amount of the watershed is paved with impervious surfaces, with driveways, rooftops, roadways, and when it rains, you have a lot more water running off from those areas.

Wysenski says reducing the impact of storm water run-off in urbanized areas by reducing impervious surfaces is a political, not an engineering problem.

Bob Wysenski: Whether citizens would support tearing up driveways, putting in gravel, I'm not sure...There's a real component of this that we need to educate our society and bring them along with this. And that's a real key part of the whole issue.

Kelvin Rogers: That's one of the things the RAP's have been valuable in addressing, is education.

Kelvin Rogers of the Ohio EPA is also the Coordinator for the Cuyahoga River Remedial Action Plan or RAP. He says RAP's were created by federal mandate to encourage citizen involvement in forming new plans to improve water quality.

Kelvin Rogers: Educating the public, getting them involved, getting them re-connected with the stream in their backyard...Citizen education is where we're going to see a real impact in the future.

One plan the Cuyahoga RAP is encouraging is to restore stream banks and channels to their natural state wherever possible, thus increasing green space and reducing sedimentation and flooding. Another is to base new development on an understanding of the natural watershed. But other solutions are being tried and tested around the country, solutions that rely on new green technologies that can provide alternatives to conventional wastewater treatment. Tomorrow we'll explore some of those alternatives and their potential for reducing the costs of clean water. For 90.3, I'm Karen Schaefer in Cleveland.