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Sewer upgrade funding bill to be re-introduced
YOUNGSTOWN
U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Cleveland, used Mill Creek Park as a platform to announce re-introduction of a plan he said would help cities such as Youngstown, with outdated sewers that collect both stormwater and sewage, to improve water quality.
Brown’s bill would authorize $1.8 billion over five years for grants to help economically troubled municipalities with planning, design and construction of treatment facilities to control combined storm and sanitary-sewer overflows.
Those overflows discharge a mixture of storm- water and untreated sewage into waterways after heavy rains.
Grants would pay 75 percent of the cost of such projects, supplemented by a 25 percent local match.
Brown said sewer rate increases could be used to provide the local matching funds. How to fund the match is “up to local communities,” he said.
The senator said Tuesday that the legislation he plans to re-introduce, dubbed the Clean Water Affordability Act, would achieve water quality improvement while keeping sewer rates affordable for residents and small businesses.
The senator said his proposal would help reduce future water and sewer rate increases to attract new businesses and create jobs.
Communities and rate-payers “shouldn’t have to handle these fixes alone. The cost is too great for individuals and businesses and industries and communities,” the senator said.
Under its agreement with the U.S. and Ohio Environmental Protection agencies, Youngstown will spend $146 million over the next 18 years to upgrade its sewer system, including curtailment of combined storm and sanitary-sewer overflows that discharge into Mill Creek MetroParks.
After heavy rains in late June, such an overflow was the primary cause of a massive Lake Newport fish kill, the Ohio EPA said.
After the Mahoning County District Board of Health detected high E. coli bacteria levels there, park officials closed lakes Newport, Cohasset and Glacier indefinitely July 10 to all recreational uses.
“What’s happened here is pretty devastating to a community,” Brown said during Tuesday’s news conference overlooking Lake Glacier from Fellows Riverside Gardens.
“When systems go without upgrades and repairs, what results is this kind of water contamination,” he added.
Brown introduced similar bills in 2010 and 2014, but they died because they were not passed by the end of their respective two-year congressional sessions.
The National Association of Clean Water Agencies, which represents sewer districts, has endorsed the proposed legislation.
The bill also proposes updating the federal EPA’s clean water affordability policy, which Brown said can put undue strain on local communities’ budgets.
That policy does not now provide for a complete and accurate representation of the financial burden of sewer system improvement efforts on communities struggling to meet federal clean water regulations, he said.
Ohio Senate Minority Leader Joe Schiavoni of Boardman, D-33rd, also promoted his proposed March 2016 ballot issue that would authorize borrowing $1 billion in bonds to provide $100 million annually in grants over 10 years to local communities to upgrade their water supply and sewer systems.
“Mother Nature brought this up this summer when we saw what happened in the park, and that’s because we’ve been kicking the can down the road for too long. We need to make the investment now” in sewer improvements, Schiavoni said.
Curtailing all of Ohio’s combined sewer overflows would cost at least $8 billion, Brown said.