Warren council being asked to approve $1.6 million sewer study

By Ed Runyan | July 26, 2016 at 12:05a.m.

WARREN

To eliminate sewage problems, Warren City Council is being asked to approve legislation Wednesday that will authorize a $1.6 million study of all of the city’s sewage and storm-sewer lines.

Among the problems are a sewage pipe that overflows into the Mahoning River during storms and wastewater filling up basements, said Ed Haller, the recently hired Warren water pollution control director,

In an interview with The Vindicator, Haller said the study is likely to determine that Warren needs $30 million to $40 million worth of improvements. Much of the cost would have to come from water and wastewater customers. A 2015 study of just the downtown area indicated that it would cost about $20 million.

Warren’s sewer problems are not as severe as some larger cities, such as Cleveland and Columbus, and are comparable to what is being planned for Trumbull County’s waste-treatment plant in Howland and the Niles waste-treatment plant, Haller said.

He has been on the job 18 months after working 30 years for Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District, which serves 61 communities around Cleveland.

The problems in Warren are not as severe as in Youngstown, Haller said, because the sewage overflow has not produced the type of water-quality problems in the river as Youngstown’s overflows have caused in Mill Creek Park.

“Even though we have an active sanitary-sewer overflow, the volume is very, very low,” Haller said. In May, for example, there was no overflow.

To alleviate basement flooding, the Ohio EPA allowed the city last November to let one sewer pipe overflow into the river, but it asked the city to conduct a “flow study” of its sewer systems in 2015. It cost $99,623, but the results were inconclusive, so the EPA ordered the city to conduct a larger one, Haller said.

One reason for the larger study is that some of the problems are occuring in Champion Township and other areas outside of the city, Haller said. Such infiltration frequently comes from gutters that direct storm water into sewage pipes.

There are also cracked sewage pipes, for example, under the Mahoning River, that can allow storm water to enter. Two cracked pipes already have been identified – on Park Avenue along Courthouse Square and in David Grohl Alley just south of the square. Fixing those two alone would cost about $500,000 Haller said.