Water Sector News
A snapshot of clean water stories from publications around the country, updated daily!
Cleveland's combined sewage overflows into Lake Erie have been reduced by 1.7 billion gallons a year
CLEVELAND — Being a lifeguard at Edgewater Beach was a lonely job Tuesday. They're used to protecting people in the water, not from it, but after Monday night’s heavy rainfall forced the release of untreated stormwater and sewage into the lake it wasn’t safe to swim in. You see, Cleveland is one of around 800 cities across the country that have what are called combined sewers, where the sewage from your homes travels in the same pipes as the stormwater from your street to the water treatment plant.
"So when you have heavy rain that falls there's only one of three that this places that this water can go it's either flooding the plant, flooding homes or it discharges into the environment,” said Jeannie Smith of the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District.