By ideastream's Brian Bull
All summer long area beaches have been closed due to “water advisories”. That means the e-coli levels make the water unsafe for swimming.
But the Cleveland area is making gains in efforts to control sewer overflows into the lake.
It’s been a fairly regular occurrence during the rainy spells of the year. A heavy downpour can tax local sewer systems, causing overflows of sewage into waterways that eventually contaminate beaches and threaten public health.
But Julius Ciaccia, CEO of the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District, says they’ve wrapped up construction of a 3-mile long combined sewer overflow tunnel – or CSO – this week.
“This particular tunnel is in the Bratenahl- Cleveland border, in the Collinwood area," says Ciaccia. It’ll go online about 6-7 months from now. And we’ve another tunnel that’s also under construction, and we have a third one under design. All geared towards eliminating 4 billion gallons of overflow annually that goes into Lake Erie.”
Ciaccia says each CSO tunnel cost around $200 million and this latest one came in more than $3 million under budget. The projects are both funded by the sewer district’s rates.