Lakewood's Storm Water Runoff Under the EPA Microscope
Officials hope to comply with federal guidelines, but with a price tag of hundreds of millions of dollars, the city can’t swing it.
City officials concede that for the past 100 years in Lakewood, “the solution to pollution was dissolution.” That’s no longer an option. With Lakewood reporting in 2010 that 91.4 million gallons of storm/sewer water were dumped into Lake Erie, the EPA is forcing the city to make some changes. Those fixes to the city’s infrastructure could be expensive — as much as $500 million. The city is working on an agreement with the US EPA to address the problem. Lakewood’s combined sewers are designed to take all flows to the treatment plant, which can process about 20 million gallons per day. However, during storms, the volume of water entering the combined sewer system can exceed both the capacity of the combined sewers and the treatment plant. …
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Jerry Gubanich
3:18 pm on Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Rain barrels give the biggest bang for the buck. Connect rainbarrel to garden with hose. Thats it. The rainbarrel will substantially cut down on damp basements in Lakewood. I don't believe much hydrocarbon comes from the asphalt street. There is very little leaching from that type of asphalt. more ›