A groundbreaking agreement between the City
of Akron and the Ohio EPA is in jeopardy due to the possibility of litigation by the
United States Department of Justice. On July 5 of this year, Mayor Don Plusquellic
announced the agreement that was signed to alleviate problems with combined sewer overflow
(CSO) in Akron. City engineers have spent nearly 10 years working on the issue, and Akron
became the first city in the state to create a plan to solve the CSO problem that plagues
most urban areas in the country.Now, the City of Akron has learned that a Department of
Justice representative has indicated an unwillingness to accept the agreement, thus adding
many more months before Akron could resolve the problem of sanitary sewer water
overflowing into rivers and streams during heavy rainstorms. It is possible, the Mayor
said, that Akron could be sued by the Department of Justice, further protracting the
solution…a solution mandated by the Environmental Protection Agency.
Mayor Plusquellic announced at his weekly news conference this morning that the City of
Akron must raise sewer rates 6% so the City can get started immediately on solving the
problem. The Mayor said, in making the announcement, "We have to do this for two
reasons. One, we must show a good faith effort to the EPA that we are working on remedying
the CSO problem, and two we need to take advantage of $2 million in federal money that
will disappear if we delay too long. We must move forward on solving this problem."
The Rack 40 project will cost roughly $14 million and will solve many of the
cities’ problems with sanitary sewer overflow. The Rack system is a modernized method
of accommodating larger amounts of water and effluent than Akron’s decades-old system
can currently handle.
