Throughout the negotiations, Akron had been urging the US EPA to allow it to proceed to improve the sewers in a staged approach, instead of trying to identify the specific projects years in advance of their construction. Instead, the parties have agreed upon the methods for conducting the studies and evaluations which will be used to determine the specific projects to be constructed. Under the proposed order Akron will have 12 months to update its long term control plan for the sewers.

The City will construct two additional sewer separation projects within four years and three others within the following four years. Akron agreed to upgrade its wastewater treatment plant by increasing its secondary treatment capacity from 110 to 130 million gallons per day within 5-7 years.

Although the US and State of Ohio routinely require huge civil penalties and had initially demanded tens of millions of dollars in penalties, the fine imposed in this case is actually very small compared to their original request. The City will pay $300,000 to the federal government and $200,000 to the State of Ohio. In addition, the City agreed to provide funds for a supplemental environmental project which will be capped at $900,000. That project will be the removal of the Route 82 dam near Brecksville.

In reaching the agreement, the US and Ohio EPAs recognized Akron had made substantial investments in excess of $53,000,000 in upgrading its sewer system since 1993. Improvements include, but are not limited to, construction of the Cuyahoga Street Storage Facility (CSO Rack 40) that captures more than 36% of the combined sewer overflow volume from the system.

The following is a statement from Mayor Don Plusquellic regarding the consent decree with the US and Ohio EPAs:

"Akron began in 1994 on the studies necessary to make logical decisions on how to overcome the problem of inheriting combined sewers that were last built in 1938.

Despite the agreement we reached with the State of Ohio seven years ago, the US EPA was especially unreasonable in applying rational, affordable standards to our situation.

We fought to keep costs down for our citizens and even gave in to federal demands, in particular on the issue of fines, because of the huge cost of litigation.

We still believe we have adhered to the regulations and were actually prevented by the US EPA from proceeding to do projects to clean up the river since 2002.

But with this agreement, we will finally be able to start cleaning the water going into the Cuyahoga River rather than paying attorneys to argue with bureaucrats in Washington who seem to care very little about the hard working people in our community who have to pay for this."