The Reason
Toledo is one of several hundred communities located primarily in the Northeast and Midwest under court order to cleanup polluted sewage discharges into waterways in their areas. These cleanups are required by Section 309 (e) of the U.S. Clean Water Act of 1972.
These environmental problems normally trace back to three sources: combined sewer overflows (CSO), sanitary sewer overflows (SSO) and lack of sufficient capacity or updated technology at wastewater treatment plants to handle the flow resulting from extreme wet-weather events.
Approximately 20 percent of Toledo sewers were built to carry sanitary sewage as well as storm water and other forms of ground water. During extreme wet-weather events, the capacity of the system and, many times, the capacity of the Bay View Wastewater Treatment plant would be exceeded. At such times, the excess wastewater would overflow directly into the Maumee and Ottawa rivers and Swan Creek. It is such overflows that needed to be controlled.
In the late 1980s, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency cited the City of Toledo with illegally bypassing the Bay View Wastewater Treatment Plant and releasing untreated effluent directly into the Maumee River, during excessive wet-weather situations. The federal group also found monitoring, reporting and recordkeeping violations in connection with the plant’s operation as well citing the City for not having a Class IV sewage plant operator on staff.
The U.S. EPA filed suit in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio’s Western Division, located in Toledo, in 1991 and amended the suit at the end of 1992. This action led to a downward spiral of negotiations involving the City and the EPAs. The Ohio EPA had been added to the suit by this time.
The action ended with Toledo agreeing to a three-pronged comprehensive settlement, thus avoiding pending court action by the U.S. Department of Justice. The government indicated it would be more lenient toward Toledo in a comprehensive settlement.
A Consent Decree, handed down in 2001 by the federal court in Toledo, ended the eleven-year court case; and, in July 2002, Toledo voters approved a ballot issue implementing the Consent Decree. This implementation created a program that came to be known as the Toledo Waterways Initiative.
The Consent Decree directed the City to do a number of things, including …
- Expansion of the Bay View Wastewater Treatment Plant
- Elimination of sanitary sewer overflows
- Reduction of combined sewer overflows
- Development of a Long-term Control Plan setting out a timetable for the identification, design and construction of the various projects to accomplish the court’s direction
Based on the Consent Decree, TWI was developed as a two-phase program.
TWI’s Phase One, begun in 2002, involved a major expansion of the Bay View Wastewater Treatment Plant and major sewer revisions and pump station construction in the Point Place area along with extensive work in the River Road area.
TWI’s Phase Two, begun in 2009, involves 25 projects to be implemented in the City’s neighborhoods near affected waterways as part of Toledo’s Long-Term Control Plan. Work is projected to continue through August 2020.
For more on the Consent Decree, click on this link.
Consent Decree
Consent Decree Modifications
