Water Your Thoughts - Construction by Troy & Lake Quality

Have you checked out our Facebook page lately? As a service to the community, we test the water quality at the Avon Lake beaches four days per week during the summer and post bacteria levels on our Facebook page. Usually, after moderate rain events, bacteria levels at the beaches increase due to runoff and combined sewer overflows entering Lake Erie. You can check out our Facebook page to help determine if you should be swimming. Note that these results tell you what the water quality was like the day before. We are working on getting a Nowcast system up and running to estimate same-day levels.

We would love every day, even post-rain days, to be swimmable. One way we are working to improve the water quality in Lake Erie is through our combined sewer separation program. Last month, we began work around Troy Intermediate School that will separate the combined sewers on Belmar Boulevard, parts of Redwood and Electric, and on other neighboring streets. This project, which will take a little more than one year to complete, will affect access to Troy Intermediate School. During the project, the best way to get to the school will be through the south access road off of Canterbury Drive (which runs beside the community garden), rather than the west access road off of Belmar Boulevard. (See link for a map of the area.) Once the project is complete, about 10 million gallons of combined sewage (a mixture of stormwater and wastewater) will be prevented from entering Lake Erie.

By 2020, Avon Lake Municipal Utilities is required to prevent virtually all combined sewer overflows, which will prevent another 50 million gallons of combined sewage from entering Lake Erie each year. This means that as the combined sewer separation work in the Belmar/Troy area winds down next summer, combined sewer separation work in the Crestwood to Beachwood area will be ramping up. Following that will be work on Avondale in the 2015/2016 timeframe, Fairfield to Brookfield in the 2016/2017 timeframe, and the Stop 45 area (Lakewood to Tomahawk) in the 2018/2019 timeframe. All told, these projects will cost about $30 million and are part of a 10-year, $60 million capital improvement plan we have for the sanitary sewers and water pollution control center.

This work will help to improve the quality of Lake Erie, reduce the chances for basement backups, improve stormwater drainage, and repave several streets. Avon Lake customers’ wastewater bills are in the bottom 5% statewide, and the average Avon Lake residential home currently pays about $0.75/day for wastewater service. (That’s less than the cost of a cup of coffee.) By completing these improvements over the next ten years, we will be able to temper how they affect rates, thereby maintaining affordability.