Sewer upgrades to lead to fewer sewage discharges at Edgewater Beach

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CLEVELAND, Ohio (WOIO) - There should be fewer sewage discharges at Edgewater Beach this year thanks to recent upgrades to a sewer system originally built in the 1880s.

The Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District announced Wednesday they have completed sewer upgrades, including improvements to fix added to the system in the 1980s on the near West Side, which they believe will reduce sewer overflows at the beach, according to a media release.

“As a result of recent work, upgrades to the Northwest Interceptor will likely reduce the volume and frequency of combined sewer overflows at the beach,” said Kyle Dreyfuss-Wells, CEO of the Sewer District.

The Northwest Interceptor was a system built in the 1980s that significantly decreased sewer overflows at Edgewater to about one a year, the release said. That system was an improvement on the combined sewer outfall at Edgewater that was originally built in the late 1880s and discharged a mixture of sewage and stormwater into Lake Erie about 40 to 50 times per year through the 1970s.

In the past five years, the sewer district said, the discharges have become more frequent. In 2020, the sewer overflows discharged at Edgewater four times.

“There have been 11 storms over the last 5 years that caused CSO events at Edgewater Beach,” said Doug Lopata, Sewer District Program Manager, Engineering & Construction. “While we cannot remove the outfall, we did aggressively search for opportunities to improve the function of the sewer system connected to the outfall, so that we could reduce overflows, and we found better ways to manage flows in the Northwest Interceptor system.”

The improvements have made it so that a discharge at Edgewater is a last resort for the system, the release said.

It will likely happen only during a storm that drops 3.16 inches in six hours - an event that occurs once every 25 years.

“The Edgewater outfall is a last resort release point during heavy rains, protecting homes, businesses, and the Westerly Wastewater Treatment Plant from flooding, so we unfortunately cannot remove it,” said Dreyfuss-Wells. “We explored options, including relocating the outfall approximately 2000 feet into Lake Erie. This option does not improve water quality and would cost more than $30 million to build. As a result, moving the outfall further into the Lake is not a good use our customers’ dollars and we will continue our focus on managing flows in this area to have as few overflows as possible.’'

The sewer district annouced it will also resume daily water quality tests at Edgewater, Villa Angela, and Euclid Beaches. Huntington Beach samples are collected by the Cuyahoga County Board of Health.