Avon Lake, Ohio, water quality issues are complex. Because sewage and storm water are treated together, the potential for Lake Erie pollution is great, especially when the system overflows. The Avon Lake, Ohio, water quality and bacteria count go hand in hand to impact the water resources, and thus the plant and animal life dependant on Lake Erie.
Avon Lake is a small town in Ohio, on the shore of Lake Erie. Along with Cleveland and 50 other lakeshore communities, Avon Lake combines sewage and storm water in discharges into Lake Erie. This practice has led to severe pollution of Lake Erie.
When sewage and storm water systems are combined, as they are in Avon Lake's water management system, the possibility of overflows due to excessive storm water arises. Untreated sewage mingles with storm water and flows through the storm water overflow system into Lake Erie.
These Combined Sewer Overflows (CSOs) are responsible for beach closures, wildlife destruction, and human health problems. Untreated sewage may contain E. coli bacteria, Hepatitis A virus, and the parasite Giardia. Storm water runoff is contaminated with petroleum products washed from streets and fertilizers from gardens and agricultural land. CSOs are likely a contributor to the "dead zone" in the middle of Lake Erie, where water oxygen levels are too low to support most aquatic life.
Avon Lake dumped a total of 99,500,000 gallons of untreated sewage into Lake Erie during 2005, part of over 10.9 billion gallons of untreated sewage from CSOs. Avon Lake experiences an average of 14 CSOs per year, compared to 37 CSOs for Toledo; 44 from Defiance; 27 from Elyria; and 18 from Euclid.
The development of combined sewage and storm water systems began in the mid-1800s as a solution to a lack of sanitation systems in growing towns. CSOs were infrequent as long as populations remained relatively small and undeveloped land was available to absorb rain water. But by the 1960s, CSOs were recognized as a major public health threat. Growing populations generated much more raw sewage. The ground of some urban areas became virtually impermeable due to buildings, asphalt roads and parking lots, leaving rain water nowhere to go except into the strained, combined sewer and storm water system. CSOs became more frequent and voluminous.
To address the growing problem of CSOs, the federal Environmental Protection Agency adopted a CSO Control Policy in 1994. In 1995, the Ohio EPA adopted a state policy modeled upon the federal policy. In 2000, Congress incorporated the EPA CSO Control Policy into the Clean Water Act. At a minimum, municipalities which use combined sewer and storm water systems are required to monitor, record, and alert the public of all CSO events. The goal of CSO control policy is to eliminate these antiquated sources of water pollution.
Unfortunately, Ohio communities such as Avon Lake continue to dump raw sewage into Lake Erie without notifying the public in real-time. Indeed, Ohio leads the Great Lakes states in CSO events, with 1,343 in 2004. Indiana was a distant second with 876 CSO events, while Minnesota was last with eleven.
Avon Lake and the 51 other communities in the Lake Erie Watershed that use combined sewer and storm water systems must do more to monitor, report, and issue real-time alerts to the public when CSOs occur. More importantly, federal and state funding must be found to replace antiquated combined sewer and storm water drainage systems and isolate raw sewage from the drinking water supply.
