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Executive Summary
As the new home of Ohio PIRG's environmental work, Environment Ohio can be contacted regarding this report.
The discharge of untreated human sewage
to waterways poses severe potential
threats to human health. Sewage
commonly contains bacteria, parasites and
viruses that can make people ill, as well as a
variety of toxic chemicals.
Unfortunately, the discharge of untreated
human sewage into waterways in
Ohio’s Lake Erie basin is extremely common,
largely as a result of the region’s antiquated
sewer systems. Studies show that
this pollution has the potential to harm the
health of those who swim in or drink from
those waterways.
Sewer overflows result in the dumping
of billions of gallons of untreated sewage
and stormwater to waterways in the
Lake Erie basin each year.
• Fifty-three sewer systems in Ohio’s
Lake Erie basin—including the
Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer
District, which serves all or part of 60
Cleveland-area communities—have
antiquated combined sewer systems
that combine sewage and stormwater.
These systems can allow untreated
sewage to overflow into waterways
during periods of rain. There are more
than 600 combined sewer outfalls that
can dump sewage into Lake Erie basin
waterways, including the lake itself.
• In 2004, discharges from just 11 of
these combined sewer systems resulted
in the release of more than 8 billion
gallons of untreated sewage and
stormwater to Lake Erie basin
waterways.
• Untreated sewage can also find its way
into waterways through overflows
from sanitary sewer systems and
“bypasses” of sewage treatment during
mechanical failures or heavy rain
events.
Exposure to contaminants commonly
found in sewage can cause illness.
• Untreated sewage contains bacteria
(such as Salmonella), viruses (such as
Hepatitis A) and parasites (such as
Giardia and Cryptosporidium) that are
capable of causing disease. Some of
these contaminants are infectious at
very low levels of exposure. Sewage
may also contain toxic chemicals
dumped down drains from industrial
facilities.
• Numerous scientific studies have
linked drinking or swimming in
contaminated water with elevated rates
of disease. Waterborne illnesses cause
an estimated 560,000 cases of severe
disease and 7.1 million cases of mild to
moderate disease in the U.S. annually.
• A recent study conducted at a Cleveland-
area Lake Erie beach found that
swimmers who fully immersed themselves
in the water were 40 percent
more likely to contract diarrhea,
vomiting, nausea or severe stomachache
than those who had no contact
with the water.
• Because many waterborne illnesses
produce symptoms (such as nausea and
diarrhea) that do not require medical
treatment and because people can
contract these illnesses in a variety of
ways (from contaminated recreational
water, drinking water or food, or from
person-to-person contact), many
outbreaks and individual cases of
waterborne disease go unreported.
Contaminants found in sewage are frequently
detected in Lake Erie basin waters.
• From 2000-2005, testing at Ohio’s
Lake Erie beaches found unsafe levels
of E. coli bacteria in about one out of
every six tests.
• Century Beach in Lorain had the
highest percentage (82%) of tests
violating the U.S. EPA’s single-sample
standard for E. coli bacteria from 2000
to 2005, followed by Camp Perry in
Port Clinton (70%) and Edgewater
State Park in Cleveland (50%).
• Water testing in the Cuyahoga River
during 2000 and 2002 found infectious
viruses in 73 percent of all water
samples taken, with 20 percent of
samples testing positive for Hepatitis A
and 50 percent testing positive for
Salmonella bacteria.
• Industrial waste may also be included
in the untreated sewage that is discharged
into Ohio’s waters. Industries
in eight northern Ohio counties
dumped an estimated 2.6 million
pounds of toxic chemicals into the
region’s sewer systems in 2003—
including such chemicals as chromium
compounds, cyanide compounds,
formaldehyde and lead. These toxic
substances can be washed into waterways
during sewer overflows.
Sewer overflows are among the contributors
of health-threatening pollution
to waterways in Ohio’s Lake Erie
basin, but more work needs to be done
to document the impacts of sewage discharges
on recreational and drinking
water quality.
• Recent research has found high E. coli
levels at the mouths of several Ohio
rivers—including the Maumee,
Cuyahoga and Rocky rivers—that
receive sewage overflows. However, E.
coli in these rivers could also come
from other sources, such as stormwater
runoff.
• The degree to which sewer overflows
affect drinking water and recreational
water quality depends on many factors,
including the quality of water treatment,
the location of sewer overflows
relative to beaches, and environmental
conditions such as wave height and
wind direction. In recent studies at
Lake Erie beaches, local sources of
pollution have been found to make a
large contribution to high E. coli levels.
But much remains unknown about the
length of time that many pathogens
present in sewage persist in the environment
and how far they may travel
in complex water bodies like Lake
Erie. As a result, Ohio should take a
precautionary approach toward
warning the public about sewage
overflows and undertake a long-term strategy to reduce the risk to public
health.
Ohio residents have a right to know
when combined sewer overflows affect
their local waterways. And Ohio should
take action to mitigate, and eventually
eliminate, sewer overflows to waterways
in the Lake Erie basin.
• Ohio has the worst system of public
notification of sewer overflows in the
Great Lakes states. Prompt, public
notification of sewer overflows can
give Ohioans the information they
need to protect their health, and help
researchers, government officials and
the public understand and work
toward the reduction of Ohio’s sewage
overflow problem.
• Specifically, the Ohio EPA and sewage
treatment utilities should:
• Track sewage overflows.
o Sewage treatment utilities should
track all sewage overflows from
their systems and the resulting
impacts on water quality.
• Report sewage overflows.
o Sewage treatment utilities should
immediately report all sewage
overflows to the Ohio EPA and the
Ohio Department of Health.
• Notify the public when sewage overflows
occur.
o Sewage treatment utilities should
post warning signs at the affected
waterways, include information on
sewage overflows on their Web
pages, and notify the media and the
public when sewage is overflowing.
o The Ohio EPA should compile all
sewage overflow data in the state
and make it available to the public
on its Web page, as well as in an
annual report.
o The Ohio EPA should develop a
statewide toll-free hotline and email
notification system to alert
interested parties of sewage overflows.
• The state of Ohio and municipalities
should adopt land-use practices that
minimize stormwater runoff to sewer
systems—thus reducing the potential
for combined sewer overflows. Such
practices include reductions in the use
of impervious surfaces for paving, the
creation of vegetated drainage systems
to absorb runoff, and the adoption of
ordinances to limit erosion and runoff
from construction sites.
• The state of Ohio and its sewage
treatment agencies should move to
eliminate combined sewer overflows,
as 13 Ohio communities have
already done.
• The state of Ohio should improve its
beach monitoring and advisory system
to communicate the health risks of
swimming in contaminated water to
the public more quickly and accurately.
• Ohio should work with other Great
Lakes states to pursue federal funding
for a comprehensive restoration
strategy for the Great Lakes that
would include more resources for
reducing sewer overflows.
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