Friday, July 21, 2000
Pipe keeps raw sewage from river
Sewers overflow less often near downtown
By Tim Bonfield
The Cincinnati Enquirer
On a sunny day, it takes much more than a city health warning to chase boaters off the Ohio River.
Thursday, Reading resident Dave Stansbury spent the afternoon splashing around on a Yamaha Wave-
runner with his daughter Dana, 10, and niece Karrie, 12.
They welcomed news that a new storm-water pipeline in downtown Cincinnati appears to be reducing a decades-old problem of raw sewage getting into the river after heavy rains.
“We'd be happy about that,” Mr. Stansbury said.
In 1998, the river was declared “unhealthful” for recreational use for six straight weeks in June and July. But this year, the Ohio River Water Quality Index has reached an unhealthful level only once since early May.
“It looks like good news,” said Cincinnati Health Commissioner Malcolm Adcock. “They (the Metropolitan Sewer District) continue to work on those combined sewer overflows. That was a major problem area.”
The $10.7 million pipeline runs 2,720 feet along Fort Washington Way, between Broadway and Central Ave nue. It was laid behind the retaining wall on the north side of the rebuilt road.
The huge concrete pipe measures 8 feet in diameter. It can hold about 1 million gallons of storm water.
MSD predicted the new pipe would cut the number of downtown sewer overflows into the Ohio River from about 150 a year to less than 10. MSD has not yet reinstalled the flow meters it uses to count overflows, but the impact appears immediate.
“There was nothing there before. Before this, we had five or six lines running north-south straight into the river,” said Don Gindling, city construction manager for the Fort Washington Way project.
Many of Cincinnati's underground sewer lines were built to carry waste from toilets and storm water draining off the streets in single pipes.
Some of these combined sewer pipes are more than than 100 years old. In newer suburbs, sanitary sewers are built separately from storm-water systems.
When large rainstorms hit, the storm-water flow in the old pipes can temporarily overwhelm the system. To prevent backups, the pipes are built to bypass treat ment plants during extreme flows. As a result, “combined sewer overflows” allow raw sewage to travel untreated into waterways.
A water-skier who gulps a mouthful of river water laced with fecal coliform bacteria can wind up with a nasty case of diarrhea. Or worse, be exposed to a variety of other infectious bugs.
The boating crowd has known for years that skiing and swimming is safer upstream from downtown Cincinnati, said Randy Reichelderfer, owner of the California Yacht Club.
Without its flow meters, MSD cannot say whether the pipeline has lived up to its predictions. But the city's Ohio River Water Quality Index provides an early indicator of success.
The city's index measures fecal coliform levels based on weekly samples collected at five points near downtown.
In 1997, the city reported “unhealthful” levels for six of the 12 weeks from May to mid-July. In 1998, the city reported “unhealthful” readings for seven of those 12 weeks.
In 1999 — while the pipe was under construction — the number of unhealthful readings dropped to just one in 12 weeks. However, experts attribute that decline to a drought last year.
In 2000, however, rainfall is above average.
Yet there has been only one unhealthful river quality reading this year. The only clear difference between 1997, 1998 and 2000 has been the new pipeline.
The new pipe intercepts those north-south downtown feeder lines and carries the water to a treatment plant. A chamber built into the pipe slows storm-water surges, which helps the treatment plant handle the flow by allowing the pipe itself to serve as a temporary storage tank.
People should not assume that the combined sewer overflow problem is solved, said Alan Vicory, executive director of the Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission (ORSANCO).
“I'd be surprised if it really made that much of a difference,” Mr. Vicory said.
For example, the Fort Washington Way pipeline does not address overflows from sewers feeding into the Mill Creek and the Licking River in Northern Kentucky, both of which flow into the Ohio.
In 1996, MSD started a 20-year, $332 million effort to eliminate many of the sewer overflow points in its system.
This year, MSD is working on 11 overflow-control projects.
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