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r Ohio EPA Compliance Strategy for the City of North Olmsted Background The City of North Olmsted administers a professionally managed wastewater operation in accordance with Ohio EPA requirements. The department is a good steward of the equipment and financial resources entrusted to it. Through the efforts of the wastewater personnel and administration, the City has worked through the Consent Decree imposed on it by environmental regulators in the late 1990s but terminated in 2002. The operation maintains permit compliance in most every area. Still, the August 20th storm event (3.4 inches of rain in 20 minutes) highlighted isolated weaknesses in the system. The City wants to adopt a strategy of aggressively confronting these issues in cooperation with the Ohio EPA. The Ohio EPA acknowledged in the September 20th meeting at the Northeast District Office that the City does operate and maintain a well run system. Ms. Sandra Cappotto indicated that EPA has a goal of eliminating the sanitary sewer overflow occurrences. EPA reported that the northeast office has received complaints from residents in the North Olmsted after the severe August storm. The City did acknowledge that some sanitary sewer overflows were unavoidable to reduce the prevalence of basement flooding in selected residential neighborhoods. It was also noted that much of the high water was due to topographical influences of simply too much water for the storm drainage network to handle (excess of 100 year storm for short duration) and unrelated to the sanitary sewer system. This fact may be lost as residents watch water rise on their property. At the EPA meeting, there was agreement that the sanitary sewer system did overflow (pumping). Further, it was recognized that sporadic pumping episodes have occurred over the years although their number and duration have been greatly reduced from what occurred in mid 1990s. Overflows have been reported as required. In concert with Ohio EPA, the City wants to move forward with a multi -step program to identify the sources of extraneous water and reduce their influences on the sanitary sewer system. Ohio EPA characterized this work as a Plan of Study report. Again, the stated goal of Ohio EPA is to eliminate the sanitary sewer overflows. At this point, it is useful to document that the City carried out several measures in the mid 1990s to tighten up its sanitary sewer system — smoke /dye testing, TV monitoring, grouting, manhole restoration, and even did restoration work on home laterals. This is a traditional approach to sewer restoration work. Traditional in the sense that the focus in on conduit refurbishment. A total of about $17 million dollars were spent. Details of this work are outlined in the SSDCP Report dated November 11, 2002. Technical Discussion With this background, additional money and resources may have limited impact on the 1/1 challenges if another traditional work plan in unveiled. In a more universal sense, a select number of communities around the state are somewhat frustrated by a lack of consistent results from traditional sewer preservation methods. The clear indication is that hydrostatic pressure (a column of water) from surface /groundwater compromises the integrity of the sewer system and takes advantage of most any flaw in the pipe /manhole structure by introducing extraneous clean water flow. At this time, a better technical approach is for the City to look at other sources of extraneous water in two (2) general areas: (LeBern & Dover lift station drainage areas) suspected footer residential footer drains and storm drain improvements. Both work hand in hand in every storm event, especially severe episodes as what occurred on August 20th. Another leg to the equation is an evaluation of lift stations in the impacted areas. Can their performance be optimized with system reinforcements, operational changes, or component modifications? Footer drains are a suspected source of extraneous water due to the general style and vintage of home in the Chase, Deerfield, Woodmere, Ridge, Frank, Gessner, Stoneybrook, and Sudbury Drive areas among other residential streets. These 1960s era dwellings count many "split level" homes in which the lower floor is constructed below grade. In many cases, it was common practice for footer drains to be connected into the sanitary sewer lateral. Footer drains release hydrostatic pressure from the soil structure as water ponds on the surface. Occasional footer drains serve as a direct storm water connection. During dry weather when soil design and engineering solutions for your world