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. ~ i~ - '7 ' Plan of Study for City of North Olmsted Phase I by Floyd Browne Group January 4, 2006 OEPA Compliance Strategy for the City of North Olmsted INTRODUCTION The City of North Olmsted administers a professionally managed wastewater operation in accordance with Ohio Environmental Protection Agency (OEPA) requirements. The department is a good steward of the equipment and the financial resources entrusted to it. The City wants to adopt a strategy of aggressively confronting regulatory compliance issues in cooperation with the OEPA. The City of North Olmsted received a letter from the OEPA; Northeast District Office dated October 13, 2005. The City was directed to submit a Plan of Study by January, 2006 to address suspected problems with the sanitary sewer system. Specifically, bypassing and basement flooding have both been deemed to be significantly acute by OEPA and contrary to the water quality standards. The OEPA acknowledged in a September 20"' meeting at the Northeast District Office with City officials that the community does operate and maintain a well run system. OEPA has a goal of eliminating the sanitary sewer overflow occurrences. OEPA reported that the Northeast office has received complaints from residents in the North Olmsted after a severe August summer 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 general in nature due to too much water for the storm drainage network to handle and unrelated to the sanitary sewer system. It was agreed that this fact may be lost as residents watched water rise on their property. At the OEPA meeting, 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 the early 1990s. Overflows have been reported as required. In concert with OEPA, the City wants to move forward with amulti-step program to identify the sources of extraneous water and reduce their influences on the sanitary sewer system. Again, the stated goal of OEPA is to eliminate the sanitary sewer overflows. The City notes that an intense downpour event on August 20, 2005 caused many challenges in the community. Approximately 3.67 inches of rain were received in a 1 hour period (see Appendix D). This rainfall is statistically in the neighborhood of a 1,000 year storm event. The City forces were able to limit property damage but sanitary sewer bypassing did occur and some basements were flooded in areas of the community, almost exclusively in residential neighborhoods. Overall, the City has a fairly good history of compliance with OEPA principles including implementation of an Extraneous Flow Reduction Policy. Effluent quality from the wastewater treatment plant has tracked better than National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) Permit limit levels in recent years. Without going into many project specifics, the City has spent upwards of $17 million on sewer improvement work during the last decade (smoke/dye testing, TV monitoring, grouting, manhole restoration, and restoration work on home laterals). Prior to these expenditures, the City was under tight OEPA scrutiny starting in June, 1995 in the form of a Consent Decree. Regulators wanted to see physical improvements to the collection system as well as performance improvements at the wastewater treatment facilities. The City issued an extensive document titled Satellite Sewer Discharge Control Program