Regional sewer district idea has potential

Vermilion has an expensive problem on its hands: The city's aging wastewater treatment plant needs roughly $76 million worth of work to bring it into compliance with U.S. Environmental Protection Agency requirements. The city, as Mayor Jim Forthofer made clear during a City Council meeting Monday, doesn't have that kind of money just lying around. Nor are residents likely happy with the increased bills they're receiving to pay off the $76 million loan that Forthofer said the city had taken out to cover the costs. "A town of 10,659 people can't bear that," Forthofer said Monday. Nevertheless, Vermilion has no choice but to address the problems, and a proposed regional sewer district under consideration by Lorain County officials might be the city's most viable option. Forthofer told us Tuesday that the city already had spent about $6 million on design and other preliminary work aimed at fixing what the EPA had mandated be completed by 2026. Forthofer said the EPA appeared willing to grant extensions so long as the city was making progress. One solution acceptable to the EPA, he said, would be the regional sewer district. The idea would incorporate existing wastewater treatment plants in the county with a new treatment plant on the county's west side, perhaps at the Lorain County Regional Airport in New Russia Township. (County officials have mulled relocating the airport to create a "megasite" for large-scale development.) A "megasite" for development along with a wastewater treatment plant there isn't as farfetched as it might sound. As county Commissioner Dave Moore pointed out to us in July, the site already has water and sewer lines, and the county could theoretically relocate the airport, although we imagine that, too, would be expensive. Sewers are crucial to development, and local leaders have long dreamed of bringing them to the county's west side. Prior efforts to do so — such as plans to run sewers into South Amherst to spur development of the old sandstone quarries — have never really taken off. If the regional sewer district is created, Forthofer said, it might shrink the cost to Vermilion, but the city would still have to run sewer lines to wherever the county builds its new wastewater treatment plant. It also would have to reconfigure its existing plant into a massive pump station to move the sewage. In other words, creating a regional sewer district wouldn't be easy. Or cheap. Doing so would require a lengthy and complex process, including public hearings and, eventually, the approval of a county judge. An exact cost also hasn't been determined, but County Administrator Jeff Ambruster said last week that county officials intended to ask the state for $79 million during a trip to Columbus scheduled for Dec. 18. That's a princely sum, but, as Armbruster acknowledged, it wouldn't cover the full cost of the project. All of which means that additional funds would need to be secured somehow. Then there's the question of whether the public would embrace such a costly project and potentially higher sewer bills to help pay for it. Some folks wouldn't like the idea of development on the county's west side. Others likely would balk at the possibility they'd be mandated to tie into sewer lines if those lines passed too close to their homes or businesses. (Such mandated tie-ins helped create fierce resistance to the Lorain County Rural Wastewater District, which serves portions of townships on the county's east side, after it was created in 1997. It didn't start building sewers until more than a decade later.) As for Vermilion, if the regional sewer district is created, the city might have to wait as long as a decade before it could connect to the new wastewater treatment plant. In the meantime, Forthofer said, the city is trying to address the separate but related issue of "inflow and infiltration," which happen when stormwater and groundwater get into wastewater collection systems. That can strain a wastewater treatment system, especially during heavy rains, which have become more frequent in recent years. Replacing the city's sanitary laterals and installing residential cleanouts in the Vermilion-on-the-Lake neighborhood has an estimated cost of about $8 million. (Bids for the work came in over the estimate, so the city is trying again.) The city also is on a deadline to fix Vermilion-on-the-Lake's sewer issues. It received a $4.1 million grant from the Ohio Department of Development and must complete the work by November 2026. (The city borrowed another $4 million to cover the rest of the cost.) In other words, the city is making strides to deal with some of its wastewater woes, but it has a long way to go. It is premature to say that a regional sewer district is the right solution, but it's an idea worth exploring.