CLEVELAND, Ohio – Raw sewage flowed into Lake Erie at Edgewater Beach Thursday night, prompting the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District to post warnings of poor water quality.
Sewer maintenance teams were alerted to a potential overflow at Edgewater Beach at 9:46 p.m., sewer district spokeswoman Jenn Elting said. The actual overflow began at 10:05 p.m. and lasted for 25 minutes.
During that time, 4.9 million gallons – the equivalent of 7.5 Olympic-size swimming pools – of combined storm and sanitary sewage poured out of the massive pipe at the west end of the beach, in the area where dogs are allowed.
Typically, the first flush of stormwater carries most of the raw sewage to a water treatment plant, Elting said, but an unknown amount gets released onto the beach.
Crews responded to the overflow in the middle of the night to repair the section of the beach that was washed away by the flows.
The combined sewer outfall at Edgewater Beach, seen here in 2023, can be activated during heavy rains.Peter Krouse, cleveland.com
The sewer district will test the water off Edgewater Beach in 10 spots twice a day until each of the locations shows acceptable E. coli bacteria levels. Only then will the sewer district change the water rating from poor to good, Elting said.
It’s the third time this year that the overflow pipe at Edgewater has been activated. There was a 15-minute flow on July 16 and a 20-minute flow on June 14.
There was only one overflow at Edgewater Beach last year, but three occurred in 2023, with one lasting for 40 minutes that can be seen in the video below.
Climate change has resulted in more of the short, heavy rains that overwhelm the city’s combined sewer system at times, Elting said.
“We tend to use the phrase ‘warmer, wetter, wilder weather,’” she said.
Thursday night’s storm was categorized as a 5-year, 30-minute storm, Elting said, which means a storm of its size had a 20% chance of occurring and that it happened over a half-hour period.
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