NEWS: Central neighborhood brownfields go green with Sewer District project

Sewer District awarded $400,000 in clean-up funds to help with Green Infrastructure project

Contaminated land like this between Woodland Ave. and
Kinsman Rd. will be remediated to make way for a green
infrastructure project.

The Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District has been awarded $400,000 from the US Environmental Protection Agency to clean up two brownfields in Cleveland's Central Neighborhood.

Two properties located between Woodland Avenue and Kinsman Road near E. 65th Street, polluted with thousands of cubic yards of industrial waste atop contaminated soils, will be remediated to make way for the Sewer District's Woodland Central Green Infrastructure Project.

The Sewer District applied for two Brownfields Cleanup Grants, each with a maximum award of $200,000. Awarded monies will help defray the total cost for site cleanup; estimated remediation costs are $1.2 million for these properties alone. Cleanup activities will include site preparation and restoration, removal and separation of solid waste, transportation and disposal of trash as well as backfilling of the site.

"We are extremely pleased about receiving these grants and grateful to our congressional delegation for supporting our applications," said Julius Ciaccia CEO of the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District.

GREEN: 78 green infrastructure projects you might not realize are part of Cleveland's present, future

If you run in sustainability circles nowadays, it's a phrase you hear a lot: Green infrastructure, green infrastructure, green infrastructure.

But in Cleveland, you might not be aware of just how many green infrastructure projects are planned or under construction right now in the Cleveland area. Seventy-eight, to be exact:

The purple area in the map above indicates an area served by combined sewers—sewers that carry both sewage and stormwater in the same pipe. It includes most of the City of Cleveland and portions of 11 surrounding communities, the region covered by Project Clean Lake, our 25-year consent decree that will reduce combined-sewer-overflow pollution by billions of gallons by 2035.

NEWS: Green infrastructure projects will sprout in 2012

As part of its plan to reduce the amount raw sewage entering local waterways, the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District submitted its green infrastructure plan [PDF] to the United States Environmental Protection Agency yesterday.

The plan is a component of the Project Clean Lake consent decree signed between the Sewer District and the federal government which details the long-term program for reducing combined sewer overflows into the environment. The $3 billion 25-year program will reduce the total volume of combined sewer overflows from 4.5 billion gallons to 494 million gallons annually. Of the 4.5 billion gallons, 44 million gallons will be reduced through the use of green infrastructure.

The Plain Dealer featured a story on the program and its potential today.

EPA touts Sewer District's green infrastructure program

In its announcement to promote the use of green infrastructure for environmental and economic benefits, the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District’s program was listed a model for other municipalities around the country. Nine other communities across the country also were mentioned by US EPA as leaders in this field.