City of Lorain Collection System Modeling Demonstrates Feasibility of Relocating the Black River WWTP to Support Economic Redevelopment

Cities across the rust belt are all facing the same dilemmas – failing infrastructure, dwindling tax base, increasingly stringent regulations and exponentially rising operation and maintenance costs. The City of Lorain, Ohio, has met these challenges by embarking on a proactive track to not only maintain the City's wastewater utilities, but to also economically revitalize the City. The City's overall economic growth plan includes the Lakefront Renaissance initiative which includes redeveloping prime riverfront properties along the Black River. Hindering the redevelopment plans are the City's Black River Wastewater Treatment Plant which sits on nine acres of valuable waterfront property, an active sanitary sewer overflow (SSO) and a proposed retention basin that is slated to be constructed on vacant land near the confluence of the Black River and Lake Erie. The City wishes to relocate the existing wastewater treatment plant, eliminate the SSO and develop an alternative storage facility to allow the riverfront property to be revitalized. To reach these goals the City developed a sanitary sewer collection system model to complement a feasibility study which evaluated wastewater treatment plant relocation alternatives. This paper will discuss the collection system model, the wastewater treatment plant relocation study, the financial evaluation results and finally the recommended alternative to support the City's Lakefront Renaissance.