Clean Water Works
CLEVELAND, OHIO: From the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District, an in-depth and fun conversation led by Donna Friedman and Mike Uva on any and all topics related to clean water, wastewater treatment, stormwater management, and the people, projects, and programs serving Lake Erie and our local waterways and communities.
Clean Water Works
Ohio's Infrastructure Report Card
The newly released 2025 Ohio Infrastructure Report Card delivers a sobering assessment of the systems we rely on daily but rarely think about. Ohio has made modest improvements since the last American Society of Civil Engineers' report in 2021, yet vulnerabilities persist.
Sewer District employees (and ASCE members) Derek Vogel and Lita Laven walk us through the grades and explain how federal infrastructure funding has breathed new life into long-neglected systems, particularly benefiting water, transit, and bridge projects across the state. However, the looming expiration of this funding in 2027 threatens to erase these hard-won gains. And with Ohio's stormwater infrastructure approaching the end of its designed lifespan, we're facing a perfect storm of aging systems and increasingly intense rainfall events.
Check out the complete 2025 Infrastructure Report Card to see how your state's vital systems measure up.
You guys on Canopy, canopy, canopy, cleveland City of Cleveland's internet.
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:Oh, do you not know about this? No, you've got to get signed up.
Speaker 2:You've got to get Canopy.
Speaker 1:You've got to get Canopy. Canopy is internet created basically for the City of Cleveland. So if you're a City of Cleveland resident it is $18 a month and if you have a child in CMSD it is $0.
Speaker 3:Oh, that's great.
Speaker 1:That's awesome $0.
Speaker 3:That's really cool yeah, $18 a month Highly recommend $18 a month.
Speaker 1:It's been great. Canopy City of Cleveland Internet. Yeah, Derek Vogel, project manager, engineer, one of my neighbors. West side, west side, mm-hmm one of my neighbors West side, west side, the best side Not that we're passing judgment.
Speaker 3:It's all good. I like going over there. I love the east side as well.
Speaker 2:I want to choose sides.
Speaker 1:Okay. I guess you don't have to.
Speaker 3:Listeners to our recent recap episode of the Ohio Stormwater Conference will recall that I talked with Derek briefly about the infrastructure report card, and so we're going to go into a little more detail today. This is a big day, right, it's a big day. For engineers, for the country's infrastructure For the whole country.
Speaker 2:Yes, because Ohio is somewhat of a bellwether for the country, depending on who you talk to. But yes, today at 10 was the release of the 2025 Ohio ASCE infrastructure report card.
Speaker 3:The ASCE, asce.
Speaker 2:Ohio. What the heck is that? The American Society of Civil Engineers?
Speaker 3:Oh, that's big Is this? The national one? Theinfrastructurereportcardorg.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Is where you can see the 2025 national report. There's a map. You can click on your state and see how your state is doing in terms of infrastructure across 17 categories. Yes, this happens.
Speaker 2:Every four years there's a new infrastructure report card yeah, so the national american society of civil engineers comes out with a report card every four years and the 2025 for national was released in March and the Ohio report card that release was today.
Speaker 3:Oh, they keep it secret, they do. Is this like Oscar season for engineers.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, it is very much so. What are the different categories that get graded?
Speaker 2:So there's 17. Oh my word Best supporting bridge.
Speaker 3:Oh, I like that Supporting bridge.
Speaker 1:I would like to thank all of my supporting structures.
Speaker 3:Yes, Maybe we can do it. Before you go into the categories, can you just give us a little background on this?
Speaker 2:ASCE, the American Society of Civil Engineers, is the oldest civil engineering professional.
Speaker 3:National Civil Engineering Organization according to the website. Civil engineering organization. According to the organization.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it encompasses all aspects of civil engineering, so the report card also tries to cover all of the different focuses. Okay, so what are those categories? So we'll just go right down the list aviation, bridges, dams, bridges, dams, drinking water, energy, hazardous waste, inland waterways, levees, ports, public parks, rail roads, schools, solid waste, stormwater, transit and wastewater. That about covers it.
Speaker 3:That's everything.
Speaker 1:And so you have a role at ASCE. Yes, so I'm a role at ASCE.
Speaker 2:Yes, so I'm a past president of the Cleveland section and that's kind of how I got involved with the report card.
Speaker 1:Should we announce the overall grade first?
Speaker 3:This is the national one.
Speaker 2:This is the Ohio one.
Speaker 3:yeah, so we're doing the drum roll for the Ohio grade.
Speaker 2:Derek, the Ohio grade for the infrastructure report card is a C, overall A C. The national card was also a C.
Speaker 1:However, ohio goes, so goes the nation.
Speaker 2:We went from a C minus to a C. Okay, okay.
Speaker 1:So we did, we improved. Does the phrase C's get degrees really carry here, or do we feel poorly about our C? How are we feeling Poorly?
Speaker 2:Yes, oh, okay, as many engineers I see Right, okay, c is definitely better than 2021. And the overarching theme, I think, of this report card is that the IIJA and IRA, so the oh sure, Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Thank you.
Speaker 1:And then the Inflation Reduction Act. Yes IIJ is also known in some circles as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill.
Speaker 2:Yeah, those two federal bills and acts, I believe once they were passed, provided a bunch of federal funding for infrastructure and that allowed grades to increase across the board through all the states and the national. But the overarching message is that that funding needs to be maintained and in some cases increased in order for the grades to keep going up or even stay the same.
Speaker 3:And so what are some of the projects that that funding went towards?
Speaker 2:In general, a lot of the IIJA and IRA funding went to water and transit, both wastewater and drinking water, as well as roads and bridges and rail and public transit. So that was the main focus of at least the funding that's kind of been released so far.
Speaker 1:Because some of that infrastructure investment and Jobs Act money went directly into the state of Ohio's revolving loan funds, which are run by Ohio EPA, and we have seen some of our local member communities get additional funding through that state revolving loan for wastewater projects. So it's forgivable loans to some of these previously disinvested communities. So it's money that wasn't available that they're actually now able to capture and then implement some of these projects that have just been sitting on the shelf or haven't even been designed yet. So it's been great.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was a awesome kind of influx of money into parts of infrastructure that had been neglected somewhat for decades and then funding.
Speaker 1:Year 2027 is technically like the last round of that funding with that extra money, so we'll see if they renew it or not. It would be really great if they did.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and ASC National, I guess, has been doing a lot of work to try to quantify the amount of money that the average American family would need to spend, based on our current infrastructure and possible future infrastructure. If we got the funding or if we didn't get the funding, and they have a report called the Snapback Report, if we snap the best name ever, if we snap back to, um, the older funding, the original funding of infrastructure, it would cost the average family something like three thousand dollars a year, just in poor infrastructure costs that are borne by the, the general public.
Speaker 3:So what would that mean, though? The average family would be spending three thousand dollars, like on repairing their car because of potholes.
Speaker 2:That kind of thing. That's one of the the big examples. Another is like time lost due to traffic because of some of the transportation issues. Some of it is like boil notices for water treatment plants and all of the extra expense that comes with a lack of fresh water.
Speaker 1:Oh, so it's like the consequences. That's why yeah.
Speaker 3:If we wanted to continue raising this grade from the C. It really depends on funding, yeah.
Speaker 2:Even though there are some grades that did increase, such as hazardous waste, levees, ports, public parks and roads and transit in Ohio, there's also grades that decrease, such as energy, inland waterways, rail and schools. The rest pretty much stayed the same. So, yeah, if we want to bring up those ones that are getting worse, we definitely need a ton of additional funding, but the grades that remain the same means that there's the same problems that we had in 2021, unfortunately, what was the decrease in inland waterways?
Speaker 2:The infrastructure along the Ohio River, specifically the locks and dams for the Ohio River to get barges up and down, I think is the main driver of that. There's some deferred maintenance of all those locks.
Speaker 1:Oh, deferred maintenance. So it's not necessarily the water quality, it's like the actual physical infrastructure on the Ohio River.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the inland waterways category focuses more on built infrastructure in our navigable channels rather than the water quality In stormwater. We do discuss that a lot, and water quality is one of the big takeaways as to why we got a D-plus in the stormwater chapter. Oh ouch, yeah, the stormwater chapter was the second lowest grade in the 2021 report. A lot of it has to do with impervious area that isn't controlled by any sort of best management practice or stormwater control measure before it gets into the environment, so that's a big driving factor for our grade.
Speaker 1:And that would be the majority of development that occurred before the Clean Water Act, so the majority of the city of Cleveland.
Speaker 2:Most development had occurred in our urban areas so that includes our big cities and our inner rig suburbs before the Clean Water Act and before some of these stormwater management regulations were passed and when it rains, the runoff just carries all those pollutants directly into the waterways and not only pollutants but the high temperature of urban runoff and the energy involved with urban runoff.
Speaker 2:the high temperature? Yeah, because a lot of surface well impervious surfaces heat up that rain that hits the surface and then sends it into streams that can't handle that increase in heat, that like um influx of heat right away. So that causes some issues. For sure it's bad for the animals.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it's bad for, like the macroinvertebrates and the fish living in the streams. The other thing is the warmer the water, the less dissolved oxygen you can hold in the water, which is what negatively impacts creatures living in the water, because there's less oxygen for them to be breathing. So stormwater D plus.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Okay, and so for us to bring that up, it would be installing more stormwater management controls.
Speaker 2:Yeah, one of the things that we tried to quantify in the chapter was how much money it would take to bring most of the developed area in Ohio up to current standards, which is daunting. Yeah, there's a huge investment in private and publicly owned property. That would have to happen in order to be able to put some sort of control for all impervious area in Ohio.
Speaker 3:So what are some of those measures to put in place?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the ones that I really love are known as green infrastructure practices, but there's more traditional practices as well. Just like any detention basin you might see in a subdivision, all that does is slow down the water and detain it for a little bit so that you can slowly release it back into the environment. Other best management practices are bioretention or rain gardens. Permeable pavement, cisterns all kinds of ways in which really just to try to slow down and treat stormwater are great in order to try to help out our receiving waters.
Speaker 1:Can you talk a little bit about data collection? I feel like anytime you put out a report card like this or any type of like scoring, I'm sure you had a rubric for certain types of controls and I'm wondering what that looked like in the stormwater.
Speaker 2:Yeah, For each one of those categories, those 17 categories, there are eight different criteria. I think is what we call them. Okay, so capacity condition, funding, future need, operation and maintenance, public safety, resilience and innovation oh, wow.
Speaker 2:So this time around for 2025, we put together a survey which we released and sent out to thousands of stormwater professionals throughout the state and got some feedback on just some of the questions in each one of those eight categories. We got some great feedback. Professionals who work in their certain service area needed more than two times their current funding in order to try to bring the system up to the types of standards that we're talking about. So, yeah, it's a big funding issue and it just is something that's not a priority for a lot of municipalities and organizations throughout the state. So the biggest issue for increased funding, or the biggest reason why we asked for increased funding, was that the capacity of our system is pretty low from, like, a level of service perspective. We talk about level of service all the time.
Speaker 3:Like there's too much water for the infrastructure is it Right?
Speaker 1:So it floods or people flood or the bridge floods Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I like to think about it as like a pipe is only so big and there's only so much water that you can push through a pipe, and a lot of those pipes, when they were installed, were only meant for some of these pretty frequent storms, nowhere near the 10, 25, 100-year level storm.
Speaker 1:I think most catch basins which people are familiar with, like where your stormwater goes on your street is usually like a two-year level service.
Speaker 2:Yeah, two to ten, depending on the age, and then the condition was the other criteria that we used for the argument for increased funding, because our average age of stormwater infrastructure in the state is more than 40 years old and usually it's only warrantied for that 40 to 50 years. So we're coming to the end of useful life of a lot of the infrastructure in Ohio and that needs to either be repaired or replaced or at least inspected to see what the condition of it is.
Speaker 1:Derek, you're an engineer. Where did you go to school?
Speaker 2:I went to the University of Cincinnati. I started out in just like a general civil, before I really even knew I wanted to be a civil engineer or an engineer at all. And then I started to get interested in geotechnical engineering, which is like the study of geology and how it relates to foundations and and civil engineering, and then I realized that I've kind of wanted to shift a little bit away from that, more to the water resources side. So I made a bit of a shift in my career path and I'm so glad that I did, because I really love water resources engineering and that's what I do at the sewer district now.
Speaker 1:So do you have a favorite project?
Speaker 2:The one Pyramids.
Speaker 1:That you've worked on.
Speaker 2:They are amazing, though, don't you think Wonders of the world? I think my favorite, the one that has a special place in my heart, is our Stickney Creek project. Yeah, I really like that one. That was one of the first ones that I ever worked on at the sewer district, and it incorporated a yeah, you can go on over to Brooklyn Ohio and it's off of Ridge Road just past. I think it's like West 66th or something like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think you're right Stigney Creek tributary to Big Creek, tributary to the Cuyahoga River out to Lake Erie.
Speaker 3:So these stormwater projects? They make a difference, they soak up the water.
Speaker 2:We need more of them to get a higher grade, more stormwater projects and more money available in creative ways for people to try to manage the stormwater that's coming off of their site. Because for so long, even when I was in school, the lessons around stormwater management and hydraulics were to worry about the water on your site only, and then, once it left your site, there was no real worry about what happened to it. And then, yeah, coming into this field and working at the sewer district was eye-opening, to say the least, to see how, if that happens on a large scale, we create these enormous problems downstream that have to be handled in one way or the other. So, yeah, our stormwater projects try to help mitigate some of those impacts from some unregulated releases from a lot of those properties.
Speaker 1:One of the programs that the sewer district does have is the community cost share program, which is 25% of the stormwater fees collected in a community go back to the community for stormwater infrastructure. Very frequently we hear from our communities about how helpful it is to have that pot of money to be able to buy a street sweeper, be able to repair catch basins or repair local storm sewers. Because the funding is really so pinched when it comes to replacing some of this infrastructure, it can be insanely expensive.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I am somewhat involved in the Green Infrastructure Grant Program, which provides grants for green infrastructure practice installations to any organization within our combined sewer area that works with a nonprofit or with a municipality in order to get a solution put together, and that ranges from green roofs to bioretention cells to permeable pavement installations, and we've got a lot of awesome information on our website about that grant program for anybody who's interested. But it's a great program and it's one of few, at least in our service area, where entities can get funding for those types of projects.
Speaker 3:Lita, it's been a while.
Speaker 4:How's it going, Mike?
Speaker 3:Lita's one of the first people I met here at the district, uh-uh.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and that's when I was up in CCR for like a little bit.
Speaker 3:That's right.
Speaker 4:And then I came down to Watersheds. So I have a lot of extensive knowledge about the district, both from the wastewater side, stormwater side and other initiatives too.
Speaker 3:Tell us about your promotion.
Speaker 4:So I am now manager of design for engineering construction for the plants group. So we oversee all the design of the three district wastewater treatment plants as well as the pump stations. We also are responsible for facilities. We do big projects, small projects, so we're very involved in the improvements district-wide. I have been involved in ASCE ever since I was a student, as a civil engineering student back in my college days. So they have student chapters and then when you graduate they want to keep you as a member by being involved through your professional career. I was in Columbus last week for the Ohio Infrastructure Report Card. It was at the Ohio Statehouse. It was kind of a unique day. Typically it's a little busier at the Statehouse but the budgets were being delivered and voted on and so you know timely for this report card release on the topic of budgets.
Speaker 1:And Derek Vogel gave us a rundown through the stormwater chapter, so we're wanting to have you on today to talk a little bit about the Ohio wastewater.
Speaker 4:Yes, so the wastewater grade for Ohio. It was a C minus no change in grade between 2021 and 2025. However, the last time we did a report card before 2021 was 2009, and that grade was a D+. Okay, the big improvement from 2009 to 2021 is the implementation of long-term control plans, otherwise known as CSO reduction. So there's been a lot of work statewide, there's been a lot of improvements made with CSO control and Ohio has around $16 billion in needs. A significant portion of that need is addressing aging infrastructure. So that's the big shift from you know, if you would have looked at the need 10 years ago, the need was CSO control, cso implementation, and now the shift is yep, that CSO is being addressed, but aging infrastructure and we talk a lot about that here at the sewer district, there's so much I&I, infiltration and inflow, oh, okay.
Speaker 3:So water getting into the pipes yeah.
Speaker 4:So that's infiltration.
Speaker 4:Typically when they're seeping through cracks, inflow is when there's just a direct connection or direct source of water coming into the pipe, so that could be holes in a manhole cover where a storm sewer or like a catch basin, is tied in correctly to the sanitary instead of the storm pipe. Those are examples of inflow. So we've seen that grade from 2009 improve to a C and then from 2021 to 2025. It stayed the same. It stayed the same. There is so much need to address aging infrastructures and utilities are doing the best that they can with the resources they have. There just isn't enough funding on the federal side and the state side. That's where most of the utilities are burdened with making these fixes on their own. Most utilities, their rate structure is such that they can only address their operation and maintenance needs, and then they're not investing on the capital side in a manner to address the infrastructure issues.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for a lot of communities it is hard enough, I think, just to maintain what they have. And so then, when you are talking about maybe a 60-year-old system or a 70-year-old system where you do maybe just need wholesale rehabilitation or replacement or relief, sewers.
Speaker 4:It's expensive and that's another thing is you know we promote resilience in this report card. There are a couple ways to look at resilience. You know you can take a look at how you inform your design, especially on the wastewater. Stormwater side is outdated precipitation data, and so making sure we get more current data. We've talked a little bit about this extreme weather that we're seeing. The rain events are more flashy and intense, and so making sure that we have that information to reflect and inform our designs. Making sure that we have that information to reflect and inform our designs. The other piece of resilience is making sure that you're taking a look at a comprehensive approach to a solution. We call it like the life cycle cost analysis approach is to you know there might be a fix that costs less but it's not going to last as long, and so then you're going to have to fix it again.
Speaker 4:So making sure you're doing that evaluation, so when you do a project, that it's the most resilient project.
Speaker 1:Is the purpose of the report card or I guess at least part of the purpose to make a plea for federal funding? Is that the purpose? To make sure that our revolving state loan funds are funded?
Speaker 4:Yeah, it is a tool for public education on why it's I see, yeah, what's important, and engineers, I can talk acronyms, I can talk technical all day, any day. I'm probably maybe doing it a little bit too much in this podcast, but the goal of this report card is the general public and lawmakers, to inform them of what kind of needs are out there. And so it's not just funding, it's just maybe also some policy where that funding could maybe be used to make a difference in improving infrastructure. So you could take it to your state lawmakers. This report card is used at the federal level, so I've actually been a participant in the national fly-in for the last five years and we meet with the two senators and then representatives throughout the state and advocate on behalf of the AACE priorities. You have to kind of make everything relatable to lawmakers and the general public to educate on why it's important.
Speaker 4:What's kind of cool about infrastructure is it's a bipartisan topic. Everyone wants to see improvements made. Whatever you defer, it's only going to cost more later. When you take a look at what Ohio gets, the grant funding is $50 to $60 million, and when you're seeing nominations like $2 to $3 billion, everyone wants that. There's just not enough to go around. So looking at innovative ways to fund infrastructure I think the sewer district do a good job of that, and so that's. Another criteria of the report card is innovation. So it's not just necessarily innovation of how do you do things better, it's how to you know. On the funding side too.
Speaker 4:And you know, the district has been, I think, a pioneer in that, and so I'm really, you know, proud to work for an organization that does that.
Speaker 3:The new 2025 Infrastructure Report Card can be accessed by the public at infrastructurereportcardorg. All one word.
Speaker 4:Yep, and then I think, if you could, there's a specific Ohio tab where you can get information on the Ohio report card. I just want to note that this report card, this is a volunteer effort. It's no easy task and it's you know, you're balancing the work responsibility that we have day to day. It's a lot of work, but it shows how much passion these folks on this report card have for making a difference and, if you think about it, civil engineering. We're helping the greater good of society and helping people, and so I think that's one of the reasons why I really enjoy working on this report card. It's important, it needs to be discussed in order to find a path to make these improvements, to make sure that our water resources are kept clean and safe for drinking and recreation and all that good stuff.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for coming on today, Lita Thanks for having me.
Speaker 4:This was a lot of fun.
