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
Call 811 . . . BEFORE You Dig!
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One careless shovel strike can turn a home project into a power outage or emergency situation, but it's easy to avoid! We sit down with Community Discharge Permit Program Specialist Rob Stoerkel to discuss Ohio 811—also known as OUPS, the “call before you dig” service that keeps homeowners, contractors, and field crews from hitting underground utility lines.
We also talk about the helpful systems that make this work, including Geographic Information System mapping, blueprint review, and coordination across multiple utilities and communities.
Ditch Digging And Underground Risk
unknownOkay.
Mike UvaWell we'll keep it light for you, Mighty. Yeah, keep it light. What do people need to know about, you know, if they're gonna dig a ditch in their front yard? What to do? I mean you shouldn't just go ahead and do that. Rob Stirkle is the community discharge permit program specialist for the Regional Sewer District. Today we're gonna talk about the Ohio Utility Protection Service, otherwise known as OOPS. What is OOPS, Rob?
SPEAKER_01It's the Ohio Utility Protective Service, and it is a means by which construction company, excavators specifically, I guess, and engineers can coordinate with utilities to prevent any kind of damage to that utility or or worse, right? I mean, a gas line. And we've all seen the disruptions from water main breaks. Uh it's a state agency, though? It's not.
Donna FriedmanOhio 811 is a nonprofit public safety organization founded in 1972 to serve as the established underground utility protection service across all 88 counties in Ohio.
SPEAKER_01I guess that's the important thing to remember is Ohio 811, because that's how you actually find them is just dial 811. Yeah, so 811 is the way to communicate with them.
Donna FriedmanIt says that they process more than 1.6
Ohio 811 Basics For Homeowners
Donna Friedmanmillion excavation notifications and direct over 10 million utility locate requests annually. Wow. If I'm digging a foot down, do I need to call? What's the rule?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, uh, you're supposed to, anyway. Like planting flowers, even. Well, I think uh what they're they're mainly concerned about near the road, right? Uh these utilities are generally located in the right of way, right? So that's the concern there. If you're digging near the road. If if you're digging a foot down in your backyard and you hit anything, it's probably gonna be your problem uh and no one else's. But it would be rare, it would be unusual to have something like a major utility in your backyard. What is it?
Donna FriedmanThe electric fly. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So they do, but they go behind my house too. That's an excellent point. But they're up in the air. They always put it. So it's not really an oops thing. Uh if you hit one of those. You're swinging pretty high. Yeah, maybe you should call somebody else.
Donna FriedmanIs there an opposite of call before you dig? Is there like a call before you fly?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think oops are they're concerned with the underground stuff. So you're supposed to either call 811 or go to this website and you mark out the area that you're gonna be working in. And you know, 99.9% of the requests that I get or we get are surveyors and engineers working on like road projects, right? So they're not someone digging a garden or anything like that. So what we get are these utilities, and there's actually two different kinds of oops requests.
Locate Marks And Paint Colors
SPEAKER_01Everyone is familiar with the oops requests where they come out and paint on the ground. Sorry. Right. They use different colored spray paints for different color utilities. Uh, that is our sewer system maintenance and operation people who do that. And uh it's kind of cool, they in a way, I guess. Oops, cool, is that they they actually know other utilities' paint colors, like they each have their own paint color that they use specifically so that they can tell each other apart. They have to fight over that in the beginning.
Donna FriedmanAnd can we get a glittery one? I just found out there's glitter chalk. Did you know this?
SPEAKER_01No.
Donna FriedmanYeah, I was I was doing some chalk art, you know, casual, casual chalk art. Just chalk it. One of the one of the chalks had glitter in it, and it was pretty fabulous. I feel like maybe we should talk to SSMO and see if they'd be willing to upgrade to like some glitter green.
Mike UvaOh, that's got PFOS in it. No, that glitter chalk has got some bad things in it.
Donna FriedmanOh my gosh, you're probably right. Wait, wait. So there's two different kinds of boots called.
SPEAKER_01So there's two different right. So that's the so within 48 hours before you dig, you are supposed to put in this request with your utility.
Donna FriedmanOnly 48 hours?
SPEAKER_0148 hours before you're supposed to do it, and then SSMO comes out and marks our sewer.
Donna FriedmanDang, that's a quick turnaround.
SPEAKER_01And all the other utilities come out. And all the other utilities are supposed to come out, yeah, and marker
Early Design Requests For Engineers
SPEAKER_01sewer. The other type of oops request is the one that I deal with primarily, and that is much earlier in the process when engineers are designing the uh project to begin with, right? They gotta write down on the blueprint where these different utilities are, and so they request drawings through the same oops system. What kind of projects are we talking about? Give an example of gas line maintenance, any kind of road project, uh repaving, even if it's just like a repaving or something, they are gonna request drawings and even the sewers which might be 10 feet below the project, you know. So every utility gets this request for drawings or markings, whatever it is, that is supposed to be in this area. So somehow, by some magic, oops knows what utilities are in what areas. Initially, you have to report that when you join Oops. We joined Oops. Ohio law requires it, but it's a kind of a collaboration between the utilities uh that you join, and uh so you join that and you report where your stuff is, and they remember it somehow. So on this map, they might send a request to us. They'll send requests to Enbridge, First Energy, CPP, and the local communities uh requesting drawings of any facilities they have in these areas. They're along the road, they're generally not in people's backyards. You got gas, electric, water, of course, internet, and phone, and steam. There's steam lines downtown, right? Oh, you don't want to hit one of those, I don't think. Like it's steam under pressure. Oof, that's bad. Yeah, so that would be bad. And it's a lot scarier for those people because a lot of their stuff is shallower. We're tend to be the deepest, right? We have to be lower than people's basements in order for sewers to drain, right?
Deep Sewers And The Sludge Force Main
SPEAKER_01This is all gravity stuff going on. So we're generally eight, nine feet down. The most important thing that I do is really look out for that easterly sludge force main. Tell us about it. As you may know, the easterly uh plant doesn't dispose of their sludge, they remove sludge from the water, uh, and then they pump it through a pipe, like 16-inch diameter pipe under pressure, all the way from easterly to southerly. 13 miles, right? Something like that. I've never able to know that. Thanks for having that number. Right. So they pump the 13 miles, uh, like right on East 55th and St. Clair stays in the right of way. So if Easterly were not able to pump that sludge, they have enough storage for a couple weeks, uh, and then they would have to start trucking it, which you can imagine the cost of that versus just pumping it down a force main. So I just have these nightmares of uh some kind of poop fountain in the middle of East 55th, right? If somebody hits that force main, right.
Donna FriedmanUh this is what keeps you up at night. East 55th poop fountain.
Mike UvaThat pipe is under so much pressure all the time. That's what keeps me up at night.
Free Requests Versus Costly Damage
Donna FriedmanSo does it cost money for people to put in an oops request?
SPEAKER_01No. It's free. No cost, it's free. It's free. The cost isn't hitting something. And I did have a uh a community that will go nameless tell me once that they probably spent over fifteen thousand dollars a year repairing their infrastructure because they did not respond to an oops request.
Mike UvaSo you say it's required if you don't call oops, do you get in trouble if there's damage?
Donna FriedmanThat's a good question, Mike.
SPEAKER_01Uh well, it would be illegal, but I'm sure it's one of those things that if you don't hit anything, no one's gonna say anything. But uh yeah. It's just not a good idea, Mike. Because it's probably in your front yard that you're digging or something, and you just wouldn't want something bad to happen. Right. You wouldn't even want your internet cut off, you know.
Mike UvaBut Boop says the coordinating agency.
SPEAKER_01That's right. Okay. They coordinate, and they they're the ones who know where the utilities are because we've told
GIS Tools, Flow Permits, Final Pitch
SPEAKER_01them.
Donna FriedmanWhat tools do you use to do your job?
SPEAKER_01What does it take? What tools? What's cool?
Mike UvaWhat? Sorry, I should have worn my earring aid. What tools? Oh, what tools? Let me say the question again. What's cool? What's cool about my job?
SPEAKER_01Oh, well. There are some cool things about my job. You'd be surprised with a title like community discharge permit programs.
Mike UvaOkay, take two.
SPEAKER_01What cool tools do I use? I use uh GIS, our geographic information system, is I spend so much time looking at that. It's amazing, really. Uh, I also have to be able to review blueprints uh for the job that I do. So I have a software that does that, it helps me do that. It's kind of cool. And we have a plan review software that I spend a lot of time moving people's plan reviews through our process. So I do plan reviews in our department. Uh I guess if I could back up a moment there, community discharge permit program to break that down, right? Community discharge. That is they're discharging to our system, right? Um permit, and we give them a permit to do that. Uh, and in our program, we enforce those permits. So it says in those permits that you have to comply with our code of regulations. An oops request is another type of plan review for us. It's called a utility location. So it is one type, it is the most numerous type of request and review that we do, but it is one of several different plan reviews that we do.
Donna FriedmanWhat is acceptance of flow? Oh.
SPEAKER_01Well, I'm glad you asked. Acceptance of flow? Yes. Acceptance of flow, right? So we accept flow. That's what we do. We own the three large wastewater treatment plants here in our service area. And an acceptance of flow basically is a statement that the sewer district has capacity at its treatment plant for your new sanitary flow. Like a housing subdivision, right? If you are extending the sanitary sewers out and you're gonna build a hundred new homes in Columbia or Olmstead Township, you will need a PTI from the state of Ohio.
Donna FriedmanThe permit to install.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And the state of Ohio will say, Hey, sewer district, do you have enough capacity at your plant for this? And there are permits to install for a number of things. The ones that I am dealing with exclusively are those, hey Rob, do you have capacity at the treatment plant for this new project? It's really Ohio EPA that issues a permit to install. They're just getting our they're asking us if we have capacity for it. That's it.
Donna FriedmanOkay. So they wait till we issue the acceptance of flow and then they will issue.
SPEAKER_01You have to turn it in with your application to Ohio EPA. And you so you can't get a permit till you get that. And they have been enforcing that lately uh in the last couple of years more than they did in my first few years here.
Donna FriedmanSo that's good though, because we've done all these projects, especially like the local sewer system evaluation studies to really understand what capacity there is in the sanitary sewer system out in our communities.
SPEAKER_01Right.
Donna FriedmanAnd so I think it's kind of similar to the conversation we had about within the combined sewer area, like if there's no capacity, we want to make sure that folks aren't tying into that line.
SPEAKER_01Right.
Donna FriedmanBecause it'll just create more flooding.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, all kinds of problems.
Donna FriedmanSo if it's a project out in Parma and we know that the flow's gonna go to Southerly, you would be saying that we have capacity at Southerly, yeah, and therefore we can accept the flow.
SPEAKER_01Right. And at our treatment plants, right? We have done millions of dollars in upgrades. You know, Easterly can take like 150 million gallons a day in flow on average, right? That's just a normal day for Easterly. So, and but a lot of these projects, it's like, you know, 20,000 gallons that they're gonna be sending. And so it's not a huge lift for us. Heights hilltops interceptor system or something, you're talking about eight foot, ten-foot diameter pipes. But on the local system, you're tapping into an eight-inch or ten-inch diameter pipe. So, you know, that's where your bottlenecks often occur. It's not in our interceptor system. Got it. We get occasionally big ones though, and like the jail is talking like a million and a half gallons a day, so that's a lot, you know. So we will look closely at that and make sure that we're gonna be all right.
Donna FriedmanBut that's Garfield Heights.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Cuyahoga County Jail Central Services, I think it's it's not called the jail.
Mike UvaSo that's a that's a nice euphemism for it.
SPEAKER_01It's a campus. Campus life. Campus, yeah. Yeah, that's a different podcast.
Donna FriedmanYou mentioned geographic information systems, which is sort of like our large mapping magical programs that we use. You have like a certificate in that or a degree or something, right?
SPEAKER_01I do. I do. I was hired full-time at the district in 2015, but actually started in 2013, pretty sure the oldest intern ever at the sewer district. They put in the uh honorary uh ramp for access as I age. Rob Circle Memorial Handrail that they put in the restroom. I spent like twenty years in the lumber industry and working at a lumber yard. So that's where I learned to to look at blueprints. That's where they taught me how to read a blueprint there, right? And I was just loading two by fours and plywood into people's cars. Ended up in sales there and selling lumber. Uh so yeah, I kind of moved up there and it was a great company to work for. You know, it was really good. And it was a good family company. It was it was nice. Um, but then 2009, all of a sudden, housing market uh explodes, you know, or I don't know, cut was cut in half. Uh the sales at the lumber yard I worked at were cut in half, like within two years. All these builders went out of business, went bankrupt, left the state, you know. So it was a bad time to be working in a lumber yard uh during that recession. And I was like, well, I'm gonna go be a history teacher. That's what I wanted to do. Went to Lakeland, they're like, there are no jobs for history teachers either. So uh try GIS. That was kind of an exploding field, I guess. What was that? Early or no, in 2009, 2010, sorry. So I I did that because it had geography, I got to look at maps. I was like, yeah, this is cool. So I I did that. Uh I did the two-year program at Lakeland. I have an associate's degree in geospatial technologies, I think it is. And then uh I got the job here and I was going to Cleveland State for my bachelor's in environmental studies. Not science. Environmental science, you had to take trigonometry. So I did environmental studies, uh, which is combinated. They give you some environmental science classes, urban studies classes, and uh economics, some economics classes. So kind of the combination of that. Which equipped me well to speak about stormwater fees and things. Uh but then they hired me full-time here after after I got my bachelor's degree.
Donna FriedmanDo you find that you need trigonometry?
SPEAKER_01I have not had to use it.
Donna FriedmanSo you made the right call.
SPEAKER_01I think I did. I think I did. I would have had to pay for that class and then fail it. So anyway, so I've been here ever since and kind of watched uh the program grow. I mean, our plan review program and our oops program grow. Um, coordination with other agencies has grown a great deal with uh the City of Cleveland sewer people. If we sit in on those now weekly meetings, where I get the cool part of my job is I get to see these new projects, you know, coming in before anybody else. And so it gives me something to talk about other than poop at dinner parties. I'm also so if we could talk real quick about plan reviews, I guess. Last year we did 444 responses. Wow. Yeah, so and that's actually strangely consistent the last three years that I've been tracking it. So yeah, we're doing hundreds of these.
Donna FriedmanDo you think you ever would have wanted to be a surveyor?
SPEAKER_01You know, it'd be nice to get out in the field on a day like this and do that. You know, I was just talking to a guy uh down on the old ship channel, right? They're so they're gonna fill in what was one time a berth that repaired ships, right? If you look at a map in the 1880s, you'll see it there. It's been uh now it just looks like a wetland, but it was at one time where you did ships repaired them. So they did a survey of that property. So the surveyors gotta go down there like through the jungle, right? I mean, it's all you know, nine foot tall, invasives all around. They gotta go down there and find a manhole that's buried three feet down, you know, it's it would be really hard, right? So, and I'm sure they gotta do it in the winter too. So I I don't know. I'm a bit remember the world's oldest intern part? I'm a little too old for that kind of thing. I more, I guess, might want to brag about the fact that we have increased our coordination a great deal uh from what we used to be doing, and I'm I guess very proud that that's happened. Uh, and I feel I have played a big role in that. So I just wanted to get it on record.
unknownYeah.
Mike UvaVery good. Got that in there. It's a good sign. Uh if we had to just kind of recap the importance of call before you dig. What's your elevator pitch for why it's important to call? Oops. Uh that's 811.
SPEAKER_01811. Not only does it cost you money when uh infrastructure is hit, right? Because the money that we use to fix something comes from the ratepayers. Anything that needs repaired, that money is going to come from the people paying the rates. So it is expensive, but it's dangerous as heck, right? I mean, if you were to hit a gas line, I you know, little sparky there when the excavator hits it, you know, it would be terrifying. It'd be terrifying. So you just save yourself a lot of time and money and possibly your life by calling oops. It's free. And uh it could save you a huge headache.
Donna FriedmanYou've reached Ohio Utilities Protection Service. Doing business as Ohio 811. We are the call before you think number for the state. Why didn't they use your voice? They didn't call you and ask.
SPEAKER_01You know, I wanted a voice over actor for my voice in this, right?
Donna FriedmanDid you put that request in?
SPEAKER_01I didn't. I asked Mike if I could add. You wanted Clooney, right? I asked for Clooney. He didn't, I guess didn't respond to Mike's calls. Maybe Pee-wee Herman's available.
Mike UvaHe's not, sadly. Rob Stirkel is the community discharge permit program specialist for the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District. And this is Clean Waterworks. Rob, thank you for joining us and talking about the importance of using this service, oops, to make sure you don't hit any uh utility lines in your front yard or out to the uh right away.
SPEAKER_01Putting a lot of work into it on our end to try to prevent that.
Mike UvaGreat. Just another aspect of our work here at the Regional Steward District.
Donna FriedmanThanks for joining us, Rob. Thanks.
