The Price of Pumping: Building The Future of Toledo’s Wastewater Treatment Plant
Multimillion-dollar repairs are needed in the next few years.
TOLEDO, Ohio — Chances are, you don’t spend all day thinking about what’s going down your toilet or what’s going down the sewer system, but people over at Toledo’s Bay View Wastewater Treatment Plant do: 24/7, 365. But there’s one part of the plant that’s been running 24/7, 365 for over a hundred years. It’s the pump station and that’s exactly where all of that sewage is coming in, so you would think — over time — that repairs are needed. And that’s exactly the case: repairs are needed. So who’s fitting the bill? Chances are, it’s you.
“We take the waste from residential homes, so when you flush your toilet, you use the shower, anything that goes down your drains is hitting the sewer collection system and it comes to use for treatment.”
Ed Moore, director of public utilities for the City of Toledo, couldn’t have explained it better — but the process of receiving waste, treating it, and eventually releasing it is a bit more complicated.
“We clean the liquids and then we clarify it and then we chemically treat it to sanitize it and we release it back out to the waterway. Now the solids are treated in a different manner. They’re pressed, dewatered, and then what they will use the biosolids for we can beneficially reuse it on farmlands or, if we don’t have the ability to apply it to the farmland during certain times a year, we put it in a landfill,” Moore said.
So, that’s a simplification of this process, but I was able to get a partial tour of the plant, which focused mainly on where repairs are needed.
That included the Bay View Pump Station, which is over a hundred years old. It’s actually listed on the state’s registry of historic buildings. The station’s also connected via a tunnel under the Maumee River to the East Toledo Pump Station, just across the river. As you can see, both are similar architecturally.
But the issue is upgrades at Bay View, which have happened over the years, are needed once again — and they will be expensive. Moore puts the price tag at about $900 million, money that will likely come from increased rates — which you, of course, will have to cover over a span of a few years.
My tour of the plant was led by Mike Schreidah, a city employee of over 30 years, and Andy McClure, who’s been with the city for 13 years. The plant, which doesn’t just serve Toledo, had its most recent major upgrade back in 2006. That was when construction wrapped on the part of the plant used during heavy rain events, excess waste that the bulk of the plant can’t take on.
As we toured the chlorine treatment, as well as the grit removal and grease removal parts of the plant, I got to ask Schreidah about his story — and why he continues in this line of work years later.
“How did I get into this line of work? By accident. I applied for an engineering job and when they interviewed me and they accepted me, they said ‘Okay, you’re assigned to water reclamation.’ and I came here. I’m a mechanical engineer, I’m not a civil. Engineering in the city’s mostly civil, but it’s worked out for me here because there’s a lot of equipment and that’s what my major is,” Schreidah said.
Fast forward to now, he continues his journey in spite of the smell, as some consider the views along the Maumee River to be quite rewarding.
And for McClure, building the future of a major treatment plant isn’t something new, as he led the city through improvements to the Collins Park Water Treatment Plant.
Finally, as time progresses, we’ll learn more about just how much Toledoans will be paying — for the price of pumping.
