Cleveland's Plan To Stop CSO's

Cleveland is one of many cities in the northeast part of the U.S. that uses a combined sewage system. This is where both sewage and rain runoff use the same pipes. The problem with this is that heavy rainfall can lead to combined sewage overflow, where the sewage gets dumped, before it can get treated, into the lakes, rivers, etc... Cleveland's plan to combat these CSOs is by creating a Green Infrastructure pilot with The Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District. Cleveland's plan will spend around 44 million dollars on around 20,000 vacant lots spread across 8 years, which it will achieve in 2018. This will soak up the rain water, so less of it gets into the combined sewers. Also the plants will take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. As if that wasn't good enough, they  increase the rate of ground water purification. To learn more about these benefits, you can visit this website, "http://www.envirothon.org/pdf/2012/04_EPA_green_infrastructure.pdf"
To help out around Springfield, students can talk to their teachers about either raising money to purchase and maintain their own vacant lots, or talk about teaming up with the Promise Neighborhood.

(Shows the amount of CSOs before and after a similar plan. Acquired from "http://grcity.us/enterprise-services/Environment-Services/Pages/Combined-Sewer-Overflow.aspx")

(More recent figure about CSO reduction. Taken from http://ottawa.ca/en/residents/water-and-environment/sewers-and-septic-systems/overflow-activity)

(Combined sewer overflows during dry and wet weather taken from http://www.epa.gov/sciencematters/april2012/overflows.htm)

Students can talk to their teachers about either raising money to purchase and maintain their own vacant lots, or talk about teaming up with the Promise Neighborhood.