Kucinich SUPPORTERS: Could you write your candidate about something?

[ShaneGR]

http://www.cleveland.com/cuyahoga/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/cuyahoga/1076500559253010.xml

Billions of gallons of raw sewage flowed into the Cuyahoga River last year. My river, the same river that had been, for the most part, cleaned up over the last 20 years. Since it is his district (I'm in Sherrod Brown's district, which also has parts of the Cuyahoga) I thought maybe you could make this an important new issue for him.


(snip)
Last August's blackout shut down the Southerly sewage treatment plant in Cuyahoga Heights for nearly eight hours, forcing operators to divert 31.5 million gallons of partially treated sewage into the Cuyahoga River.

Solon's sewage plant also lost power, diverting 105,000 gallons of sewage into Tinkers Creek.


But the releases Aug. 14 were just a trickle of the overall sewage that poured into the Cuyahoga River last year.

Ohio Environmental Protection Agency reports show that at least 15 communities dumped an estimated 4.38 billion gal- lons of sewage into the river last year.

"When you see the numbers, it becomes clear," said Elaine Marsh, who heads Friends of the Crooked River, a Cuyahoga River environmental group. "We are using our river as a sewer. And we need to stop it."

The releases after the blackout led health officials to close several Cleveland-area beaches on Lake Erie as a precaution because of bacteria in the water.

But all year long, sewage poured into the river from Ravenna to Cleveland, according to Ohio EPA's documents. Some of the sewage - more than 800 million gallons - was partially treated before it entered the river. Nearly 3 billion of the 4.38 billion gallons were a diluted mixture of sewage and rainwater.