TOLEDO, Ohio — In the March 26 episode of WTOL 11’s weekend community affairs program, Leading Edge, Sylvania Mayor Craig Stough, who is a member of the regional water commission, brought to our attention a pressing issue with Toledo’s raw water intake pipeline:
"We've been told by an engineering firm taking a look at the low-pressure water line coming from the low-pressure water treatment plant to the water treatment plant itself that it had a zero life expectancy left in it. We've got to fix that," Stough said.
In that report provided to WTOL 11, engineers told city and regional leaders late last year that there are serious problems with the nine-mile raw water line that feeds into the water treatment plant.
“This is the first time we got a report back that we could have a problem with the couplings themselves,” Ed Moore, the director of public utilities for the city of Toledo, said. “Not the pipe itself, but the couplings that hold the pipe together."
In the report, those dresser couplings are called the “most catastrophic risk to the pipeline,’ saying they had a zero-year life expectancy.
So, what does that mean for you? If you're a Toledo water customer, your water service could take a hit. Moore said the worst-case scenario "is that the pipe would fail and we couldn't meet summer demand."
There are backup pipes in place in case of emergencies, but those backups aren't as big, Moore said.
If there's a failure at some point, summer demand would not only affect your water pressure, but it could also force what Moore called, “a high level of conservation.” That means possible restrictions on when and how you use your water.
It's a “$175,000,000 critical fix,” Moore said, and it's going to use $100,000,000 earmarked for a new secondary water source. That secondary water source is something many officials like Stough and Lucas County Board of Commissioners President Pete Gerken have been begging for since the water crisis of 2014. But the city is choosing to use that money for this critical fix instead.
"Let's use that $100,000,000 that we were going to allocate through rates for the alternate water source and divert that to the raw water main so that we can get the first two phases done,” Moore said.
Moore said there is a plan to replenish the funds for that secondary water source. And he said they're going to get creative through grants and low-interest loans.
At this point, the critical fix is still in the design stage. Construction may not start before 2025 and it'll take three years to complete, Moore said, leaving the threat of the pipeline’s failure here with us for at least another five years.