Youngstown’s sewer ‘crisis’ is a complicated issue with no easy answers, student-led coalition says

YOUNGSTOWN — Youngstown appears to be one of the larger American cities now struggling to maintain critical sewer infrastructure, said Jackson McGough, a University of Minnesota student who for the past few months has been studying that topic nationwide for a nonprofit coalition bringing awareness to water insecurity issues.

Those furthest behind are small, former coal-mining towns, he said, but Youngstown is a much larger city of about 60,000, according to the 2020 Census. In his research, McGough learned of major wastewater disasters in Seattle and New York City over the past few years. But those metro areas' ability to manage those crises and correct infrastructure dwarfs Youngstown's, he said.

McGough presented his findings on American cities facing these wastewater crises — including Youngstown — during an hourlong virtual presentation Thursday hosted by the nonprofit Water Insecurity Correction Coalition, which is primarily based in New York.

The student-led group advocates for water security and works to bring awareness to communities struggling with those issues.

"It's really a broader point about accountability in government," McGough told Mahoning Matters. "I think [wastewater] is something that politicians and our government are kind of letting get brushed under the rug."

The American Society of Civil Engineers in 2021 gave America's wastewater infrastructure a D+ rating and a D rating for stormwater, according to McGough. The society estimated the U.S. is underinvesting in that infrastructure by about $81 billion annually — and that gap widens each year, he said. Even the latest federal infrastructure package passed Wednesday — considered one of the largest such investments in history — would put only about a "kind of puny" $11 billion a year toward water infrastructure, McGough said.

The city of Youngstown's now-failing sewer system, installed in the 1920s, combines stormwater and wastewater. Though these types of combined systems were common and acceptable decades ago — long before the Clean Water Act of 1972, which gave the EPA authority to regulate pollutants pumped into U.S. waters — they've become targeted for elimination due to the environmental and health hazards they pose.

Sewer overflows can be linked to rises in bacteria-caused gastrointestinal diseases in the surrounding areas, like E. coli, hepatitis A and typhoid fever, according to McGough. Overflowing stormwater can also push contaminants into natural areas, killing plant and animal life, he said.

New York City, Philadelphia and Atlanta also use combined sewer systems, according to McGough. The "most troublesome" of those systems nationwide serve 40 million people in 860 communities, he said.

Youngstown has fallen behind schedule on a decades-long, $160 million mandated plan to improve its sewer system — far behind enough to invite about $700,000 in EPA fines, Mahoning Matters reported earlier this year. Meanwhile, city officials say the scope of some projects keep them out-of-reach for a shrinking Rust Belt city like Youngstown.

"The problem is Youngstown's no longer the size of the city it was when all of this infrastructure was put in place," Kyle Miasek, the city's finance director, told Mahoning Matters in April.

And Youngstown isn't alone, McGough found. Cities across the country now struggle to leverage the funding needed to keep up with sewer infrastructure installed at their commercial height — infrastructure now crumbling away after several decades of economic decline and fleeing ratepayers.

The city of Youngstown scrambles year-round to fix hundreds of broken catch basins or crumbling brick-and-clay sewer lines across the city, said Lauren McNally, the city's 5th Ward councilwoman. She listened in Thursday and discussed the city's precarious position.

"I loved [the students'] initiative. I love that they're focusing on something like this," McNally told Mahoning Matters after the presentation. "It's a complicated issue, so to be able to break it down the way they did for easy consumption — it's the type of information and the type of resources we need as leaders to be able to push out into the community, to help them understand what's really going on."

Raising awareness about these issues is a big part of the coalition's mission, said Annabel Gregg, executive director.

Water infrastructure mostly exists underground, keeping it largely "out of sight and out of mind," McGough said Thursday. But when those systems fail, "the added cost of human illness; the economic costs; the environmental costs over time is killing people — it's just not nearly as often" as with failures of above-ground infrastructure like bridges, he said.

The decline of daily print newspapers nationwide has compounded the issue and torn down the forums where these issues were once discussed, McGough found.

"I don't think most people think about [wastewater infrastructure] when they vote for their elected officials," he said Thursday. "Although sewers cost about as much as drinking water [infrastructure] to fix and reconstruct, they're getting way less attention despite the fact that they're also influencing water quality."

Nationwide, cities have few good options to fund the kind of sweeping rehabilitation needed to correct sewer deficiencies, McGough found.

Though the EPA initially proposed a $350 million plan, city officials 20 years ago negotiated it down to $160 million, McNally said.

"We were hesitant at the time to enter into any agreement," Miasek told Mahoning Matters in April. "We knew we'd never be able to afford what they wanted."

Youngstown is currently stalled on the second phase of its mandated sewer improvement plan for lack of funding, McNally said Thursday. When asked by the coalition's audience about possible funding avenues, McNally pointed to Ohio's $2.7-billion rainy day fund, which has long gone untapped, even through the first year of the coronavirus pandemic.

"There is no reason that money can't be funneled down to help with our wastewater issues," she said. "We're in desperation mode for money for these projects. Any little bit helps us get to the next level."

When considering how the city's roughly $88 million in American Rescue Plan funding could be used, sewer upgrades are one of City Council's top priorities, McNally said. But even if the entire $88 million were dumped into the city's sewers, "we'd be no better off," she said.

City officials on Thursday also considered chasing two sewer grants that could put up to $5 million for an interceptor sewer to divert wastewater from Mill Creek as well as another large project that's been put off, McNally said. But for the latter project, even the maximum grant award would cover only a quarter of the total cost, she said.

The city in 2019 set a five-year sewer rate hike to save up for repairs. But with a majority of ratepayers below federal poverty guidelines, "any small increase hurts them. It's hard to swallow," McNally said. "[City officials] can't do it ourselves. We cannot. That's not one of our options.

"We'll take anything we can get. That means it alleviates the burden we have to tack on residents and businesses."

This story was originally published August 15, 2021 at 6:20 AM with the headline "Youngstown’s sewer ‘crisis’ is a complicated issue with no easy answers, student-led coalition says."