CLEVELAND — Saturday marks 50 years since the Cuyahoga River last burned, so thousands across Northeast Ohio are celebrating a river reborn.
Officials from the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District unveiled a plaque during a ceremony at Settlers Landing.
This newly-revealed plaque celebrates both past investments that contributed to that rebirth, as well as ones happening now that will preserve and protect it for years to come.
It will be permanently displayed on the newly constructed sewer district’s Superior Avenue pump station.
Its a part of Project Clean Lake and will help to reduce pollution discharging into the river.
“So its been about $5 billion to get us to this point. To improve all the wastewater treatment plants and all of the sewer infrastructure and that’s just with the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District. City of Akron, many other communities, their residents have invested significantly. So we’re going to focus on that success and then talk about issues we have urban runoff, agricultural runoff, invasive species, and the issues we need to keep working on,” Kyle Dreyfuss-Wells, CEO of the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District, said.
The sewer district already has plans in the works to continue cleaning up waterways in northeast Ohio, including a shoreline storage tunnel which will deal with discharges into Lake Erie and a regional stormwater management program.
