Community Shares of Greater Cincinnati endorse Communities United for Action (CUFA's) People's Sewer Justice Platform
OCTOBER 12, 2020 — Hamilton County residents are being harmed by sewage overflows, sewer backups and unaffordable sewer rates. While the Metropolitan Sewer District of Greater Cincinnati (MSD) has been working on Project Groundwork since 2006 to solve the problem and has a court-mandated program to help people experiencing sewer backups, few are getting help from the program. Low-income residents are struggling to keep pace with rate increases, resulting in thousands of households losing access to water each year. Our public health is at risk from exposure to untreated sewage.
To make matters worse, as our region begins to grapple with the impacts of climate change, MSD and our various Stormwater Management Utilities are not prepared to effectively manage stormwater jointly for our watershed region. Stormwater overwhelms our outdated combined sewer system, even during moderately heavy rains.
MSD has systematically locked ratepayers out of decision-making for how sewers will be fixed and has created a barrier to public transparency for money spent and progress made. The public reporting that MSD does on its website has improved due to public pressure from Communities United For Action, but should be more user-friendly for Hamilton County residents seeking information about projects in their neighborhood and MSD’s effectiveness at alleviating sewer backups and overflows. Various completed projects have not alleviated overflows, backups, and overland flooding. MSD largely ignores resident complaints.
Communities United For Action presents the People’s Sewer Justice Platform as a solution for systemic changes that will force our public utility to be open, transparent and accountable to ratepayers. While MSD has made some improvements, MSD governance is broken, and now is the time to fix the system. CUFA is specifically making recommendations for the City of Cincinnati and the Board of Hamilton County Commissioners to:
• Stop government waste and delays for fixing our sewers; and
• Involve ratepayers and impacted communities in decision-making; and
• Systematically incorporate public accountability and transparency mechanisms, such as independent auditing and open public reporting on Project Groundwork and the Sewer Backup Response and Prevention Programs; and
• Develop cohesive, effective stormwater management and responsible development policies; and
• Make our sewer rates affordable and equitable for everyone.
Communities United For Action is calling for:
• a new, required process for involving residents in the planning of Phase 2 for Project Groundwork.
• public project audits and effective communication with residents during planning, implementation and post-project evaluation.
• MSD to fix the sewers first in neighborhoods hardest hit by sewer backups and overflows.
• collaborative management of our watershed.
• comprehensive, cost-effective green infrastructure solutions that focus on alleviating sewer backups and overflows by removing stormwater from our sanitary sewers.
• a national search for an MSD Director who has extensive experience implementing green infrastructure solutions to combined sewer overflows
• responsible development requirements.
• local jobs for fixing our sewers.
• yearly, independent auditing of MSD.
• an easily understandable, public dashboard for reporting progress on Project Groundwork.
• the City and County to swiftly resolve their differences to operate MSD for the benefit of all ratepayers.
• an independent audit of the Sewer Backup Response Program and Sewer Backup Prevention Program to ensure MSD’s compliance with the Consent Decree mandates.
• immediate implementation of a comprehensive Customer Assistance Program,
• a continued sewer rate freeze and a moratorium on water shutoffs until all of the above programs are implemented.
• restructuring of sewer rates to be fair to residential ratepayers.
More detail at https://www.cufacincy.org/peoples_sewer_justice_platform.
