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Health & Fitness

Water Your Thoughts - Helping Our Community

Over the years, Avon Lake’s City government and Avon Lake Municipal Utilities have worked together to help grow Avon Lake. In the 1920’s and 1930’s, the original water system was installed by individual neighborhoods petitioning the City government to assess their properties in order to pay for the pipes to deliver water to their homes. In the more recent past, city leaders have contributed 5% of income tax revenues to help pay for sewer system improvements to make Avon Lake more attractive to potential residents and businesses. The revenue helped to defray costs for major sanitary sewer construction projects, such as the Walker Road sanitary sewer, which allowed for the development of the southern half of Avon Lake, and the combined sewer separations to improve the quality of Lake Erie.

The City of Avon Lake is receiving much less revenue now than in the past because it no longer receives local government and personal property reimbursements or tangible personal property and estate tax revenues. Therefore, it must either cut expenses or increase revenues in other ways such as increasing taxes. One way to cut expenses is to stop providing the 5% of income tax revenues to Avon Lake Municipal Utilities. City Hall and Avon Lake Municipal Utilities have talked about the possibility, and Avon Lake Municipal Utilities is ready to take the fiscal hit so the City may continue with its share of the combined sewer separations.

In Avon Lake, Avon Lake Municipal Utilities is responsible for drinking water and wastewater; the City government is responsible for storm water. Generally, when a combined sewer (one that carries both wastewater and storm water together) is separated, a new sanitary sewer is constructed and the combined sewer is converted into a storm sewer. This conversion allows easy storm water improvements to be made, such as installation of additional catch basins (to reduce yard and street flooding). With the departure of the City’s 5% of income tax revenues, the money you (and all other customers) pay to Avon Lake Municipal Utilities will now be the sole funds paying for the separation and construction of new sanitary sewers and other major sanitary sewer improvements. However, city leaders can now use that 5% toward much-needed storm water improvements made timely by the widespread sewer separation. If the money is indeed used for that purpose, city residents will continue to see improvements in their neighborhood drainage issues as the combined sewer separations continue. Just as important, tax revenues can be spent much more efficiently this way, making stormwater changes while the roads are already torn up, instead of the City having to come back later to dig up roads to make the improvements and then fix them again.

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With Avon Lake Municipal Utilities no longer receiving this money, that means a reduction of  $500,000 per year in revenue, which is the equivalent of $50 per year per customer. This scenario has not been factored in to the new wastewater rates that will take effect next July. Rather, we have been working to implement cost-saving measures that we hope can offset that loss in revenue, while continuing to serve you in the manner to which you have become accustomed.

Avon Lake Municipal Utilities (soon to be known as Avon Lake Regional Water) is your water and wastewater service provider. Questions/comments? Contact us via phone (440-933-6226), email (contact@avonlakewater.org), social media (Facebook/Twitter), or in person (201 Miller Road). You can also learn more by watching our semi-monthly Board Recap Show on ALC-TV’s government channel (TW 12 or Wow! 21) or logging on to avonlake.pegcentral.com to see recap shows or Board meetings.

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Avon Lake Regional Water: Serving the region. Protecting the resource.

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