Cleveland Water Investing $26 Million In Infrastructure Work

CLEVELAND HEIGHTS, OH — Residents have by now gotten the news that the city is transitioning to service by the Cleveland Water Department. What residents may not know is that Cleveland Water has announced it plans on spending $26 million per year, over the next five years, to update its infrastructure.

Cleveland Water says that replacing underground water mains could help minimize water-loss by the system. It's unclear if the infrastructure work will aid Cleveland Heights, but any improvements may aid the community that was sued by the EPA for allowing sewage overflow to spill into Lake Erie.

"A critical component of our efforts to be more efficient – and by extension control our costs – is to limit the amount of water lost in the Cleveland Water distribution system," said Jason Wood, chief of public affairs, in a blog. "With a distribution system as large and old as Cleveland Water’s, some water loss is inevitable."

Cleveland Water said it lost more than 27 billion gallons of water in 2016, down 30 billion in 2015. Wood chalks that decrease up to infrastructure replacement and improvement efforts by the department.

While Cleveland Water did not initially say where that $26 million will be spent, the department did vow that its efforts would reach suburban communities.

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