Cleveland Foundation Awards $400,000 to Help Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District (NEORSD) Realize 'Green' Potential of its $3 billion Water Quality Program
Published: Friday, June 22, 2012, 7:30 PM
By Steven Litt, The Plain Dealer
CLEVELAND, Ohio — Drilling giant sewer pipes far underground may not sound like a sexy pathway to urban beautification and economic revitalization for Cleveland.
But thanks to a new program approved Friday by the Cleveland Foundation, the city has a far better chance to capitalize on the full potential of a $3 billion, federally mandated program to reduce the flow of untreated waste into Lake Erie.
The Cleveland Foundation announced today that it is launching a $400,000 program that will marry the engineering prowess of the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District with the fine-grained skills of veteran neighborhood planners and urban designers.
The goal is to spend relatively small amounts of early money on design and planning so that when the sewer district performs major surgery far underground on the “gray” part of its project, neighborhoods directly above on the surface will benefit big time.
Instead of capping excavation zones with brain-dead areas of turf grass scattered through the city without rhyme or reason, the sewer district project could ultimately leave behind carefully located new parks, streetscapes and public amenities.
Other efforts will involve creating spongy landscapes on the city’s surface to absorb and filter runoff, including green, pedestrian- and bike-friendly boulevards, which could be laced throughout the city. These amenities, in turn, will help spark redevelopment and trigger other big investments.
That’s already happening with a pilot project Cleveland’s Slavic Village. A $1 million sewer district proposal to trap and filter rainwater with new landscaping along Fleet Avenue helped the city win $6 million from the Ohio Department of Transportation to repave the street with bike lanes and “traffic calming” crosswalks and curb extensions...
