Clean water at 50

Our 50th anniversary year isn’t just marking time. It’s a milestone of impact, progress, and opportunity.

Our work has affected the lives of Northeast Ohioans for 50 years. You might not realize it, but you do know the clean-water impacts, and we’ll focus our attention on six of them between March and August as we commemorate our fiftieth anniversary.

Each month, we’ll highlight stories that help capture the people, programs, and progress that have impacted our region for the better since 1972.

And with it, we’ll reveal a simple artistic seal that helps illustrate the connection between our work and the lives of more than a million Northeast Ohioans. We’ll showcase the art in various ways each month.

Here’s how the themes take shape:

March: Sparking change

Even before our creation in 1972, local and national events were shaping our future work and the responsibilities we would take on. Since then, our work has been extensive, expensive, and essential. We’ll talk about that history.

April: Healthier lake and streams

Our earliest days were heavily invested improving our treatment plants and expanding the system to best serve our region. Doing so began bringing life back to a once-dead river.

May: Recreation

As we welcome beach season, we’ll look more closely at the programs that have helped make our river and lakefront a destination — and how we plan to keep them that way.

June: Protecting our lake and streams

Our combined sewer overflow control work didn’t start with Project Clean Lake. But the consent decree was a manifestation of years of work and forethought. We’ll celebrate Project Clean Lake at its 10-year mark by visiting our latest project that reflects that commitment to purpose and precision.

July: Resilience

Managing a 400+ mile stream network comes down to understanding our environment’s past, present, and future. Our regional stormwater management program was years in the making, and we’ll examine how it’s helping our sewer and stream networks at the same time.

August: Community

As a regional utility, relationships are key. This month we’ll celebrate the ways we are advancing our clean-water mission with partners and customers together.

All these stories will converge on the most appropriate stage possible — our first large in-person event since 2019, Clean Water Fest on Saturday, September 17, 2022.

Keep track of our stories, art, and impacts at https://www.neorsd.org/50