Welcome to the Village of Moreland Hills - The #1 Rated Community in Northeast Ohio

Message from Mayor Susan C. Renda

Dear Resident,

On August 26, 2019, there was a mechanical failure at the Jackson Valley/ Basswood Pump Station due to a ruptured component on one of the pumps. This mechanical failure led to a sewage leak which in turn disabled the control panel, transformer, electric motors, and other related electrical components causing them to short out. The Village has telemetry installed at the pump station to automatically notify Service Department members of failures such as this. Because the leak disabled the control panel, Service Department members were not automatically notified and did not discover the leak until the next morning during their regular inspection. Since the leak occurred in the middle of the night and the notification system was disabled, approximately 10,000 gallons of clear effluent entered a nearby storm sewer that empties into Wiley creek. An inspection of the area between the pump station and the creek was made to verify there were no visible pollutants on the ground, and there were none.

Once the leak was discovered the overflow was stopped immediately using pumps to direct flow to onsite storage. Village Engineer, Jeff Filarski, Service Director, Ted DeWater, and Pump Station Technician, Stewart Thompson, worked around the clock to get the pump station repaired and back to operating normally. Furthermore, a hauler was hired to transfer sewage by truck from Jackson Valley Pump Station to the Woodland Glen Pump Station and an extra pump was kept onsite as an emergency backup until all repairs were completed.

Council Members were notified of the mechanical failure by email on August 27th.  This issue was discussed in public meetings on September 11, September 24 and October 2. Mr. DeWater contacted the Ohio EPA to report the pump station malfunction, the sewage overflow and actions taken to correct the issue immediately. Furthermore, he submitted a “Sanitary Sewer Overflow 5 Day Follow Up” written report to the OEPA on October 8. The OEPA has been supportive of the actions we have taken. Furthermore, the representative we interact with at OEPA is impressed that we use telemetry to monitor our pump stations and that we have taken steps to protect that telemetry in case of another mechanical failure.

Unfortunately, mechanical parts occasionally break. We have redundancy and protections in our systems but very occasionally even that fails. Our last failure was in 2014; the OEPA representative stated that she realizes that the Village has a strong record of preventing equipment failures and overflows and stated that we efficiently handled this one. The Village spent $44,402.25 to clean up this issue. We have been in contact with our insurance carrier so that a claim can be processed to recover as much of this money as possible.

If you should have any questions, please feel free to contact me.