Topic: Cincinnati: City versus Suburbs Policy Discussion

[jjakucyk]

Speaking of the Census, just when IS the 2010 Census data supposed to be available anyway? 

[Eighth and State]

   Don't know. The Census is still conducting field surveys. There is supposed to be a press conference tomorrow for the Census to give a status report.

[dmerkow]

Usually first numbers show up in the fall of year, w/ most coming out next spring. I'd add that with the ACS replacing the long form, we won't be waiting for ten years for a lot of population data.

[Ram23]

   Cincinnati Water Works is owned and operated by the City of Cincinnati.

   MSD is owned by Hamilton County and operated by the City of Cincinnati, by agreement signed in 1968. All MSD employees are City of Cincinnati employees. The director of MSD is a City of Cincinnati employee.

Good job figuring out how to look these things up.  Now figure out exactly how the sewer district decides to expand, and then we can talk about that.

I will add that the City of Cincinnati used to have a policy of only constructing water and sewer services for areas within the city.  The policy basically made it so that in order to get those services, landowners had to allow their land to be annexed into the city.  I can't remember if it was state legislation or the state supreme court that outlawed this practice, likely because they feared having Cincinnati become too large a city and overshadowing the rest of the state.

[Eighth and State]

   ^--- Some cities still have policies like that.

   Just for fun, can you imagine what the City of Cincinnati would be if the boundaries were taken as the water service area? The city would have a population of about a million.

[bbrown]

Pretty sure Columbus and San Antonio are two cities that have that policy.

[jmecklenborg]

You don't want that.  It makes sense at first but in practice it's a bad situation. Columbus basically can't do what Cincinnati's doing right now with the streetcar because the city itself is mostly suburban. Also, I am very much opposed to a merging of the county and city police forces. 

[dmerkow]

Columbus did not expand it's schools along w/ the city boundaries - so many Cbus residents send their kids to suburban schools. It changes the debate about urban/suburban competition in interesting ways.

[LincolnKennedy]

Columbus did not expand it's schools along w/ the city boundaries - so many Cbus residents send their kids to suburban schools. It changes the debate about urban/suburban competition in interesting ways.

Excellent point. 

I will add that the City of Cincinnati used to have a policy of only constructing water and sewer services for areas within the city.  The policy basically made it so that in order to get those services, landowners had to allow their land to be annexed into the city.  I can't remember if it was state legislation or the state supreme court that outlawed this practice, likely because they feared having Cincinnati become too large a city and overshadowing the rest of the state.

I'm pretty sure that the practice of annexing based on water supply was outlawed as a result of Columbus' actions, not Cincinnati's.  A lot of HamCo suburban cities have their own water companies (for example, Indian Hill and Wyoming) and they pay a lot more for it.  I suspect the other older towns had their own water facilities as well but the poorer ones eventually sold theirs off to CWW or merged with other suburban water companies.  Guesses all, not original research.

  "Now figure out exactly how the sewer district decides to expand, and then we can talk about that."

  Quest - Unsewered Areas of Hamilton County Summary, 1993

  page 1:  "In 1993, the Hamilton County Board of Commissioners recognized the need for a plan for wastewater management in areas of the County which are unsewered....These unsewered areas comprise approximately 90,000 acres or 35% of the total land area of the county." ...

So did you see any mention of the City of Cincinnati's sewer expansion policy in all that?

[jjakucyk]

I can't speak for municipalities who sold out their water systems to the CWW, but there's actually a surprising number of independent water districts in Hamilton County.  Aside from Indian Hill and Wyoming that were already mentioned, there's also Terrace Park, Norwood(!), Lockland and Reading (which might share Wyoming's system), Glendale, Loveland, and most of the far western areas of the county like Harrison, Cleves, North Bend, and Addyston. 

What is interesting is that there used to be independent sewer districts that were eventually brought under MSD.  Municipal treatment plants had been built in Lockland, Wyoming, College Hill, Glendale, and Mt. Healthy between 1909 and 1927.  Many were closed shortly thereafter because of the horrible pollution already present in the Mill Creek where their plants discharged.  It was argued that there wasn't much reason to clean the sewage that even untreated wasn't as bad as the creek.  By the close of WWII all those treatment plants had all been closed and the sewer networks were connected to the Mill Creek Interceptor, which unfortunately is still overwhelmed by combined sanitary, storm, and industrial flows.  A great resource for understanding the combined sewer problems, and the difficulty in fixing them, is Stanley Hedeen's book "The Mill Creek:  An Unnatural History of an Urban Stream."  It's a surprisingly enjoyable read, despite the rather bleak subject.     

[Eighth and State]

  "So did you see any mention of the City of Cincinnati's sewer expansion policy in all that?"

   The City of Cincinnati's policy is to let MSD deal with it. The City of Cincinnati has neither an expansion policy nor an urban growth policy; they simply don't have a policy regarding sewer extensions.

   "Never build anything underground - you won't get credit for it." - former Ohio governor James Rhodes.

    That said, the director of MSD is a city employee, who answers to the City Manager. Since MSD went through 6 directors in 8 years in the 1990's, it is obvious that the relationship between the City Manager and the director of MSD has not been smooth. (The current director has been there for about 5 years.) While the director doesn't necessarily have 100% control, he certainly has a great influence. The current director of MSD has an expansionist policy.

   

[Eighth and State]

"despite the rather bleak subject."

Bleak? Why, sewer and water utilities are at least as interesting as street railways, have a longer history, a greater value, and arguably have more influence on development than transportation. There hasn't been as much written about them because most of the infrastructure is underground and out of sight.

   

[jjakucyk]

It's bleak because its focus is really on Mill Creek itself, though the sewer system in the valley is intimately related to it.  Reading about the types of industrial pollutants that have been dumped into the thing (which Hedeen goes into in amazing detail on) is pretty gross and disheartening.  He goes into detail about the natural history of the area as well (and he even has another book that explores that aspect of the whole region), and reading about the early dense hardwood forests, farms and orchards, and the relatively pastoral quality of the valley until about the mid 1800s as compared to what it is today is also rather sobering. 

[Eighth and State]

  The water quality in the Mill Creek has been getting better since about 1940.

    What is Hedeen's other book?

[LincolnKennedy]

For a guy who posts frequently and often quotes other people's posts, you seem to have an extremely strange habit of missing the point.

  "So did you see any mention of the City of Cincinnati's sewer expansion policy in all that?"

   The City of Cincinnati's policy is to let MSD deal with it. The City of Cincinnati has neither an expansion policy nor an urban growth policy; they simply don't have a policy regarding sewer extensions.

You'd been complaining about what the City does to drive people to leave, to the point of building them their own sewer lines.  I mention that the City doesn't run the sewers, and now you're answering my snide rhetorical question?

"despite the rather bleak subject."

Bleak? Why, sewer and water utilities are at least as interesting as street railways, have a longer history, a greater value, and arguably have more influence on development than transportation. There hasn't been as much written about them because most of the infrastructure is underground and out of sight.

Jeff answered you, but it seemed pretty obvious that he was referring to the pollution as bleak and not the subject of municipal sewer systems.  This is an urban nerd forum, after all.

[jjakucyk]

Yes, they've done a good job of cleaning up Mill Creek, and have eliminated pretty much all the industrial point source pollution.  However, there's still many areas that have been channelized, which is just about the worst thing you can do to river, especially since you also lose the overhanging trees in the riparian zone.  Even with that, it's not too bad overall, UNTIL IT RAINS.  That's the key problem with the combined sewer overflows.  You get a flood of fast moving storm water, which is highly amplified from hard surface runoff in the watershed, and its also polluted by human waste which lingers for a good while after the flow returns to normal.  Basically, the creek is poisoned on a regular basis and has to try to recover from that while being in an already highly stressed state. 

Hedeen's other book is the "Natural History of the Cincinnati Region" published just four years ago.  It does a great job explaining the sorted history of glaciation in the region, the natural order of the area's indigenous flora and fauna, and the effects of development and invasive species.  He mentions, for example, that the forests in the ravine on the north side of Ault Park, and also much of California Woods are two of the very few remaining stands of old growth forest in the area. 

[Eighth and State]

   "I mention that the City doesn't run the sewers..."

    But the city DOES run the sewers!

    The 1968 agreement that formed MSD was not ideal, and has resulted in a lot of stress, but it clearly set up the City of Cincinnati as the operator of the sewers. All MSD employees are city employees.

    Yes, the city and county have clashed over sewers, and it was the county commissioners that initiated the QUEST program to extend sewers to unsewered areas, but it is clearly the city that operates the system. The city did not have to sign the 1968 agreement, but they chose to do so. 

   "You seem to have an extremely strange habit of missing the point."

    Sorry, I don't do it on purpose. 

[LincolnKennedy]

   "I mention that the City doesn't run the sewers..."

Meant to say, plan new sewer construction.  I've got to actually proofread my comments to your posts because I can't assume anything.

[jmecklenborg]

>It's a surprisingly enjoyable read, despite the rather bleak subject.     

I remember when CityBeat reviewed it, but it took me a few years to go and read it.  It's a shame he probably made less than $5,000 on that book. We have sucky books about our city because there's no money in it, unlike the big cities and tourist traps. 

The biggest thing I took away from that book was the realization that much of the argument about the pollution of the canal was probably actually the conditions of the Mill Creek transfered in the minds of citizens to the canal. This sentiment was recognized and exploited by the era's politicians in getting the City Hospital moved up to Corryville/Avondale (which neighborhood, technically, is University Hospital in?) and agitation for the subway/parkway. The average person can't tell the difference between a creek and a canal, and definitely can't trace the source of an industrial odor in a mixed urban environment.  That smell up by Paddock Rd. usually attributed to the Seagram's distillery is said to instead come from a place that makes artificial flavorings.  People blame it on the distillery because you can see it from the highway.  I don't know the answer.  I haven't taken the time to sniff the area in a systematic manner.  Possibly it's both.  All I know is I'm glad that I had a chance to ride in a car through Gary, Indiana around 1984 and smell what truly bad industrial cities used to smell like.     

[jjakucyk]

This sentiment was recognized and exploited by the era's politicians in getting the City Hospital moved up to Corryville/Avondale (which neighborhood, technically, is University Hospital in?) and agitation for the subway/parkway.

It's pretty much all Corryville, which is a fairly consistent rectangle bound by Jefferson near UC, Vine north of MLK, Erkenbrecker, Burnet, and McMillan.  That's an interesting point about the canal vs. Mill Creek, especially when you consider that in the later years of the canal some and eventually all the water was diverted into the creek up near Spring Grove Cemetery.  The added flow of pretty clean water helped immensely to flush out Mill Creek.  However, the stretch of the canal along Eggleston Avenue was abandoned sometime in the 1850s or 60s, and as far as I can tell there was no spillway south of Spring Grove.  With fewer industrial customers (especially breweries) using the canal in OTR and downtown, I suspect stagnation really was a problem, though they could've just tapped into a sewer line near Sycamore or Cheapside to keep the flow going. 

[Eighth and State]

    There may have been a raceway down Eggleston to dump water, and possibly use it for hydropower, after the segment of the canal down Eggleston was abandoned.

    I have a feeling that the raceway is still there, as well as the original canal lock walls, buried under the street somewhere.

    The Broadway Commons site contains about 40 feet of fill, to give you an idea of what the original ground in that area looked like.

     

[jjakucyk]

They pretty well removed the locks and whatever structures used to be there.  No maps show any sort of raceway or anything left at all after that stretch of the canal was abandoned.  It's possible that they did drain it into one of the sewers under Eggleston or Culvert Street.  They already had to drain Deer Creek through there (hence Culvert Street), and those are some very large constructions.  There's a newer round pipe under Eggleston that's 12' in diameter, but the presumably original one made of stone is 14' high by 12' wide...damn!  There's 8' diameter pipes under Broadway Commons and Culvert Street, which could easily suck the canal dry, but I don't know if they ever plugged into those.

[Eighth and State]

   On page 159 of Raja Rooman's book "Urban growth and the development of an urban sewer system" there is a drawing labeled "Section at N. End Lock 7" which shows a 14' W x 12' H sewer adjacent to an 8' circular raceway. I don't know if that raceway is still there or not, but it was clearly underground in this drawing, which is not dated.