![\"Edgewater](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/XPNGJXXSI5EB7HGS7NYRD73R5U.jpg\")
The combined sewer outfall at Edgewater Beach, seen here in 2023, can be activated during heavy rains.Peter Krouse, cleveland.com<\/p>\nCLEVELAND, Ohio \u2013 Raw sewage flowed into Lake Erie at Edgewater Beach Thursday night, prompting the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District to post warnings of poor water quality.<\/p>\n
Sewer maintenance teams were alerted to a potential overflow at Edgewater Beach at 9:46 p.m., sewer district spokeswoman Jenn Elting said. The actual overflow began at 10:05 p.m. and lasted for 25 minutes.<\/p>\n
During that time, 4.9 million gallons \u2013 the equivalent of 7.5 Olympic-size swimming pools – of combined storm and sanitary sewage poured out of the massive pipe at the west end of the beach, in the area where dogs are allowed.<\/p>\n
Typically, the first flush of stormwater carries most of the raw sewage to a water treatment plant, Elting said, but an unknown amount gets released onto the beach.<\/p>\n
Crews responded to the overflow in the middle of the night to repair the section of the beach that was washed away by the flows.<\/p>\n
The combined sewer outfall at Edgewater Beach, seen here in 2023, can be activated during heavy rains.Peter Krouse, cleveland.com<\/p>\n
The sewer district will test the water off Edgewater Beach in 10 spots twice a day until each of the locations shows acceptable E. coli bacteria levels. Only then will the sewer district change the water rating from poor to good, Elting said.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the third time this year that the overflow pipe at Edgewater has been activated. There was a 15-minute flow on July 16 and a 20-minute flow on June 14.<\/p>\n
There was only one overflow at Edgewater Beach last year, but three occurred in 2023, with one lasting for 40 minutes that can be seen in the video below.<\/p>\n
Climate change has resulted in more of the short, heavy rains<\/a> that overwhelm the city\u2019s combined sewer system at times, Elting said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe tend to use the phrase \u2018warmer, wetter, wilder weather,\u2019\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Thursday night\u2019s storm was categorized as a 5-year, 30-minute storm, Elting said, which means a storm of its size had a 20% chance of occurring and that it happened over a half-hour period.<\/p>\n If you purchase a product or register for an account through a link on our site, we may receive compensation. By using this site, you consent to our User Agreement<\/a> and agree that your clicks, interactions, and personal information may be collected, recorded, and\/or stored by us and social media and other third-party partners in accordance with our Privacy Policy.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CLEVELAND, Ohio \u2013 Raw sewage flowed into Lake Erie at Edgewater Beach Thursday night, prompting the Northeast Ohio…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":91900,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[746,159,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-91899","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114914989793024123","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91899\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/91900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}