Newark City

• In 1922 Newark became the first municipal waterworks anywhere to scrape settled sludge out of its basins by machine rather than by hand.
• Newark was the first water system in Ohio, and among the first in the country, to disinfect with ultraviolet light - a step it added in 2004.
• The plant deliberately drives its water to a pH of about 10.8 with lime to crash out hardness, then bubbles carbon dioxide back in to bring it down to about 8.8 before filtering.
• Only 16% of Newark's sewers are combined, but that sixth of the system still feeds 20 permitted overflow outfalls to the Licking River and Raccoon Creek.

• 1886The privately owned Newark Water Company began operating a pumping station and distribution system.
• 1910City of Newark bought the private water company and merged it with the municipal plant it had built in 1905 on the North Fork.
• 1922Newark became the first municipal waterworks to remove settled sludge by mechanical means, adding softening and filtration at the same time.
• 2004Plant became the first in Ohio and one of the first in the United States to disinfect drinking water with ultraviolet light.
• 2016-2020Phase II Combined Sewer Overflow Long-Term Control Plan submitted Dec. 31, 2016, amended Feb. 21, 2020, and approved by Ohio EPA on March 27, 2020.

How it is treated

Lime softening plant, 15 MGD design, drawing directly from the North Fork Licking River (~75 sq mi watershed) through riverbank mechanical screens. Pre-oxidation with permanganate, chlorine and powdered carbon; rapid mix with lime and ferric sulfate; flocculation; three sedimentation basins…

Water pressure

not published; a finished water pump station with four pumps supplies pressure to the distribution system, but no psi figure is given

$6.35 per 1,000 gallons

Effective Jan. 1, 2026: $4.75 per 100 cubic feet for the first 350 units ($6.35 per 1,000 gal). Combined water and sewer minimum bill is $31.77 per month; sewer adds a $9.33…

EPA compliance record

Lead at the tap: 90th-percentile result 0 ppb in 2023 (action level 15 ppb).

EPA record: no health-based violations since 2015.

1 violation of any kind logged since 2020, 1 of them paperwork (monitoring, reporting, public notice or consumer report).

Recent and current work

• High rate treatment facility at Newark WWTP · completed
  Ballasted flocculation adding 28 MGD of wet-weather solids removal and disinfection; Ohio EPA proposes reclassifying its Outfall 034 from a CSO to a bypass.
• Newark WWTP re-rating to 9.0 MGD · 2026 · completed
  Permit-to-Install DSWPTI-260365 issued April 7, 2026 raising average daily design flow from 8.0 to 9.0 MGD; plant last upgraded 2022.
• CSO Long-Term Control Plan Bundle 1 · completed
  Implemented over the last five years; an Oct. 24, 2025 programmatic review found the projects performed better than expected.

Planned or needed

• CSO Long-Term Control Plan Bundles 2 and 3 · planned
  Separations, interceptor upsizing, relief sewers and headworks work targeting 11 overflow events per typical year and over 99% wet-weather capture; the 16…

A river-fed supply on a small ~75 sq mi agricultural watershed: nitrate reached 6.02 ppm against a 10 ppm MCL, atrazine is routinely detected, and Cryptosporidium turned up in 5 of 11 raw water samples in the CCR's cited monitoring. Individual TTHM samples ran to 106 ppb. Low river flow is the standing supply risk.

Sanitary

City of Newark operates its own WWTP (built 1948, last upgraded 2022) discharging to the Licking River, then the Muskingum and Ohio. Average daily design flow was re-rated from 8.0 to 9.0 MGD in April 2026; peak secondary capacity is 20 MGD, with overflow to a 1.0-MG equalization basin and then a 28 MGD high rate treatment system. The…

Storm

Newark runs a separate stormwater utility under Ordinances 17-21 and 05-55, created for Clean Water Act Phase II compliance and billed per equivalent residential unit - $8.05/ERU/month effective Jan. 1, 2026, rising to $9.60 by 2030 under Resolution 25-69.

Compiled from the utility's own reports and public records, then independently re-checked against primary sources.