Aqua Ohio - Struthers

• The system's entire water source is a private lake: Aqua Ohio owns Evans Lake outright, 582 acres created by damming Yellow Creek in 1948.
• Neighboring Campbell is easy to confuse with Struthers but runs a completely separate water system drawing on Lake McKelvey and Lake Hamilton.
• Struthers' wastewater plant runs two mismatched treatment trains side by side — activated sludge on the West End, plastic-media trickling filters on the East End — off one shared headworks.
• Only about a third of the flow through the Struthers plant is actually Struthers': 64.5% arrives from Mahoning County territory outside the city.

• 1948The Evans Lake dam on Yellow Creek in Poland Township was completed, creating the 582-acre reservoir that still supplies the Aqua Ohio Struthers system.
• 1961The City of Struthers Water Pollution Control Facility was constructed; it was last upgraded in 2011.
• 2004Ohio EPA's Mahoning River TMDL found bacteria impairment upstream and downstream of the Struthers plant, attributing it to unsewered areas, combined and sanitary sewer overflows, livestock and…
• 2025A new Aqua Ohio rate agreement was reported for the Struthers service area after the prior 2012 contract expired December 31, 2024, setting a 20.5% increase phased across 2026-2029.

How it is treated

Raw water is drawn from Evans Lake, a Yellow Creek impoundment in Poland Township, and treated at Aqua Ohio's Poland plant before distribution to Struthers, New Middletown and neighboring parts of Mahoning County. Ohio EPA identifies the source and plant; the specific unit-process train was not…

Water pressure

not published — no system-wide psi figure found in sources reviewed.

$11.68 per 1,000 gallons

2026 residential rate under the reported Aqua Ohio agreement: $11.68 per 1,000 gallons plus a $16.90 monthly base charge on a 5/8" x 3/4" meter. Rising to $11.73 (2027), $12.35…

EPA compliance record

Lead at the tap: 90th-percentile result 0 ppb in 2025 (action level 15 ppb).

EPA record: no health-based violations since 2015.

2 violations of any kind logged since 2020, 2 of them paperwork (monitoring, reporting, public notice or consumer report).

Recent and current work

• Struthers WPCF sanitary sewer overflow compliance schedule · 2023 · under construction
  Ohio EPA included a compliance schedule in the renewed NPDES permit to address collection-system SSOs, plus SSO reporting special conditions.
• Inflow and infiltration elimination program · under construction
  City program to keep stormwater out of the sanitary sewers and eliminate system overflows, across roughly 50 miles of Struthers sanitary sewer.
• Struthers WPCF upgrade · 2011 · completed
  Most recent major upgrade to the 1961 facility, per the Ohio EPA NPDES fact sheet.

Planned or needed

• Aqua Ohio phased rate increases, 2026-2029 · planned
  5% in 2026, 5% in 2027, 5.25% in 2028 and 5.25% in 2029 — about $2.98 more per month initially on a 3,900-gallon bill.
• Industrial pretreatment program (contingent) · proposed
  Struthers has not been required to run a pretreatment program, but Ohio EPA reserved the right to modify the permit to require one.

Evans Lake is a single, privately owned 582-acre impoundment, a smaller drought buffer than large regional reservoirs such as nearby Meander Creek. The Mahoning River downstream is listed as impaired for recreational-use bacteria, with combined and sanitary sewer overflows among the named sources.

Sanitary

The City of Struthers operates its own Water Pollution Control Facility at 530 Lowellville Rd, discharging to the Mahoning River (then Beaver River and Ohio River). Average design flow is 6.0 MGD with a peak hydraulic capacity of 9.5 MGD, serving about 34,500 people in Struthers, the Village of Poland, and parts of Youngstown, Poland…

Storm

Sanitary sewer overflows are reported and under an Ohio EPA compliance schedule, and the Mahoning River corridor carries documented combined and sanitary sewer overflow contributions to bacteria impairment. No dedicated citywide stormwater utility fee was…

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