Celina, City Of

• Celina drinks out of what was, when it was finished in 1845, the largest man-made lake on earth - dug entirely by hand by German and Irish laborers with shovels, picks and mule-drawn sleds for about 30 cents a day.
• The world's first offshore oil wells were drilled in Celina's drinking-water reservoir starting in 1891, on wooden cribs and pile platforms; more than 100 wells were pumping out on the lake by about 1913.
• Every Celina water bill carries a $2.00-per-1,000-gallon 'Water Treatment Chemical Cost Adjustment' that exists solely to pay for treatment chemicals and the granular activated carbon media used to strip algal toxins.…
• The city spent years hunting for another water source - wells, other surface water, anything - found nothing cost-effective, and decided to stay on an algae-plagued lake and buy better treatment instead.
• Celina's own municipal laboratory is Ohio EPA-certified to run total microcystin tests, which very few small-city water utilities do.

Source: lakeimprovement.comaoghs.orgcelinaohio.org

• 1837-1845Grand Lake St. Marys was dug by hand as a feeder reservoir for the Miami and Erie Canal by German and Irish laborers using shovels, picks and mule-drawn sleds; at 13,500 acres it was the largest…
• 1891The world's first offshore oil wells were drilled out on the lake itself, on derricks built atop pile platforms and log-and-stone 'cribs'; more than 100 wells operated over the water through about…
• 1949Grand Lake St. Marys was among Ohio's canal-feeder lakes dedicated as the state's first state parks.
• 2009-2010Ohio EPA posted no-contact advisories after microcystin from Planktothrix-dominated blooms far exceeded recreational health thresholds; 2010 readings ran hundreds of times over the swimming advisory…
• 2010Effective January 1, 2010, city ordinance established the Water Treatment Chemical Cost Adjustment (WTCCA), a per-1,000-gallon surcharge to recover the cost of treatment chemicals and GAC media.
• 2011Ohio designated the Grand Lake St. Marys watershed as 'distressed' (January 18, 2011), the first such designation in the state.

Source: celinaohio.orglakeimprovement.comen.wikipedia.org

How it is treated

Celina's plant draws raw surface water straight out of Grand Lake, which is fed entirely by agricultural and residential runoff from a 190-square-mile watershed (Upper Beaver, Grass, Coldwater and Burntwood creeks). Treatment is conventional clarification and filtration with a granular activated…

Source: celinaohio.orgdailystandard.comdam.assets.ohio.gov

Water pressure

Not published. No distribution pressure figure or pressure-zone description appears in the city's CCR, rate ordinance or utility pages. The 2024 CCR discusses pressure only in the…

$10.59 per 1,000 gallons

Typical household bill about $47 a month for water.

Inside-city residential, per the city rate sheet: $10.59 per 1,000 gal for the first 3,000 (minimum bill $31.77/month), $7.35 per 1,000 for the next 47,000, $6.14 per 1,000 over…

Source: celinaohio.orgcelinaohio.org

Source: celinaohio.org

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

• Ultraviolet advanced oxidation process at the water treatment plant · $531,000 · 2017 · completed
  Approved as an emergency by City Council in April 2017 and targeted for service by that September, when dying lake algae releases toxins. Placed ahead of…
• Ohio EPA Drinking Water Solutions Grant · $8 million · 2016 · completed
  Grant award that funded the UV unit, engineering and subsequent plant upgrades; about $1.3 million had been spent on engineering and related work by mid-2018.
• High-rate clarifier replacement at the water plant · 2018
  Prototype tested in 2018 - a dissolved-air-flotation-like process using charged microbubbles to float solids off, promising far higher solids removal and lower…
• Alternative water source study · 2018 · completed
  Multiyear search for a groundwater or alternate surface supply found no cost-effective option; the city committed to staying on Grand Lake and investing in…

Source: dailystandard.comdailystandard.com

Planned or needed

• Wastewater treatment plant expansion and upgrade · $32 million · 2027-2029 · planned
  Preliminary $32 million estimate to add a third oxidation ditch and two clarifiers and replace outdated equipment, in order to end bypasses to Beaver Creek and…

Source: dailystandard.com

High. Celina's only source is Grand Lake St. Marys, a 13,500-acre, roughly 1.5-metre-deep hypereutrophic reservoir whose 190-square-mile watershed is almost entirely agricultural and residential runoff. Persistent Planktothrix blooms have produced microcystin far above recreational and drinking-water advisory levels, and Ohio designated…

Source: celinaohio.orgdam.assets.ohio.govdailystandard.com

Sanitary

City-owned Celina Wastewater Treatment Plant at 1125 S. Elm Street, design flow 3.0 MGD, discharging to Beaver Creek and serving the city plus East Jefferson Township. The current plant went online in 1991, replacing a 1940 plant that had been upgraded in 1962. It handles dry weather fine but not wet-weather infiltration and inflow…

Storm

Celina runs a dedicated stormwater utility. Residential properties pay a flat $3.27 per month (effective 12/15/2008); non-residential properties are charged by impervious area multiplied by the same $3.27 unit rate. The city prohibits sump pumps and…

Source: dam.assets.ohio.govdailystandard.comcelinaohio.org

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