Akron City

• Akron pulled its last lead service line, public and private, on November 19, 2025, ending a 60-year effort and making it the largest Ohio system with none left.
• The Ohio Canal Interceptor Tunnel is 27 feet across and 6,240 feet long, and holds 25.6 million gallons of storm flow during a heavy rain.
• Akron Water manages more than 20,000 acres of watershed on the upper Cuyahoga River, land the city has protected for over a century.
• In 2025 Akron bought backup water from Medina County for 57 days, 51.3 million gallons, while rehabilitating a storage tank.

• 1915Akron completed the Lake Rockwell dam and treatment plant on the upper Cuyahoga River, 2.5 miles north of Kent in Portage County.
• 2014Akron entered the federal consent decree behind Akron Waterways Renewed!, following a 2009 Clean Water Act settlement, to cut combined sewer overflows to the Cuyahoga.
• 2020The Ohio Canal Interceptor Tunnel went into full service in June, storing up to 25.6 million gallons and keeping about 467 million gallons a year out of local waterways.
• 2023A federal court approved a downsized Northside Interceptor Tunnel, 16.5 ft rather than 24 ft in diameter, saving about $50 million, with a Dec 31, 2026 deadline.
• 2025Akron finished removing every lead service line on Nov 19 after a 60-year effort, and had an HAA5 MCL violation at 2 of 12 sites in the third-quarter monitoring period.

How it is treated

Lake Rockwell water, supplemented by releases from LaDue and East Branch reservoirs in Geauga County, is filtered, fluoridated and disinfected with chlorine and chlorine dioxide, with zinc orthophosphate and pH above 7 for corrosion control, then pumped 11 miles to Akron via three force mains.

Water pressure

not published; the utility notes 21% of the system sits at higher elevations served by eight additional pump-station and tank districts

$4.09 per 1,000 gallons

Typical household bill about $27 a month for water.

2024 restructuring: $3.06 per HCF (748 gal) = $4.09 per 1,000 gal, plus a new $9/month fixed infrastructure charge; the prior $2.73/HCF had held since 2012

EPA compliance record

Lead at the tap: 90th-percentile result 2.7 ppb in 2025 (action level 15 ppb).

EPA health-based violations since 2015:

• 2025Haloacetic acids (HAA5) · exceeded a maximum contaminant level · measured 0.062 MG/L · returned to compliance

1 violation of any kind logged since 2020, 0 of them paperwork (monitoring, reporting, public notice or consumer report).

Recent and current work

• Ohio Canal Interceptor Tunnel (OCIT-1) · 2020 · completed
  27 ft diameter, 6,240 ft; stores 25.6 million gallons; prevents ~467 million gallons of CSO a year. Cost not published.
• Lead service line replacement · 2025 · completed
  every public and private lead service line removed, finished 11/19/2025; largest Ohio system to do so
• Akron Waterways Renewed! consent-decree program · $1000 million · under construction
  24 of 26 consent-decree projects complete since 2014; about $1 billion invested to date

Planned or needed

• Northside Interceptor Tunnel · 2026 · under construction
  25th of 26 decree projects; downsized to 16.5 ft diameter, about a mile long; due Dec 31, 2026

Supply hangs on a single upper-Cuyahoga watershed rated moderate susceptibility in Ohio's 2003 assessment: farm runoff, failing septic systems, wastewater discharges and spill risk where rail and road corridors cross. In 2025 Akron leaned on its Medina County intertie for 57 days, 51.3 million gallons, during a tank rehab.

Sanitary

The City of Akron runs the sanitary and combined sewer system under the 2014 federal consent decree, which followed a 2009 Clean Water Act settlement, discharging to the Cuyahoga watershed. 24 of 26 decree projects are done at about $1 billion; when complete the system captures 99% of wet-weather flow.

Storm

Combined sanitary and storm sewers in older parts of the city are being separated or intercepted under the consent-decree tunnel program; no dedicated stormwater utility fee identified this pass.

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