Tallmadge City

• Tallmadge draws no water of its own — every drop comes from Akron's Upper Cuyahoga reservoir system, which starts at Lake Rockwell, built in 1915, and is pumped 11 miles to Akron before it reaches Tallmadge.
• Akron owns roughly 16,000 acres around its Cuyahoga River source reservoirs, about a third of the land bordering the river in Portage and Geauga counties, kept undeveloped as natural filtration for drinking water.
• Tallmadge's distribution system contains no known lead service lines at all — no lead, no galvanized pipe needing replacement, and no unknown-material lines.
• A hot, wet summer in 2025 loaded Akron's reservoirs with organic matter and forced heavier chlorination; the resulting disinfection byproducts pushed Tallmadge over the federal haloacetic acid limit for one quarter…
• Only about 28% of a Tallmadge utility bill is for water — the sewer charge, all of it paid to Akron for treatment, is the bigger half.

Source: tallmadgeoh.govakronohio.govtallmadgeoh.gov

• 1915Akron constructs Lake Rockwell Reservoir on the Upper Cuyahoga River in Franklin Township, Portage County, 2.5 miles north of Kent — the primary source Tallmadge buys from today.
• 1939East Branch Reservoir, in Geauga County, completed as supplemental storage for Akron's system.
• 1962Wendell R. LaDue Reservoir, also in Geauga County, completed, adding supplemental storage and drought buffering.
• 2003Ohio EPA completes a source water assessment of Akron's supply and rates its susceptibility to contamination as MODERATE, citing agricultural runoff, failing septic systems, municipal wastewater…
• 2024Akron restructures its water rates — the first increase since 2012 — raising the commodity rate from $2.73 to $3.06 per hundred cubic feet, adding a $9/month fixed infrastructure charge for…
• 2025Tallmadge incurs a Haloacetic Acids (HAA5) maximum contaminant level violation in the third quarter monitoring period, which the city attributes to unprecedented organics levels; HAA5 returns to…

Source: tallmadgeoh.govakronohio.govakronohio.gov

How it is treated

Tallmadge buys 100% finished water from the City of Akron and does no source treatment of its own. Akron's Water Supply Bureau draws surface water from the Upper Cuyahoga River, stored in three impounding reservoirs — Lake Rockwell in Portage County, supplemented by Wendell R. LaDue and East Branch…

Source: tallmadgeoh.govakronohio.govakronohio.gov

Water pressure

Not published. Neither Tallmadge's CCR and rate documents nor Akron's water bureau pages give a distribution system psi figure.

Source: tallmadgeoh.govtallmadgeoh.gov

$4.61 per 1,000 gallons

Typical household bill about $23 a month for water.

Tallmadge sets its own retail rate; it does not pass through Akron's retail schedule. Per Ordinance 2026-37, effective June 1, 2026, residential metered water is $0.03449 per…

Source: tallmadgeoh.govtallmadgeoh.gov

Source: tallmadgeoh.gov

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.

3 violations of any kind logged since 2020, 3 of them paperwork (monitoring, reporting, public notice or consumer report).

EPA compliance record · Akron City (treats the water)

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

• Four-year phased water rate increase · 2025 · under construction
  Adopted in 2025 to restore the water fund, which the city projected would run out of cash by the third quarter of 2027. Increases of 10% (June 1, 2025) then…

Source: tallmadgeoh.gov

Planned or needed

• Water line repair and replacement program · $5.6 million · 2025 · planned
  The city identifies approximately $5.6 million to repair aging and broken water lines, to be funded by the phased rate increases.
• Brittain Road Reservoir replacement (Akron, supplier) · 2024 · planned
  Supplier-side, not a Tallmadge asset. Akron's 110-year-old Brittain Road Reservoir is slated for replacement using the roughly $15 million per year raised by…
• Akron lead service line replacement (supplier) · 2024 · under construction
  Supplier-side, not a Tallmadge asset. Akron reported about 2,550 remaining active lead service connections and aims to be lead-free by the end of 2027.…

Source: tallmadgeoh.govakronohio.govwkyc.com

Tallmadge treats no water of its own and buys 100% from Akron's Upper Cuyahoga River reservoir system, though it holds emergency interconnections with Portage County Water Resources and the City of Kent (unused in 2025). Ohio EPA rated Akron's source water MODERATE susceptibility in 2003, with agricultural runoff, failing septic systems…

Source: tallmadgeoh.govtallmadgeoh.govwkyc.com

Sanitary

Tallmadge owns no wastewater plant. It is a Master Meter Community whose sanitary flow is split between two districts and treated by the City of Akron under an Ohio EPA permit — the same arrangement Cuyahoga Falls, Lakemore and Summit County use. Rates: after a 34% increase from upstream providers was phased in as 16% on May 1, 2022 and…

Storm

Not published. Neither Tallmadge's utility pages nor its master fee schedule describe a storm sewer system or a stormwater utility fee, and no separate stormwater charge appears in the 2026 fee schedule.

Source: tallmadgeoh.govtallmadgeoh.govtallmadgeoh.gov

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