Warren Co. Socialville

• The Richard Miller plant is one of only a few in the country that pairs granular activated carbon with ultraviolet disinfection, and the GAC is regenerated on site in the plant's own reactivation furnace.
• Cincinnati's 1839 purchase of a private water company for $300,000 made it Ohio's first municipally owned water system.
• Rather than bury the problem in a storage tunnel, MSD dug up a mile of the long-buried Lick Run stream as green infrastructure, cutting about 400 million gallons of overflow a year.
• The city's two plants could hardly be more different: Miller filters river water through carbon and UV, while Bolton simply softens well water with lime.

• 1821The Front Street Pumping Station begins operating for the private Cincinnati Manufacturing Company, chartered in 1817; it served until Nov. 1907.
• 1839On June 25 the City of Cincinnati buys the water works for $300,000, becoming Ohio's first municipally owned water utility.
• 1907On Oct. 22 the 'New Works' on Kellogg Ave., begun in 1898 about ten miles upstream, starts continuous rapid-sand filtration.
• 2009MSD begins implementing its federal Clean Water Act wet weather program, one of the largest public works efforts in the region's history.
• 2024PFOA and PFOS at the Bolton groundwater plant test above EPA's new 4 ppt limits, starting a compliance push ahead of the 2029 deadline.

How it is treated

About 88% of supply is Ohio River water treated at the Richard Miller plant by coagulation, flocculation, sedimentation, rapid sand filtration, granular activated carbon, UV light and chlorine, with fluoride. The other 12% is Bolton well water, lime softened and chlorinated, with no GAC.

Water pressure

Not published as a system average. GCWW serves a hilly, multi-elevation area with numerous pressure districts, pump stations and storage tanks.

GCWW publishes an annual 'Cost of Your Water' residential rate sheet, but no per-1,000-gallon rate or effective year could be verified from the utility's live pages.

EPA compliance record · Warren Co. Socialville

Lead at the tap: 90th-percentile result 0.9 ppb in 2024 (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).

EPA compliance record · Cincinnati Public Water System (treats the water)

Lead at the tap: 90th-percentile result 2.1 ppb in 2026 (action level 15 ppb).

EPA record: no health-based violations since 2015.

Recent and current work

• Lick Run Greenway · 2021 · completed
  Daylighted a buried stream in South Fairmount; eliminates roughly 400 million gal/yr of combined sewer overflow to Mill Creek.
• MSD Wet Weather Program (consent decree) · 2009-present · under construction
  Has cut annual sewer overflow volume from about 14 billion to 5.9 billion gallons systemwide.

Planned or needed

• Bolton plant PFAS treatment · planned
  GCWW has grant money to study treatment options and says it will install whatever is needed to meet the 2029 PFAS standards.

The Ohio River source is high-volume and drought-resilient, and the Miller plant's GAC gives it a strong barrier against spills and PFAS. The live concern is the Bolton groundwater plant, where PFOA and PFOS exceed the new federal limits for roughly 12% of GCWW customers ahead of the 2029 deadline.

Sanitary

The Metropolitan Sewer District of Greater Cincinnati (MSD), a county-city partnership, provides sanitary sewers and wastewater treatment. MSD works under a federal Clean Water Act consent decree and has been implementing its wet weather program since 2009 to cut combined sewer overflows into Mill Creek and other waterways.

Storm

Much of the older urban core uses combined sanitary/storm sewers. MSD's wet weather plan mixes green infrastructure like the Lick Run Greenway with conventional separation and storage to reduce overflow-driven flooding.

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