MSD proposes 50/50 credit-sharing IGAs with municipalities to permit development while reducing sewer backups
Get AI-powered insights, summaries, and transcripts
Subscribe
Summary
Metropolitan Sewer District deputy director Reese Johnson proposed a strategy to reduce sewer backups by identifying hydraulic clusters ('Larissas'), removing extraneous private-side flow, and crediting verified public-side removals to municipalities (Sharonville IGA on Thursday). MSD proposed a standard 50/50 split of required flow reductions.
Reese Johnson, deputy director and chief engineer for the Metropolitan Sewer District (MSD), presented a new SBU (sewer-backup) strategic risk reduction initiative on Jan. 27 that pairs MSD hydraulic analysis with municipal action to reduce private-side inflow and enable development in constrained areas.
Johnson said MSD identified clusters of recurrent backups—nicknamed 'Larissas'—and condensed an initial set of about 474 clusters to roughly 200 discrete areas that require management. By tracing upstream hydraulics, MSD can quantify the gallons per day that must be removed to allow a proposed development to proceed without worsening SBUs; Johnson gave an example that a downtown Sharonville proposal adding about 327 apartments would require roughly 82,000 gallons per day of removal, split in MSD’s illustrative example 50/50 between public- and private-side interventions.
MSD proposes adapting a consent-decree crediting approach (the 'stack' program) to SBU areas. Under a proposed intergovernmental agreement with Sharonville, MSD would remove or mitigate public-side sources and confirm private-side removals carried out or incentivized by the municipality; once verified, MSD would credit equal public-side removals into a local credit pool for Sharonville on a one-for-one basis so developers could be permitted to proceed.
Johnson explained verification steps—MSD identifies likely private-side contributors (downspouts, driveway drains, etc.), assigns standard credit values (for example, downspout removal ~400 gallons), and then inspects sites after remediation rather than requiring flow monitoring at every property. He said MSD is already in discussions with Springdale and Blue Ash about similar arrangements and that an IGA with Sharonville is on the county board agenda for Thursday.
Commissioners expressed strong support and asked whether municipalities would budget incentives; Johnson said municipal mechanisms (grants or other incentives) are under discussion and MSD can provide parcel-level lists of likely retrofit sites. He described the approach as a collaborative, replicable model to permit development while reducing the risk of household backups.
Johnson asked commissioners to approve the Sharonville IGA on Thursday to pilot the model; if the board approves, MSD plans broader outreach across its service area.