Under the Weather
In Northeast Ohio, changing winter climate patterns mean storms are shifting away from steady snow accumulation and toward this specific weather pattern, causing immediate runoff on frozen ground.
What are intense winter rainstorms (or heavy freezing rain)?
The dangerous, widespread public belief that water entering a street storm drain goes here to be cleaned before entering Lake Erie.
What is wastewater treatment plant?
In older sections of Greater Cleveland, this specific type of dual-purpose sewer system mixes both stormwater and household sewage in a single pipe, presenting a unique management challenge during heavy downpours.
What is a Combined Sewer System?
This simple residential device attaches directly to a home downspout to harvest roof runoff, serving the dual purpose of slowing down yard erosion while conserving free water for landscaping.
What is a rain barrel?
Unlike the district’s clean water program, the Regional Stormwater Management Program focuses its daily operations on infrastructure maintenance and stream construction rather than this specific chemical process.
What is wastewater treatment at a treatment plant?
This specific type of localized flooding occurs during short-duration, high intensity cloudbursts when the volume of rainwater simply outpaces the capacity of neighborhood street grates and municipal pipes.
What is urban flooding?
Homeowners often mistakenly believe that switching from an asphalt driveway to this common grey building material will reduce their property's stormwater runoff.
What is concrete?
To prevent combined sewers from overflowing into the environmental waters, NEORSD relies on these massive, deep underground engineering projects to capture and store billions of gallons of intense wet-weather flow.
What are large-scale underground storage tunnels?
Rather than letting water sheet off a driveway, homeowners can build this shallow, landscaped depression filled with deep-rooted native plants to capture and naturally filter runoff within 48 hours.
What is a rain garden?
Maintaining a wide, un-mowed zone of native vegetation right along the edge of a stream or neighborhood pond – known by this two-word term – is vital for keeping banks from sliding into the water.
What is a riparian buffer (or vegetative buffer)?
While many people assume stormwater management only matters during massive storms, this specific term describes the continuous, cumulative impact of small, frequent rain events on urban stream channels.
What is accelerated stream bank erosion (or channel degradation)?
Property owners often panic when a neighborhood retention basin fills to the brim and spills over, missing the fact that the basin is built to hit this specific engineered limit during historic downpours.
What is design capacity/controlled overflow?
Stormwater routing through the southern and eastern suburbs of Greater Cleveland eventually flows into this waterway, which serves as the largest tributary to the Cuyahoga River.
What is Tinker’s Creek?
To protect local watersheds from toxic algae blooms, homeowners are urged to strictly avoid applying lawn fertilizers containing this specific nutrient right before a forecasted storm.
What is phosphorus?
To ensure local tax dollars directly benefit neighborhoods, this specific NEORSD funding initiative returns a dedicated percentage of stormwater fees right back to individual cities for local drainage fixes.
What is the Community Cost-Share Program?