THIS BLOG WILL BE UPDATED AS MORE INFORMATION BECOMES AVAILABLE. See News UPDATES in side panel.
Attention: Recreation on Mill Creek south of Salway Park on Spring Grove Avenue, as well as in the West Fork Creek channel in the South Cumminsville neighborhood should be avoided at this time. Recreation on the Ohio River downstream of Cincinnati should also be avoided.
MSD’s Mill Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant has been affected by the failure of a high-voltage substation transformer that feeds power to the treatment plant. As a result, there have been Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO) discharges along Mill Creek from the Northside neighborhood, south to the Ohio River. The discharges are visible and there may also be odors near the creek over the next few days. MSD is working diligently and quickly to restore power to the plant with six 1.5-megawatt generators and they are expecting to begin limited pumping by the end of the day today.
Mill Creek Alliance has mobilized a response team of staff and water quality monitoring volunteers to sample the affected areas for contaminants. Testing at these sites will continue until further notice and data will be shared with the public. Assessments are being performed to understand how much Mill Creek is being affected by the discharges.
Results of the March 6th water sampling conducted by Mill Creek Alliance staff and volunteers. According to Dr. Mike Mill, local expert, the data show largest sources of at CSO 05 (near Lick run outfall). West Fork Creek is contributing as well and perhaps the large CSO at Northside. Conductivity shows almost the same pattern, but shows that the West Fork Creek is a bigger source of salts than of E. coli.
In addition, with support from MSD, Mill Creek Alliance successfully requested that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers increase the amount of water being released from the West Fork Mill Creek dam at Winton Woods. This will keep streamflow higher than normal and will help flush material out of the stream more quickly, greatly mitigating any damage to stream ecology. The increased flow will continue through Friday, by which time MSD believes it will have restored enough pumping capacity to end the CSO releases.
Again, it is recommended that recreation on Mill Creek south of Salway Park be avoided at this time, as well as in the West Fork Creek channel in the South Cumminsville neighborhood. It is also recommended that recreation on the Ohio River downstream of Cincinnati also be avoided.
MCA will be sharing further information and updates on social media and our website as they become available.
News UPDATES
April 14, 2023
WCPO Channel 9
March 11, 2023 3:36 pm
Update: Good news! MSD has its pumping system back online, and it appears that there are currently no CSO discharges in Mill Creek or the Ohio River!
March 10, 2023
City of Cincinnati
March 10, 2023 10:30 am
March 6, 2023 - 6:12 pm
![IMG_9167[1].JPG](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5b2b9f2a96d455e5b0c2632d/1678467515463-7K4Z2OSISEOTTB3T0TUG/IMG_9167%5B1%5D.JPG)