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Here is Millcreek Township's Frequently Asked Questions document. We think this information will help you understand the situation that Millcreek and other communities are facing, in respect to waste water treatment.

What’s the difference between the sanitary sewer and a storm sewer?

Millcreek’s sanitary sewer system receives and conveys to the City of Erie’s treatment plant sewage, or wastes from sinks, basement floor drains, garage drains, toilets and the like that need treatment so that they can then be discharged without causing contamination. A storm sewer carries water that does not need treatment.

What is storm water?

By and large, it is water that does not need treatment to protect against contamination, like water running out of or off of the ground, from roof gutters, a sump pump or the like.

What difference does it make if storm water goes into the sanitary sewer system?

It makes a lot of difference in many ways:

First, no sanitary sewer system is designed or sized so as to be able to carry storm water. To do that would cost millions of dollars just to convey water for treatment that doesn’t need treatment in the first place.

Second, we have an inter-municipal sanitary sewer system, with sewage flows from Millcreek and other suburbs being transported to the City of Erie for treatment at its facilities. The sanitary sewer system’s users pay for the costs of transportation and treatment of those flows. Each municipality has paid for an allocated capacity in the sanitary sewer system, based on known and projected future needs. If a municipality exceeds that capacity, it is subject to very substantial surcharges.

Third, the volume of storm water flows substantially increases after storm events or when snow melts. Storm water, added to the sanitary sewerage the system is intended to convey, can exceed the system’s capacity, leading to backups in people’s properties. This has also led to discharges of sewage into Walnut Creek, just to protect properties, and these discharges violate state and federal laws.

Did Millcreek ever allow people to discharge stormwater into the sanitary sewer?
No.

How much storm water is going into the sanitary sewer system today?

It is estimated that, on an average day, about 25% of the flows in the sanitary sewer system come from storm water. During and after a storm event, the storm water can exceed sanitary sewer flows by as much as 15 times