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City of Indianapolis Settlement

(Washington, D.C. - Monday, November 8, 2010) The Department of Justice, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the state of Indiana have reached an agreement with the city of Indianapolis on important modifications to a 2006 consent decree that will make Indianapolis’ sewer system more efficient, leading to major reductions in sewage contaminated water at a savings to the city of approximately $444 million.                                  

Prior to 2006, the city of Indianapolis and its 800,000 residents experienced Combined Sewer Overflows (CSO’s) totaling approximately 7.8 billion gallons per year.   Combined sewer systems, which have not been constructed for decades in the United States, carry both sanitary wastewater (domestic sewage from homes, as well as industrial and commercial wastewater), and storm water runoff (from rainfall or snowmelt) in a single system of pipes to a publicly owned treatment works.

A consent decree approved by a federal court in 2006 required the city to construct 31 CSO control measures, including a 24-million gallon capacity shallow interceptor sewer, to reduce the city’s overflows to approximately 642 million gallons per year.   Those improvements were expected to cost approximately $1.73 billion over a 20-year period.

 

For more information, contact:

Alan Morrissey
U. S. Environmental Protection Agency
Office of Civil Enforcement
Water Enforcement Division
1200 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20460
Office: 202-564-4026
morrissey.alan@epa.gov

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