Our Democratic Candidate

Water, Water, Water

Waste Water

One of the defining issues affecting any community is how it supplies its residents with water. Water and waste water are the fuel and exhaust of any healthy economic engine. Failure to supply either in appropriate proportion causes the engine to stop working altogether. Portage County was at risk in both of these areas. Chuck Keiper has used his energy and talent to secure our future sources of both these vital community commodities.

For over 100 years the City of Akron had claimed complete and total ownership of the water in the Cuyahoga River. In his very first campaign for office Chuck made this a central issue. It took a decade and the might of the Ohio Supreme Court, but Portage County has-at last-its own rights to the water in the Cuyahoga River System restored.

Why is this important to Portage County voters? The answer is simple. Our victory guarantees Portage County's economic growth for the next 50 years and helps to stabilize treatment rates for all Portage County consumers. Why? The Cuyahoga River is the key to our community being able to expand our treatment of waste water. Under Akron's claim, Portage County residents would have been subject to constantly increasing fees in their sewer bills. Additionally, sewage treatment in Portage County would have been held to standards significantly higher than our neighbors. Our communities would have been unable to add any addition outflow from our treatment plants into the Cuyahoga, meaning that all growth in new houses or new business would have come to an immediate and permanent halt. Thanks to Chuck Keiper's foresight and hard work, our future is secure.

Drinking Water

The water we drink is also remarkably important to the economic security of Portage County. Without water communities cannot grow, homes cannot be built and factories cannot expand. Again, as Chuck brought his focus to this problem, Portage County found the right long-term solution. Prompted by the City of Aurora to find enough water supply to accommodate all of that city's anticipated growth, Chuck headed the Portage County negotiating team that successfully negotiated a first-of-its-kind agreement with the City of Cleveland. This new agreement will allow up to 5 million gallons a day of the water from Lake Erie to be sent to Portage County for consumption. By all estimates this means that the water supply for this part of our community will be guaranteed for the next one hundred years. Not only that, but Portage County rate payers will save millions of dollars by not having to drill new wells and build new treatment facilities.

Storm Water

The silent threat to the development of Portage County is storm water. Storm water refers to the water that runs over the land through established drainage courses ultimately making its way into our streams and rivers. As Portage County continues to develop it becomes increasing difficult for water that used to be absorbed into the ground to find a place to go. More and more often areas that have not traditionally been flooded during storms are becoming areas where flooding is common place.

A few years ago this growing problem was made worse because of changes to the US Clean Water Act. The new regulations require communities to take a great many steps to ensure that water run-off is free from pollution and won't contaminate our drinking water supply. That means that things like road salt, farm chemicals, lawn fertilizers and the like will need to eventually be monitored.

As the new regulations have taken shape, Chuck has used his voice to make sure that all of our communities have the opportunity to begin addressing the regulation in as affordable a way as possible. Portage County offered townships the opportunity to participate directly with the county on a number of the initial EPA required steps so that they would not have to spend monies from their already limited budgets.

Storm water will be a defining issue for Portage County over the next 20 years. How our community chooses to address the new laws will be very critical. It will take teamwork and open minded collaboration to move us toward a successful outcome. Chuck Keiper has used his leadership abilities to help craft solutions in both our drinking and waste water programs and he promises to use the same levels of energy, commitment, and openness to solve this one.