CLEVELAND — Jennifer Schwelik and Lisa Thomas are leaders of the Story Church on Madison Avenue, who believe more federal funds are desperately needed to significantly repair chronic water and sewer issues in their neighborhood.
Schwelik and Thomas also run the Twice Blessed Free Store located in the church basement and told News 5 that multiple sewer back-ups over the past several years have hurt the distribution of toys, coats, clothing and more as they try to help immigrant families also victimized by Cleveland's aging infrastructure.
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"We must have flooded 20 times, at least once a year, and all of our donations got wet; we had to throw away a lot of our merchandise because of this flooding," Thomas said. "Absolutely, it's quality of life when we have families come here because their basement is flooded and all their children's clothes are saturated in sewage.”
Schwelik told News 5 that local business owners are also being hit hard by the infrastructure issues and believe fewer people are willing to move back into Cleveland because of the chronic water issues.
“It's major problems and not just once, it’s happening annually, it discourages people because then they don’t want to stay," Schwelik said. “For local business owners, intermittent, unexpected periods of time that would certainly affect your income, even if you’ve got insurance to cover stuff, it just affects your income.”
Cleveland mother Monica Correa, who dealt with a November water main break in front of her West 101 Street apartment, told News 5 it's hard to raise children when water service is constantly interrupted.
“We didn’t have any water for two or three weeks, and it’s constantly happening left and right, so it’s not getting handled," Correa said. “They need to do something about it because we’ve got kids living in these apartment complexes and everything else and it’s just ridiculous.”
News 5 reached out to Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown about federal infrastructure dollars coming to Northeast Ohio in the coming months, and he issued the following statement:
Broken water mains are frustrating and nerve wracking for Clevelanders and they shouldn’t have to deal with them. Its why we passed the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law which will allow Ohio communities like Cleveland to finally replace ancient water infrastructure, using American-made materials and installed by Ohio workers. I will continue fighting to ensure communities across Ohio quickly receive these needed infrastructure investments.
Ohio Congresswoman Shontel Brown also responded to our story and issued the following statement:
This year, I requested more than $2.7 million in federal funds to improve local sewers in Cleveland and Lakewood. These funding requests are currently pending as Congress works through appropriations. This is another example of what is at stake as we debate the budget and push back against efforts to enact drastic cuts or shutdown the government. Thanks to the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, there will be billions of dollars in federal funding for water infrastructure allocated this decade.
The Cleveland Division of Water told us more federal dollars are needed in the following statement:
Cleveland Water has focused Capital Improvement Projects on addressing the 5,300 miles of underground pipes necessary to deliver high-quality water to the communities we serve. We are investing $30 million a year in capital funds to replace and renew aging water mains throughout our service area. Additionally, we are always evaluating opportunities for federal dollars to support these projects.
Meanwhile, Thomas told News 5 Cleveland leaders must spearhead the charge in demanding more federal resources because it's tough to raise children or run a church, charity or business with constant water and sewer problems.
“We have a complaint into the city and we’ve called the water company and we’ve told them over and over again," Thomas said. “Our basement is getting flooded, everything is getting ruined and we have to start all over and it gets to be expensive, you know the insurance company, the insurance rates start rising.”
News 5 is committed in following through on this important issue.
