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About ALMU Avon Lake Municipal Utilities was founded in 1925 to provide water for 1,200 Avon Lake residents.
The Water Pollution Control Center was established in 1960 to meet the community’s need for safe wastewater treatment and was upgraded in 1970 to provide secondary treatment for the City’s industry. The wastewater plant presently has a capacity of 6.5 million gallons a day and can accept flows as high as 12.5 mgd during wet weather periods. The Center was expanded in1985 to add a diaphragm filter press facility, which compresses plant sludge into dry cakes suitable for disposal in the Utilities', EPA approved, landfill. Distribution & Collection were consolidated in1960 to service the City’s water and sewer system, which today comprises approximately 250 miles of water and sewer mains. Recognizing the need for additional workspace and plant security, the Board of Municipal Utilities authorized the purchase of 10 acres of land for a new garage/office complex at 201 Miller Road in 2002. The remote location, within a mile of the Water Filtration Plant and adjacent to the Water Pollution Control Center landfill, is an ideal site for the utility’s new home. The Engineering Division was created in 2002 to provide a more efficient operation. Engineering services, such as oversight of the new office garage complex and expansion of the water plant filter building, were previously performed either by upper and middle management or "top dollar" outside engineering services. Upper management’s primary responsibility now is growing the business and responsibility for the daily activities of running the utility belongs to middle management. As the utility grows organizational restructuring is an important part of the Utilities’ Strategic Plan, which is a "living document" that is periodically reviewed by the staff and Board of Municipal Utilities. It’s mission is to provide water and sewer customers with the highest quality products and services at the lowest possible cost.
When zebra mussels invaded the Great Lakes in the ‘80s. Avon Lake was the region’s first utility to innovate methods of preventing mussels from obstructing raw water intakes. On-the-board plant improvements include adding membrane filtration, a state-of-the-art technology that removes dirt and bacteria more cost-effectively. Avon Lake Municipal Utilities and its 32 full-time employees are dedicated to providing the highest quality products and services at the lowest possible cost, while maximizing return on investment to its owners, the residents of Avon Lake.
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The price tag of $390,000 then included the cost of the land and the original water plant and administration building, which were constructed a year later. Today Avon Lake Municipal Utilities is a $40,000,000 operation, with a modern Water Filtration Plant that provides high quality water to over 180,000 people in a 600-square-mile, five-county area. The present plant capacity of 40 million gallons a day is a far cry from the 2 mgd of 77 years ago.
First in technology, Avon Lake is fortunate to have one of the most progressive drinking water and wastewater treatment systems in the Great Lakes region. The utility was first to fluoridate its drinking water in the ‘50s, and in the mid ‘70’s designed the first EPA-approved tube settler and high-rate filtration system in the state. The design, which saved millions of dollars in construction costs, has become the model for the Avon Lake Water Filtration Plant expansion and a standard for water plant improvement in Ohio.
