On Oct. 27, the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District (NEORSD) unveiled the first of 10 core green infrastructure projects to reduce combined sewer overflows to Lake Erie. The bioretention project displayed in October involved the transformation of three neglected lots in Cleveland’s Slavic Village neighborhood. The bioretention facilities are expected to retain more than 757,000 L (200,000 gal) of stormwater runoff annually. The green infrastructure projects are part of Project Clean Lake, NEORSD’s 25-year effort to reduce the total annual volume of raw sewage discharges from 17 million m3 (4.5 billion gal) to 1.9 million m3 (502 million gal). Most of the reductions will come from building seven storage tunnels, which will hold overflows until they can be treated. The effort, required under a federal consent decree, is expected to cost $3 billion. Of that, $42 million will be spent on green infrastructure projects, which should be complete before 2019.