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Garrett A. Morgan Water Treatment Plant Open House

Blog Date
Author(s)
Stuart O. Smith, Jr.
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Cleveland
Water Treatment

Garrett A. Morgan Water Treatment Plant Open House
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On the morning of Saturday, May 12, 2018, I woke up knowing that I would be attending my wife, Julie's, concert in the evening, but I had a strong sense that I had forgotten a daytime event that I had wanted to attend. There is always something going on that you can learn about by following the right organziations on Twitter. Luckily, I was reminded by a 7:24 a.m. "What's it gonna be for you today?" tweet by @ShareTheRiver. The tweet linked to the Share The River event post: Cleveland Water Tour of the Garrett A. Morgan Water Treatment Plant

The Share The River event post stated that in celebration of American Water Works Association's (@AWWAACE) Drinking Water Week, Cleveland Water (@ClevelandWater) was hosting an open house of their Garrett A. Morgan Water Treatment Plant. This was the final event of Cleveland Water's Drinking Water Week 2018 activities.

Cleveland Water Open House

02/02/2018

In celebration of Drinking Water Week, Cleveland Water will be holding an open house from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday, May 12, at the Garrett A. Morgan Water Treatment Plant.

Join us for an opportunity to learn how your water goes from lake to tap with a free guided tour. We’ll also have family-friendly activities, hands-on demonstrations and exhibits, food trucks, games, and giveaways.

Registration is encouraged for tours, which are approximately 30 minutes long. Please note that the last tour leaves at 3 p.m. The Morgan Plant, like all of our water treatment plants, is a 365/24/7 operation. Some areas may be very noisy. Certain restrictions will be in place for your and our employees’ safety.

Tours also involve considerable walking and standing. If you have any accessibility needs, please let us know in advance, and we will make accommodations as we want all of our guests to be able to participate.

Initially started more than 35 years ago by the American Water Works Association (AWWA), National Drinking Water Week is an annual event for both water professionals and customers to unite in recognizing the vital role water plays in our daily lives.

Water Treatment Is Important!

One of the main reasons I am grateful for seeing @ShareTheRiver's tweet reminding me to attend Cleveland Water's open house is that I am very interested in the subject of water treatment and city resource infrastructure. In fact, I have already written two blog posts about the subject:

Here is a map that shows the physical relationship between the Garrett A. Morgan Water Treatment Plant and both the Southerly Wastewater Treatment Plant and Akron Water Reclamation Facility.Since all the water from the Cuyahoga River ends up in the source of our drinking water -- Lake Erie -- you can understand how important the work of these three water treatment plants are to the health and wellbeing of our region.

 

Facts about Cleveland Water and Garrett A. Morgan

During the tour, I learned that Cleveland Water's Garrett A. Morgan Water Treatment Plant is one of four treatment plants that provide safe, quality drinking water 24/7/365.

Cleveland Water's Garrett A. Morgan Water Treatment Plant is one of four treatment plants that provide safe, quality drinking water 24/7/365.
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In the past, redundant systems were not in place to guarantee that if one plant was down, the others could make up for the loss. Now, there are more efficient pump systems, generators available during power outages, and backup water pumps within the Garrett A. Morgan Water Treatment Plant. Between the backup systems within each plant, and the combined resources of the four plants, Cleveland Water has in place systems and plans to ensure there will always be water available.

Today, over 1.3 million people are served by Cleveland Water. It was interesting to learn that when the Garrett A. Morgan Water Treatment Plant was first built, the only treatment was to chlorinate the water, and the water intake was close to the Cuyahoga River, which was polluted from all the industry along the river in Akron and Cleveland. Today, Cleveland Water does more than just purify the water, and the water intake is farther out in the lake.

Here is a PDF file of the Garrett A. Morgan Water Treatment Plant brochure that Cleveland Water provided during the tour. It explains some of the history of the building, why it is named after Garrett A. Morgan, and an overview of the water treatment process. The Garrett A. Morgan Water Treatment Plant brochure PDF will open in a new browser window.


Garrett A. Morgan Water Treatment Plant brochure
Read PDF File of
Garrett A. Morgan Water Treatment Plant

I have always wanted to see the Garrett A. Morgan Water Treatment Plant up close, since driving by on the shoreway, I was fascinated by the architecture of these old buildings. During the tour, I learned that while the main building was built in 1916, the building I was looking at from the freeway was the newer water pump station (I believe it was built in 2005). Cleveland Water did a good job matching the architecture of the new pump building to that of the older, historic building.

Here is some information from the Cleveland Water website about the Garrett A. Morgan Water Treatment Plant and its namesake, Cleveland inventor Garrett A. Morgan.

Garrett A. Morgan Water Treatment Plant

Westside in Ohio City

The Garrett A. Morgan Water Treatment Plant, built in 1916, was originally named The Division Avenue Pumping and Filtration Plant, and was constructed on the site of where the original water system originated in 1856. This makes Morgan the oldest treatment facility within the Cleveland Water system. In addition to being the oldest, Morgan also has the largest Ohio EPA approved capacity of 150 million gallons, pumping an average of 60 million gallons of water a day to the residents and businesses located downtown and in the western and southern suburbs of Cleveland.

From 2001 to 2012, Morgan underwent renovations as part of Cleveland Water’s Plant Enhancement Project. The cost associated with these improvements was $177.2 million and consisted of: a new finished water pump station; renovated filters; a renovated Filter and Administration building and a raw water pump station; a new 15 million gallon reservoir; and the demolition of an old finished water pump building.

In 1991, the plant was renamed the Garrett A. Morgan Water Treatment Plant. It is named after Garrett Augustus Morgan, a local inventor and entrepreneur whose creations have made a positive impact on the world and are still being used today. He is also known for inventing an improved traffic signal with a warning light; a zig-zag stitching attachment for sewing machines; and hair cream. However, his most notable invention was the gas mask which saved the lives of several men trapped during an explosion in an underground tunnel beneath Lake Erie in 1916. This same gas mask was adopted by the U.S. Armed Forces during WWI and became the prototype for modern day firefighting hoods used to battle oil well fires.

Before going on the tour, Department of Public Utilities Manager of Communications Paula D. Morrison told me some details about the Garrett A. Morgan Water Treatment Plant and how they have a mini-museum about Garrett A. Morgan.

Mini-museum about Cleveland inventor Garrett A. Morgan
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I have read a little about Garrett A. Morgan at the Western Reserve Historical Society (@CleStartsHere) (see photo in #GarrettMorgan tweets), and have a poster of him in my office that Lee Hall (@PaleeoGuy) designed for the 2017 March for Science in Cleveland (@ScienceMarchCLE). (See photo in my office in #ScienceMarchCLE tweet and all the posters in my March For Science Cleveland on Earth Day 2017 blog post.)

See the "September 9, 2015 - Gateway District "Take a Hike" Tour" section of my "Take a Hike," Cleveland! - 2015 & 2016 blog post to learn how I "met" Cleveland inventor Garrett Morgan (or at least a talented actor who shared his stories) during the tour. The Historic Gateway Neighborhood Corporation (@GatewayCLE) "Take a Hike" Cleveland tours are the greatest!

I think it is great the Cleveland Water honored Garrett A. Morgan during the tour -- see my photos in the tweets below.

Tweets & Retweets

Here are my @sos_jr tweets and retweets, which include information about Cleveland Water and some photos of the Garrett A. Morgan Water Treatment Plant. Note that photography was restricted during the Plant tour, so some of the photos are from Cleveland Water's website. Please share informational tweets and any photos and videos that you find interesting by retweeting.

Thank you, Cleveland Water, for the informative tour. I hope to learn even more in the future.