GLWA launches Rouge River Outfall; Implementation will improve water quality in river

DETROIT— The Great Lakes Water Authority (GLWA), Michigan’s largest drinking water and wastewater treatment service provider, has successfully launched its Rouge River Outfall Disinfection Facility (RRO). The new RRO ensures every drop of water discharged into the Rouge River from GLWA’s Water Resource Recovery Facility (WRRF) is entirely screened, treated and disinfected – improving water quality in the river and helping to protect public health.

GLWA operates what is called a combined sewer system, meaning the system collects not only water flushed down toilets and drains, but also everything that runs into storm drains throughout the system. All this water flows to GLWA’s WRRF, where it is treated and disinfected. However, combined sewer systems often experience capacity issues after heavy wet weather events, such as rainstorms and snow melts, causing extremely high volumes of flow to the WRRF, which had previously resulted in some of the wet weather flows getting to the Rouge River without receiving any disinfection.