The Cost of Standing Still: Part One
When Galion City Council approved three financing ordinances this spring, the combined numbers were substantial: up to $3.743 million in new bond anticipation notes tied to improvements in the city’s water and sewer systems.
They are the latest consequence — financial — of problems that have been growing for years. Ohio Environmental Protection Agency violations of the city’s drinking water system have resulted in formal orders from the agency that mandate improvements with deadlines that stretch into 2027. For Galion residents and leaders, the question is no longer if significant improvements need to be made to the city’s drinking water system. They do. Rather, the questions now are how much those improvements will ultimately cost, how the city will pay for them, and what commitments to big-ticket expenses like that will mean for Galion in the long run.
We know well how difficult it is to sort through the information and public and private rhetoric about these issues. So those are questions this series will attempt to answer.
But for Part 1, there’s a more fundamental question: Why does Galion have to spend all this money in the first place?
A Problem That Did Not Begin in 2026
Galion’s difficulties with its drinking water system predate the financing legislation passed this year.
One recurring issue has involved total trihalomethanes, generally known as TTHMs. TTHMs are disinfection byproducts that can form when chlorine used to disinfect drinking water reacts with naturally occurring organic material. Federal drinking-water regulations establish a maximum contaminant level of 80 parts per billion. Galion’s own 2016 annual water quality report showed a TTHM level of 80.9 parts per billion, with individual results ranging as high as 113.7 parts per billion. The City reported a violation that year.
The problem did not disappear. Galion’s 2021 annual report showed a TTHM level of 86.7 parts per billion, again above the federal maximum, with individual readings ranging as high as 105.8.
The following year brought another violation. Galion reported exceeding the TTHM maximum during the January through March 2022 monitoring quarter. At that point, the City said corrective measures included distribution-system auto-flushers, changes in elevated-tank operations, repairs or replacement of treatment equipment and exploration of upgraded equipment.
Another maximum-contaminant-level violation followed during the April through June quarter of 2023. By then, the relationship between the City and the Ohio EPA had moved beyond routine monitoring and corrective work.
Formal Orders Arrive
On August 31, 2023, the City and Ohio EPA entered into Director’s Final Findings and Orders covering the drinking water system. Those orders established deadlines for a series of projects and required Galion to return to compliance with TTHM standards. The projects included rehabilitation of a clarifier, installation of elevated-tank mixing equipment, broader improvements at the water treatment plant, and clearwell mixing and aeration.
The City subsequently reported that the clarifier rehabilitation was completed in April 2024 and elevated-tank mixing in June 2024. General plant improvements continued afterward, while clearwell work remained unfinished.
There were setbacks along the way. Galion’s 2023 water quality report disclosed that the City missed a September 30, 2023 deadline to begin the clarifier rehabilitation project. The work was later completed in April 2024.
Meanwhile, Ohio EPA continued examining other portions of the system. A limited-scope site visit in August 2023 and a sanitary survey conducted in May 2024 resulted in additional violations and corrective requirements involving equipment, operations and facilities. By May 2025, Ohio EPA was acknowledging that Galion had resolved a number of those items, but others remained. A May 29, 2025 letter, for example, documented the resolution of one violation while reviewing the status of several still outstanding from the 2023 and 2024 inspections.
The picture that emerges from the state correspondence is not one of a system on which nothing was being done. It is a system in which significant work was being done because significant work was required.
Millions Had Already Been Spent
By January of this year, the City said it had spent more than $3 million on water plant improvements since 2024, with most of that money coming from state and county grants rather than loans. The completed or underway work cited by the City included a $788,269 clarifier rehabilitation, a $1.05 million lime slaking system replacement, an $816,400 filter media and underdrain replacement, tank mixing equipment, repairs to the Dawsett tower and painting and repair work on water towers.
But the work was not finished. In that same January statement, the City identified three remaining areas requiring resolution with Ohio EPA.
One was the Amann Pump House. At that point, the City estimated the project at approximately $2.18 million and said it had secured $500,000 through the Ohio Public Works Commission. Plans were due to Ohio EPA by March 31, 2026, with completion scheduled by December 31, 2027. A second was the clearwell project, then estimated at approximately $1.17 million, with a completion deadline of December 15, 2027. The third involved the City’s backflow prevention program, with Galion working under a schedule to address required devices throughout the system.
The amounts cited in January were project estimates. The financing package Council considered later in April used different amounts and grouped some projects differently, however the direction was unmistakable. More work remained, and it would be expensive.
A Conditioned License
There was another significant development as 2026 began. On January 9, Ohio EPA issued Galion a conditioned license to operate its public water system through January 30, 2027. The distinction is important.
Ohio EPA said the conditioned license was being issued because of violations of drinking-water regulations and required Galion to continue complying with the August 2023 Director’s Final Findings and Orders. At the same time, the agency specifically stated that Galion was then in compliance with the terms of those orders.
In other words, the City remained under regulatory conditions because the larger corrective process had not ended, but Ohio EPA was not saying Galion was ignoring the required schedule. That distinction has also been emphasized by the City. Galion has repeatedly stated that its drinking water is safe and that it is meeting current Ohio EPA standards while completing the projects required under the regulatory process.
The City’s 2025 annual water report, published this year, lists the clarifier rehabilitation, elevated-tank mixing and general plant improvements as completed, while clearwell mixing and aeration remained ongoing.
So by spring, the issue confronting Galion was not whether the City had begun addressing its water infrastructure. It plainly had. The issue was that some of the largest pieces remained.
Sewer Problems Were Developing Too
The water system has accounted for most of the new financing, but Galion’s wastewater operation has faced its own Ohio EPA scrutiny.
A February 2024 state review of Galion’s industrial pretreatment program found, among other things, that two of the three regulated industrial users had expired permits, monitoring reports from one industrial user had not been received for approximately three years, and evaluations of certain industrial discharge controls had not been performed since at least 2007. Inspectors also reported that process wastewater, believed to contain lime, was entering the wastewater treatment system and causing interference, structural corrosion and flow obstructions.
Those issues are separate from the drinking-water violations, but together they form part of the infrastructure environment in which City Council acted this spring.
Three Ordinances and $3.743 Million
At its April 28 meeting, Galion City Council passed three ordinances authorizing bond anticipation notes for water and sewer projects. Together, the maximum authorization was $3.743 million. The largest share, approximately $3.15 million, involves the water system.
Let’s take a look together at those three ordinances.
➤ Ordinance 2026-31
The first measure authorized up to $1.143 million. Unlike the other two ordinances, most of this financing represents a continuation or refinancing of debt already incurred. The City had issued $1.1661 million in bond anticipation notes in July 2025. Those notes were scheduled to mature in July of this year. Council authorized new notes, together with other City funds, to retire that earlier issue.
The underlying projects include:
- $346,600 for screw-pump equipment and related improvements at the sewage treatment plant;
- $246,400 for construction of a sanitary sewer lift station along State Route 61; and
- $550,000 for improvements at Powers Reservoir and the water treatment plant, including clearwell and sluice-gate work.
This portion of the April package does not represent $1.143 million of entirely new projects suddenly conceived this spring. It continues the financing of improvements for which the City had already borrowed.
➤ Ordinance 2026-32
The second ordinance authorized up to $1.2 million for another group of water treatment plant improvements. The work includes tank-mixing equipment, floating aeration, blowers, ventilation of the clearwell, control equipment, sluice gates, hatches, sediment removal and electrical improvements. Those improvements closely reflect the type of treatment and clearwell work that has appeared repeatedly in the City’s Ohio EPA compliance history.
➤ Ordinance 2026-33
The third ordinance authorized up to $1.4 million for improvements at Amann Reservoir. The project includes demolition and replacement of existing structures, raw-water pumps, electrical equipment, piping, valves, screens, gates and related work. Again, Amann was not a newly discovered concern. Only three months earlier, the City had publicly identified the Amann Pump House as one of its three remaining Ohio EPA water-system issues and said the project was required to be completed by the end of 2027.
Not Yet Long-Term Bonds
There is another distinction in what Council approved. Galion did not simply issue $3.743 million in 20-year bonds on April 28. Council authorized bond anticipation notes, commonly known as BANs. Those notes provide shorter-term financing in anticipation of long-term bonds that the ordinances contemplate issuing later.
The BANs themselves carry interest and must mature no more than one year after they are issued. The actual amounts borrowed, interest rates and other final financing terms therefore remain significant.
The ordinances anticipate long-term bonds dated around July 1, 2027. Most of that principal would be repaid through 20 annual installments, while one sewer component uses a 15-year schedule. The legislation assumes an estimated 6 percent interest rate for the eventual bonds.
The first scheduled principal payments on those long-term bonds are anticipated around December 1, 2027, roughly 16 months from now. Financing costs associated with the short-term notes begin before that point.
The Work Is No Longer Theoretical
There will be legitimate questions about the financing. There will be questions about whether other funding sources remain available, how much of the authorized borrowing ultimately will be necessary, what interest rate Galion will obtain, and exactly which City revenues ultimately will be used to repay the debt. Those questions matter, but but they should not obscure what the public record already demonstrates.
The infrastructure problems themselves are not inventions of the 2026 borrowing ordinances. Galion reported a TTHM drinking-water violation as far back as 2016. More violations followed in 2021, 2022 and 2023. Ohio EPA imposed formal findings and orders in 2023. Inspections identified additional deficiencies. Projects were completed, millions of dollars were spent, and additional work remained under state-imposed schedules.
Galion was still running its water system under a conditioned Ohio EPA license at the start of this year, actively working towards bringing their system up to the final couple of requirements. In that way, this spring’s approval of nearly $3.743 million in financing is less about how the story begins, but rather the bill coming due for a story that’s been developing over years.
Now that Galion has hit a point where they need to significantly repair and upgrade the system, how they pay for it is the next concern. How those costs start to trickle through the City’s budget and toward the citizens and businesses that comprise it will be considered in Part Two, coming later this week.