Issue 3 of 12
Nothing gets built without a sewer line.
The county does not decide where your township allows houses. It decides where the pipe goes, and no subdivision gets built without one. That makes the Regional Sewer District the most direct growth tool the commissioners have, and the least discussed. Ryan will put every capacity decision in public, with the roads, schools, and traffic it makes possible on the table in the same meeting.
See what the county controls ↓550 miles
Sewer line in the county district's collection system, serving more than 129,000 people. Every mile of it is owned by the county and governed by the three commissioners.
Delaware County, August 10, 2026$46 million
What it cost to rebuild the Olentangy Environmental Control Center in Powell, finished in August 2026. Bringing the builder in during design cut roughly $12 million from the price.
Delaware County, August 10, 20269,872
Housing units already in the township development pipeline at the end of 2025. Nearly every one needs a county sewer connection before a single wall goes up.
DCRPC lot status, December 2025The data
The system grew up quietly. The plan says it doubles.
The district started in 1969 with no pipes at all. Today it runs 550 miles of line and nine treatment facilities, and handles 3.2 billion gallons a year. Its own master plan projects the population it serves will roughly double by 2035. Where the new lines go is the county's most direct decision about where growth lands.
People served by the county sewer district, 2010 to 2035
The 2010 figure is the district population counted in the 2017 master plan; 2017, 2022, and 2026 are the counts the district and county published at those dates. The projection is the master plan's planning forecast, not a promise.
Alum Creek plant: built for roughly twice what it treats
Ohio EPA permit records, October 2025. Room at the biggest plant does not mean room in every pipe under every township. Which pipes have room is exactly what a public capacity map would show.
Straight answers
What people ask at the door.
Who is actually in charge of the sewer district?
The three county commissioners. Ohio law puts a county sewer district under the board of commissioners: the board sets the rates, adopts the master plan, employs the sanitary engineer, and approves every construction contract. There is no separate elected sewer board. Day to day, professional staff run the district, and run it well. But when the board votes to extend capacity into a growth corridor, that is the board's vote, at a public meeting, on the record. Most people have no idea the vote is happening.
What is happening right now?
The district treats wastewater at nine facilities, led by the Alum Creek plant in Lewis Center and the just-rebuilt Olentangy Environmental Control Center in Powell. It publishes no single list of active projects, but its bid notices and the board's own journals from the past year show at least five underway: the East Alum Creek pump station upgrade the commissioners approved in April 2026 for $4.5 million, finishing by July 2027; an East Alum Creek interceptor rehabilitation; the Jewett Road trunk sewer; the Trotters Gait pump station; and a study pointing toward a future treatment plant near the US 36 and SR 37 interchange.
How does a sewer pipe decide where houses get built?
A developer asks the district whether service is available. The district answers with a serviceability letter: yes, no, or yes with conditions. By the district's own rules, capacity is not guaranteed until the capacity fee is paid. That letter sits upstream of everything else. A township can zone land for houses all day long, but with no line and no capacity, the lots do not get platted and the houses do not get framed. Where the pipe goes, the rooftops follow, usually years later.
What happens if nothing improves?
Capacity keeps getting extended one project at a time, each vote reasonable on its own, and the combined effect on roads and schools never gets added up in public. Then the intersection fails, the elementary school runs out of seats, and everyone asks how it happened. It happened at a weekday morning meeting nobody attended, years earlier. The system itself is in good shape. The decision process around it is the problem.
What if I am on a septic system?
Then the commissioners are not your regulator. Home septic systems fall under the Delaware Public Health District, which permits, inspects, and tracks them under state sewage rules. And the honest answer for most of the rural west and north: county sewer is not coming. The district's rules guarantee service to no property, and its master plan aims the lines at the growth corridors along US 23, I-71, US 36 and SR 37, and Sawmill Parkway. A home on well and septic far from those corridors will likely stay that way.
Where can I check this myself?
The commissioners meet Monday and Thursday mornings at 9:30 in the Historic Courthouse at 91 North Sandusky Street in Delaware, and sewer items appear on the agenda most weeks. The district posts its rules, its fee schedule, its master plan, and its bid notices online. The Regional Planning Commission publishes the development pipeline. Every figure on this page is linked in the sources at the bottom.
Credit where due
What the county just built.
The Olentangy Environmental Control Center in Powell reopened in August 2026 after a rebuild that took nearly four years. The plant first opened around 1980 and was rebuilt in the mid-1990s; by the time crews broke ground in September 2022, much of its equipment had passed the end of its design life.
The county delivered it a different way than usual. Instead of finishing the design and then bidding out construction, it brought the builder in during design, one of Ohio's first public projects run that way. The district's director says the approach cut roughly $12 million from the cost. A $5 million state water infrastructure grant helped pay for it. The total came to $46 million.
That is real work, done well, and it deserves credit. It also makes the case for this page. The plant serves the growth corridors along Sawmill Parkway and US 23, and the capacity it added is what makes the next decade of houses there possible. The road and school picture that comes with those houses was never published alongside it.
Levers and limits
What a commissioner can actually do about sewer.
On most issues the county shares power with townships, cities, and independently elected officials. Not this one. The sewer district belongs to the board, by statute.
The board controls
The sewer district itself. Under Ohio Revised Code Chapter 6117, the board establishes the district, adopts the general plan of sewerage, employs the sanitary engineer, and approves the contracts. Even the state permit for the Powell plant lists the permit holder as the Delaware County Commissioners. This is the most direct authority the office has over growth, and it is exercised almost entirely without public attention.
Rates and capacity fees. Ohio law directs the board to fix the rates and connection charges. The capacity fee, $8,100 per home today, is one of the few legal ways in Ohio to make growth help pay for the infrastructure it requires, because the state gives counties no impact-fee statute.
Where the lines go. Every extension, every pump station, every interceptor is a board vote, like the $4.5 million East Alum Creek pump station upgrade approved in April 2026. Extending capacity into a corridor is a decision to allow development there, whatever the stated reason.
Whether any of it is public. The board sets its own agenda and its own reporting. Publishing what a capacity decision makes possible requires no new authority from anyone.
The board does not control
Zoning. In 15 of the 18 townships, zoning belongs to the township. The county zoning resolution covers only Marlboro, Radnor, and Thompson. Service availability is a county decision. Land use is not.
City sewer systems. The City of Delaware runs 175 miles of its own sewer, and Sunbury runs its own plant. Westerville collects its own wastewater and treats it by contract. The surprise is Powell: it has no city sewer at all, and the county district serves it.
Drinking water. Del-Co Water is a member-owned nonprofit water company with its own board. It is not the county, and county commissioners do not set its rates.
Ohio EPA permits. Every plant discharges under a state permit with state standards. The county meets those requirements. It does not write them.
Septic systems. Home sewage treatment systems fall under the Delaware Public Health District, a separate public health agency, under state sewage rules.
The plan
What Ryan will do.
Publish a public capacity map, updated every year.
Where capacity exists today, where it is already committed to approved projects, and where it runs out. The district already has this information. By its own rules it guarantees capacity to nobody until the fee is paid, which is all the more reason a family weighing a move, or a trustee weighing a rezoning, should be able to see what the pipe under a road can still carry.
Put the growth consequences in the same meeting as the capacity vote.
When the board votes to extend capacity, the roads, intersections, and school enrollment that capacity makes possible should be in writing, in the packet, in front of the public, before the vote. This is an improvement in how the board runs its own business, and it requires nobody's permission but the board's.
Review the capacity fee so growth pays for growth.
Ohio gives counties no impact-fee statute, so the capacity fee is the legal tool that exists. It has been $8,100 per home since January 2020 while construction costs have climbed. Reviewing it in public, on a schedule, keeps the cost of serving new development on new development instead of on people who have paid a sewer bill here for twenty years.
If nothing improves
The system works today, which is exactly why nobody watches it. Capacity keeps getting extended one sensible vote at a time, and the combined effect shows up years later as a failed intersection and a crowded elementary school. By the time anyone connects the sewer vote to the traffic, the pipe is in the ground and the lots are recorded.
What better looks like
A county where you can look up what the sewer system under your township can still carry, and where every vote to extend it comes with a plain accounting of the houses, cars, and students it makes possible. The quietest decision in county government, made in front of you instead of past you.
Sources
Last updated: September 2, 2026
You should not have to take a candidate's word for any of this. Every figure above traces to one of these sources. Found an error? Tell the campaign and we will fix it.
Keep going.
Sewer is the quiet system underneath the Growth and Traffic pages.