Crown Water Treatment Plant

The Crown Water Treatment Plant is located in Westlake, Ohio, making it the only Cleveland Water treatment plant not located in the City of Cleveland. Named after Emil J. Crown, a former Director of Public Utilities, Crown went into operation in 1958.

Crown produces an average of 41.5 million gallons daily (MGD) of water to deliver to the residents and businesses of Cleveland’s westside, including its western and southwestern suburbs, and has a pumping capacity of 130 MGD. An eight-foot diameter intake pipe that extends 2.5 miles into Lake Erie brings water to a raw water well where two, 54-inch mains feed the plant. Crown is equipped with 25 multistage flocculators; 10 sedimentation basins; 12, 72-inch-deep filters; and a 36.5-million-gallon inground reservoir.

Since 2016, Crown has received the prestigious Phase IV Excellence in Water Treatment Award, given by the Partnership for Safe Water. This designation establishes utilities as high-performing providers of safe drinking water based on annual performance and operational assessments. As Phase IV recipient, Crown has improved and optimized its operations to surpass federal requirements for drinking water quality. From 2004 to 2016, the Crown plant received a Phase III Certification. Receiving the Partnership IV Award represents the accumulation and recognition of hard work by Cleveland Water engineers, consultants, and employees, which began in 1958 and continues today.

Over the years, we’ve invested hundreds of millions of dollars in significant renovations and upgrades at Crown. Key improvements included doubling plant capacity from 50 million gallons to 112 million gallons by rebuilding the filters with deep bed media, improving the residual system, installing a water softener system to reduce SHC bulk delivery concentration from 12% to the engineered design feed rate of 6.5, building a new powder activated carbon (PAC) system, and the installation and integration of new state-of-the art control systems and monitoring software that help staff analyze and control water quality more precisely and easily.