U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D., Toledo) said Monday he is reintroducing legislation that could provide relief from escalating sewer rates by making more money available to cash-strapped communities that need to improve their water infrastructure.

The Clean Water Affordability Act would provide up to $1.8 billion in federal money available over five years, a figure that, while large, would be used up quickly by dozens of U.S. communities that need billions of dollars of improvements.

“It’s a good start,” Mr. Brown told The Blade after a news conference at Toledo’s Collins Park Water Treatment Plant.

The primary targets are combined sewer overflows.

In older cities such as Toledo, a nutrient-rich combination of untreated household waste and street runoff spills into area rivers, lakes, and streams, adding to farm runoff and other pollution when they become inundated by heavy rain.

Toledo is under a federal court order to expand and improve its sewage network to reduce such spills. It is doing that through its $521 million Toledo Waterways Initiative, which began in 2002 and — after a couple of extensions — is now slated to be finished in 2020.

That will reduce the frequency and volume of spills by about 80 percent, the city's commissioner of water treatment said.

Julie Cousino, Toledo Waterways Initiative program administrator, said Mr. Brown’s bill would likely provide some relief, although she said it’s too early to say how much or in what form.

With interest rates low, the city probably wouldn’t save much from low-interest loans. But it could if some of that money is made available as grants — and perhaps use that money to help defray operational costs, she said.

Much of the nation’s sewage work has been funded by federal money passed through the states under a formula.

The Clean Water State Revolving Fund is the largest fund in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s budget. But it has been subject to steep cuts by Congress, especially in recent years, as politicians look for ways to trim the budget.

Mr. Brown’s office said most of the new money would be made available as a 75/​25 cost share for municipalities to use for planning, design, and construction.

Toledo’s algae-induced water crisis of 2014, which put the city under the global spotlight when public health officials urged nearly 500,000 metro to avoid drinking or making contact tap water one weekend, underscored the need for a long-overdue commitment to better infrastructure nationally, Mr. Brown said.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates 850 billion gallons of raw waste are released into the nation’s waterways each year from spills. Ohio alone has a $7 billion shortfall in infrastructure needs, he said.

The nation needs the Clean Water Affordability Act as much as it needs a highway bill to improve the nation’s transportation system, Mr. Brown said. “We are not investing the way we should [in infrastructure],” he said.

Memories fade as time moves further away from event such as the Toledo water crisis, Mr. Brown said.

“People forget quickly,” he said. “We continue to remind people this is really serious.”

Joining him at the news conference were Mr. Campbell, downtown restaurateur Ed Beczynski, and Toledo Mayor Paula Hicks-Hudson.

Mr. Beczynski, who owns The Blarney and Focaccia’s, said he and other restaurant owners agree clean water is essential to their businesses and downtown’s continued economic revival.

Contact Tom Henry at: thenry@theblade.com, 419-724-6079, or via Twitter @ecowriterohio.

First Published October 6, 2015, 4:00 a.m.