Toledo Mayor Paula Hicks-Hudson on Thursday highlighted the largest project in the $527 million campaign to drastically reduce Toledo's sewage overflows into local rivers.

A 36.3-million-gallon basin in North Toledo's Joe E. Brown Park, which cost about $70 million, is nearly finished, the mayor said.

Officials said it will result in fewer overflows into waterways in North Toledo. 

The site includes a 172 million gallon-per-day pumping station, a new lighted baseball park with dugouts, tennis courts, a roller hockey rink, playground equipment, a shelter house, a walking path, and parking.

The Toledo Waterways Initiative is more than 80 percent finished, with 18 projects substantially complete, five under way, and two still to begin: modifications to two regulator stations in East Toledo.

Along with the tank under Joe E. Brown, the underway projects include one in International Park that is scheduled for completion in October, 2018. A downtown storage basin will augment a 5.7-million-gallon sewer tunnel Toledo built beneath Superior Street during the 1980s. It also will receive overflows from sewers along Locust and Magnolia streets that connect to a sewer "interceptor" along Summit Street that leads to the city treatment plant near Point Place.

First Published October 26, 2017, 7:00 p.m.