16980 Kercheval Ave • McCourt Building • Grosse Pointe, MI 48230 • 313.882.6900 • Office Hours: Monday-Friday 9am-5pm

16980 Kercheval Pl. • Grosse Pointe, Michigan 48236 • 313.882.6900 • Monday-Friday 9am-4pm

By Brad Lindberg | on March 02, 2022

GROSSE POINTE PARK — None of the 369 storm water discharges into Michigan rivers and Great Lakes during 2020 came from Grosse Pointe Park.

None of the 3.84 billion gallons of untreated combined sewage overflows. Meaning raw, untreated sewage.

Nor did any of the 29.68 billion gallons from retention basins.

Among discharges of raw sewage, Port Huron did it 42 times during the year for a total of 17 million gallons, according to the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy’s 2020 annual report on the topic.

Redford, Inkster and Dearborn Heights combined for 16 raw discharges totaling 20.4 million.

The Great Lakes Water Authority, which among other things manages sewer water treatment for 125 communities in southeast Michigan, including the Grosse Pointes, reported making 29 overflow discharges totaling 25,315.5 billion gallons, nearly 2 billion of which were untreated, raw sewage.

At the Chapaton retention treatment basin at Jefferson and Nine Mile in Macomb County, eight overflow discharges during 2020 consisted of 176.5 million gallons, all treated.

Nine discharges totaling 424.7 million gallons of treated water came from the Milk River Combined Sewer Overflow Retention Treatment Basin, which accepts storm water from St. Clair Shores and Harper Woods, plus combined storm and sewer water from Grosse Pointe Woods.

“After a rainstorm,” according to a description of Milk River operations in a Feb. 10, 2021, EGLE news release, “there may be more water entering the sewer system than the system can handle. When this happens, the sewer flow is diverted to the Milk River Pump Station and CSO treatment basin instead of backing up into residential basements located within the service area.”

“We shouldn’t be using basements as sewage retention basins,” said Andrew Richner, a resident of Grosse Pointe Park, where last summer two big storms plus Water Authority pump station malfunctions downstream in Detroit equaled basement backups.

Yet, the state won’t permit the Park to divert excess storm water into Lake St. Clair.

The ban extends to rains so rare they’re statistically forecast to happen only once per 1,000 years.

It applies when storm pumps fail in a downstream jurisdiction upon which the Park depends, causing backups of combined runoff and sewer water into 3,000 Park residential and commercial basements as happened June 25 and, to a lesser degree, less than three weeks later July 16.

It applies even though most of the Park’s storm water network operates independently of the sewer system, thereby lessening the degree of cross contamination should excess storm water runoff need to be diverted into the lake, as happened with many communities and agencies listed in the state report.

“We need to fix the problem,” Richner said.

“In the last five years, Grosse Pointe Park would have experienced a total of, maybe, three discharges,” said Dale Krajniak, former Park manager. He retired in 2019. “At least two would’ve resulted from excessive rains that overtook the Great Lakes Water Authority due, in part, to equipment failures.”

During two storms in 2021, some pumps failed at three GLWA stations that are supposed to collect flow from the Pointes and other eastside municipalities.

“If everything worked perfectly, there still would have been flooding, but not nearly to the same extent,” Krajniak said.

It’s part of a recent pattern.

“In 2016, there was a problem downstream in Detroit,” Krajniak said. “The Park had to shut down its pump station, yet north of Jefferson only about a dozen houses flooded. The south side flooded terribly. When pumps don’t work, where is the water supposed to go?”

No one from the GLWA or EGLE responded to interview requests. Neither did the Park’s voice in the state House of Representatives, Joseph Tate, D-Detroit.

“One of the realities is EGLE does not want to grant a blanket permit,” said Park Councilman Max Wiener, an engineer and chairman of the infrastructure committee. “They have a major problem with outfalls. There are tons of outfalls in neighboring communities. With that storm in June, there were outfalls in front of us, behind us, all over the place. Most of these outfalls are grandfathered in.”

“Nobody builds outfalls anymore,” said Nick Sizeland, current Park manager. “But, in the case of these rain events, we have to think outside the box and do something.”

“For us to get permission, it has to be very tailored,” Wiener said.

The Park’s current plan to fight storm-induced flooding supplants a 2018 proposal that already is considered out of date.

“Given the major storm event (in June), we don’t think it would have been effective,” Wiener said. “Now, we’re looking at a way more robust design.”

Both proposals involve installing an extreme emergency relief valve, or EERV, at or near the Park’s stormwater retention tank at Patterson Park.

The tank, extending 60 feet underground and more than consuming the foundation of a mansion which it replaced, is designed to combat storm-induced sewer backups by holding excess rain water for controlled, delayed release.

In 2018, engineers contracted by the Park proposed installing an EERV under Essex Drive near the entrance to Patterson Park. The design allowed sewer water — not only from the Park but also from upstream communities sending flows through the Park to southwest Detroit for treatment by GLWA — to enter the storm water network, then flow by gravity to the holding tank for drainage into Lake St. Clair.

“One of the realities is we have an interconnected system with neighboring communities,” Wiener said. “There’s water coming in from neighboring communities.”

“During an extreme event, the valve could be opened manually to release sewer water into (the retention tank),” Sizeland said. “After further study, we found it would help but not maximize the project because you’d have a bottleneck at the juncture. The concern is it could back up. That was based on storm volumes experienced in 2016, which were nothing compared to what happened last June.”

The new idea is to build a large sewer pipe straight from Essex to the holding tank; no link or junction with a storm water line.

“It’s bigger, there’s no bottlenecking and it will transfer water quicker for discharge into the lake,” Sizeland said.

There also are plans to add a seventh pump at the station to beef up volume and redundancy.

“We need backups to the backups to the backups,” Sizeland said. “Originally, the EERV was estimated to cost about $400,000. It could be $1.5 to $2 million now.”

The new design gives Park officials more control over flow.

“We can put in other controls to have minor treatments of incoming water,” Wiener said. “That’s one of the biggest issues with EGLE. They want to know we have flow controls so we can monitor what’s actually going through as opposed to just bridging it and blending it.”

He doesn’t characterize the EERV as a silver bullet, a guarantee against flooding.

“It’s like a parachute,” he said. “You don’t want to use it, but if there’s an emergency, you’ve got it. In the last decade, the EERV would have been turned on twice, for the June event and the 2016 event. This is something we never want to use, but it’s a parachute before you have $50 million to $80 million damage and an environmental, health and safety catastrophe for residents.”

The Park’s ability to shed water could benefit other members of the system, just as discharges by upstream communities have benefitted the Pointes.

“Being able to relieve pressure would have taken stress off of Detroit as well,” Wiener said. “A good example is when Candice Miller in Macomb County opened her discharge, it took stress off of us. We would have had more flooding if she had not done that release.”

Sizeland said he’s submitted documentation to the state about the EERV projected performance, the magnitude of storms in the Park, sewer backups, flood damage and the city’s current versus expanded capacity to handle volume if allowed to install the relief valve.

“Give me the answer of what you need,” Sizeland asked of state environmental administrators.

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