Worms to Help with Detroit’s Remaining CSOs

Who knew? Now Detroit can handle 95% of its combined sewer overflows! Worms will help with the remaining 5%.

On June 24, 2016, The Atlantic City Lab published an article by Jessica Leigh Hester titled “Detroit Is Turning Vacant Lots Into Sponges for Stormwater.” Hester reports (excerpts):

Detroit’s aged sewer system carries both sanitary sewage and stormwater. It overflows into creeks and rivers after heavy rains.

“Over the last two decades, the city has poured $1 billion into upgrading the system; now, its six retention basins and three treatment facilities can accommodate approximately 95 percent of the untreated overflow—an improvement, but an imperfect solution. ‘How do you get to the last 5 percent of the problem?’ asks Palencia Mobley, the deputy director of Detroit Water and Sewerage. ‘Spending another $1 billion or $2 billion doesn’t make a lot of economical sense.’ To bridge the gap, the city has pivoted to focus on green infrastructure …”

Rendering, bio-retention garden, Warrendale neighborhood. (Courtesy of Joan Nassauer)

Small scale stormwater interventions may suffice in other, more crowded cities, but Detroit has plenty of room for larger projects.

“It’s a sprawling city, with vacant or buckling properties scattered across its 139 square miles. As of April 2016, 66,125 vacant parcels were held by the Detroit Land Bank Authority, which has received more than $100 million in federal funds to demolish blighted structures.”

“This spring and summer, researchers across the city are investigating the immediate and long-term ecological and sociological benefits of turning vacant land into stormwater basins topped with colorful plants.”

“Wade Rose, the vacant land restoration manager at the reforestation and farming organization the Greening of Detroit, described the process of remediating parcels that have been untended for decades. The houses that used to sit on top of them, Rose says, were demolished before the current protocols were put in place; they might have been bulldozed into the basement and sealed off.”

“The project deploys various techniques for soil remediation and water retention: a wildflower meadow; a tree stand, in which oak trees’ roots fracture compacted soils; rain gardens with deep depressions; and a treatment that deposits 100,000 worms at depths ranging from 2-6 feet, creating a network of tunnels that make space for storm water.”

http://www.citylab.com/cityfixer/2016/06/detroit-vacant-lots-gardens-stormwater/488342/

Free Press Resurrects DWSD Against KWA

Detroit Free Press - Have you been off on another planet the last five years? No, more likely you’re playing word games with an ulterior motive.

In today’s (6-12-16) Free Press (“Official: Flint will 'lose everything’…“) you wrote:

“While those punishing terms appear to make a Flint default unlikely, whether Flint hooks up with the new KWA pipeline to Lake Huron or opts to continue receiving treated Lake Huron water from the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department, as it does now, remains a live issue.” (Emphasis added.)  

As you know very well, Flint presently gets water from the regional successor to DWSD, the Great Lakes Water Authority. Your misstatement lingers until a correction at the bottom of the piece, which many readers won’t reach.

I suspect the Free Press is surreptitiously advancing the idea that an abused, downtrodden Flint should make common cause with an abused, downtrodden Detroit in part by resurrecting the DWSD brand, as if oblivious to GLWA and its Detroit retailer, DWSD-R.

I agree that an urban alliance against everything Republican, from Snyder to out-county Genesee, might be useful, but the means you’re employing could do more harm to Flint than to Republicans.

http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/flint-water-crisis/2016/06/11/official-flint-lose-everything-if-leaves-kwa/85662110/

MDEQ Says GLWA Layoffs Violated Agreement

Excerpts from an Oakland Press article by Ronald Seigel, 4-1-16:

voiceofdetroit.net

The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality sent a notice March 9 to both the Detroit Water and Sewage Department and the newly formed Great Lakes Water Authority (GLWA) serving the suburbs, that employee layoffs made in the Detroit Water System last October violated state environmental laws and a consent agreement made several years ago. [Emphasis added.]

 The State MDEQ stated these layoffs violated an administrative consent order between that state agency, and the Detroit Water and Sewage Department and agreed to by the newly formed GLWA, which took charge of suburban water at the start this year. MDEQ stated the agreement required at least 95 percent of the minimum staffing level of the MDEQ’s approved staffing plan “on an average annual basis,” but after the layoffs the staffing level went down to 85 percent.

[GLWA Director Susan] McCormick stated that many or most of the functions of the laid off employees will be replaced by new hires and internal transfers.

GLWA Counsel William Wolfson said because the consent agreement requiring GLWA to have 95 percent of the minimum staffing level specified, that this would be done on an “annual average basis.”

http://www.theoaklandpress.com/general-news/20160401/state-concerned-about-threats-to-water-and-sewage-safety-in-detroit-and-suburbs

Do MDEQ’s sudden concerns about staffing at GLWA and the obvious bearing staffing has on public health and safety reflect a new vigilance at MDEQ? If so, we can expect a lot more actions like this one.

Consider the past inattention to Michigan’s numerous impaired waters, in addition to the glacial pace of restoring Michigan’s toxic Areas of Concern, not to mention the disgraceful pollution caused by turning a blind eye to the discharged manure of hundreds of thousands of animals in Michigan’s industrial-scale livestock feeding operations.

Or does laissez faire continue to reign supreme in those arenas? Time will tell.